LETTERS
Editors: I read with great interest Lewis Coser's article "The Hungarian Revolution Revisited," [Summer, 1963], in which he wrote (referring to the beginning of the revolutionary...
...But perhaps the services rendered to Soviet totalitarianism are not to be equated with those rendered to other totalitarian regimes...
...Upon my return to Brazil, I published the interview in the newspaper Tribuna da Imprensa, in Rio de Janeiro, early in October 1956...
...Is a statement of fact a "denunciation...
...I know that at least one person in the West foresaw what was going to happen in Hungary...
...The old freedom fighter, in one of the most lucid analyses made on the neo-Stalinist period, not only traced the profiles of Stalin's heirs, but also made reference to the slavery existing in the socalled people's democracies...
...Siegel be similarly offended if an unrepentant former employee of Goebbels' propaganda ministry were to translate a book by an Auschwitz inmate...
...Hayward and Hingley...
...Siegel quotes from the novel without informing the reader whose edition he is quoting from...
...Siegel's review of this important novel [DISSENT, Spring 1963...
...New Republic, May 11, 1963...
...I do think the Hayward-Hingley version is somewhat better than the translation by Ralph Parker, but not overwhelmingly so...
...I had written in some detail on the respective merits of the two editions of One Day but these passages were cut— with my knowledge—by the editor...
...Would Mr...
...Solzhenitsyn deserves better interpreters...
...Was his failure to mention the fact that the quotations are from the Praeger edition a mere oversight...
...JEAN STEINBERG GEORGE SIEGEL Replies: Editors: I am of course aware that Ralph Parker was a notorious Stalinist and apologist for the Soviet regime but unless it can be shown that his political beliefs have influenced his translation what relevance do they have...
...STEFAN BACIQ Seattle The Praeger Edition Editors: As one of the editors of the Praeger edition of Alexander Solzhenitsyn's One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich—thus obviously a not disinterested party—I would like to comment on Mr...
...Trotsky, took place...
...Siegel states that Praeger "denounced" Ralph Parker as a "fervent apologist for the Soviet regime...
...However, the clarification of this point is not the central reason for my letter...
...Parker's version superior to that of Messrs...
...For the record, I would like to tell you about an interview I had with Natalia Sedova, Leon Trotsky's widow, in Mexico in September 1956, a few weeks before the outbreak of the Hungarian revolution...
...Or vice versa...
...With prophetic vision, she announced the beginning of the movement of the masses, referring specifically to Hungary...
...Three weeks later the revolutionary movement of Budapest, so clearly foreseen by Mrs...
...This omission is the more startling in that Mr...
...It seems to me that Mr...
...Are both equally good or poor...
...Most literary critics agree that Solzhenitsyn's novel is a truly great work of literature...
...Mr...
...As Irving Howe has written: ". .. the book survives both renderings and can be read with absorption in either...
...Editors: I read with great interest Lewis Coser's article "The Hungarian Revolution Revisited," [Summer, 1963], in which he wrote (referring to the beginning of the revolutionary movement in Budapest in Ocober, 1956): "Nobody in the West, certainly, had any inkling of the events to come...
...Siegel completely abdicates his responsibility as a reviewer when, after having mentioned the dual publication of the book, he fails to comment on the respective merits of the two editions...
...Is Mr...
...He also disagrees with Praeger's opinion that Mr...
...Is the reader not entitled to a comparative literary value judgment, as well as being treated to a dismissal of the political factors surrounding the publication of the book...
Vol. 10 • September 1963 • No. 4
