IJ study archive

Как подобрать ключ к Уоллесу: Алексей Поляринов и Сергей Карпов о переводе «Бесконечной шутки»

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TL;DR

A February 2020 pervoe.online recap of a Moscow talk-show event ("There Will Be Spoilers," Voznesensky Center, 7 Feb) at which Alexey Polyarinov and Sergey Karpov, the two co-translators of the Russian Infinite Jest (Бесконечная шутка), talked through how they carried the novel into Russian. It is the compact, public-facing counterpart to the pair's LiveJournal record: the fan-to-official origin story (Polyarinov found Wallace via the This Is Water goldfish parable, ordered the book, broke down on page five, posted an excerpt online, and was talked into the full translation by a stranger who wrote on a publisher's behalf); the split workflow (one drafts something raw, the other combs it, back and forth — the more passes, the better), with Karpov the literalist and Polyarinov the meaning-first "over-explainer"; the economics that kept Russia waiting 22 years (a professional quoted 1280 pages would starve — such books get translated only out of love); the polyvocal-voice problem (each third-person chapter is told in the language of its subject, so each time you have to find new keys — the recap's title); a #MeToo-era reckoning with Wallace's contradictions; and a spoiler-free close pointing readers at the Aaron Swartz ending reconstruction and the Reddit variants, with Karpov's caution that half the plot is deliberately absent and the book asks to be decoded at the level of episodes, not solved whole. Two printed Wallace-in-Russian renderings frame the piece (an IJ epigraph the pair themselves translated; a passage from "The Devil Is a Busy Man" from Brief Interviews, Karpov's translation).

Key claims

  • The fan-to-official origin (Polyarinov). He came to Wallace through the This Is Water goldfish parable, googled its author, found there was essentially nothing about Wallace in Russian, ordered the book (here: on eBay — his LiveJournal telling says Amazon; see Accuracy notes), and bounced off it hard: «Я сломался на пятой странице» (I broke down on the fifth page — gloss ours), and again around page ten. He advises reading Wallace's stories and essays first (simpler, funnier) before Шутка. After he posted his thoughts and a translated excerpt online, a stranger wrote that her publisher was interested; he first refused («я знаю, что меня ждёт» — I know what awaits me — gloss ours), she persisted, and he then brought Karpov in.

  • Karpov read as he translated — and thinks that is the best way to read. He admits he was still finishing Шутка during the translation, jokes «Я ужасный человек?» (am I a terrible person? — gloss ours), and holds that most translators prefer to take on what they have not read, because translation is the closest reading there is (you take apart every word, sentence, fact). This is the near-exact inverse-yet-kin of the French translator Kerline's stance (deliberately not reading the novel first) — a cross-source rhyme.

  • The 22-year gap is economics, not neglect. IJ came out in the US in 1996; for 22 years no one in Russia took the translation on. Polyarinov's explanation: a professional shown 1280 pages and quoted a fee «понял, что умрет с голода» (realized he'd starve — gloss ours); books like this are done purely out of love, no one earned from it.

  • They were amateurs, working nights and weekends, with a split workflow. Karpov is a journalist by training, Polyarinov an engineer-hydrotechnician; they translated after work and on weekends; the translation itself was done «три года назад» (three years before the event — gloss ours, i.e. ~2017). There was no formal division-of-labor agreement: one makes something raw, the other combs it («причесывает»), the first says you combed it wrong here and here, and returns it — «Чем больше операций, тем лучше» (the more passes/ operations, the better — gloss ours).

  • Literalist vs. meaning-first. Their methods differ: Karpov keeps to literalness, «слово в слово» (word for word — gloss ours); Polyarinov aims to carry the sense and by his own admission often «переобъясняет» (over-explains — gloss ours). The hardest passages were hard not for what is said but how — an episode starts ordinarily then tips into madness (Canadian language, murder): «Мечта переводчика» (a translator's dream — gloss ours), says Karpov; Polyarinov is struck by how coldly the killing is described.

  • The polyvocal-voice problem is the title's "keys." Recounting the French translator's point (2.5 years on the book): with most authors you catch one intonation that runs the whole book; with Wallace it constantly changes — each third-person chapter is told in the language of the person it is about, so unlike in the essays «каждый раз приходится подбирать новые ключи» (each time you have to find new keys — gloss ours). This is the recap's governing image ("how to find the key to Wallace").

  • A #MeToo-era reckoning with Wallace the man. Some chapters are now awkward to read (Polyarinov, on the author's treatment of other races and very low humor: «Некоторые главы сейчас неловко читать»); in the #MeToo era Wallace comes under attack, with researchers calling his work a «ужасная токсичная культура» (terrible toxic culture — gloss ours), and post-2008 facts about his mistreatment of a girlfriend surfacing. Polyarinov: «Не стоит его обелять» (he shouldn't be whitewashed — gloss ours) — an oddball — «(Ч)удаковатый был. Человек с биполярочкой» (an oddball, he was; a guy with a touch of bipolar — gloss ours; the bracketed capital as printed). Karpov's frame: readers who take him only as the apostle of sincerity get a caricature; there are many sides.

  • Spoiler-free close: the book is a rebus; half the plot is missing by design. Бесконечная шутка is a «книга-ребус» (a puzzle/rebus-book — gloss ours); on finishing you must return to the beginning and recall the first chapter to grasp what happened; there are several ending variants. They point readers to the best-known reconstruction, Aaron Swartz's («Аарона Шварца» — the raw's genitive), and other Reddit variants. Karpov's caution: «в книжке отсутствует половина сюжета» (the book is missing half its plot — gloss ours) — you decode and interpret at the level of episodes, not of the whole book.

Theories & evidence

These are reception-level touches by the translators at a public event, not close-argued positions — graded conservatively as the source's own stance.

CONNECTION: the translators tell readers the book is annular — on reaching the end you must return to the beginning and re-read the first chapter to see what happened

  • Crux: annular-structure
  • Stance: mentions
  • Evidence:
    • [S — RU] The recap's close (Sigaeva's framing, echoing the pair): Бесконечная шутка is a «книга-ребус» (a puzzle/rebus-book — gloss ours), and on finishing «дойдя до конца, нужно вернуться к началу и вспомнить хотя бы первую главу, чтобы понять, а что вообще произошло» (reaching the end, you have to go back to the beginning and recall at least the first chapter, to understand what actually happened — gloss ours). [line 237–239]
  • Notes: The return-to-p.3 / ring reading, at reception depth: the translators instruct the reread-from-start but do not argue the macro-shape (no Sierpinski, no Möbius, no dead-center design), so this stays mentions, not endorses. This framing sentence is the journalist's; the pair are its reported source.

CONNECTION: several ending variants exist; the translators point readers to Aaron Swartz's reconstruction and the Reddit variants

  • Crux: ending-missing-year
  • Stance: mentions
  • Evidence:
    • [S — RU] «Существует несколько вариантов концовок. Алексей и Сергей советуют посмотреть самую известную версию от Аарона Шварца и другие варианты, опубликованные на сайте Reddit» (there are several variants of the ending; Alexey and Sergey advise looking at the best-known version, Aaron Swartz's, and other variants published on Reddit — gloss ours). [line 239–241]
  • Notes: A reception pointer, not an adjudication — the pair name the Swartz reconstruction (the pro-recoverability pole of ending-missing-year) as the famous one and gesture at Reddit alternatives, without endorsing a specific reconstruction themselves; hence mentions. «Аарона Шварца» (the raw's genitive) = Aaron Swartz (cite-as-written; see Accuracy notes).

CONNECTION: Karpov's caution — half the plot is deliberately absent; you decode at the level of episodes, not of the whole book

  • Crux: designed-holes
  • Stance: mentions
  • Evidence:
    • [S — RU / Ka] «Мы можем пытаться разгадать какие-то вещи, но суть в том, что в книжке отсутствует половина сюжета» (we can try to decode some things, but the point is that half the plot is absent from the book — gloss ours), and «ты должен разгадывать и интерпретировать на уровни каких-то эпизодов, а не всей книги» (you have to decode and interpret at the level of episodes, not of the whole book — gloss ours). [line 243–246]
  • Notes: Leans toward the anti-closure / "resistance to closure" pole of designed-holes — the gaps are constitutive, whole-book solving is the wrong unit — but Karpov hedges ("Мы можем пытаться разгадать какие-то вещи") and it sits one breath after the pair recommend the Swartz reconstruction, so the note holds the two cruxes side by side rather than reading a clean anti-closure argument. mentions.

ADJACENCY (logged, NOT folded): the polyvocal-voice "new keys" observation

  • Candidate slug: narrator-proximity (adjacency only)
  • Evidence: [S — RU / P] Relaying the French translator's point, Polyarinov notes each third-person chapter «передается языком человека, о котором ведется повествование» (is conveyed in the language of the person the narration is about — gloss ours), so «каждый раз приходится подбирать новые ключи» (each time you have to find new keys — gloss ours). [line 139–143]
  • Notes: This is the free-indirect / voice-proximity idea (each chapter voiced from inside its subject), which adjacently touches narrator-proximity. But it is translation-craft-framed and reached via a second translator's (Kerline's) reported remark — thin and doubly-mediated — and it is the title's governing image ("find the key") — an adjacency only. Translation/craft-scoped material has no home slug (do-not-coin standing finding).

Themes

The fan-to-official path (parable → googling → the blue book → breaking down on page five → an online excerpt → a stranger's publisher → the reluctant yes); the economics of literary translation (1280 pages that would starve a professional; labor done out of love); the two-translator workflow as iterative combing (the more passes, the better); the literalist-vs-meaning-first temperaments (Karpov word-for-word, Polyarinov the over-explainer); translation as the closest form of reading; the polyvocal novel and its per-chapter "keys"; Wallace's difficulty and where it lives (not what is said but how); the #MeToo-era reckoning with the author (race, low humor, mistreatment of a partner, the toxic-culture charge, bipolarity — against the sincerity-apostle caricature); and the spoiler-free reader's-guide close (the rebus, the reread-from-start, the Swartz reconstruction, the deliberately absent half-plot). Wallace's own words enter only as three framed renderings (the This Is Water parable; an IJ epigraph; a Brief Interviews passage).

Cross-references

  • kerline-books-2015 and lapresse-infinie-comedie-2015 — the "French translator … 2,5 года" Polyarinov cites (line 137–143) is Francis Kerline (L'Infinie Comédie, 2015; ~2.5 years). Two live rhymes to wire: (a) the polyvocal new-keys / constantly-shifting-intonation point echoes Kerline's own account of Wallace's deliberately shifting syntax; (b) Karpov's view that most translators prefer to take on what they have not read is the near-inverse-yet-kin of Kerline's deliberate refusal to read the novel before translating. With Blumenbach (who worked the fan newsgroup as he went), the three make a cross-source motif: how much of the novel a translator reads, and when.
  • nesi-minimaetmoralia-intervista, blumenbach-trashpool-2011, blumenbach-spiegel-2009, mokita-blumenbach-passage-2017 — the translator-testimony cluster. This is the Russian pair's public-facing entry (the economics-of-the-work, split-workflow, and difficulty-lives-in-how threads all rhyme with the German/Italian primaries). Unlike Nesi (fax correspondence with Wallace) this note carries no Wallace contact of any kind — the pair worked from the text (and, per their LiveJournal, from guides and each other).
  • esposito-ij-around-the-world — the around-the-world hub. Esposito's round-up carries no Russia entry — no Polyarinov, no Karpov — so this note stands as the archive's Russian-side companion to it rather than a footnote of it.
  • polyarinov-lj-2014-2016 — the translators' own long-form telling of the translation years (Polyarinov's three translation-era LiveJournal posts: the 2014 review-essay and the 2015/2016 release posts). Same-author corroboration for the origin story lives there — including the vendor discrepancy (this recap says eBay; the LiveJournal telling says Amazon — and page four where this recap says page five; see Accuracy notes).

Notable passages

Reader prose leads with the English sense; the Russian span is the verbatim anchor, the English in parentheses is our gloss (paraphrase). Guillemets « » and the nested curly " " reproduced as printed.

  • «Я сломался на пятой странице» (I broke down on the fifth page — gloss ours) — Polyarinov's first encounter with the book; a section title and the note's signature line.
  • «каждый раз приходится подбирать новые ключи» (each time you have to find new keys — gloss ours) — the polyvocal problem; the source's title image ("how to find the key to Wallace").
  • «Один человек делает что-то сырое. Другой человек приходит и «причесывает» … Чем больше операций, тем лучше» (one person makes something raw, the other comes and combs it … the more passes, the better — gloss ours) — Polyarinov on the two-translator workflow (nested «причесывает»/«причесал» as printed).
  • «он понял, что умрет с голода» (he realized he'd starve — gloss ours) — Polyarinov's economics of why Russia waited 22 years; such books are done «по любви» (out of love — gloss ours).
  • «Мечта переводчика» (a translator's dream — gloss ours) — Karpov on the passages that tip from the ordinary into "Canadian language" and murder.
  • «Не стоит его обелять» … «(Ч)удаковатый был. Человек с биполярочкой» (he shouldn't be whitewashed … an oddball, he was; a guy with a touch of bipolar — gloss ours) — Polyarinov in the #MeToo-era reckoning; Karpov's counter is that the sincerity-apostle reading yields «Такой карикатурный персонаж» (that kind of caricature — gloss ours).
  • «в книжке отсутствует половина сюжета» (the book is missing half its plot — gloss ours) — Karpov's spoiler-free caution to decode at the level of episodes, «а не всей книги» (not of the whole book — gloss ours).
  • Framed Wallace-work renderings (printed; these are the Russian renderings, never Wallace's English): the IJ epigraph the pair themselves translated, «Я бы рассказал вам все, что захотите, и даже больше, если бы то, что я говорю, было равно тому, что вы услышите» (attributed «Дэвид Фостер Уоллес, «Бесконечная шутка»»); and a passage from «Дьявол – человек занятой» ("The Devil Is a Busy Man," from Brief Interviews, Karpov's translation): «Общеизвестно, что очень трудно совершить добрый поступок …».

Accuracy notes

  • DATE — the "2019" attached to this piece in earlier records is WRONG. The page dateline reads «12 февраля 2020 09:30» (line 80–81): publication 2020-02-12. The event was «7 февраля» at the Центр Вознесенского (line 87); the year is not printed in the body, inferred 2020 from the five-day gap to publication. The media-registration certificate date «26.07.2019» (line 517) is the outlet's license, not this piece's date. The earlier "Feb 2019" gist is off by a year (gist correction: Feb 2020); "Voznesensky" is the venue (the Voznesensky Center), not an interviewer.
  • eBay vs Amazon. Polyarinov here orders the book «на eBay» (line 127); his LiveJournal account says he ordered the blue hardcover from Amazon. Reproduced as written here (eBay); the discrepancy is between two of his own tellings.
  • «Аарона Шварца» (line 241) = of Aaron Swartz (standard English spelling); the raw prints the genitive inside Sigaeva's prepositional phrase, reproduced as printed here (corrected at the seat-12 re-probe — the earlier bullet had de-declined the name to a nominative the raw never prints).
  • "(Ч)удаковатый" (line 228) — the recap parenthesizes the capital Ч to mark its own capitalization of чудаковатый mid-utterance (after the attribution dash); reproduced byte-true.
  • "на уровни каких-то эпизодов" (line 245) — nonstandard case (standard Russian would read на уровне); reproduced as spoken/printed.
  • Page count. The event-goers' «1280 страниц» and Polyarinov's «1280 страниц» (lines 109, 169) are the Russian АСТ edition's page count (the English print IJ is 1079 pp.); reproduced as the figure the piece uses.
  • Wallace's death year «в 2008 году» (line 226) is correct.