'Foreign Improvements': Tolstoy’s 'Lucerne' as a Second Translation of Sterne

• In Event: Translating Fictions

Abstract

In this paper, I argue that Tolstoy’s first journey abroad, and his short story “Lucerne,” (1857) were mediated by Laurence Sterne’s A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy (1768). Tolstoy’s incomplete and unpublished translation of Sterne’s novel, which he produced in his journals in 1851, was, I suggest, only the first draft of a translation project that culminated in “Lucerne.” Tolstoy’s own sentimental journey gave him a new perspective on Sterne’s text and, ultimately, motivated him to produce a second version of it. That second version reveals the limitations of Sterne’s poetics, of Tolstoy’s own first translation of Sterne, and of translation in general.

Author

• Elizabeth Frances Geballe, Indiana U Bloomington