One of the reasons why there are so many versions of Chekhov is that translations date in a way that the original doesn't; translations seem to be of their time.
Interpretation
Translations of literature can become dated while the original work remains timeless.
This quote by Tom Stoppard suggests that the nature of literary translations is such that they are influenced by the cultural and temporal context in which they are created. While the original work retains its essence across time, translations can feel outdated as languages and societal norms evolve, leading to multiple interpretations and versions of a single text over time.
In practice
A literary discussion about how translations of Russian authors can vary in interpretation.
Love is - OK, it's 20 things, but it isn't 19. And I think that love reaches for something which is very, very deep in us and is very easily obscured, and is also very easily denied, which is the instinct towards the other person, other than toward the self.
A movie camera is like having someone you have a crush on watching you from afar - you pretend it's not there.
I once did a radio program with a famous materialist, that is to say a scientist who believed that absolutely everything was physical and that all emotions were reductive to little electrical impulses in your neurons. And I found that I didn't believe that. But what the emotions really are, I don't have an alternative theory.
A Chinaman of the T'ang Dynasty—and, by which definition, a philosopher—dreamed he was a butterfly, and from that moment he was never quite sure that he was not a butterfly dreaming it was a Chinese philosopher. Envy him; in his two-fold security.
Chekhov directors and Chekhov actors love working on his plays because there seems to be no end to what you can find out about the micro-narrative when you're investigating a text.
I think theater ought to be theatrical ... you know, shuffling the pack in different ways so that it's -- there's always some kind of ambush involved in the experience. You're being ambushed by an unexpected word, or by an elephant falling out of the cupboard, whatever it is.
I never plot out my novels in terms of the tone of the book. Hopefully, once a story is begun it reveals itself
When you know what an actor has, you can reach in and arouse it. If you don't know what he has, you don't know what the hell is going on.
Wasn't writing a kind of soaring, an achievable form of flight, of fancy, of the imagination?
For me, music and life are all about style.
It's difficult because nothing's preordained by plan and you can't control it. That's one of those joys and thrills and nerve-racking realities of being an actor. A lot has to do with luck, no matter what your talent or contribution can be.
I gathered poets around me and we all wrote beautiful erotica. As we were condemned to focus only on sensuality, we had violent explosions of poetry. Writing erotica became a road to sainthood rather than to debauchery.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.