[Scanlan is an American educator and author of works concerning Russian philosophy. Below, he discusses problems with the translation of In Job's Balances.]

In light of the debt owed the Ohio University Press for making available in English over the past ten years an entire series of works by the Russian existentialist philosopher and critic, Lev Shestov (1866-1938), only a churl could greet the present (seventh) volume without at least a show of gratitude. The fact is, however, that In Job's Balances has been available in English for a long time. Indeed, portions of the work have already appeared in other volumes of the Ohio University Press series. The chapter "What Is Truth?" was appended to the Press's edition of Potestas Cavium in 1968, and for this reason has been excluded from the present volume. However, other, shorter sections included here have also appeared earlier in the Shestov Anthology published by the Press in 1970.

It is, of course, useful to have the whole work once again in print, but even that boon has its blemishes. The 1932 translation used here—without revision—was done indirectly from a German translation. The resulting English text, though collated with the Russian and accurate in a general way, is not only remote from the original stylistically but is capable of promoting some unfortunate misunderstandings. Thus, to render Shestov's "dostovernost' sama po sebe, a istina sama po sebe" as "certainty and truth each exist independently" is to suggest, first, that there is such a thing as certainty—which is precisely the illusion Shestov seeks to dispel—and second and perhaps still worse, that this (genuine) certainty should be sought independently of truth. Minor omissions, gratuitous additions, and simple slips are also a persistent problem; for example, "laws of human evolution" unaccountably become "laws of human thought," and so on.

None of this is to say that the "pilgrimages through souls" (as Shestov called them) which make up the book are in themselves anything short of spellbinding. The essays are vintage Shestov: the old irrationalist's campaign against the logical intellect is at its most brilliant and compelling height, and the "souls" he traverses in waging this campaign—Spinoza, Pascal, Plotinus, and above all Dostoevsky and Tolstoy—are remarkably illuminated by the attendant spiritual commotion. Bernard Martin's new introduction is competent and informative, as usual, and there is an added bonus for this edition in the form of a newly-translated letter from Shestov to his daughters, in which he comments further on Tolstoy.

Still, because the primary text of the present volume offers no improvement on a known, existing resource, its value is regrettably limited. Students of Russian thought will welcome it, but will reserve their enthusiasm for the announced next volume of the series, which promises not only additional unpublished letters and fragments but the first English translation of Herman Lowtzky's biography of Shestov, as well as the first publication in any language of Shestov's 1918-19 Kiev lectures on the history of Greek philosophy.