Life and Works of Mikhail Bulgakov
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Life and Works of Mikhail Bulgakov
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In 1988, Marietta Omarovna Chudakova (1937-2022), whio is perhaps the greatest Bulgakov scholar ever, wrote her best-known book Zjizneopisanie Michaila Bulgakova or The Life of Mikhail Bulgakov. I had the pleasure of talking to her at length a few times when I lived in Moscow from the summer of 2008 to the spring of 2010. Our first meeting, however, came about in a rather unfortunate way: the occasion was a rather noisy argument I had with Marietta’s sister Inna Omarovna Mishina in May 2007 at the reception of the M.A. Bulgakov Museum in Moscow.
During our second meeting in the summer of 2007, Marietta Omarovna gave me an autographed copy of her book as a gift. «I wrote that twenty years ago, and everyone who writes a book about Bulgakov mentions it in their bibliography, but it has never been translated,» she said, «wouldn’t that a nice and challenging project for you?». Meanwhile, thanks to her intercession, I was able to start the fourth year of Russian language studies at the renowned Lomonosov Moscow State University in 2009.
Back in my hometown, I intended to start translating Marietta Chudakova’s Life Story of Mikhail Bulgakov, but it turned out that my signed copy had mysteriously disappeared during the move. Since I had already started other projects like the subtitling of Russian films and television series based on The Master and Margarita and other works by Bulgakov, the idea of translation was shelved.
The news of Marietta Chudakova's death on 21 November 2021 revived the idea of making an English translation of her Life Story of Mikhail Bulgakov. But then I noted to my great regret that, in the meantime, an English translation had already been published. It was entitled Mikhail Bulgakov. Life and Times, translated by Huw Davies. So I decided to translate Marietta Chudakova’s masterpiece in Dutch.
After several months of searching I found a second-hand copy of the original work, and in the spring of 2022 I started working on it. Then followed 15 months of translation, endless searches to write the footnotes, rereading, correcting, rephrasing and starting all over again, but eventually, 35 years after the publication of the original, Marietta Chudakova's Life Story of Mikhail Bulgakov, a book of 712 pages, was published in Dutch as Levensverhaal van Michail Boelgakov.
While I worked on my Dutch translation, I occasionally felt the need to compare the result of my work with the aforementioned English translation, but I soon stopped doing that. It was a great disappointment to see that this translator did not share my concern to adhere as closely as possible to Marietta Chudakova’s original text from 1988. On the contrary, in many places he simply rewrote her text, instead of translating it. I admit, his changes increased the readability of Chudakova’s rather dry account of the facts, but they also resulted in a different book. Moreover, 91 pages from the source text have not been translated, and the rest of the translation contains many blatant factual errors. I am not going to mention those at length here now. You can read more details of my misgivings about this translation by clicking this link..
So, you can guess what happened next: indeed, I decided to take up Marietta Chudakova’s challenge from 2007, and make a new English translation of her book. As a result my English version of Life and Works of Mikhail Bulgakov (712 pages*) will be released on 1 December 2024.
Bibliography
To top it all off, I added a complete bibliography of all the works that Mikhail Bulgakov ever wrote. This bibliography is the result of 17 years of research while working on my website about The Master and Margarita, a result which I gladly share with anyone who is interested in the life and the works of the author.
Colofon
Original title: Zhizneopisanie Mikhaila Bulgakova
Original text: © Marietta Chudakova, 1988
English translation: © Jan Vanhellemont, 2024
712 pages *
First edition: 1 December 2024
ISBN 978-9-081853-38-5
Regular edition
49.99 €
Orders will be sent out starting 1 December 2024
Order the regular edition with the following link
Limited edition
99.99 €
Orders will be sent out starting 1 December 2024
Order de autographed limited edition with the following link
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