D-r Tchékhov, Detektiv . . . the Problems of Englishing a Completist. Too anorakish?

It is well-known that, like Kipling, Tchékhov prided himself on his hyperdetailed understanding of the habits, customs and manners of the toilers from his own great sprawling multicultural empire. 

Filth! The place was one mass of it. Filth underfoot – filth on the walls, the rafters and the beams – filth floating on the hot, heavy pestiferous air.                                    (‘Zola,’ Tchékhov thought, ‘would revel in a minute description of this reeking den.’)                                    Anton placed his enamel tray on the workbench.   Old Vańuška cleared a space by removing an ancient fowling-piece, and a peculiarly shaped stump which Anton knew to be a leg-guard used by the cannoneers.  (When two shaft-horses drew a field-gun, one horse was ridden by a postilion who would have this clumsy-looking, very comical piece of wood fixed to his right leg.)

By comparison with a later text (see below), the Englishing of this modest display of military intelligence did not fox my father when first confronted with the ‘Chekhov manuscript’, labelled The Fatal Debut (understood to be a provisional title) in Anton’s own hand on the wax paper wrapper containing the putative Chekhov novel, bartered in 1946 by a prisoner of the Nürnberg Trials for ‘. . . half a carton of Chesterfields, two tins of cocoa and one can of condensed milk . . .’ (My father was an interpreter with SHAEF at the trials when he became acquainted with the possessor of the ms, General Vadim Ignatyvich Kulikov, who, following demands from the Soviets for his repatriation, was returned to Russia where after a show trial in Moscow he was executed for treason.)

Trainspotting credentials.

My father complained that Chekhov’s completism became more pronounced as the novel (he retitled the ms D-r Tchékhov, Detektiv: A Textbook Case) progressed towards its denouement and the measure of the challenges he faced may be grasped from his tackling of a particularly anorakish Chekhovian line, which warrants, I think, a more protracted textual exegesis . . .

From D-r Tchékhov, Detektiv: A Textbook Case, conclusion of Part 1, The Unvarnished Truth . . .  

Soon, the double yolk of a yellow approach-signal shimmered in a glair of mist.

I do believe my father’s erudite translation has the distinction of conveying Chekhov’s meaning with the very lightest touch. The preceding sentence, sets the scene . . .

In the far distance, a railway engine laboured on a curve, and then the railway lights came into view over the brow of a hill, and a high column of grey smoke and sparks shifted fretfully hither and thither, trapped in the cutting between the forest trees.

The elegance of the ‘double yoke’ is matched, in this case, by D-r Tchékhov’s apposite usage of a practically untranslatable Cheremissian word for a particularly serpentine river mist, which is also a homograph for ‘egg white’. (My learned father wittily employs the Scottish Gaelic word, glair, which has a very similar double meaning.)

The Soviet Railroad Signals Manual (see diagram) certainly confirms D-r Tchékhov’s trainspotting credentials and, indeed, does not contradict his observations of a ‘ramassage train’ for the fortress general’s remounts approaching signals set for their diversion to the marshalling yard. (Diagram: Switchgear for points, inwards, with a graduated outward crossover plate to the running line.) 

For the opinion of a Marxist footplatemen on the aridity of matters literary, see :
https://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.com/2011/10/solitary-truck-euphonious-assonance.html

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A number of extracts from the as-yet-unpublished crime novel, D-r Tchékhov, Detektiv, have been posted here over recent years :

The Unvarnished Truth
https://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.com/2018/11/ur-gumshoe-d-r-tchekhov-detektiv.html
A Skirmish with Wolves, 

http://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.com/2015/01/d-r-tchekhov-skirmish-with-wolves-and.html 

or Winter Rules,

http://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.com/2015/03/winter-rules-and-le-diable-boiteux.html

or Chekhov’s talking raven,

http://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.com/2014/02/khar-r-r-kai-khar-r-r-kai-khar-r-r-kai.html 

or Dead Wife, New Hat,

http://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.com/2012/10/dead-wife-new-hat-femme-morte-chapeau.html

or Inductive Detection,

http://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.com/2011/10/inductive-detection.html

or D-r Tchékhov, Detektiv. A long lost novel, 

https://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.com/2011/10/d-r-tchekhov-detektiv-long-lost-novel.html

The transcription and restoration of a long lost crime novel by Chekhov (he, himself, referred to such a work in progress in 1888) has been a task requiring considerable cerebral vigour, which I confess demands a savviness I can no longer own.

The novel relates the misadventures of the morphine-dependent D-r Anton Tchékhov, aged 28 years, when investigating the mysterious duelling death of an aristocratic cadet in a remote snowbound northern garrison.