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Marian Schwartz

{{short description|American translator}}

Marian Schwartz is an American translator of contemporary Russian literature. She is the principal English translator of the author Nina Berberova and has translated over 70 books of fiction, history, biography, and criticism into English.{{Cite web|last=Community|date=2017-09-12|title=A Conversation Between Literary Translators Marian Schwartz and Nicky Harman|url=https://bookriot.com/a-conversation-between-literary-translators-marian-schwartz-and-nicky-harman/|access-date=2022-01-04|website=BOOK RIOT|language=en-US}} She is the recipient of two translation fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts.{{Cite web|title=Translator of Russian Literature, Marian Schwartz, to Read|url=https://news.uark.edu/articles/22230|access-date=2022-01-04|website=University of Arkansas News|language=en}} Based in Austin, Texas, she is the former president of the American Literary Translators Association.{{Cite web|date=2011-09-30|title=Marian Schwartz|url=https://www.ndbooks.com/author/marian-schwartz/|access-date=2022-01-04|website=www.ndbooks.com|language=en}}

Biography

Schwartz was born and raised in Ohio and began studying French as a child. She studied Russian and Spanish at Harvard as an undergraduate before completing a Master's degree in the Slavic Department at the University of Texas at Austin in 1975.{{Cite web|title=AATIA – Marian Schwartz featured in current edition of Source|url=https://aatia.org/marian-schwartz-featured-in-current-edition-of-source/|access-date=2022-01-04|website=aatia.org}} During this time, she co-translated her first published translation, An Otherworldly Evening by Marina Tsvetaeva, with Russian professor Richard D. Sylvester. After a year in Austin working on an unpublished translation, she moved to New York to work as an assistant editor for Praeger Publishers on a series of Soviet-focused publications. Another editor at Praeger put Schwartz in touch with a newly started publishing company looking for translators. The book, a translation of the seven-essay collection Vekhi, was published as Landmarks by Karz Howard in 1977.

While perusing the Slavonic Division of the New York Public Library, Schwartz began identifying ignored and overlooked women writers that formed the basis for an anthology of 20th-century women writers, both within the Soviet Union as well as émigrée authors. This work became the foundation for her first fellowship from the NEA and the start of her career as a freelance translator.

Schwartz began publishing translations of Berberova's fiction, beginning with The Accompanist, in 1987.{{Cite news|last=Christopher|first=Nicholas|date=1988-11-13|title=EAVESDROPPING ON THEIR TRYSTS|language=en-US|work=The New York Times|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1988/11/13/books/eavesdropping-on-their-trysts.html|access-date=2022-01-04|issn=0362-4331}} She continued publishing translations of major Russian authors such as Solomon Volkov's Conversations with Joseph Brodsky, Yury Olesha's Envy, Mikhail Bulgakov's The White Guard, and Oblomov by Ivan Goncharov. In 2013, her 2012 translation of Mikhail Shishkin's Maidenhair (Russian: Венерин Волос) was shortlisted for the Best Translated Book Award.{{Cite web|date=2013-04-11|title=2013 Best Translated Book Award Finalists Announced|url=https://www.rochester.edu/newscenter/2013-best-translated-book-award-finalists-announced/|access-date=2022-01-04|website=NewsCenter|language=en-US}}

= Translation of Anna Karenina =

In 2015, Schwartz published her translation of Anna Karenina (Yale University Press), shortly after Rosamund Bartlett's translation appeared from Oxford University Press. The two translations were often compared in the way they addressed Tolstoy's "rough" language, with Bartlett proposing that Tolstoy was "often a clumsy and occasionally ungrammatical writer, but there is a majesty and elegance to his prose which needs to be emulated in translation wherever possible". However Schwartz's point, as reviewer Masha Gessen described, was that "Tolstoy's writing is indeed remarkable for its purposeful roughness, the use of repetition, and the obsessive breaking of clichés to force the reader to consider the meaning of each word and phrase".{{Cite news|last=Gessen|first=Masha|date=2014-12-24|title=New Translations of Tolstoy's 'Anna Karenina'|language=en-US|work=The New York Times|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/28/books/review/new-translations-of-tolstoys-anna-karenina.html|access-date=2022-01-04|issn=0362-4331}} In her introduction to the text, Schwartz notes:

English translators have tended to view Tolstoy's sometimes radical choices as 'mistakes' to be corrected, as if Tolstoy, had he known better, or cared more, would not have broken basic rules of literary language.

Selected bibliography

  • {{Citation|last=Berberova|first=Nina|title=The Accompanist|year=1987|place=London|publisher=Collins|isbn=9780002231602}}
  • {{Citation|last=Berberova|first=Nina|title=The Revolt|year=1989|place=London|publisher=Collins|isbn=9780002234375}}
  • {{Citation|last=Berberova|first=Nina|title=The Tattered Cloak and Other Stories|year=1991|place=New York, NY|publisher=Knopf|isbn=9780679402817}}
  • {{Citation|last=Berberova|first=Nina|title=The Ladies from St. Petersburg: Three Novellas|year=1998|place=New York, NY|publisher=New Directions|isbn=9780811213776}}
  • {{Citation|last=Berberova|first=Nina|title=The Book of Happiness|year=1999|place=New York, NY|publisher=New Directions|isbn=9780811214018}}
  • {{Citation|last=Berberova|first=Nina|title=Cape of Storms|year=1999|place=New York, NY|publisher=New Directions|isbn=9780811214162}}
  • {{Citation|last=Berberova|first=Nina|title=The Billancourt Tales|year=2001|place=New York, NY|publisher=New Directions|isbn=9780811214810}}
  • {{Citation|last=Berberova|first=Nina|title=Moura: The Dangerous Life of the Baroness Budberg|year=2005|place=New York, NY|publisher=New York Review Books|isbn=9781590171370|translator-last=Sylvester|translator-first=Richard|translator-last2=Schwartz|translator-first2=Marian}}
  • {{Citation|last=Berberova|first=Nina|title=The Last and the First|year=2021|publication-place=London|publisher=Pushkin Press|isbn=9781782276975}}
  • {{Citation|last=Bulgakov|first=Mikhail|title=White Guard|year=2008|place=New Haven|publisher=Yale University Press|isbn=9780300151459}}
  • {{Citation|last=Dashkova|first=Polina|title=Madness Treads Lightly|year=2017|place=Seattle|publisher=AmazonCrossing|isbn=9781477823460}}
  • {{Citation|last=Erofeev|first=Venedikt|title=Walpurgis Night, or the Steps of the Commander|year=2014|place=New Haven|publisher=Yale University Press|isbn=9780300207057}}
  • {{Citation|last=Gelasimov|first=Andrei|title=Thirst|year=2011|place=Las Vegas|publisher=AmazonCrossing|isbn=9781611090697}}
  • {{Citation|last=Gelasimov|first=Andrei|title=The Lying Year|year=2013|place=Las Vegas|publisher=AmazonCrossing|isbn=9781611090710}}
  • {{Citation|last=Gelasimov|first=Andrei|title=Calligraphy Lesson: The Collected Stories|year=2015|place=Dallas, Texas|publisher=Deep Vellum|isbn=9781941920039|translator-last=Bashkatova|translator-first=Mariya|translator-last2=Maizell|translator-last3=Schwartz|translator-last4=Shtutin|translator-first2=Sylvia|translator-first3=Marian|translator-first4=Leo}}
  • {{Citation|last=Gelasimov|first=Andrei|title=Into the Thickening Fog|year=2017|place=Seattle|publisher=AmazonCrossing|isbn=9781503940819}}
  • {{Citation|last=Goncharov|first=Ivan|title=Oblomov|year=2008|place=New York, NY|publisher=Seven Stories Press|isbn=9781583228401}}
  • {{Citation|last=Gonzalez Gallego|first=Ruben David|title=White on Black|year=2006|place=Orlando|publisher=Harcourt|isbn=9780156032353}}
  • {{Citation|last=Lermontov|first=Mikhail|title=A Hero of Our Time|year=2004|place=New York, NY|publisher=Modern Library|isbn=9780812970760}}
  • {{Citation|last1=Lotman|first1=Yuri Mikhailovich|title=High Society Dinners: Dining in Tsarist Russia|year=2014|place=Totnes, Devon|publisher=Prospect Books|isbn=9781903018989|last2=Pogosjan|first2=Jelena}}
  • {{Citation |last=Mamleyev |first=Yuri |title=The Sublimes |year=2014 |publication-place=Paris |publisher=Haute Culture Books |isbn=9789198115710 |author-link=Yuri Mamleev}}
  • {{Citation|last=Megre|first=Vladimir|title=Parables|date=10 March 2015 |publisher=Ringing Cedars Publishing House|isbn=9785906381552|translator-last=Downing|translator-first=Susan|translator-last2=Schwartz|translator-first2=Marian}}
  • {{Citation|last=Olesha|first=Yuri|title=Envy|year=2004|place=New York, NY|publisher=New York Review Books|isbn=9781590170861|author-link=Yury Olesha}}
  • {{Citation|last=Panyushkin|first=Valery|title=12 Who Don't Agree|year=2011|place=New York, NY|publisher=Europa Editions|isbn=9781609450106}}
  • {{Citation|last=Peskov|first=Vasily|title=Lost in the Taiga: One Russian Family's Fifty-Year Struggle for Survival and Religious Freedom in the Siberian Wilderness|year=1994|place=New York, NY|publisher=Doubleday|isbn=9780385472098}}
  • {{Citation|last=Radzinsky|first=Edvard|title=The Last Tsar: The Life and Death of Nicholas II|year=1992|place=New York, NY|publisher=Doubleday|isbn=9780385423717}}
  • {{Citation|last1=Sarabianov|first1=Dmitri V.|title=Liubov Popova|year=1990|place=New York, NY|publisher=Harry N. Abrams|isbn=9780810937017|last2=Adaskina|first2=Natalia}}
  • {{Citation|last=Slavnikova|first=Olga|title=2017|year=2010|place=New York, NY|publisher=Overlook|isbn=9781590203095}}
  • {{Citation|last=Slavnikova|first=Olga|title=The Man Who Couldn't Die|year=2019|place=New York, NY|publisher=Columbia University Press|isbn=9780231185950}}
  • {{Citation|last=Shishkin|first=Mikhail|title=Maidenhair|year=2012|place=Rochester, NY|publisher=Open Letter Books|isbn=9781934824368}}
  • {{Citation|last=Solzhenitsyn|first=Aleksandr|title=March 1917: The Red Wheel, Node III|volume=1|year=2017|place=Notre Dame, Indiana|publisher=University of Notre Dame Press|isbn=9780268102678}}
  • {{Citation|last=Solzhenitsyn|first=Aleksandr|title=March 1917: The Red Wheel, Node III|volume=2|year=2019|place=Notre Dame, Indiana|publisher=University of Notre Dame Press|isbn=9780268106850}}
  • {{Citation|last=Solzhenitsyn|first=Aleksandr|title=March 1917: The Red Wheel, Node III|volume=3|year=2021|place=Notre Dame, Indiana|publisher=University of Notre Dame Press|isbn=9780268201708}}
  • {{Citation|last=Steinberg|first=Mark|title=Voices of Revolution, 1917|year=2001|place=New Haven|publisher=Yale University Press|isbn=9780300101690}}
  • {{Citation|last=Tolstoy|first=Leo|title=Anna Karenina|year=2014|place=New Haven|publisher=Yale University Press|isbn=9780300203943}}
  • {{Citation|last=Vodolazkin|first=Eugene|title=Brisbane|year=2022|place=Walden, NY|publisher=Plough|isbn=9781636080451}}
  • {{Citation|last=Volkov|first=Solomon|title=Conversations with Joseph Brodsky: A Poet's Journey Through the Twentieth Century|year=1998|place=New York, NY|publisher=Free Press|isbn=9780684835723}}
  • {{Citation|last=Wilke|first=Daria|title=Playing a Part|year=2015|place=New York, NY|publisher=Arthur A. Levine Books|isbn=9780545726078}}
  • {{Citation|last=Yuzefovich|first=Leonid|title=Harlequin's Costume|year=2013|place=London|publisher=Glagoslav Publications|isbn=9781782670308}}
  • {{Citation|last=Yuzefovich|first=Leonid|title=Horsemen of the Sands|year=2018|place=Brooklyn, NY|publisher=Archipelago Books|isbn=9781939810090}}

References

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Category:Literary translators

Category:Living people

Category:Harvard University alumni

Category:University of Texas at Austin alumni

Category:20th-century American translators

Category:Russian translators

Category:21st-century translators

Category:Year of birth missing (living people)