THE FIRST TRANSLATIONS OF LEO TOLSTOY'S RESURRECTION IN FRENCH

Resurrection became the most popular work by Tolstoy in France. Illustration magazine claimed the right of the first publication of Resurrection, but the agreement was not signed, and V.G. Chertkov gave the right to translate it to the newspaper Echo de Paris. The translation was made by de Vizeva on the proposal of the writer's son S. Tolstoy. After its publication in the newspaper the novel came out in de Vizava's translation as a separate two-volume edition in the Publishing House Perrin in 1900. During this year it was reprinted fifteen times. De Vizeva translated Resurrection into good French, but not exactly. Being a devout Catholic he shortened the chapter on the mass in prison. The translator defended his right to delete all the information in the novel that, in his opinion, "deserved" it in consistence with the socio-political situation in France, the tastes of the public, the requirements of the clergy, etc. In a separate edition of the novel published in 1899 in the French language the omitted parts were not restored. Simultaneously with de Vizeva's translation Flammarion Publishing released a translation by I.D. Halperin-Kaminsky. The cover read: "the final edition, revised by the author." In fact, it was a translation by Halperin-Kaminsky from the Russian text revised by Tolstoy. In France the reputation of Halperin-Kaminsky was highly questionable, moreover, in the opinion of S. Tolstoy, he did not know the Russian language well enough and could hardly translate into good French. In 1910, Mercure de France magazine published an article "Curious translations of Resurrection" by De Vizeva and Halperin-Kaminsky, in which the author said, "It is strange, almost all de Vizeva's inaccuracies with respect to the original text are found in the 'scrupulously correct' version by Halperin-Kaminsky". The reputation of the third translator of the novel, V.L. Binshtok, did not stand up to criticism. In 1906, Tolstoy characterized his translation as dreadful. However, having examined several fragments of the three translations of the beginning of the novel Resurrection in terms of their quality, we can conclude that Binshtok, despite his bad reputation, managed to avoid omissions and make a more adequate translation than de Vizeva and Halperin-Kaminsky.