Translator Anastasia Zavozova about favorite books

IN BACKGROUND "BOOK SHELF" we ask journalists, writers, scholars, curators, and other heroines about their literary preferences and publications, which occupy an important place in their bookcase. Today, Anastasia Zavozova, the editor of the Meduza special projects and the translator of the Goldfinch and Little Friend, Donna Tartt, shares her stories about favorite books.

Books for me since childhood were in the same row with the most essential items for life: then people stood for butter, sausage, laundry detergent and books. We still have a letter at home, which my father wrote to the maternity hospital. After the congratulations, there was an important postscript: "P. S .: In the book, Saimak was thrown out. I signed up for a queue." I learned to read in three years and since then I have not ceased to do it. You know, Alexander Zhitinsky has a wonderful children's book called The Keeper of the Planet. There is a character - a space transmitter in the form of a penguin. He feeds on information, so he needs to read something all the time, and the main character "feeds" him with dictionaries and encyclopedias. When a penguin suddenly has nothing to read and he runs out of letters, he lies down on his side, begins to flap his wings, roll his eyes and die. So, I - this penguin.

After the era when there were no books at all, the time began when suddenly they began to sell and translate everything, and my parents and I, by inertia, bought it all up, exchanged and signed it. Accordingly, I also read absolutely unsystematic. I probably didn’t have a favorite writer until 15, I loved everything. For example, Gorky's “Childhood” is a story I reread, probably a hundred times. She was so strong and tough, there men were swearing, and at the same time, there were some beautiful and unknown notions like talma with glass beads and binders of the magazine "Niva".

My grandmother worked as a primary school teacher, so her house was littered with school books about the exploits of young Bolsheviks, children who secretly boiled glycerin for printing proclamations and exposed provocateurs, well then, of course, embarrassed, but firmly pressed Lenin’s hand and left with him on the armored car to the sunset. I read it all. Or Turgenev, whom I fell in love with at the age of seven (I had two such love - Conan Doyle and Turgenev) and diligently read, not understanding anything, but regretting everyone. In Turgenev, as it seems to me now, the most conspicuous beauty of withering that came to me later on when I got to Scandinavian literature came out of the text.

At 15, I simultaneously discovered Jane Austen and Scandinavian literature. It was some kind of amazing experience: opposite-polarity books, they significantly expanded the boundaries of my literary world, which until then consisted of novels of the plot interspersed with soulful Russian classics. I got acquainted with the Scandinavians in the translations of Surits, Yakhnina, Gorlina and Andreev, in which I was struck by the unreasonable, unconditional acceptance of the magic in life. For example, as happens in the sagas. On the one hand, we have a complete pedigree of the hero, some conditional Torquil Leather Pants, and he is absolutely real: here are all his relatives, and that's where he lived - if you come to Iceland, you will be shown this place. On the other hand, here is the story of how Torkil fought the troll and defeated him, and no one serves it as something supernatural, everything is ordinary and ordinary. Here is a man, here are the trolls, and they live next to us.

Selma Lagerlöf has a lovely memoir, "Morbacca." The book was written as early as 1922, but the same unshakable confidence in the fact that the magic is nearby is also visible. Along with the cutest sketches about how my father built the barn, there are stories about how her grandmother went to her home, and she was nearly dragged into the river by a Necken, a water one, who appeared to her a huge white horse of unprecedented beauty. This incredible, very ancient perception of the world has won me over. Later, I enrolled in philology, learned Danish, and took up Scandinavian literature - not the most practical education, but I don’t regret it.

Jane Austen's novels have become important books for me. Before that, of course, as befits non-adult girls, I was a decent Brontean woman and I loved the “Master”, and, of course, “Jan Eyre”. When — much later — I fell into Austin’s hands, I was amazed at how different — other than Charlotte Bronte’s — were her novels. In Bronte because how: Victorian love for the visual rises in full growth. All her novels are very bright, almost tactile spots of the events: red room, black silk, watercolors, green moss, gray stone, glowing eyes and icy paths.

Austin also sharpened the previous tradition, removed all unnecessary from it and literally made six exciting novels out of a handful of details: there are no descriptions, no hesitations, no passions - everything seems simple, but this is deceptive simplicity. The novels of the writer are arranged like real life: in the real world, something rarely happens that is more fascinating than a trip to a taxi, but in your head a lot of things happen all the time - what did he say and what would I say and how should I behave, and if I will do this and that, whether everything will come out so and so. And these books in my 15-16 years have reconciled me with life in general, and in adolescence it is very useful.

I read whenever I do not work. If you are very lucky, I read something for work: for example, if you order a review of a good book, this is the perfect deal. I read at breakfast, read on the subway, if I manage to go out for lunch, read at lunch, read on the way home and read between the translations. If my eyes are tired or sore, I listen to the audiobook, I carry at least three of them with my iPod. At the same time, I don’t watch movies and TV shows at all, because I’m bored when I’m offering a finished picture: I’d rather read a book and draw a picture of myself in my head. I love to read when traveling: a ten-hour flight is happiness, because there is no Internet, no one gets out of your phone, but this reading clock is the best rest that can happen to me at all. I regret that I read very little by my own standards: on average, there are 100 books a year, two per week - but there are so many of them and, as they say, “everything is so tasty” that I want to read everything at once - 200, 300.

I can’t say that books help me navigate today. In my opinion, it’s enough to get out of the house, take a subway ride, look like a regular office work, earn money, well, and somehow do not live on a pink cloud lined with other people's money - and immediately start fucking to navigate today, just so that even you want to navigate in this smaller one. I love books that help to turn off from today, at least for five to ten minutes. Therefore, I love Dickens, this is the equivalent of chicken broth for the sick, a cure for life. I won't trade him for anything, because when you feel bad, when you are especially vulnerable, you can open Dickens - at least “Pikwick Club Notes” or “Cold House” - and he will not fail, because he has no desire to hurt or hurt the reader, his reader is always amiable.

Somewhere 80% of the books I read are in foreign languages. I really like English-language literature and Scandinavian, so I read mostly in English and Danish, and when I can master something simple like Stig Larsson, then in Swedish. I decided for myself that I would definitely not read all the books of the world, so here is my German plot, I will spud it. Despite the fact that I am a translator - and just because I am a translator - I find it difficult to read books in translation, I begin to think: "What was there, why did it say that, and not otherwise?" - and as a result I spoil my pleasure. I read Russian literature with caution and is completely undeveloped in this area, Teffi and Andreeva did not go further. Our writers are incredibly talented able to convey hopelessness, and I have such a temperament that she is always with me.

Selma Lagerlöf

"The saga of Jeste Berling"

This is the book that started my fascination with Scandinavian literature. Lagerlöf is an incredible tale-teller, and she also writes beautifully, and this beauty of the syllable, which is perfectly preserved in translation, won me over. When I grew up and began to read Lagerlöf in the original, at first I was afraid that everything would be drier or otherwise, because the Soviet translation school did not disdain to colorize the originals. But no, the original Lagerlöf is still surprisingly good. This fairy tale that was late for ages, magical Vermlandian realism, the story of 12 cavaliers who sold their souls for entertainment and were tired of them, became exactly what somehow hooked me up after 15 years. If I get it later, I think a miracle wouldn’t have happened, since this book is rooted in some kind of childish love of beauty.

Jens Peter Jacobsen

"Niels Lune"

Another book that I, as an adult, was very afraid to read in the original, thought: "What if it will not be there?" Probably because of her I became a translator. I was struck not by the story that was told in it - it was the story of the birth of a typically northern, deaf, lowing rage towards God in the soul of one little person - but how it was all written. Color painting by Jacobsen is almost the best thing that happened with the Danish literature of the XIX century, everything is so prominent, so tangible that it is worth reading the beginning of the book - and from this rhythm, one cannot escape from these expressions Blidov's radiant eyes, thin arrows of eyebrows, and her nose was clear, like all of them, their strong chin, their swollen lips. Strange, bitter-sensual twist of the mouth, she also inherited, but her face was pale, and her hair was soft, like silk, light and straight. "

August Strindberg

"Alone"

In Strindberg, everyone knows more of the play, and I was caught in his teenage novel The Lonely. He helped me cope with adolescent solipsism, when it seems that you are not like everyone else, and you stand alone, waving in a black cloak, in the middle of a gray mass that does not want to know you. The novel “Lonely” is amazing: on the one hand, he clearly talks about loneliness, so the teenager has a lot to do with this obsession with himself, and on the other hand, you get into your head, sad notes of northern literature. I managed to draw the right conclusions - that the deliberately imposed loneliness does not always lead to good.

Mikael Niemi

"Popular music from Vittula"

Translation of this book into Russian is one of the best I have ever met. Ruslan Kosynkin, you are still my idol forever. This is a touching, lively, Scandinavian-bodily and angular story of the maturation of two boys in a Swedish village on the very border with Finland. It happens in the 70s, wilderness, fistfights, men in the sauna, the biggest holiday is to devour reindeer at a wedding. And then the guys discover the Beatles and Elvis, and on the musical hormone-charged wave brings them to the big adult world. I rarely show emotions while reading, but I remember that I laughed and cried in a voice over this book. We lived with a friend in a hostel, we were 20 years old by ourselves, and at night we read each other pieces so that we ourselves were a living illustration of what was happening in her.

Jeanette winterson

"Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?"

I read this book not so long ago, but I immediately fell in love with it with all my heart - probably because in many respects it is about a passionate, even fierce love for books. This is the autobiography of Winterson, a famous writer, an ardent feminist. I am very sorry that it is not translated into Russian. Perhaps this is due to the fact that the book all the time serves as an academic and software work. Like, here you have a difficult, full of adversity and danger life of a homosexual teenager, a foster child in a dull mining town. At the same time, the book is not only written in a very recognizable, almost Dickensian tonality of the novel of growing up, it is also devoted to how books — reading, libraries, and attentive teachers — can save a person and pull him to the light. At some point, Winterson writes - how nice that Jane Austen starts at "A" and got her in the library right away.

Elizabeth gilbert

"Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear"

For all her writing similarity with the pink pony, who flies to you and shoots you with glitters of wisdom, she wrote an extremely practical manual for people of creative professions, which I caught in time and was very useful. I liked the idea that one should not be afraid to do something, because if it doesn’t work the first time, it’s the one hundred and first. This story helps a lot: Gilbert tells how, having received a refusal in one journal, she immediately sent her story to the next one, and as one of her manuscripts, the same editor at first rejected, and three years later she accepted - well, because he had a mood.

Even Gilbert pronounces a very good idea that you should not shake over your texts and consider them as children who were born once and everything cannot be replaced. Sometimes it happens that this “child” very quickly needs to cut off a leg, arm, head or in general to regenerate everything anew - and such a reverent attitude impedes a lot.

A. S. Byatt

"Ragnarok"

It seems to me that no one better than Byette could not recite the Scandinavian myths for adults. Remember, in childhood, everyone had adapted Scandinavian tales about gods and heroes - I had them! So, Byette in the Canonguetian myth series did the same thing, but for adults, and it is somehow indescribably perfect. On the one hand, Bayett writes in a monumental and dense manner, and on the other, he is incredibly beautiful, without a hint of vulgarity. In fact, I dream to translate this book, so I decided that it would not be out of place to say this out loud.

Leo Kassil

"Conduit and Shwambrania"

Another childhood book that I thought taught me two things. First, you can literally from a bare place, out of nowhere, go into the wonderful world of fantasy, invent a country for yourself, become its king and feel great there - play a pipe and be a driver in general. And secondly, Kassilev's sense of humor is the best thing that can happen to a child. It is understandable, not lisping. It seems impossible to read in Kassil's childhood and grow up to be a dull person.

Emily auerbach

"Searching for Jane Austen"

A very good literary study of how Jane Austen from, in general, poisonous ironic writer turned into an icon chiklita. I once wrote a dissertation on the perception of Austin in modern literature, but since then I have still tried to read the more or less worthwhile things that they write about Austin. It struck me how in the years after the death of the writer, she began to cast an angelic shine on her, paint her buns and expose her with a tender nyasha - including members of her own family who did not know what to do with her talent. Auerbach also noticed that many journalists and critics call Austin in the text very familiarly - Jane, although no one, say, would ever think of calling Kipling Rudyard and starting critical articles about him with phrases like: "Rudyard never got married."

Donna tartt

"Little friend"

With this novel, I began my love for how Tartt writes. I remember I read the Secret History first, of course, I liked it, but somehow it wasn’t completely. And then, in the summer, I came across a “Little Friend,” and it was there that Tartt's talent stood up to the image of a teenager’s tossing about and forming the inner world. I remember reading it and thinking: "This is the novel I definitely want to translate." Good that my dream came true.