Šoderlo De Laklo i “Opasnye svjazi” [P007]
Paratext collocation: Opasnye svjazi [I parte] – Moskva – Federacija – pp. 5-43.
Paratext's typology: Preface
Author of the paratext: Èfros Abram Markovič
Author's bio:
Abram Markovich Efros (1888, Moscow -1954, Moscow) - art critic, literary critic, translator, theatre historian, member of the administration of Moscow's most important museums in the 1920s. Already in his university years, he translated the Song of Songs from ancient Hebrew (1909), was the author of several translations from French and Italian, and composed essays on Aleksandr Pushkin, Michelangelo, Paul Valéry and other artists and men of letters. He was also the author of a collection of erotic sonnets (Eroticheskiye sonety, 1922). In the 1930s, Efros was chief editor of the Frantsuzskaya literatura series at the Academia publishing house. According to M. Rac, Efros' paratexts to translations of French works 'often represent small masterpieces' (Rac 1989: 13). In 1937, he was arrested and sent into exile for three years in the city of Rostov Velikiy. In 1950, during the anti-Jewish repressions against the 'cosmopolitans', he was sent into exile in Tashkent where he worked until his death as a professor at the State Institute of Theatre Art in Tashkent.
Bibliography: O. Lekmanov, Efros A.M., in Mandelstamovskaya enciklopediya, Moskva, Politicheskaya enciklopediya, 2017, t. 1, p. 569; P. Nerler, Mandelstam i Efros: о prevratnostyakh netvorcheskikh peresecheniy, "Nashe nasledie", 114 (2015), pp. 38 -52; R. Timenchik, Iz Imennogo ukazatelya k Zapisnym knizhkam Achmatovoy: A. Efros, "Literaturnyi fakt", 3/17 (2020), рр. 292-301; RGB. F. 589. Efros Abram Markovich
Date of the paratext: 1930
Paratextual directives:
Title of the original work translated into Russian: Les liaisons dangereuses
Publication date of the original work: 1782
Country of the original work: France
Author of the original text: Laclos Pierre-Ambroise-François Choderlos De
Bio of the Author (original text): French writer, born in Amiens on 18 October 1741, died in Taranto on 5 September 1803. From a family of recent nobility, he pursued a military career and became an excellent artillery officer; secretary to Philippe d'Orléans, during the events of the French Revolution he sided with his faction against the first-born branch of the Bourbons, later siding with the republicans. Imprisoned twice during the revolutionary years, he managed to avoid the guillotine thanks to his artillery skills. He returned to service under Napoleon. He was the author of the epistolary novel Les liaisons dangereuses, the "libertine novel par excellence" according to Laurent Versini's definition, a work that illustrated the licentious customs of the ancien régime nobility by creating the diabolical literary couple Viscount de Valmont - Madame de Merteuil; the novel caused an immediate stir (it was often read by contemporaries as a work à clé) and was condemned in France for immorality from 1823 to 1825, although it went through numerous editions throughout the 19th century. A fundamental book for future French literature, from Stendhal to Beaudelaire to Marcel Proust, this work remains the only authentic literary success of Laclos, who was also the author of the essay Essai sur l'éducation des femmes (1786), first published only in 1908.
Author image:
Title of the Russian translation: Opasnye svjazi
Collocation of the translation: Moskva – Federacija
Translator's name: Natal'ja Davydovna Èfros
Translator's bio: Natalya Davydovna Efros (née Galperina), wife of Abram Efros. Born near Voronezh in 1889, died in Moscow in 1989. In 1916, she graduated from Moscow University with a degree in History, and already as a student she did literary translations from French, eventually becoming a professional translator. In addition to this activity, from the 1920s onwards she also worked as a teacher at various Soviet institutions and institutes; from the end of the 1920s onwards she was intensively involved in publishing, working as an editor for "Literaturnoye nasledstvo" (1933-1941). During the war she took nursing courses and was then evacuated to Uzbekistan. She returned to Moscow in 1943, where she resumed editorial work (1946-78, in the editorial office of "Literaturnoye nasledstvo"), from '45 also at Sovinformbyuro. From 1954 to 1978 she worked for the Institut mirovoy literatury. She also resumed her work as a literary translator (translating Victor Hugo and Anatole France); in the 1970s she wrote a memoir about her husband A.M. Efros, republished in 2018 under the title Vospominaniya raznych let (Moskva, Noviy chronograf).
Curator of the Russian translation: Èfros Abram Markovič
Russian translation publication date: 1930
Concise description of the paratext-directives' relation:
The Academia Opasnye sviazi edition is the first complete publication of Laclos’ novel Les liaisons dangereuses in 20th century Russia. There was a first, partial publication in 1930 by Federatsiya. Following the closure of this publishing house in July 1932, Abram Efros resubmitted the introductory article he had edited for the previous edition (with minor changes) for inclusion in the 1933 first complete Soviet edition of the novel by Academia (with minor changes). See the comment section to P008.
Alessandra Carbone