Little Zinnobers

Chapter 3

TRANSLATOR'S NOTE

Elena Chizhova’s Little Zinnobers is not an easy read, and translating it has been no easy task either. Chizhova’s style and content are both kaleidoscopic. She delves deep, exploring themes such as ageing and loss of innocence, the individual versus society, and, of course, how learning another language alters our perception of the world, providing us with another filter, another formula we can apply as we evaluate the events of our seemingly ordinary everyday lives.

Yet Chizhova never labours her point; her message is conveyed subtly, almost by-the-by, in throwaway remarks and sidelong glances, veiled references and allusions. As translator, it has been my task to pick up on these hints and gently weave the thematic threads into the narrative’s tapestry as it unfolds. Some allusions to political events or literary figures would, I felt, be lost on an English-speaking reader, so I have added footnotes here and there to clarify some points while honouring the understated nature of Chizhova’s prose.

One stylistic device Chizhova is particularly fond of is the extended metaphor. Perhaps the clearest example of this surfaces in the chapter entitled ‘Incomplete Circle Dance. The image of the incomplete circle recurs throughout this chapter – where it takes on a very graphic form as the children literally circle through the hall – but the image echoes throughout the story as a whole, too, reflecting the cyclical nature of life. As a teacher, F. is well aware of this; she sees an unending stream of pupils waltzing through her classroom doors, then out into the big wide world where they ‘age,’ completing the incomplete circle. For a translator, extended metaphors pose a challenge as the image must light up in the reader’s consciousness creating a pattern of connections without dazzling or becoming ponderous.

Sometimes Chizhova turns to more simple repetition as a stylistic device to reinforce her motifs and metaphors, encouraging the reader to recognise the image and what it stands for each time it crops up. Take the colour red, for instance, so readily associated with Communism. It is present in the school, in the flag, in Maman’s dress, in Marina’s lipstick, and – perhaps – even in the title, since Hoffman’s hero is called Zinnober, which literally means ‘cinnabar,’ a red pigment. In translating, I felt it important to keep this repetition of exact words or phrases – which sometimes occur close together, or sometimes resurface after several chapters – so they run through the novel as a recognisable beat alerting the reader to the motif they represent.

Surprisingly, one of the trickiest translation challenges was rendering the title into English, especially bearing in mind that, as one of the Glagoslav team put it: “It’s pretty straightforward in Russian.” Chizhova’s original title is Kroshki Zaches, which literally means ‘Tiny Zacheses’ and is itself an allusion to ETA Hoffman’s nineteenth century tale Klein Zaches genannt Zinnober, translated into Russian as Kroshka Zaches, po prozvaniyu Zinnober and into English (by Michael Haldane) as Little Zaches, Great Zinnober. Russian readers are far more familiar with Hoffman’s tale than their English-speaking counterparts; indeed, one TV programme specialising in political satire even based a 10-minute sketch on the tale, poking fun at Vladimir Putin and the other politicians. As Rosalind Marsh has since picked up on this in her paper, I shall not develop the point here.

Chizhova sees both the Soviet Union and F.’s pupils as ‘Zacheses’ in that they are lauded as something they are not. The name Zaches jars on the English ear so it was decided to use Zinnober instead, which left the problem of ‘tiny ones.’ By extension, ‘kroshki’ can also refer to small children, so ‘poppets’ seemed the obvious choice, especially bearing in mind the historical usage of this word: ‘a small figure of a human-being used in sorcery and witchcraft,’ a nuance that sits well with the rather dark undertones of Hoffman’s tale. But Nicholas Kotar, the American editor who worked on this translation, pointed out that even educated American readers would assume ‘poppet’ was a misspelling of ‘puppet’ and so this idea was dropped, to be replaced by the more neutral ‘little.’ And this nicely brings us back to Haldane’s title. Many references will be lost to those unfamiliar with Little Zaches, Great Zinnober, and it is beyond the scope of this brief note to elucidate them here. Suffice to say, parallels can be drawn between F. with her golden locks and the Fairy Rosabelverde with her golden comb, and perhaps also between B.G. and Hoffman’s wandering magician Prosper Alpanus. Interestingly, there is a clear link to Shakespeare in Hoffman’s tale, too; Oberon and Titania in A Midsummer Night’s Dream resonate with Rosabelverde and Prosper Alpanus, who in turn suggests Prospero in The Tempest.

In Chizhova’s Little Zinnobers, F. uses Shakespeare to create an inner world of truth where there is no place for falsehood or the banal, a world underpinned by honesty, loyalty and inner freedom for both the teacher and her pupils, where the children, if not innocent, are at least protected from ‘ageing.’ The language of this unfettered microcosm is English, and for the first time in their lives the children are free to speak openly of honour, history, the eternal, and love. And indeed, love is another topic Chizhova explores, mainly through the rather unconventional relationship that develops between F. and her pupil, our narrator.

Chizhova’s clipped style proved to be an ongoing challenge. Russian grammar allows for the omission of pronouns. Questions and verb tenses are formed without auxiliary verbs, while definite and indefinite articles are not present. This means that Russian is naturally less wordy than English, neater, shorter, and – in Chizhova’s case – elliptic. I have sought to mirror this as much as possible, with short sentences and the omission of personal pronouns wherever admissible, and I hope this rather staccato effect serves to keep a racy pace without sacrificing meaning.

In other sections, however, Chizhova changes tack, alternating these clipped passages with protracted, potentially cumbersome sentences (take, for instance, the novel’s opening paragraph). Sometimes, these simply had to be split in English.

Another slight modification I introduced was speech marks. In the original, the combination of curt phrases and lack of punctuation made verbal exchanges hard to follow. By adding “-“ I hope the reader will keep abreast of these quick exchanges.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank my husband Dmitry Ermakov for his invaluable contribution to this translation, and of course to Elena herself for her many helpful suggestions.

Carol Ermakova

North Pennines, Spring 2017