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by emerged 1648 days ago
I’ve been reading the new translation recently. Is it just me or are there entire sections which are impossible to make sense of? Much of it is really great, but I’ve found myself skipping all the longer sections because they are all but unparsable.

It could be I need to get a different translation.

1 comments

The Gregory Hayes translation is good. Which do you have?
That’s the one I have. I don’t usually have difficulties with reading comprehension, I’m a big fan of Dostoyevsky translations. But for some reason I can read some chapters in the Hays translation a dozen times without having any idea what he’s saying.

If that’s an issue unique to me, it probably means I need to push through and it’s an opportunity to improve. The reviews seem positive and I’ve heard it recommended many times.

Well, he wasn't writing to be understood by anyone. He was writing to himself. Some wont be easy to understand. Some requires history or philosophy background and some is impossible to grasp 100%