Albaglobal - Consciousness in Translation

Narrative report1 => Past tense (w/ dependent clauses2 often in present tense)
(Silent) direct speech => Past, present or future tense
Oratorio oblique3 => Present tense
Narrated monologue4 => Present tense
Quoted monologue5 => Present and past tense

Whereas the text of an English novel, likewise told in the past, can be broken down in the following form:

Narrative report => Past tense (w/ dependent clauses in past tense)
(Silent) direct speech => Past, present or future tense
Oratorio oblique => Past tense (or would)
Narrated monologue => Past tense (or would)
Quoted monologue => Present and past tense

The primary anomaly of reported speech in Russian and English is apparent from this outline: oratorio oblique and narrated monologue take different tenses in each language. Other idiosyncrasies include the rules for dependent clauses in the narrative report, which produce verbs in Russian that generally in the present tense, while their complements in English remain in the past. Finally, we may notice that all forms of reported speech are primarily in the present tense in Russian, as they would be in (silent) direct speech, but two of these three (oratorio oblique and narrated monologue) are shifted back one tense further into the past or to the verb would (if the direct speech contains will) in English.

Taking Tolstoy as a traditional and conventional example of nineteenth century Russian literature, we find the narrative report, i.e. the recapitulation of events and the description of scenes, rendered in the past tense: «Еще как только Кити в слезах вышла из комнаты, Доли с своею материнскою, семейною привычкой тотчас же увидала...» (АК, 124)6 This past tense narrative report then continues with a dependent clause in the present tense: «... что тут предстоит женское дело...» (АК, 124) The transition from the past in the main clause to the present in the dependent clause is completely natural in Russian. In English, to retain the flow of the narrative report, the translation of this dependent clause will switch the verb to the past tense in accordance with the English tradition of narrative reports: “When Kitty left the room in tears, Dolly, with her motherly family habit of mind, saw at once that there was woman’s work to be done...” (Tr. AK, 129, italics mine)7 An English writer creating a similar sentence with saw that (or the equivalent without the unnecessary introductory word that) would invariably have a past tense verb in the dependent clause. This is the case in A Portrait: “Stephen, raising his terror-stricken face, saw that his father’s eyes were full of tears.” (A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, 29)8 In turn, the Russian translation of such sentences shifts from the past to the present in the dependent clause, so the text reads like Tolstoy’s: «Стивен, подняв побелевшее от ужаса лицо, увидел, что глаза отца полны слез.» (Портрет художника в юности, 51).9
There seems to be a consensus on the translation of narrative reports, with even adherents of the literal method of translation (e.g. Volokhonskaya and Pevear) rendering such dependent clauses in the past tense.10 For the communication of consciousness, however, especially when it is embedded in the narrative report, translators encounter a problem. When reflector-characters (or teller-characters) voice their thoughts in a third-person narrative, there consciousness is framed by a mode for presenting their inner life.11 These modes, according to Jochen Vogt, include: oratorio oblique (silent indirect speech, stumme indirekte Rede), quoted monologue (stream of consciousness, free direct monologue, free direct thought, silent direct speech, stumme direkte Rede) and narrated monologue (Erlebte Rede).12 The difficulty that English translator’s face in a Russian text is not only that oratorio oblique and narrated monologue require different tenses in English and Russian, but also that narrated monologue and quoted monologue are almost indistinguishable in Russian, making it is easy to oversee or misinterpret the mode communicating the thoughts of a character.

I. Oratorio Oblique in English and (Silent) Direct Speech in Russian

Otherwise known as (silent) indirect speech or (stumme) indirekte Rede, oratorio oblique reports the speech of a character. In English this involves a shift in tenses (one tense further into the past) and a summary of everything the character said, though not necessarily word for word. (Martinez and Scheffel, 52)13 English writers in the late eighteenth, early nineteenth century sometimes set speech of this kind apart from the narrative with quotation marks, but distinguished it from any direct mode by a shift in tense:

…and Harriet, unchecked, ran eagerly through what she had to tell. “She had set out from Mrs. Goddard’s half an hour ago – she had been afraid it would pour down every moment – but she thought she might get to Hartfield first – she had hurried on as fast as possible...” (Emma, 148)14

Harriet’s speech in Emma is reproduced in the past perfect and with modal verbs because her direct speech would be in the past simple. If her direct speech were in the present tense, then the verbs would be shifted to the past simple and appropriate modal forms. With George Eliot, the text markers fall away and the oratorio oblique (silent indirect speech) is integrated into the narration:

Mrs. Tulliver, seeing that everything had gone wrong, had begun to think that she had been too passive in life… (The Mill on the Floss, 260)15

Again the temporal shift of the verb(s) is identical to Jane Austen – one tense further into the past. In real time, if these were indeed Mrs. Tulliver’s exact words, she would have thought: “I have been too passive..."
The Russian language does not have a specific mode of speech for oratorio oblique that differs in tense from other forms of communicating consciousness. By and large Russian writers in the 19th century preferred (silent) direct speech to communicate the thoughts of their heroes. Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, for example, enclosed a stream of thought in quotation marks and the tense applicable to the actual time of the event. Here is the famous passage from Anna Karenina just before Anna commits suicide:

«Вот она опять! Опять я понимаю все» - сказала себе Анна, как только коляска тронулась и, покачиваясь, загремела по мелкой мостовой, и опять одно за другим стали сменяться впечатления.
«Да, о чем я последнем так хорошо думала? – старалась вспомнить она. – Тютькин, coiffeur? Нет, не то. Да, про то, одно, что связывает людей. Нет, вы напрасно едете, - мысленно обратилась она к компании в коляске четверней, которая, очевидно, ехала веселиться за город. – И собака, которую вы везете с собой, не поможет вам. От себя ен уйдете». Кинув взгляд в ту сторону, куда оборачивался Петр, она увидала полумертвопьяного фабричного... (АК, 747)

The tense of the verbs here corresponds to their actual occurrence in time: events from the past are narrated as such; general or current observations are voiced in the present. As with Austen, the signifiers eventually fall away, with the quotation marks disappearing first and the hyphens later, yet the tense remains the same – corresponding to the actual events as we can see here in Sologub’s story In Bondage (В плену):

Счастливые мальчики! – подумал Пака. – Сильные, смелые. Ноги у них босые, загорелые. Должно быть, они простые мальчики. Но, все-таки, счастливые. Уж лучше быть простым мальчиком на воле, чем принцем в плену. (В плену, 240)16

The narrator informs us of Paka’s consciousness through the character, but indicates his own narratorial presence by including подумал Пака, hence differentiating this from pure narrated or quoted monologue, where the narrator recedes into the background.

II. Narrated Monologue

Narrated monologue is characterised by its difference from standard narration and the seamless junction between itself and the narrative report. (Cohn, 102-3) Tense and person separate it from quoted monologue, the absence of mental verbs (s/he thought, s/he said to him/herself) separates it from silent direct speech (psycho-narration). (Cohn, 104) When narrated monologue began to be woven into the narration of novels and stories, it ended up taking a different tense in English and Russian: the past tense in English and the present tense in Russian. Let us take a look at a classic example of narrated monologue in English literature:

The fellows all were silent. Stephen stood among them, afraid to speak, listening. A faint sickness of awe made him feel weak. How could they have done that? He thought of the dark silent sacristy. There were dark wooden presses there where the crimped surplices lay quietly folded. It was not the chapel, but still you had to speak under your breath. It was a holy place. He remembered the summer evening he had been there to be dressed as boatbearer, the evening of the procession to the little altar in the wood. (PA, 29-30)

Narration and thought run together in this passage from A Portrait. Stephen describes the situation and then indirectly his literal thoughts: It is not the chapel, but still you have to speak under your breath. It is a holy place. The merging of narration and thought is subtle in English on account of both forms taking the same tense. As Cohn writes: “Joyce’s (narrator) cannot be grasped as a separate entity within the text. His most striking characteristic is, in fact, that he is ungraspably chameleonic." (Cohn, 30). He innocuously moves from one position to another, giving the reader only the clue still to indicate the change in perspective.
In Russian the distinction is much clearer. With narrated monologue in the present tense and the narrative report in the past, the reader can hardly oversee some kind of transition:

...Пака почувствовал новую для него досаду. Новые желания томили его. Знал, что эти желания неисполнимы. Учвствовал себя несчастным и обиженным.
Хотелось уйти из этого чинного дома в широкое вольное поле, и там играть с ребтишками. Быть на реке, войти в воду.
Вон там, внизу, у речки какие-то мальчики, - ловят рыбу, кричат что-то радостное. Право, лучше им живется, чем Паке. И почему доля его столь отлична от доли этих вольных и веселых детей? (ВП, 241)

Here the narrator tells us that Paka is annoyed, is tormented by longing, wants to leave home, whereas Paka himself tells us that boys are fishing by the river, shouting, enjoying life, etc., as Stephen expresses his thoughts on the sanctity of the church. However, as opposed to Joyce or Stephen, the distinction between the past tense of the narrator and the present tense of the reflector-character in Sologub’s story distinguishes them very clearly for the reader. Less clear in Russian is why this passage is classified as narrated monologue, which is only apparent on account of the injection of Paka’s name and the inclusion of the third-person pronoun его, since Paka would not speak about himself in the third person if this passage on fishing, screaming and living were a direct thought of his (i.e. quoted monologue).
Whereas in English it can be very problematic to differentiate between the narrator in the narrative report and the character’s consciousness in narrated monologue, in Russian it is the differentiation between modes of rendering consciousness that presents more problems. In Transparent Minds Cohen describes the demarcation between the narrated monologue and the other techniques for rendering consciousness as generally easy to draw. (Cohn 104) Yet, in Russian, there is often little or no linguistic criteria for distinguishing between narrated monologue and quoted monologue as we can see in this passage from Andrey Dmitriev:

Тут Елизавета перебила мужа, стала соглашаться с ним во всем и успокаивать насчет рыбы. Разумеется, она запечет рыбу, да и по поводу мяса расстраиваться не нужно: Живихина нужно расшевелить. Он охотник, и пусть еще не сезон, но ведь есть же у него знакомые егеря – пусть застрелят кабанчика или лося или, на худой конец, поделятся из старых запасов... (Воскобоев и Елизавета, 302-3)17

It is entirely possible that the last sentence here is either narrated monologue, quoted monologue or even oratorio oblique. Are these Elizaveta’s exact words? Are they an approximation of them, which would call for oratorio oblique? If they do represent precisely what she says to Voskoboev, are they more appropriately expressed in the past tense of narrated monologue in an English text or are they suited for the immediacy of quoted monologue? The narrator gives us no clue as to how we should read this speech.

III. Quoted Monologue

In the event of quoted monologue, which I am using here as nothing other than stream of consciousness,18 the thoughts are attributable to a specific character who speaks free of narration as she would in direct speech. Yet, this “inner discourse is no longer separated from its third-person context either by introductory phrases or by graphic signs of any kind.” (Cohn, 62) It is integrated into the narrative report, generally with a change of tense or inquit phrases hinting at the change in perspective. In some cases the function of the narrative report is to situate the protagonist and his quoted monologue in the external world. (Vogt, 183) Here is a passage of this kind from Ulysses:

Mr. Bloom admired the caretaker’s prosperous bulk. All want to be on good terms with him. Decent fellow, John O’Connell, real good sort. Keys: like Keyes’s ad: no fear of anyone getting out, no passout checks. Habeat corpos. I must see about that ad after the funeral. Did I write Ballsbridge on the envelope I took to cover when she disturbed me writing to Martha? Hope it’s not chucked in the dead letter office. Be the better of a shave. Grey sprouting beard. That’s the first sign when the hairs come out grey. (Ulysses, 135-6)

The first sentence explains what Bloom is doing while he relays his subsequent thoughts directly to the reader with the inquit phrase Decent fellow, John O’Connell, real good sort and later a change in tense signifying the switch from the narrative report to the quoted monologue.
In Russian, as we have seen, writers such as Tolstoy and Dostoevsky preferred to express the thoughts of their characters in free direct monologue, i.e. silent direct speech, which I have suggested is the closest equivalent in Russian to oratorio oblique. In Russian, (silent) direct speech is however also used to shape and convey the protagonist’s thoughts in a way very similar to quoted monologue. Because Russian uses the present tense for all forms of reported speech and thought, the voice of characters in this mode is invariably similar to the direct form, with only subtle clues signifying a passage is either quoted monologue, i.e. stream of consciousness, or narrated monologue. This potential pitfall will become apparent when we examine the translation of Sologub later, where narrated monologue was translated as quoted monologue.
Nevertheless quoted monologue is the dominant mode for rendering consciousness in Russian literature outside of silent direct speech. Here are examples from Master and Margarita:

Passage 1:
И тут знойный воздух сгустился перед ним, и соткался из этого воздуха прозрачный гражданин престранного вида. На маленькой головке жокейский картузик, клетчатый кургузый воздушный же пиджачок... Гражданин ростом в сажень, но в плечах узок, худ неимоверно, и физиономия, прошу заметить, глумливая.
Жизнь Берлиоза складывалась так, что к необыкновенным явлениям он не привык.... (Мастер и Маргарита, 6)19

Passage 2:
И опять передернуло Берлиоза. Откуда же сумасшедший знает о существовании киевского дяди? Ведь об этом ни в каких газетах, уж наверно, ничего не сказано. Эге-ге, уж не прав ли Бездомный? А ну как документы эти липовые? Ах, до чего странный субъект... Звонить, звонить! Сейчас же звонить! Его быстро разъяснять! (Мастер и Маргарита, 46)

In the first passage the description of Voland in the present tense interrupts a narrative that has hitherto been told in the past. While it is unclear whether these thoughts belong to Berlioz, as the subsequent paragraph suggests, or the Master or the author at the time of writing (as the larger context suggests), the shift to the present tense indicates clearly that some character is communicating their thoughts to the reader like Bloom. This is even clearer in the second passage, where the narrator situates the thoughts of Berlioz in the outside world and then describes them. As Cohn and Vogt have shown, there are no signs or verbum credendi to distinguish narration from monologue, yet the past-tense narrative report coupled with the present-tense thoughts make the passage a classic example of quoted monologue.

Summary

To rehash what I have tried to lay out above, all predicates for reporting consciousness in Russian past-tense narratives take the same tense as they would in (silent) direct speech. On the one hand, this means that there is a clear distinction between consciousness and narration due to the change in tense; on the other it blurs the boundaries between the different forms of reported speech. In English the situation is quite different. There the line of demarcation between the various modes for communicating consciousness is sufficiently clear, but the distinction between the narrative report and narrated monologue is murky.
Now that we have reviewed the general outline of narration and reported speech in Russian and English, we will look at the translation of consciousness, i.e. reported speech, in the following section. In particular, I will address many of the passages cited in this first part to elucidate the complexity of an accurate translation as well as the importance of interpretation and linguistic theory in this process.

Footnotes:

1 Used and explained later according to Jochen Vogt, Aspekte erzählender Prosa (Westdeutscher Verlag GmbH, Opladen/Wiesbaden, 1998): 164
2 For the purpose of simplification I am referring to dependent clauses following the likes of: X thinks (that), X feels (that), X sees (that)… which call for the present tense in Russian.
3 Vogt, 143-148
4 Used and explained later according to Dorrit Cohn, Transparent Minds (Princeton University Press, Priceton, 1978): 13-14
5 IBID, 12-13
6 Лев Толстой, Анна Каренина (ЭКСМО, Москва: 2006).
7 I am quoting the Pevear and Volokhonsky translation. Lev Tolstoy, Anna Karenina (Penguin Book, New York: 2001).
8 Joyce, James. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (Hertfordshire: Wordsworth, 1992). Hereafter abbreviated as PA
9 Джойс, Джеймс. Портрет художника в юности. Tr. М. Богословская (Санкт-Петербург: Азбука, 2000) Hereafter abbreviated as ПХ
10 Nabokov (Invitation to a Beheading), Natasha Randall (We), Maguire and Malmstad (Petersburg), Gleb Struve (Russian Stories) among all other translators (whose work I have seen) retain the past tense in dependent clauses of the kind described here.
11 Here I am using Franz Stanzel’s terminology. See ex. Franz K. Stanzel, “Second Thoughts on ‘Narrative Situations in the Novel’: Towards a ‘Grammar of Fiction’,” NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction, Vol. 11, No. 3 (Spring, 1978) pp. 247-264. See also: Stanzel
12 The terms are derived from Jochen Vogt, Aspekte erzählender Prosa. (Westdeutscher Verlag GmbH, Opladen/Wiesbaden, 1998). See in particular pp. 162-164 and 179-186. The English terms are cited by Vogt from Dorrit Cohn, primarily Transparent Minds.
13 Matias Martinez and Michael Scheffel, Einführung in die Erzähltheorie (Beck, Munich, 2002)
14 Hereafter abbreviated as E
15 Hereafter abbreviated as MF
16 Hereafter abbreviated as ВП. Cited from: Gleb Struve Ed., Russian Stories (New York, Dover Publications, Inc. 1989).
17 Дмитриев, Андрей. Дорога обратно (Москва: Вагриус, 2003).
18 See Jochen Vogt, Aspekte erzählender Prosa, pp. 185-186.
19 Булгаков, Михаил. Мастер и Маргарита (Санкт-Петербург: Издательство «Азбука-классика», 2006).

Part II: The Translation of Consciousness

Introduction

Both Russian and English translators face difficulties in the translation of reported speech. A Russian translator must separate the past-tense thoughts inside a character’s head from past-tense narration. The English translator on the other hand must determine the mode in which a character’s consciousness is being communicated. In each case, a given passage may contain anything from clear or subtle signifiers to completely ambiguous text.
In the following section I will examine the translation of some passages I cited in part one. This will primarily focus on Russian to English translations, although the Russian version of A Portrait will serve as a benchmark for the analysis required of translators. In general, my review of these translations will concentrate on the so-called gray area between narrated monologue and quoted monologue in Russian, where careful readings are imperative and misinterpretation more likely to appear. After analyzing “traditional” work, I will progress to more experimental narratives in an effort to show how problematic the subject can be for a translator.

I. Narrated Monologue and Quoted Monologue

The Russian translation of A Portrait offers an illuminating illustration of what narrated monologue would look like in a past-tense narrative report in Russian and how a translator must interpret the source text to determine the employed modes of speech. Here is the passage I quoted in part one:

The fellows all were silent. Stephen stood among them, afraid to speak, listening. A faint sickness of awe made him feel weak. How could they have done that? He thought of the dark silent sacristy. There were dark wooden presses there where the crimped surplices lay quietly folded. It was not the chapel, but still you had to speak under your breath. It was a holy place. He remembered the summer evening he had been there to be dressed as boatbearer, the evening of the procession to the little altar in the wood. (PA, 29-30)

Все молчали. Стивен стоял среди них, не решаясь проронить ни слова, и слушал. Его чуть-чуть мутило от страха, он чувствовал слабость во всем теле. Как они могли так поступить? Он представил себе тихую темную ризницу. Там были деревянные шкафы, где лежали аккуратно сложенные по сгибам стихари. Это не часовня, но все-таки разговаривать можно только шепотом. Тут святое место. И он вспомнил летний вечер, когда его привели в день процессии к маленькой часовне в лесу, чтобы надеть на него облачение прислужника. (ПХ, 52) (Italics mine)

The Russian translator uses the present tense, in accordance with the Russian tradition, to render the thoughts in Stephen’s head, while retaining the past tense for the narrative report. As I pointed out earlier, if his thoughts were relayed as (silent) direct speech, Stephen words would literally look like this: “This is not the chapel, but still you have to speak under your breath. It is a holy place.” The Russian translator has identified the switch in perspective and translated each part as the conventions of her language dictate.
Translating monologues from Russian into English demonstrates the complexity of determining whether the reported speech is oratorio oblique, narrated monologue or quoted monologue. Especially problematic is the distinction between the last two: narrated monologue and quoted monologue. Let us take a look at the example from Sologub in part one:

...Пака почувствовал новую для него досаду. Новые желания томили его. Знал, что эти желания неисполнимы. Учвствовал себя несчастным и обиженным.
Хотелось уйти из этого чинного дома в широкое вольное поле, и там играть с ребтишками. Быть на реке, войти в воду.
Вон там, внизу, у речки какие-то мальчики, - ловят рыбу, кричат что-то радостное. Право, лучше им живется, чем Паке. И почему доля его столь отлична от доли этих вольных и веселых детей? (ВП, 240)

…Paka experienced an annoyance new to him. New longings tormented him. He knew that these longings could not come true. He felt unhappy and injured.
He wanted to go away from this prim house into the wide, free fields, and play there with other children. To be by the river, to go into the water.
There, below, by the river, some boys are fishing, shouting something joyous. Really, their life is better than Paka’s. And why should his lot be so different from the lot of these carefree, gay children? (IB, 241) (My emphasis)

Parallel to the Russian original, the English translation begins with a past-tense narrative report and then expresses Paka’s thoughts in the present tense. A potentially awkward switch is avoided by a transition sentence, which is in fact a fragment and contains no verb (To be by the river…), and by the voicing of these present-tense thoughts in a separate paragraph. Consequently, the English translator has implicitly (perhaps unconsciously) decided that the narrator of Sologub’s text is the quoted monologue of e.g. Ulysses rather than the narrated monologue of A Portrait. Yet, the translator has failed to consider that Paka’s name and the third-person pronoun indicate narrated monologue and that this should be translated in the past tense, even in a literal translation, since a character does not speak about him/herself in the third person.
In The Master and Margarita we can find numerous passages where consciousness is indeed communicated through quoted monologue. Here is Berlioz sitting on the bench at the Patriarch’s Ponds and thinking about the stranger Voland who is talking with them:

И опять передернуло Берлиоза. Откуда же сумасшедший знает о существовании киевского дяди? Ведь об этом ни в каких газетах, уж наверно, ничего не сказано. Эге-ге, уж не прав ли Бездомный? А ну как документы эти липовые? Ах, до чего странный субъект... Звонить, звонить! Сейчас же звонить! Его быстро разъяснять! (Мастер и Маргарита, 46)20

And again Berlioz winced. How does the madman know about the existence of a Kievan uncle? That has certainly never been mentioned in any newspapers. Oh-oh, maybe Homeless is right after all? And suppose his papers are phoney? Ah, what a strange specimen… Call, call! Call at once! They’ll quickly explain him! (Master and Margarita, 45)21

In the first sentence of the paragraph, the narrator situates the thoughts of Berlioz in the narrative report (past tense). Then the rest of the passage presents these thoughts as if they were being spoken out loud – the Joycean paradigm of quoted monologue. Accordingly, the English translators have followed this lead and correctly set the monologue in the present tense. The primary difference between this passage and the one in Sologub’s story is that Berlioz’s thoughts do not make any reference to himself in the third person, but focus on someone else (Voland). The clear delineation of these thoughts from the narrative report also make it especially suitable for communication in the present tense.22

II. Consciousness in First Person Narratives and Mixed Narratives

Hitherto we have looked at fairly traditional narratives and approaches to narration, especially in Russian. At the beginning of the twentieth century, however, writers began to explore the temporal possibilities of narration similar to the way Joyce did in his work. One intriguing passage appears in Zamyatin’s novel We (Мы), where first person narration in the past tense is interrupted by first person narration in the present tense, essentially allocating two voices to one character: the narrative report and the quoted or narrated monologue. Here is a passage from We:

Вот один – стоял на ступенях налитого солнцем Куба. Белое... и даже нет – не белое, а уж без цвета – стеклянное лицо, стеклянные губы. И только одни глаза, черные, всасывающие, глотающие дыры, и тот жуткий мир, от которого он был всего в нескольких минутах...
У меня, к сожалению, плохая память на стихи, но одно я помню: нельзя было выбрать более поучительных и прекрасных образов.
Снова медленный, тяжкий жест – и на ступеньках Куба второй поэт. Я даже привстал: быть может? Нет: его толстые, негрские губы, это он... Отчего же он не сказал заранее, что ему предстоит высокое.... Губы у него трясутся, серые. Я понимаю: пред лицом Благодетеля, пред лицом всего сонма Хранителей – но все же: так волноваться... (Мы, 64-5) (Italics mine)

There was one… standing on the steps of the Cube, the sunlight pouring down on him. His face was white, or no, not white, it was no color at all, his glass face, his glass lips. Just his eyes, dark, sucking, swallowing holes… and that terrifying world that he was only minutes away from.
I have a poor memory for poetry, unfortunately, but one thing I do remember: You couldn’t have picked more edifying and resplendent images.
Again the slow, heavy gesture, and a second poet stood on the steps of the Cube. I nearly rose from my seat: Could it be? No… those thick, African lips… it was him. Why didn’t he mention that he was going to have the high…? His lips trembled, they were gray. I can see that when you’re face to face with the Benefactor, standing before the whole corpus of the Guardians, you’d be… but still, to be that nervous… (We, 44-7)23 (Italics mine)

Here we have a first person narrator relaying what he saw at the Cube initially in the past tense. Yet no sooner has he introduced the subject and situated the protagonist in time and space, than (in Russian) he recedes from the narrative report and enters the head of the character-reflector, actually himself. This is more apparent in Russian where it is not his face was white, but rather his face is white. Again, the transition from the past to the present tense in Russian indicates this alteration in perspective far more clearly than the ambiguity of the narrated monologue in English. Nevertheless, the translator’s decision to opt for the subtlety of narrated monologue at the expense of the clarity in quoted monologue is potentially understandable to retain the naturalness of the original. Odd however is that the translator chooses later in this section to render я понимаю in the present tense and consequently interpret it as quoted monologue, especially since there is no significant difference between the Russian use of the present here and in the previous example to indicate that these words are in the head of the narrator.24
This stretching of time in first person narration can be found in English literature, too. J.D. Salinger in The Catcher in the Rye provides an English example of a first-person narrative report in the past tense that occasionally switches to the present:

The book I was reading was this book I took out of the library by mistake…They gave me Out of Africa, by Isak Dinesen. I thought it was going to stink, but it didn’t. It was a very good book. I’m quite illiterate, but I read a lot. My favourite author is my brother D.B., and my next favorite is Ring Lardner… (Catcher in the Rye, 15)

Holden Caufield begins in the past, the tense in which the story is primarily narrated, and suddenly adopts the present tense to express his present retrospective thoughts and opinions at the time he is telling the story: I read a lot, I read a lot of classical books, I read a lot of war books and mysteries and all. (CR, 15-16) This is happening while he is writing the memoirs. In Russian, however, it is often different: the characters thoughts are being expressed directly. It is this sort of rapid transition from the past to the present and back that has become characteristic of some Russian contemporary literature. Here I will take a look at passages from Andrey Dmitriev and Vadim Babenko.

III. Consciousness in Contemporary Russian Literature

While Salinger narrates from Caufield’s point of view in the past tense and from the retrospective present (at the time of writing) in the present, Russian narrators switch tenses in the narrative report not necessarily for the purpose of narrating the story from two different temporal perspectives. This type of narration in Russia comes closer to what Cohn describes as a "digression": "the present tense discourse of the narrating self appears as a kind of illicit straying from the straight and narrow path of narration into a terrain that does not properly belong to it.” (Cohn, 187-8) In contemporary Russian literature, a text often switches perspective in the middle of a paragraph and even the middle of a sentence – often following a hyphen – in a way similar to the passage cited from Salinger. Andrey Dmitriev, Irina Polyanskaya, Pavel Maylakhs, Pavel Krusanov, Boris Akunin, Vadim Babenko to name a few have engaged in formal innovations reminiscent of those at the beginning of the twentieth century.25
In contemporary Russian letters, Andrey Dmitriev is one of the more prominent experimenters with modes for rendering consciousness. Here is a passage where the character's thoughts are communicated in both narrated and quoted monologue:

И тогда Воскобоев пришел к ней. Опустившись на краешек плащ-палатки и с минуту помолчав, он вдруг принялся торопливо и подробно высказывать свои соображения о предстоящем застолье: кого позвать, кто сам придет, сколько купить водки, если учесть, что четверо вовсе не пьют, другие, есть и такие, предпочитают крепленое вино, а полковник Живихин – тот давно зациклился на коньяке, но главное, чем кормить, где достать такую прорву мяса; конечно, и рыбу можно сделать на уровне европейских стандартов, например, запечь... Тут Елизавета перебила мужа, стала соглашаться с ним во всем и успокаивать насчет рыбы. Разумеется, она запечет рыбу, да и по поводу мяса расстраиваться не нужно: Живихина нужно расшевелить. Он охотник, и пусть еще не сезон, но ведь есть же у него знакомые егеря – пусть застрелят кабанчика или лося или, на худой конец, поделятся из старых запасов... (Воскобоев и Елизавета, 302-3)26

And then Voskoboev went up to her. He sat down on the edge of his raincoat and was silent for a minute, before suddenly beginning hastily and in detail to voice his thoughts on the upcoming dinner party: who to invite, who will come on their own, how much vodka to buy if you consider that four people don’t drink at all, while others – and there really are those – prefer strong wine, and then Colonel Zhivikhin – who had long since fallen for cognac; but the main thing is: what to eat, where to get an outrageously large portion of meat; and the fish, clearly, would have to be prepared in the European way, for instance, by baking it… At this point Elizaveta interrupted her husband, began to agree with him on everything and to reassure him with regard to the fish. Of course she would bake the fish, and he shouldn’t worry about meat at all: we just have to motivate Zhivikhin. He’s a hunter, and although it isn’t the season, it’s impossible for him not to have some hunter friends – they could shoot a small wild boar or an elk or, in the worst case scenario, make something out of old leftovers… (Voskoboev and Elizaveta, unpublished)

Dmitriev uses colons, adverbials and new sentences to narrate the thoughts of the characters from their perspective. The narrative report at the beginning gives way to quoted monologue, the impersonal words of Voskoboev: who to invite, which in Russian is more like who should we invite, and who will come on their own, how much vodka to buy, which is again like how much vodka should we buy. Later, the narrator employs the Russian verb разумеется (English adverbial of course) and the third-person pronoun she, which clearly indicates that this is narrated monologue to be translated by shifting the verbs back one tense (here from will to would), and then returns over a colon (we just have to motivate Zhivikhin...) or over the period (he’s a hunter) to quoted monologue. In Russian the later (he’s a hunter) is certainly quoted monologue, whereas the former (we just have to motivate Zhivikhin) is open to interpretation since there is no we in the Russian original, although a we or they is implied, depending on the reading. Here we see the difficulties ensuing from quoted monologue and narrated monologue both being in the present tense in Russian: it is often impossible to distinguish the one from the other, especially when the subject of the thought is another person or object. The translator must, however, make a decision, and her reading is clear, though it might be added that other considerations will incline the translator to favor the present tense, and hence quoted monologue over the past tense (i.e. narrated monologue), as we saw in the case of Sologub.
By way of an aside, it would also be possible to interpret Voskoboev's speech about who they had to invite and who would come on their own as a post-modern, Russian version of oratorio oblique. Accordingly, the translation of consciousness in the following part of the previously cited passage could look like this:

Опустившись на краешек плащ-палатки и с минуту помолчав, он вдруг принялся торопливо и подробно высказывать свои соображения о предстоящем застолье: кого позвать, кто сам придет, сколько купить водки...

He sat down on the edge of his raincoat and was silent for a minute, before suddenly beginning hastily and in detail to voice his thought on the upcoming dinner party: who they had to invite, who would come on their own, how much vodka they would have to they buy…

The increasingly colloquial nature of the passage suggest that oratorio oblique is not ultimately the mode of the original, but a potential transition within the sentence from one mode to another, as occurs later after разумеется (of course), is not out of the question, since invariably oratorio oblique would be rendered in the present tense in Russia and allow authors to weave it together with other present-tense modes of communicating consciousness.
A first-person approach to experimentation in a past-tense narrative report, like Holden Caufield's, is available in Babenko's The Black Pelican (Черный пеликан). In this novel the first-person narrator regularly switches into the present tense to voice his current thoughts or philosophy on life, although not necessarily to juxtapose his views at the time of writing with his consciousness at the time of the events. Here is a passage with three modes we have explored in this article:

(Narrative report) Еще за несколько метров закралось сомнение – что-то фальшивило, плащ сидел не так и брюки слишком пузырились при ходьбе. (Narrated or quoted monologue) Быть может Юлиан сделался провинциален вдали от столицы, и вкус его опростился в угоду местным нравам? Или может он и есть таков на самом деле, а былой столичный шик – вовсе наносное? (Narrative report) Но нет, вскоре стало ясно: (Narrated or quoted monologue) слишком уж этот, в плаще, с серой спортивной сумкой, органичен окружающей толпе. (Silent direct speech) Он из местных, не иначе, подумалось уныло, (Narrative report) хоть надежда еще теплилась едва-едва, так что я подошел вплотную, задел будто ненароком, потом, извиняясь, заглянул в лицо и отвернулся с досадой – (Narrated or quoted monologue) ничего похожего, да и чего собственно было ждать, шанс безнадежно мал. (Narrative report) Незнакомец зашагал дальше вместе со всеми, спешащими на зеленый, а я зачем-то посмотрел вслед и удивился сам себе – (Narrated or quoted monologue) с Юлианом никакого сходства, что за странное наваждение. (Черный пеликан, 51-52)27

A few meters back, doubt had stolen over me – something’s not right, he didn’t wear his raincoat like that, and his trousers didn’t bubble up that much as he walked. Maybe Julian has become provincial far from the capital and his taste simpler in accordance with the local tradition? Or perhaps that is his true identity, and his former fashionable self was entirely contrived? But no, soon it became apparent: this man with his coat and gray training bag – belonged to the surrounding crowd. He’s from here, definitely, I thought glumly, although the smallest grain of hope impelled me to walk up and bump into him, as if by accident. Apologizing, I peered into his face and turned away in despair – no resemblance whatsoever. And what was I to expect? The chance was ridiculously small. The unfamiliar man strode on with the others, hurrying across at the green light, while I, for some reason, followed them with my eyes and was surprised at myself – he and Julian don’t look even remotely similar. What kind of strange obsession do I have? (The Black Pelican, unpublished)

The narrator speaks in the past tense, whereas the character states his thoughts in the time corresponding to their existence, that is, he says: ничего похожего, да и чего собственно было ждать, шанс безнадежно мал (Literally: no resemblance. And what was I to expect? The chance is ridiculously small). The transition over the semicolon earlier requires the same treatment: this man with his coat and gray training bag – belonged to the surrounding crowd. He’s from here, definitely, I thought glumly… This sounds slightly more natural than saying the present tense would be. Although the Russian suggest this is quoted monologue rather than the narrated monologue of the English translation, the transition from one mode to the other is smoother over the period. On the whole, the first-person narrator’s thoughts resemble more of quoted monologue: Maybe Julian has become provincial far from the capital and his taste simpler in accordance with the local tradition? Or perhaps that is his true identity... and the present tense, even if there are no signifiers conclusively indicating it is the one or the other.

Summary:

In many cases the decision to render Russian monologues as narrated monologues or quoted monologues is a subjective decision left to the translator. Logically, the bias will be in favor of quoted monologue, especially for translators adhering to the literal method of translation promulgated by Vladimir Nabokov and others, since this lets the English version retain the present tense of the Russian original. Nonetheless, as we have seen in the Russian translation of A Portrait and the English translations of In Bondage by Sologub and We by various translators, an interpretation of the original to determine the voice speaking can provide clues as to the proper translation. Occasionally the Russian narrative dictates the form of speech required, as was the case with Sologub and Dmitriev, where a word in the original indicates how the passage should be translated.

Footnotes:

20 Булгаков, Михаил. Мастер и Маргарита (Санкт-Петербург: Издательство «Азбука-классика», 2006).
21 Bulgakov, Mikhail, The Master and Margarita. Tr. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (New York: Penguin Books, 1997)
22 It would, of course, also be possible to express these thoughts in English by using narrated monologue on account of the reasons mentioned earlier, primarily the uniformity of the present tense for consciousness in Russian.
23 Yevgeny Zamyatin, We, Tr. Clarence Brown (New York: Penguin Books).
24 Interestingly, the latest translator of Мы, Natasha Randall, has phrased these two sections differently, but retained the past tense in the first case (albeit a sentence later) and the present in the second. See Yevgeny Zamyatin, We, Tr. Natasha Randall (New York: Modern Library, 2006): 42-43.
25 In F.M. by Boris Akunin we have the following example: «Морщина перерезала чистый лоб. И Николасу стало жалко этого калеку с его вывернутыми набекрень мозгами. Представить только: время идет, меняется жизнь, взрослеют или стареют окружающие, а ты от них отстаешь, и с каждым годом все больше. Тови ровесники оторвались вперед, ты остался один в глухой чаще. Как это, наверное, гороько и обидно. Поневоле начнешь всех ненавидеть. Можно не сомневаться, что врачи признают этого преступника психически больным и без усилий Аркадия Сергеевича. (Борис Акунин, Ф.М., том 2, ОЛМА-Пресс, 2006): стр. 175 (Italics mine).
26 Дмитриев, Андрей. Дорога обратно (Москва: Вагриус, 2003).
27 Бабенко, Вадим. Черный пеликан. (Санкт-Петербург: Амфора, 2006)

Part III

Introduction:

The lack of any temporal distinction between the different modes of interior monologue in Russian generally offers a translator the option of choosing either quoted monologue or narrated monologue for an English translation.(1) It is the intention of this chapter to explore the various advantages and implications related to the translation of Russian free indirect discourse as quoted monologue in English. The primary advantage is that by rendering consciousness as quoted monologue the translation will come closest to retaining the temporal structure of the original. Likewise propitious for the English version is the reproduction of a potential division between the author and narrator in an original text where the author communicates in the present and the narrator tells in the epic tense (the preterite). A translation will consequently recreate this duality when the tense of these two figures coincides with the original.

Here a twentieth-century, third-person narrative with an impersonal omniscient narrator relating his story in the past tense will serve as the basis for reviewing this approach to reproducing indirect discourse. (2) Such a text has the potential to assimilate a range of modes for communicating the thoughts and speech of characters, yet not be too experimental to obscure any criteria for analysis. A suitable published translation as well as general familiarity with characters and plot make The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov a good subject for this inquiry.
The occasional shifts from the epic omniscient narrator to passages in the present or future within the narrative report are limited in number and allow for a fairly manageable overview of narrative innovations related to consciousness. Retrospectively, Bulgakov’s narrator recounts events taking place in May, from Wednesday to Saturday, in Moscow. This report, however, flows seamlessly into the author’s commentary to the reader, into the monologues of the protagonists and some other ambiguous passages. The tense in these sections of the story differs from the epic narrative report.
The governing narrative situation of the novel is evident from the first sentence and only infrequently switches from this epic, third-person account :(3)

В час жаркого весеннего заката на Патриарших прудах появилось двое граждан (Мастер и Маргарита, 5). (4)

The past tense, an omniscient narrator, and a third-person perspective are all evident here. Expanded is the scope of this report by embedded voices that betray or testify about their thoughts in the present tense, as is customary in Russian monologues. Here Bulgakov integrates into the narrative report the thoughts of Berlioz after he hears Voland talk about his uncle in Kiev. The monologue is related in the present tense:

И опять передернуло Берлиоза. Откуда же сумасшедший знает о существовании киевского дяди? Ведь об этом ни в каких газетах, уж наверно, ничего не сказано. Эге-ге, уж не прав ли Бездомный? А ну как документы эти липовые? Ах до чего странный субъект... Звонить, звонить! Сейчас же звонить! Его быстро разъяснить! (MM, 46; italics mine, highlight interior monologue in passage)

After an introductory sentence situates the thoughts of Berlioz, the narrative departs for the inner world of the protagonist. The change in tense signifies the alteration in perspective from the narrator to Berlioz. The entire arrangement of the paragraph, with situating text followed by thought, could come straight out of Ulysses.
The aforementioned examples establish the general framework in which the narrator tells his story. There are, however, deviations that complicate interpretation and translation. One stumbling block emerges when the author enters the narrative as a participant:

Да, следует отметить первую странность этого страшного майского вечера. (ММ, 5)

The present tense следует is generally the narrator’s or author's address to the reader.(5) It represents commentary on the story, a remark outside the context of the narrative report, rather than the thoughts of a character as was observed in the preceding passage. The recognition of the author as an individual figure separate from the narrator and one who voices his opinion in the present tense is critical to avoid creating a hierarchy or privileging certain interior monologues over others. As will become apparent later, this is a common problem in translation.
Finally, there is the instance where a monologue has no clearly identifiable locus, when it is unclear whose voice is speaking. The first description of Fagot in the novel issues from Berlioz or the author, since the experiencing protagonist is not identified unambiguously by the narrator as was the case in the first example of interior monologue:

И тут знойный воздух сгустился перед ним (Берлиозу), и соткался из этого воздуха прозрачный гражданин престранного вида. На маленькой головке жокейский картузик, клетчатый кургузый воздушный же пиджачок... Гражданин ростом в сажень, но в плечах узок, худ неимоверно, и физиономия, прошу заметить, глумливая. (ММ, 6; italics and additions mine, explain person and highlight reported thought)

Berlioz and Homeless are sitting on a bench when the air thickens in front of the former. The sketch of Fagot initially appears to be drawn in Berlioz's head, yet toward the end is one of the author's classical phrases, прошу заметить, which hints at him being the source of this account. Oddly, the ambiguity here is very similar to that of narrated monologue in English where the words can sometimes be attributed to either the character or narrator because both the narrative report and narrated monologue are (primarily) in the preterite. (6)

I. Review of Modes for Reporting Speech in General with Examples from The Master and Margarita

There are four modes for reporting interior monologue in English: oratorio oblique, narrated monologue, quoted monologue and direct speech/thought (psycho-narration). In Russian, on the other hand, there is no difference in tense between direct speech (with tags) and these various forms of indirect speech and monologue. The latter merely offers an inconspicuous transition and integrates monologues into the narrative body.
Direct discourse is the primary mode of psycho-narration for conveying the thoughts of Bulgakov’s characters. It is one of two modes seen in The Master and Margarita for transmitting inner thoughts. Here is Margarita thinking about the master after his disappearance:

«Сон этот может означать только одно из двух, - рассуждала сама с собой Маргарита Николаевна, - если он мертв и поманил меня, то это значит, что он приходил за мною, и я скоро умру. Это очень хорошо, потому что мучениям тогда настает конец. Или он жив, тогда сон может означать только одно, что он напоминает мне о себе! Он хочет сказать, что мы еще увидимся. Да, мы увидимся очень скоро!» (MM, 226)

Quotation marks as well as untransposed verbs inform the reader of Margarita’s interpretation of her dream. This presentation of thought takes the same form as direct speech: it is set apart from the narrative report through signifiers and inquit phrases.
To repeat what was argued in part one and two, though now in the context of The Master and Margarita, the absence of transposition in Russian reported speech largely precludes the possibility of interpreting speech as oratorio oblique, since the past is the tense for narration and the present for interior monologues.(7) Consequently, reported speech and thought in Russian – direct and indirect statements as well as monologues – adopt the same tense as they would in direct discourse, i.e. the verbs are not transposed.
What would be termed narrated monologue in English mediates in the present tense in Russian.(8) Bulgakov does nothing explicit to counter this claim, and does not even include any passages that could allow narrated monologue to be misconstrued as quoted monologue or vice-versa. The narrator only occasionally recounts in the idiom of the characters in the preterite (a defining feature of narrated monologue), but a shift to the character as narrator never takes place. A quintessential example is embedded in this rare exposition of Margarita’s thoughts:

- Благодарю вас, мессир, - чуть слышно сказала Маргарита и вопросительно поглядела на Воланда. Тот в ответ улыбнулся ей вежливо и равнодушно. Черная тоска как-то сразу подкатила к сердцу Маргариты. Она почувствовала себя обманутой. Никакой награды за все ее услуги на балу никто, по-видимому, ей не собирался предлагать, как никто ее и не удерживал. А между тем ей совершенно ясно было, что идти ей отсюда больше некуда. (ММ, 291; itallics mine)

This is the closest Bulgakov comes to narrated monologue in the English sense. The thoughts are introduced by she felt deceived (она почувствовала себя обманутой), the tone is colloquial, yet the interjection of по-видимому would not issue from Margarita, would be left out if the words were formulated in her mind. The narrator, however, betrays a certain proximity to Margarita through the colloquial idiom of this italicized sentence, which only requires the removal of по-видимому to become something similar to narrated monologue, though does and would ultimately remain the narrative report.(9)
As was illustrated in the introduction to this third part, the present tense is the dominants free indirect style or interior monologue, making such discourse closest in form to quoted monologue in English. Similar to the example with Berlioz from page 1 are Rimsky’s thoughts on Stepa’s trip to Yalta after Voland has whisked him off the Moscow scene: