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#1213: Willa Cather to Cyril Clemens, [1930 to 1940]

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To the Willa Cather Memorial
Cyril Clemens

Some eight years ago I met, in Paris3, a Russian violinist who had heard that I was "from the West". and who, aAfter a few moments of conversation, he eagerly asked me whether I was from "the Mississippi". I asked him whether he meant from the State of Mississippi4. He looked perplexed and put his hand to his forhead and said eagerly - "But the river, the river!". Oh yes, I told him, I had crossed the Mississippi river many times. He said at once that this river was the thing in America5 that he most wished to see.: Hhe, himself, was born and grew up on another great river, up in a little town on the Volga, but while when he was still a little boy he had read a Russian translation of "Huckleberry Finn"6, and had always thought that the Mississippi must be much more wonderful and romantic than the Volga. I questioned him a little about the book - he seemed to remember it perfectly. But how in the world could the talk negro speech of nigger Jim be translated into Russian,? aAnd what would become of the seven shadings of Southern dialect which the author7 in his preface8 tells the reader must not be confounded one with the other? It seemed to me that the most delightful things in "Huckleberry Finn" must disappear in a translation. One could easily translate Parkman9 or Emerson10, certainly: but how translate Mark Twain? The only answer seems to be that if a book has vitality enough, it can live through even the brutalities of translators

Willa Cather