I checked three translations for the verb “flew”; Constance Garnett’s has 22, Oliver Ready’s has 6, Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky’s has 15. This suggests that it’s not entirely a translator’s idiosyncrasy. On the other hand there might be some Constance Garnett influence over other translators.
I have picked a random sentence from the book, Part II — Chapter VII:
Constance Garnett
Katerina Ivanovna flew into a fury.
Oliver Ready
Katerina Ivanovna was beside herself.
Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky
Katerina Ivanovna flew into a rage.
Depending on the corpus of work surveyed, there’s not really any clear trend. However, “flew at” definitely went out of style in the 1960s for British English based on one chart.
So Garnett was working at the time and place that “flew at” was widely used (England 1900-1940). Pevear/Volokhonsky were translating in England in the 1990s on, when the phrase was not popular, so your suggestion of Garnett influence is probably correct.
Ready’s translations are really recent so it’s not really surprising that he’s using more modern language.
I have realized I should have restricted the search to “flew at”. In that case Garnett has 5, Ready has none, and P&V has 2 matches. Another random bit from Part III — Chapter I:
Garnett
“Fetching? You said fetching?” roared Razumihin and he flew at Zossimov and seized him by the throat.
Ready
‘Delicious? Delicious, you said?’ Razumikhin roared, before suddenly hurling himself at Zosimov and seizing him by the throat.
P & V
“Ravishing? Did you say ravishing!” Razumikhin bellowed, and he suddenly flew at Zossimov and seized him by the throat.
I have no idea. And my edition doesn’t say who translated it. But your idea may be right. So if my idea about Peanuts is right in turn, it may be the translator of my edition of Karamazov who’s responsible for Peanuts being full of ‘You blockhead!’
On a slight tangent, “blockhead” in English actually goes back to the 1500s, according to the OED. The earliest known use comes from Saint Thomas More:
I wolde not call it heresye, yf one wolde translate presbyteros a blok: but I wold say he were a blok hed. And as very a blokhed were he, that wold translate presbyteros an elder in stede of a preste.
(I wouldn’t call it heresy if someone translated presbyteros as “block”, but I would say he was a blockhead. And just as much of a blockhead is anyone who would translate presbyteros as “elder” instead of “priest”.)
This comes from More’s response to Tyndale, who insisted that it was valid to translate Latin senior as English “elder”, since that’s literally what it means; More responded that that was utter heresy, because Latin senior was used to translate Greek presbyteros, which means something different; Tyndale asked if he was calling the Latin Vulgate heretical; More said that using English “elder” was heresy but Latin senior wasn’t, because it had the weight of tradition behind it. Truly a gripping tale.
(Yes, yes, A Man for All Seasons is a lovely story, but he was happy to use state authority to execute “heretics” while he was in Henry’s favor).
You’re the linguist, but I think Tyndale has the better of this argument, no? I seem to recall (and Google seems to confirm) that there’s a presbyteros/hiereus distinction in the Greek that More mostly tries to wriggle past…
I’m not enough of a theologian to comment on the heresy aspect of it, but linguistically, presbyteros (πρεσβύτερος) does in fact just mean “elder”, and is applied to all sorts of things other than people. More is just straight-up wrong about that. It was applied to a specific role in the early church, but the Greek word doesn’t indicate any particular ordination; you’d have to look at history rather than linguistics for that.
On a slight tangent, “blockhead” in English actually goes back to the 1500s, according to the OED. The earliest known use comes from Saint Thomas More:
So at that point was it being used as an insult, or did it get turned into an insult later?
More’s definitely using it as an insult. It seems like it’s only later that it acquired any non-insulting meanings, referring to a particular type of carnival performer.
I’ve just finished my 59th book of the year, with a collection of seasonal ghost stories, from the British Library’s Tales of the Weird season. In case that’s of interest to anyone else here is my review. There are dozens of books in this series of short story collections, but this is one of just four festive themed books there so far. In a nutshell I was suitably spooked!
Haha! I’m going to get through 1 more to reach 60. Then that’s me done. I’ll be blogging an end of year reading review blog sometime between Christmas and the New Year.
I finished it a few days ago!
It was a hoot and a half… until I got to the final chapters. Like I get why the book ended the way it did, but it wasn’t that satisfying…
I started Scaramouche: A Romance of the French Revolution by Rafael Sabatini. Added it to my e-reader and a few chapters down. Didn’t know the author, but I could have sworn it was a Dumas-contemporary (as in a French author). Same vibes as The Three Musketeers but before the French Revolution.
Started number crunching for my annual blog post of books read for fun this year. Quick initial stats: 60 books finished in 2023, almost 20,000 pages read, average 375 pages a week. Despite being heavily sedated from progressive neuro disease, and needing a Kindle with utterly gigantic font to keep reading. So grateful I still can! More details to follow soon. I’ll post a link to my full blog post here when it’s online.
