|
It does matter to some & I have read these three translations. The Devils is the David Margarshack version & it's put out by Penguin which is a good publisher (they publish Jack Kerouac, for example). It's not too bad. The Constance Garnett version is usually the best with any Dostoyevsky & that is the case with The Possessed. I actually do like Jesse Coulson's somewhat newer translation of Crime & Punishment better than the Garnett translation though, & it's also my favorite novel, so ultimately it's gonna depend on the reader. Demons is the newest translation of the lot & is published by Vintage Press (they do some good authors too...D.H. Lawrence, for example) & is translated by Richard Pevear & Larissa Volokhonsky. It's still good, but it just loses something to me. I love the Howard & Edna Hong translations of Kierkegaard, but usually these "team-up" translations never work out all that well. Demons reads kinda more like Turgenev than Dostoyevsky. Ivan Turgenev is a good writer too though & I also highly recommend Fathers & Sons. The themes are very similar to those explored in The Possessed.
|