Pelevin Empire V

I just finished listening to Pelevin’s Empire V — the Russian audiobook, with its rich narration and immersive production, outshines any recent English audiobooks I’ve listened to. Pelevin’s style is layered with philosophical depth and theological play rather than straightforward references, adding to the novel’s allure. I’m curious how well the official English translation holds up, especially in key chapters “The Red Ceremony” and “Villa dei Misteri,” where much of the novel’s core meaning resides.

Empire V weaves vampire fantasy with explorations of God and Non-Duality, echoing a notion from Pelevin’s other novel “T”: “What came first—the word or the idea of the word?” Pelevin’s language is essential to the experience; his use of matershchina (Russian profanity) isn’t vulgar but methodical, yet challenging to capture in translation. I wonder if terms like bablós — a clever mix of slang and satire — can carry their full weight in english. The upcoming film adaptation by Victor Ginzburg might reveal how such language translates visually.

Below, I’m revisiting some of the clippings from the “Villa dei Misteri” and other chapters in both English and Russian, comparing them side-by-side to see if the translation captures any of the nuances of Pelevin’s writing.

• Pelevin Villa dei Misteri

• nail fragment from Villa dei Misteri

other notes:

• вменяемые элиты; “The smile on the paternal visage was obviously addressed not to me but to the ‘responsible elites’ whose comfortable substance I was being exhorted to respect.”
• законы социального дарвинизма; “I had sunk to the very dregs of existence, below the level at which the laws of Social Darwinism could begin to operate. But I soon came to realise that no chasm, no ghetto, could be deep or isolated enough to insulate one against these laws, because any individual cell in the social organism functions according to principles identical to those of society as a whole.”
• летняя Москва хороша не своими домами и улицами а намеком на те таинственные невозможные места куда из нее можно уехать; “I was not thinking very clearly, but it occurred to me that the reason Moscow in summer is so beautiful owes less to its streets and its buildings than to the obscure promise of escape it harbours”. (img)
• любое объяснение есть функция существующих представлений … Меняется представление меняется и вердикт “any explanation can only be a function of concepts that already exist. If the explanation is a scientific one, it depends on concepts that already exist in science. … When concepts alter, so do the conclusions.”
• я развивался быстро и без особых усилий… реальный возраст человека это объем пережитого … воруя чужой опыт я платил за него своей неопытностью что и есть юность; “the true age of a person is determined by the sum of his knowledge. The acquisition of vicarious experiences must be set against the loss of my own inexperience, which is to say of my youth.”
• … не снаружи через то что люди говорят и пишут а изнутри через интимное знакомство с тем что они думают и чувствуют ++experiential knowledge++; “However, our approach to the subject was not extrinsic, an investigation into what people were saying on the record, but internal, via an intimate acquaintance with what they actually thought and felt.”
• … каждый народ или даже человек в обязательном порядке должен разрабатывать свою религию сам, а не донашивать трепье кишащее чужими вшами … “Each nation, as each individual, must work out its own religion and not simply continue wearing out the rags of others, swarming as they are with the lice from which all diseases come …”
• сделать фундаментом национального мировоззрения писаного непонятно кем непонятно как это все равно что установить на компьютер пирацкую версию Виндоус на турецком языке, без возможности апгрейда … людям нужна открытая архитектура духа - опен соурс ++open source spirituality++ “… to base our world view on a mishmash of texts written by unknown hands in unknown places at an unknown time is equivalent to installing a pirate Turkish version of Windows 95 in a crucially important computer with no upgrade available, completely unprotected against spyware, Trojans and viruses”
• идеалогия это описание невидимой цели которая оправдывает видимые средства ; “Ideology is a description of the invisible aim which justifies visible means,”
• … (дискурс) он отделяет территорию на которую нельзя попасть от территории оттуда нельзя уйти … “Discourse acts in a manner not unlike an electric barbed-wire fence where the current touches not the human body but the human mind. It defines territory that cannot be penetrated from territory from which it is impossible to escape.”
• … мужчина описывается как нахрапистая грубая женщина с волосатым лицом, а женщина как мужчина-идиот без члена который плохо водит автомобиль … “thus men appear as bearded, bullying, coarse versions of women, and women as idiotic dickless males who know nothing about driving a car.”
• два вида наркоманов принимающих сильнейшие психотропы с диаметрально-противоположными галлюцинациями но должны проводить время друг с другом, за многие века они не только научились совместно ловить кайф но и выработали этикет как вести друг с другом как будто они и правда понимают друг друга … “our world is populated by two types of drug user, each addicted to extremely strong psychotropic substances producing radically different effects. The hallucinations affecting each type are diametrically opposed, yet the subjects are obliged to live in permanent conjunction with one another. For this reason they have learned to indulge jointly in fundamentally different individual trips, relying on an elaborate form of etiquette that allows each side, despite the fact that the same words mean different things to them, to behave as if it understood the other.”
• красота вызывающая рыночные чувства (marketplace feelings)
• сравнение офисного къюбикл со стоилом скота а компьютера с морковкой; “but the workspace for today’s office proletarian – his cubicle – even looks like a stall for a large cattle stock. The only difference is that in front of his face instead of a feeding trough he has a monitor displaying his fodder digitally.”