Dostoevsky in English and Shakespearean Universality: A Cautionary Tale

Authors

  • Chris Thurman University of Witwatersrand (Johannesburg, South Africa)

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18778/2083-8530.21.07

Keywords:

Shakespeare, Dostoevsky, Russia, Underground, Hamlet, translation, universality

Abstract

This is the second of a pair of articles addressing the relationship between Dostoevsky’s novella Notes from the Underground and Shakespeare’s Hamlet. The first article considered the similarities between the two texts, using David Magarshack’s 1968 English translation of the Notes, before discussing the wider phenomenon of Hamletism in nineteenth-century Russia. In this article, the author focuses on the problem of translation, identifying a handful of instances in the Magarshack translation that directly ‘insert’ Shakespeare, and Hamlet in particular, into Dostoevsky’s text. It is argued that these allusions or citations overdetermine the English reader’s experience of Shakespeare-and-Dostoevsky, or Shakespeare-in-Dostoevsky. Returning to the question of Shakespeare’s status in Europe in the nineteenth century, the article concludes with a critique of Shakespearean ‘universality’ as it manifests through the nuances of translation.

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Author Biography

Chris Thurman, University of Witwatersrand (Johannesburg, South Africa)

Chris Thurman is Associate Professor and Head of the English Department at the University of the Witwatersrand. He is also a columnist for Business Day. He is the editor of South African Essays on ‘Universal’ Shakespeare (2014) and Sport versus Art: A South African Contest (2010). His other books are the monograph Guy Butler: Reassessing a South African Literary Life (2010); Text Bites, an anthology for high schools (2009); and two collections of his arts journalism, At Large: Reviewing the Arts in South Africa (2012) and Still at Large: Dispatches from South Africa’s Frontiers of Politics and Art (2017). Thurman has edited the journal Shakespeare in Southern Africa since 2009 and is president of the Shakespeare Society of Southern Africa.

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Published

2020-06-30

How to Cite

Thurman, C. (2020). Dostoevsky in English and Shakespearean Universality: A Cautionary Tale. Multicultural Shakespeare: Translation, Appropriation and Performance, 21(36), 99–114. https://doi.org/10.18778/2083-8530.21.07

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