Orgia na dworcu w Jekaterinhofie. (O wytwarzaniu Inności w przekładach Idioty Dostojewskiego)
An Orgy at Yekaterinhof Station: On the Creation of Otherness in Translations os Dostoevsky’s The Idiot

Summary/Abstract: This article explores how Otherness is created in two Polish translations of Dostoevsky’s The Idiot. The analysis focuses on scenes whose localisation the Russian original describes as воксал (read: vauxhall, meaning ‘railway station’). This word first appears in the characterization of Anastassya Filippovna (in a sentence about her participation in the orgy at Yekaterinhof); later it is used consistently to describe the events set in Pavlovsk. The translations mention an orgy ‘at the station’ [na ‘dworcu’] in Yekaterinhof as well as concerts that drew the characters staying in Pavlovsk to the botanical gardens. This corresponds to the popular image of Russia as a land of the unforeseeable and of radical cultural difference. In the translations of The Idiot Russia is subject to ‘re-mapping’ (pushing away from us).

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