The annotated We: a new translation of Evgeny Zamiatin's novel

Abstract

The annotated We: a new translation of Evgeny Zamiatin's novel, by Vladimir Wozniuk, Bethlehem, Lehigh University Press, 2015, 196 pp., US$75.00 (hbk), ISBN 978-1-611-46178-7When writing about Evgeny Zamiatin's We (1920-21), one of the canonical texts of Russian modernism, it is difficult to avoid mentioning the impressively heterogeneous scholarship the novel has generated over the past half-century. Modernist studies, genre studies, (anti-) utopian studies, mathematics, psychoanalysis, fine arts, biopoetics: the list of the novel's critical contexts goes on and on. In his short and seemingly simple science-fiction story of the mathematician D-503's struggle for selfhood in the futuristic One State, Zamiatin has woven together so many archetypes, intertexts, philosophical ideas, and socio-political allusions that even after almost one hundred years, We still keeps scholars busy and continues to attract new readers.Throughout its turbulent history, the novel has had considerably more luck with translators than with publishers. Not only did the first English edition predate a Russian one by almost thirty years, but also no fewer than eight translations of Zamiatin's jocular and most serious piece (xiii) have appeared to date (including Wozniuk's). Two of the most recent ones - by Garrett Brown and Natasha Randall - are still widely available on the market as Penguin and Modern Library paperbacks. This is quite an achievement for a Russian author whose last name is not spelled Dostoevskii or Tolstoii. Given such proliferation, one might question the need for yet another English version of Zamiatin's magnum opus. As Wozniuk explains, his intention was to produce an accessible English rendition of the novel, but one that would employ language, syntax, and even punctuation that mirror the strange precision and economy of Zamiatin's own (xvi). The result is one of the most accurate - and certainly the most thoroughly researched - translation of We. Wozniuk focuses on the novel's intertextual resonances and the majority of his choices set the text more firmly within the Russian cultural tradition. One particularly noticeable example is his decision to render the novel's chapter headings (zapisy in the original) as notes rather than records or entries, in order to reinforce the Dostoevskian connection (by pointing to Notes from the Underground). Perhaps it is a credit to Zamiatin and the power of his artistic imagination or to his other translators, but even though Wozniuk scrupulously examines every word and phrase from the original to come up with the best English equivalent, his version does not come across as superior to others on the market. D-503's narrative is still as enticing and allusive as ever, but it does not acquire any new dimensions.What truly distinguishes this volume is the second half of Wozniuk's project, namely a scholarly commentary introducing readers to fresh possibilities for the many-leveled game that is We, particularly regarding the many ostensibly cryptic passages that are linked to its peculiarities of lexicon (xvi). In the 53 pages of annotations appended to the end of the book - along with a selected bibliography - Wozniuk not only brings our attention to his translation choices - and, by extension, to the semantic richness of Zamiatin's text - but also undertakes a massive endeavour to untangle the dense intertextual network underlying the novel's narrative and imagery. …