by Mariya Mykhaylova, LCSW

FOUND IN TRANSLATION

I have not read the Russian classics. They were never assigned to me as required reading, and I have not felt drawn to them when reading for pleasure. I never felt that I was particularly avoiding them. Perhaps I was.

These texts always felt complicated for me as a Ukrainian emigrant and a Russian speaker. In which language to approach them? My first language – the language in which they were written – or the dominant language of my adolescence and adulthood? The density and complexity of the Russian text felt daunting, yet I could not bring myself to read an English translation. Reading a translation of something I could, should, be able to read in the original felt like a cop out, somehow less than what it could be. And so, I didn’t.

One time in high school, I did pick up Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina—in the original, of course. I couldn’t get into it. I made it about a quarter of the way through and never found my way back to it. Last year, a friend and I started to read Bulgakov’s, The Master and Margarita, an exercise in maintaining our Russian. That feels like a lifetime ago and I don’t see myself picking it back up anytime soon.

Today, my linguistic priorities are different. I never imagined that in my thirties I would suddenly immerse myself in learning a new language, for the second time in my life, and that this language would be Ukrainian. War changes you, even from afar.

My Ukrainian teacher says that in order to really learn a language, you have to really want it.

I crave fluency while appreciating progress, meeting myself where I am, and continuing to push forward. My interest in the language is paralleled by a regard for Ukrainian voices, including classic and contemporary writers. I feel a personal connection to and intrinsic interest in what they have to say in a way I have not experienced before.

Once again, I am faced with the dilemma of original versus translation. My status as language learner helps me approach this decision with greater humility. This summer, my desire to read Rafeyenko’s Mondegreen: Songs about Death and Love surpassed my desire to wait until I was fluent enough to read the Ukrainian and I started on the English translation.

This novel was an uncannily fitting choice for my first foray into Ukrainian literature. In Mondegreen, Ukrainian language is a novelty for both writer and protagonist: Rafeyenko, esteemed Ukrainian author of six Russian-language novels, committed to writing his first work in Ukrainian after fleeing war-torn Donetsk in 2014. In this debut, his protagonist Habinsky, also a refugee from Donetsk, settles in Kyiv and embarks on a surrealistic, haunting, dreamlike journey of learning the Ukrainian language, which opens up the floodgates of his unconscious, enabling much disarray and transformation.

Reading the text, I was overcome with respect for the art of Andryczyk’s translation. His efforts to communicate the nuances of untranslatable wordplay, his footnotes that let readers in on the Ukrainian and Soviet references that would otherwise pass them by. I was also acutely aware that I was reading a retelling and felt teased knowing that the real deal was just within reach.

And so, I decided to read them together, the original and the translation, in what proved to be my most powerful language learning exercise yet. In a parallel process with Rafeyenko and Habinsky, I felt equipped to wade through the Ukrainian text paragraph by paragraph, sometimes line by line, the translation filling in my language gaps along the way.

Reading in the original still feels like the most complete and intimate way to connect with the material. I look forward to being able to do so without assistance. For now, I am grateful for translations that help make this contact feel possible.