Spencer Scoville and Professor Walter Whipple, Germanic and Slavic Languages
Last year, I proposed to complete a translation of Ukrainian author Ulas Samchuk’s novella Mariia. The process of translating and researching has been both more challenging and more rewarding than I anticipated. I completed the translation of the first section of Mariia, along with a research paper discussing the symbolism of the first section.
Mariia tells the life story of a Ukrainian peasant, from the day of her birth to that of her death. Subtitled “The Chronicle of a Life,” Samchuk writes in the established biographical tradition. He manipulates the tradition to create a symoblic account of Ukrainian history throughout the early years of the Soviet Union. Specifically, Mariia describes the man-made famine imposed on the Ukraine during Stalin’s collectivization projects of the early 1930’s. Already in exile at the time, Samchuk wrote unflinchingly about the horrors of starvation in the villages of the Ukraine. Dealing with such a taboo subject, Mariia was officially printed in Ukraine for the first time only in the last ten years. The book was first published in 1933 in Paris. The printing was very limited, and read mostly among the Ukrainian diaspora in Europe, Canada and the United States. Ironically, Samchuk himself never saw a printed copy of the work.
In Mariia, Samchuk created a powerfully symbolic representation of Ukrainian history. His account relies on an idyllic presentation of Ukrainian folk culture and village life. Presenting Mariia’s entire life from birth to death gives him occasion to describer the rituals and customs of life in a traditional Ukrainian village in great detail. Samchuk goes to especially great lengths in order to establish the religious aspect of traditional Ukrainian society. The dominant image of Mariia is one central to Ukrainian and Russian literature, that of the mother. Closely tied to patriotism through the image of the mat’ rodina (the motherland), as well as to Eastern Orthodox religion through the symbol of the Virgin Mary, Mariia symbolizes the indentity of Ukraine on several different levels.
As I worked on the translation,it became clear that the goals I had set for myself when beginning the process were overly ambitious. Despite the extra time afforded by the ORCA grant, my translation proceeded much more slowly than I would have thought. Some of the peculiarities of Samchuk’s writing contributed to these difficulties. Samchuk preserves the idiosyncracies of rural speech in the dialogue of each of his characters. The effect is similar to that of the dialogue in Wuthering Heights, where Bronte uses dialogue to give added depth to different characters. Writing in Ukrainian, Samchuk has much more flexibility than we do in English. Many of his characters even speak exclusively in Russian, an important indication of their political affiliations. I found it difficult to mimic this effect in English, where the differences between official and informal language is not so well defined.
Although I have not yet finished translating the entire book, the time afforded me by the ORCA grant has brought me many benefits. Through multiple close readings of the text, I have come to understand just how important Mariia is as a document depicting the horror of the famine in Ukraine. Samchuk presents the message through a unique voice, giving a very human face to the victims of Stalin’s reign. As a literary work, Mariia also has great merit. Samchuk switches between a more characteristic compact narrative style and powerful descriptions that range from the nostalgic to the horrific. The genre of biographical chronicles has a long tradition in Ukrainian and Russian literatures. Samchuk makes innovative use of this genre, transcending from the merely historical to the universally symbolic. I am continuing the process of translating Mariia, looking forward to eventually submitting it for publication.