The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories

Translators’ Note

Leskov is notoriously difficult to translate. He wrote to his German translator: “ ‘The Flea’ is much too Russian and hardly translatable (on account of its language)” (October 26, 1888). A month later he softened a little: “If you translate ‘Lefty,’ you’re the ‘foremost magician.’ ” But a few days later he cautioned: “You will have a hard time with ‘Lefty and the Flea.’ A knowledge of colloquial German is not enough. What will you do with the sound effects and the plays on words?” In the face of these warnings, we have tried all the same to keep the whole story, including its sound effects and plays on words. And we have done the same with all the stories in this collection. That is not only the challenge, but also the delight of translating Leskov. The philosopher Jacques Maritain wrote to Pope Paul VI about a new French translation of the Bible (which he did not like): “The first duty of a translator … is always to respect the word itself that the author has used … and to seek its exact equivalent.” He was not advocating a slavish literalism; he was defending the full meaning, meaning also the way of meaning, of the original.