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Жизнеописание Михаила Булгакова
Marietta Chudakova is an expert on Soviet literature and on the works of Mikhail Bulgakov in particular. Her biography of Bulgakov was first published in 1988 and remains the most authoritative and comprehensive study of the writer’s life ever produced. It has received acclaim for the journalistic style in which it is the author draws on unpublished manuscripts and early drafts of Bulgakov’s novels to bring the writer to life. She also explores archive documents and memoirs written by some of Bulgakov’s contemporaries so as to construct a comprehensive and nuanced portrait of the writer and his life and times. Marietta Chudakova casts light on Bulgakov’s life with an unrivalled eye for detail and a huge amount of affection for the writer and his works. Mikhail The Life and Times will be of particular interest to international researchers studying Mikhail Bulgakov’s life and works, and is recommended to a broader audience worldwide. Translated from the Russian by Huw Davies. Published by arrangement with ELKOST Intl. Literary Agency. Published with the support of the Institute for Literary Translation, Russia. Introduction © 2019, J.A.E. Curtis. Proofreading by Kevin Bridge. Publishers Maxim Hodak & Max Mendor.
492 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1988
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April 25, 2024
My five stars are for Marietta Chudakova. Not for the translator.
Anyone who picks up this translation will probably be charmed by its relatively smooth writing style – a style that does not at all correspond to that of the archivist and philologist Marietta Chudakova. In itself, this should not be much of a problem, and, in fact, it would be a good thing, if someone had managed to render Chudakova's extensive knowledge in a language that is easily accessible to Bulgakov's many enthusiasts, who certainly are not all linguists. After all, as a philologist of her time and her environment, Chudakova uses long sentences with many subordinate clauses, and her original text contains an innumerable number of semicolons and statements in brackets, often in the middle of a sentence. But it becomes problematic when content is sacrificed for the sake of readability, because if you look a little further, and especially if you compare this book with the original, «The Life Story of Mikhail Bulgakov» by Marietta Chudakova, you would reach some strange conclusions.
The first conclusion: «Mikhail Bulgakov (The Life and Times)» is not a translation of Marietta Chudakova’s book. It is a book written by translator Huw Davies that is based on Chudakova's book.
To begin with, Davies has not fully translated Chudakova’s book, he simply drops, on many occasions, sentences, paragraphs, sometimes even entire consecutive pages. In total, he has not translated the equivalent of 94 pages, or 13 % of the text.
Why? Well, if we take a closer look at the omitted parts, it turns out that these are segments of text that have a somewhat «difficult» content that is not, as such, mentioned in a Russian-English dictionary, or that cannot be found with simple Google Search commands. One example: Chudakova writes that Osip Mandelstam had taken «the oath of the fourth class.» Apparently, Davies has not found the meaning of the term «fourth class» anywhere, and has therefore deleted the entire sentence. «Could it be,» thought the little devil in me, «that the cause of this lies in the fact that there is no English page in Wikipedia for an entry 'Society of Classes'?» Because there is a French-language page for that entry, and the concept of the «fourth class» – the proletariat – is neatly explained there.
All right, you could say that it’s okay; you might not know everything that Chudakva has written. True, «what you don't know doesn't matter,» as long as the rest is correct. But that doesn't quite apply here either. When Davies dares to translate a more difficult – or sometimes even easy – part of the text, he misses the mark more than once. For example, Chudakova writes that Bulgakov went for a walk with his wife, but according to Davies, he did so with his sister. And, when Chudakova writes that Bulgakov and his wife went to the Art Theater to give a document to the courier, according to Davies, he gave the document to the courier's wife. And, he calls the American theatre director Halsted Welles (who had staged «Days of the Turbins» in New York in 1934), «a man named Wales», and later simply «director Vels».
Trivial perhaps, and maybe not too bothersome if you don't care about such details, but there is one feature in this translation that leads to outright misinformation repeatedly, and that has the effect of misleading more than once the reader who wants to use this book to help understand Bulgakov’s personality. Translator Davies has difficulty taking notice of the word «not» in Chudakova’s work: a small word of barely three letters, but if you don’t see it the reader can get really confused. For example, Chudakova writes: «And what bliss it is not to ride on a tram anymore!», but the translator apparently disagrees, because he wrote that Bulgakov thought: «And what bliss it is to ride on a tram!». This is a bit embarrassing, because immediately after this, follows a whole paragraph with a colourful description of Bulgakov's well-known aversion to trams. So Bulgakov was actually «not» happy about that, Mr Davies. He hated trams, and often railed against them in several of his works. In another place, he does the opposite, adding the word «not» where Chudakova had not written it. Chudakova writes that Bulgakov often suffered: «During the illness he had a lot of pain, unconsciousness,» but the translator casually changes that to: «During the illness, he didn't suffer any wild pain or loss of memory». This is a rather awkward observation, particularly when you know that Bulgakov suffered greatly from nephrosclerosis, the disease from which his father had died at a relatively young age, and from which, as a doctor, he was well aware would happen to him too.
Davies clearly has a problem with the word «not», in one way or another. And in his translation it happens not once, nor twice, but about twenty times in total, in a context where it is crucial.
Finally, one more comment about this translation: in one place in his book, Davies does not only delete a piece of text, but instead adds one, perhaps well-intentioned, to better inform the reader – not a bad idea in itself, If, that is, the information is correct.
In Chapter 5 of her book, Chudakova describes how Bulgakov and his wife Yelena Sergeevna tried at one point to find out which of the regular visitors to their new apartment might be a spy from the NKVD secret police. She describes this, just as Bulgakov did in «The Master and Margarita», in veiled terms, without mentioning names; however, she does add a number of hints about that person in several places in her book, including having Bulgakov say that the informer often came to their house uninvited and that he had a degree from Oxford University. Davies perhaps thought he could give the reader a helping hand by inserting, on his own initiative, the name of Baron Boris Steiger, in brackets, in Chudakova’s text. There is just one inconvenience: it was not Steiger that Bulgakov and his wife had in mind. After all, Steiger never visited the Bulgakovs' home, and he only had a high school diploma. Davies could have prevented this mistake with a simple Google Search, because then he would have quickly discovered that it was Emmanuel Zhukhovitsky, who was a regular visitor to the apartment and often came uninvited (much to the annoyance of Yelena Sergeevna) and he was the only person in their circle of acquaintances having... an Oxford degree.
Perhaps the translator could have avoided many of these errors or mistakes by having prepared himself better for his assignment; for example, by first reading Yelena Sergeevna's diary or Mikhail Bulgakov's correspondence. Many things would have been much clearer to him, and he would have certainly wasted less time on research or guesses. He did not even have to read that diary and correspondence in a foreign language for him (Russian), because the most important parts of it had already been translated into English in 2012, by Professor J.A.E. Curtis from the University of Oxford, and published in her acclaimed book «Manuscripts Don't Burn». But perhaps he was under strong time pressure. After all, his potential readers needed to possess a great amount of patience for reading his book: In 2017 they were already able to pre-order (and pay for) the book, «Mikhail Bulgakov (The Life and Times)», but they had to wait until 2019 to receive it. What is also strange: the aforementioned Professor J.A.E. Curtis wrote the foreword to this «translation». But I wonder whether she was able to read the translation herself in advance, because as an expert on Bulgakov's work, she should certainly have noticed the errors or mistakes.
In summary: Huw Davies has delivered a fairly readable biography of Bulgakov, albeit incomplete and incorrect in several (frankly: too many) places.
Anyone who picks up this translation will probably be charmed by its relatively smooth writing style – a style that does not at all correspond to that of the archivist and philologist Marietta Chudakova. In itself, this should not be much of a problem, and, in fact, it would be a good thing, if someone had managed to render Chudakova's extensive knowledge in a language that is easily accessible to Bulgakov's many enthusiasts, who certainly are not all linguists. After all, as a philologist of her time and her environment, Chudakova uses long sentences with many subordinate clauses, and her original text contains an innumerable number of semicolons and statements in brackets, often in the middle of a sentence. But it becomes problematic when content is sacrificed for the sake of readability, because if you look a little further, and especially if you compare this book with the original, «The Life Story of Mikhail Bulgakov» by Marietta Chudakova, you would reach some strange conclusions.
The first conclusion: «Mikhail Bulgakov (The Life and Times)» is not a translation of Marietta Chudakova’s book. It is a book written by translator Huw Davies that is based on Chudakova's book.
To begin with, Davies has not fully translated Chudakova’s book, he simply drops, on many occasions, sentences, paragraphs, sometimes even entire consecutive pages. In total, he has not translated the equivalent of 94 pages, or 13 % of the text.
Why? Well, if we take a closer look at the omitted parts, it turns out that these are segments of text that have a somewhat «difficult» content that is not, as such, mentioned in a Russian-English dictionary, or that cannot be found with simple Google Search commands. One example: Chudakova writes that Osip Mandelstam had taken «the oath of the fourth class.» Apparently, Davies has not found the meaning of the term «fourth class» anywhere, and has therefore deleted the entire sentence. «Could it be,» thought the little devil in me, «that the cause of this lies in the fact that there is no English page in Wikipedia for an entry 'Society of Classes'?» Because there is a French-language page for that entry, and the concept of the «fourth class» – the proletariat – is neatly explained there.
All right, you could say that it’s okay; you might not know everything that Chudakva has written. True, «what you don't know doesn't matter,» as long as the rest is correct. But that doesn't quite apply here either. When Davies dares to translate a more difficult – or sometimes even easy – part of the text, he misses the mark more than once. For example, Chudakova writes that Bulgakov went for a walk with his wife, but according to Davies, he did so with his sister. And, when Chudakova writes that Bulgakov and his wife went to the Art Theater to give a document to the courier, according to Davies, he gave the document to the courier's wife. And, he calls the American theatre director Halsted Welles (who had staged «Days of the Turbins» in New York in 1934), «a man named Wales», and later simply «director Vels».
Trivial perhaps, and maybe not too bothersome if you don't care about such details, but there is one feature in this translation that leads to outright misinformation repeatedly, and that has the effect of misleading more than once the reader who wants to use this book to help understand Bulgakov’s personality. Translator Davies has difficulty taking notice of the word «not» in Chudakova’s work: a small word of barely three letters, but if you don’t see it the reader can get really confused. For example, Chudakova writes: «And what bliss it is not to ride on a tram anymore!», but the translator apparently disagrees, because he wrote that Bulgakov thought: «And what bliss it is to ride on a tram!». This is a bit embarrassing, because immediately after this, follows a whole paragraph with a colourful description of Bulgakov's well-known aversion to trams. So Bulgakov was actually «not» happy about that, Mr Davies. He hated trams, and often railed against them in several of his works. In another place, he does the opposite, adding the word «not» where Chudakova had not written it. Chudakova writes that Bulgakov often suffered: «During the illness he had a lot of pain, unconsciousness,» but the translator casually changes that to: «During the illness, he didn't suffer any wild pain or loss of memory». This is a rather awkward observation, particularly when you know that Bulgakov suffered greatly from nephrosclerosis, the disease from which his father had died at a relatively young age, and from which, as a doctor, he was well aware would happen to him too.
Davies clearly has a problem with the word «not», in one way or another. And in his translation it happens not once, nor twice, but about twenty times in total, in a context where it is crucial.
Finally, one more comment about this translation: in one place in his book, Davies does not only delete a piece of text, but instead adds one, perhaps well-intentioned, to better inform the reader – not a bad idea in itself, If, that is, the information is correct.
In Chapter 5 of her book, Chudakova describes how Bulgakov and his wife Yelena Sergeevna tried at one point to find out which of the regular visitors to their new apartment might be a spy from the NKVD secret police. She describes this, just as Bulgakov did in «The Master and Margarita», in veiled terms, without mentioning names; however, she does add a number of hints about that person in several places in her book, including having Bulgakov say that the informer often came to their house uninvited and that he had a degree from Oxford University. Davies perhaps thought he could give the reader a helping hand by inserting, on his own initiative, the name of Baron Boris Steiger, in brackets, in Chudakova’s text. There is just one inconvenience: it was not Steiger that Bulgakov and his wife had in mind. After all, Steiger never visited the Bulgakovs' home, and he only had a high school diploma. Davies could have prevented this mistake with a simple Google Search, because then he would have quickly discovered that it was Emmanuel Zhukhovitsky, who was a regular visitor to the apartment and often came uninvited (much to the annoyance of Yelena Sergeevna) and he was the only person in their circle of acquaintances having... an Oxford degree.
Perhaps the translator could have avoided many of these errors or mistakes by having prepared himself better for his assignment; for example, by first reading Yelena Sergeevna's diary or Mikhail Bulgakov's correspondence. Many things would have been much clearer to him, and he would have certainly wasted less time on research or guesses. He did not even have to read that diary and correspondence in a foreign language for him (Russian), because the most important parts of it had already been translated into English in 2012, by Professor J.A.E. Curtis from the University of Oxford, and published in her acclaimed book «Manuscripts Don't Burn». But perhaps he was under strong time pressure. After all, his potential readers needed to possess a great amount of patience for reading his book: In 2017 they were already able to pre-order (and pay for) the book, «Mikhail Bulgakov (The Life and Times)», but they had to wait until 2019 to receive it. What is also strange: the aforementioned Professor J.A.E. Curtis wrote the foreword to this «translation». But I wonder whether she was able to read the translation herself in advance, because as an expert on Bulgakov's work, she should certainly have noticed the errors or mistakes.
In summary: Huw Davies has delivered a fairly readable biography of Bulgakov, albeit incomplete and incorrect in several (frankly: too many) places.
November 10, 2025
Быть первым тяжело. И всё-таки Мариэтта Чудакова взялась раскрыть для тогда ещё советского читателя тайну над именем писателя Михаила Булгакова, за давностью лет совсем истёршееся из памяти. А почему читатель должен был его помнить? Книжных публикаций припомнить не получалось (все они затерялись в прошлом), разгадывать авторство псевдонимов в газетах и журналах желания не могло возникнуть. Разве только вспоминать по пьесам… Да кто бы мог их упомнить? Или судить по основательно переработанной экранизации о царе Иване Васильевиче? Время менялось, у ряда исследователей появилось желание открыть потерянные имена. Так в 1988 году Мариэтта Чудакова публикует объёмное «Жизнеописание Михаила Булгакова». На тот момент — наиболее точный труд. В последующем читателю станет известно о Булгакове гораздо больше. Но ведь кто-то должен был начать.
Сама Чудакова строила повествование, исходя из личных сомнений. Как рассказать о человеке, когда не обо всём следовало говорить? Читатель начинает недоумевать, почему биограф ставит перед фактом обязательно должной быть в тексте недосказанности. Значит, честно рассказав о возможном сокрытии одного, Мариэтта в другие случаях вовсе о том не обмолвилась. И писала Чудакова по большей части опираясь на слова других, создавая жизнеописание Булгакова, используя свидетельства очевидцев или имевших знакомство с ними. Иначе она не могла поступить. Это немного позже читатель получит больше возможностей для чтения трудов Михаила Булгакова, уже по ним способный самостоятельно проследить историю его становления в качестве творческого человека.
(c) Trounin
Сама Чудакова строила повествование, исходя из личных сомнений. Как рассказать о человеке, когда не обо всём следовало говорить? Читатель начинает недоумевать, почему биограф ставит перед фактом обязательно должной быть в тексте недосказанности. Значит, честно рассказав о возможном сокрытии одного, Мариэтта в другие случаях вовсе о том не обмолвилась. И писала Чудакова по большей части опираясь на слова других, создавая жизнеописание Булгакова, используя свидетельства очевидцев или имевших знакомство с ними. Иначе она не могла поступить. Это немного позже читатель получит больше возможностей для чтения трудов Михаила Булгакова, уже по ним способный самостоятельно проследить историю его становления в качестве творческого человека.
(c) Trounin
January 22, 2016
Замечательная книга, еще раз доказывающая, что настоящее литературное исследование может читаться на одном дыхании. Страшное время и населяющие его люди. Булгаков, Замятин, Олеша, Маяковский, Катаев, Горький, Станиславский... бесконечный список. И все они люди, талантливые, но... люди.
Я бы порекомендовала эту книгу всем, кто интересуется русской литературой первой половины 20 века. Ну и русским критикам, начинающим писать литературные биографии.
Я бы порекомендовала эту книгу всем, кто интересуется русской литературой первой половины 20 века. Ну и русским критикам, начинающим писать литературные биографии.
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