Andrei Makine
Dreams Of My Russian Summers
TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH BY Geoffrey Strachan
For Marianne Véron and Herbert Lottman
For Laura and Thierry de Montalembert
For Jean- Christophe
… it was with a childish pleasure and a profound emotion that, being unable to mention the names of so many others who must have acted similarly and thanks to whom France has survived, I gave the real names here…
– Marcel Proust, Le Temps retrouvé
Does the Siberian ask heaven for olive trees, or the Provençal for cranberries?
– Joseph de Maistre, Les Soirées de St. Petersbourg
I questioned the Russian about his method of work and was astonished that he did not make his translations himself, for he spoke a very pure French, with just a hint of hesitation, on account of the subtlety of his thought.
He confessed to me that the Académie and its dictionary froze him.
– Alphonse Daudet, Trente ans de Paris
Translator's Note
Andrei' Makine was born and brought up in Russia but wrote Dreams of My Russian Summers in French, living in France. In this novel the lives of the characters move back and forth between two countries and two languages. Makine uses a number of Russian words that evoke features of Russian life, and I have generally left these as English transliterations of Russian, for example: izba(a traditional wooden house built of logs); shapka(a fur hat or cap, often with ear-flaps); babushka (a grandmother); taiga (the virgin pine forest that spreads across Siberia, south of the tundra); kasha (the staple dish of cooked grain or groats); kulak (a peasant farmer, working for his own profit); kolkhoznik