Glowing Eyes
Crime and Punishment Week 15: Book Three, Chapter 4
Welcome to Week 18 of my slow-read of Crime and Punishment. This week’s chapter is Part Three, Chapter 4.
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This week’s characters
Characters in this week’s chapter:
Nastasya • Pulkheria Alexandrovna • Dunya • Razumikhin • Sonya
I’m trying something different this week and recording my thoughts about this chapter onto video. I found myself floundering with the written content and thought a different format would remove the creative blockage I was feeling. Ironically, it actually takes more time to do that, but it might just work for me for reasons that I discuss in the introduction of my video.
Part Three, Chapter 4 Synopsis
All quotations in this post are taken from Roger Cockrell’s translation of 2022, Alma Classics, © Roger Cockrell 2022
Translation Points
It’s the ‘glowing eyes’ this week. It made me think of a horror film and took me out of the story a bit. Here’s how it went down in the various translations.
Russian - Бледное лицо Раскольникова вспыхнуло; его как будто всего передернуло; глаза загорелись.
Garnett - Raskolnikov’s pale face flushed, a shudder passed over him, his eyes glowed.
Coulson - Raskolnikov's pale face flushed; he shuddered violently and his eyes burned.
McDuff - Raskolnikov's pale face flushed; he seemed to convulse all over; his eyes caught fire.
P&V - Raskolnikov's pale face became flushed; he cringed all over, as it were; his eyes lit up.
Ready - Raskolnikov's pale face suddenly flushed; his whole body seemed to convulse; his eyes caught fire.
Pasternak Slater - A flush covered Raskolnikov's pale face, and he seemed to shudder all over. His eyes burned.
Katz - Raskolnikov's pale face flushed; he seemed to shudder all over; his eyes flashed.
Cockrell - Raskolnikov's pale face flushed. His whole body seemed to shake, and eyes started to glow.
I think my favourite here is ‘lit up’. It sounds like something that someone would actually say. Your eyes would glow in the firelight maybe. As for burning, has he been sprayed with pepper spray? Although now that I think of it, ‘lit up’ sort of conjures up the idea of something positive, so perhaps that’s not quite right either. How about ‘his eyes went all bloodshot’? It’s a tricky one so it is.
How would YOU render it?
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