Word: nabokov
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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EUGENE ONEGIN, translation and commentary in four volumes by Vladimir Nabokov. Polylingual, and a poet in his own right, Novelist-Scholar Nabokov (Pale Fire) has translated Alexander Pushkin's remarkable 19th century novel-in-verse with a sense of accuracy and range of meaning closer to the original Russian than any previous version. Nabokov's supplementary volumes of notes provide the amusing, exasperating and always impressive sight of a crusty literary personality in action...
EUGENE ONEGIN, translation and commentary in four volumes by Vladimir Nabokov. Polylingual, and a poet in his own right, Novelist-Scholar Nabokov (Pale Fire) has translated Alexander Pushkin's remarkable 19th century novel-in-verse with a sense of accuracy and range of meaning closer to the original Russian than any previous version. Nabokov's supplementary volumes of notes provide the amusing, exasperating and always impressive sight of the crusty Nabokov literary personality in action...
Occasionally (as when Nabokov solemnly offers as a talisman the lines that happen to fall at the exact center of the work), the notes are extreme enough to be worthy of Professor Kinbote, the demented footnoter of Nabokov's own Pale Fire...
Scholar's Craft. But such scholarly capering should not obscure the worth of Nabokov's commentary. The translation can be enjoyed but not really understood without it. And Nabokov, who learned his craft during years of professing at Wellesley and Cornell, is not merely a translator; he is also a truly remarkable teacher. He keeps the students awake...
Doubtless Nabokov will not win the war against paraphrased translation, which is his main concern. Perhaps it should not be won-not all paraphrases are profanations-but certainly it should be fought. But translators should be reminded that uprooting a masterpiece is not a job to be undertaken lightly ("Poetry is what is lost in translation," Robert Frost once observed); students, for their part, should be warned that a translation must never be read with complete trust...