Skip to main content
Open Book Publishers

Tolstoy Embracing Tamil: Ninety Years of Lev Tolstoy in Tamil Literature

Chapter of: Translating Russian Literature in the Global Context(pp. 445–448)

Export Metadata

  • ONIX 3.0
    • Thoth
    • Project MUSE
      Cannot generate record: No BIC or BISAC subject code
    • OAPEN
    • JSTOR
      Cannot generate record: No BISAC subject code
    • Google Books
      Cannot generate record: No BIC, BISAC or LCC subject code
    • OverDrive
      Cannot generate record: No priced EPUB or PDF URL
  • ONIX 2.1
  • CSV
  • JSON
  • OCLC KBART
  • BibTeX
  • CrossRef DOI deposit
    Cannot generate record: This work does not have any ISBNs
  • MARC 21 Record
    Cannot generate record: MARC records are not available for chapters
  • MARC 21 Markup
    Cannot generate record: MARC records are not available for chapters
  • MARC 21 XML
    Cannot generate record: MARC records are not available for chapters
Metadata
TitleTolstoy Embracing Tamil
SubtitleNinety Years of Lev Tolstoy in Tamil Literature
ContributorVenkatesh Kumar(author)
DOIhttps://doi.org/10.11647/obp.0340.28
Landing pagehttps://www.openbookpublishers.com/books/10.11647/obp.0340/chapters/10.11647/obp.0340.28
Licensehttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
CopyrightVenkatesh Kumar
PublisherOpen Book Publishers
Published on2024-04-03
Long abstractThis essay begins with a personal insight into the achievements of my grandfather, Rao Sahib K Kothandapani Pillai. Born in 1896 at Andalur Semmangudi village in South India, Kothandapani Pillai is celebrated as the earliest Tamil writer to take the initiative of translating Tolstoy’s works into Tamil. A diplomat who read Tolstoy for pleasure, Kothandapani Pillai translated three stories––Two Old Men’ (‘Dva starika’, 1885), ‘How Much Land Does A Man Need?’ (‘Mnogo li cheloveku zemli nuzhno?’, 1886), and ‘A Lost Opportunity’ (‘Upustish’ ogon’––ne potushish’, 1885)––published in 1932 in Kadhaimanikkovai (Stories from Tolstoy), an academic textbook for primary-school children. The second part of this essay examines my grandfather’s translator-successors who, between 1930-1970, continued to produce Tamil translations of Tolstoy and other authors such as Maksim Gorky, Fedor Dostoevsky and Anton Chekhov, for Progress and Raduga publishers in Moscow.
Page rangepp. 445–448
Print length4 pages
LanguageEnglish (Original)
Contributors

Venkatesh Kumar

(author)
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0802-7932

Venkatesh Kumar received an Honorary Diploma from Rossotrudnichestvo, the Russian organisation for cultural cooperation abroad, for his efforts to familiarise India with the Russian language. The focus of his cross-cultural endeavours are Lev Tolstoy and Kothandapani Pillai, Venkatesh’s diplomat-turned-literary translator grandfather, who is credited with translating Tolstoy’s works into Tamil.