4 ms·

The Strange Case of Pushkin and Nabokov (1965)

17 points by benbreen 11y ago

mynegation 11y ago
For a context: I am a native Russian speaker, I read "Eugene Onegin" in original and in Charles Johnston's translation, which was done more than 10 years after the article was written. I have not read Nabokov's or Arndt's translation, apart from the fragments in the article, but from what I understand, Johnston's translation is closer in spirit to Arndt's, trying to preserve Pushkin's iambic stanzas, sacrificing precise literal meaning here and there. From this limited experience I have to say that I very much prefer Johnston's (or - supposedly - Arndt's) translation to Nabokov's. It is very close to the original and - most of the time - precise _enough_, and it recreates this unbelievable feeling of the "flying" verse one experiences reading Pushkin in Russian. To get a feeling what I am talking about, try to read aloud few verses from Johnston's translation http://lib.ru/LITRA/PUSHKIN/ENGLISH/onegin_j.txt http://lib.ru/LITRA/PUSHKIN/ENGLISH/onegin_j.txt Side note: I also enjoy poetry in English, in particular William Blake, Robert Burns, John Keats, and Alfred, Lord Tennyson; but it took me a while to get accustomed to an approximate rhyming as opposed to the perfect rhyming that was used almost exclusively in classical Russian poetry, including Pushkin. Johnston's translation follows that too.
- dang 11y ago
  Most of the now-approximate rhymes in classic English poets were precise at the time the poems were written, but got dislocated as pronunciations shifted. In some cases no one really knows whether the rhymes were originally precise. See this pretty neat Language Log thread (read the comments—skip the top post) about Pope's "obey/tea" and Blake's "eye/symmetry": http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1421 http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1421
- idlewords 11y ago
  Have you read Falen's translation? I think he's the best translator of Pushkin into English.
  - mynegation 11y ago
    No, I have not. I managed to find only a few stanzas of Falen online after a quick search, so my assessment is definitely too quick and too dirty. I had an impression that Falen's translation is similar to Johnston's, but tries to be even closer to the original at the price of using more archaic and arcane words (at least for non-native English speakers like me). I was immediately thrown off by the usage of "base" as adjective meaning "dishonourable", and "pat" as "glib". I also had to look up words, such as "prate". Not a problem of translation per se, but rather of the expanse of my English vocabulary. Interesting trade-off.
idlewords 11y ago
For context, Wilson and Nabokov were friends, but this was a nearly suicidal literary gesture by Wilson, whose Russian was as shaky as his judgement. Here is Nabokov training his guns on Wilson in a letter to the editor, and sending him to the bottom of the sea: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1965/aug/26/letters-the-strange-case-of-nabokov-and-wilson/ http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1965/aug/26/letters... Nabokov's Onegin translation is I believe intentionally unreadable, but as a work of scholarship it stands alone. One of the footnotes, for example, is a forty-page essay on the history of dueling.
- maehwasu 11y ago
  Yeah, Nabokov pwned him pretty hard. It's always a bit weird/uncomfortable to witness non-native speakers of a language confidently and incorrectly expound on the language to people who have a far stronger command of it than they. Pretty much guarantees errors of the type Wilson makes.
- david927 11y ago
  Reading the reply, which is as brilliantly witty and lethal as I would expect from Nabokov, I can't help but pine for intellectuals of that caliber to exist today.
- mynegation 11y ago
  Yes, it also struck me that, with regard to usage of Russian, most of the time Wilson is either flat out wrong or argues about inconsequential things. I wonder if Nabokov's translation was meant to serve as a reference for more traditional, future translators, like Johnston and Falen, as a source of very precise meaning. An "intermediate representation" of sorts...
  - idlewords 11y ago
    That's exactly what I think. Plus a scary head-on-a-pike to frighten those who think you can translate poetry. It's a piece of scholarly performance art and love letter to Pushkin all in one.
- 11y ago

17 points by benbreen 11y ago

For a context: I am a native Russian speaker, I read "Eugene Onegin" in original and in Charles Johnston's translation, which was done more than 10 years after the article was written. I have not read Nabokov's or Arndt's translation, apart from the fragments in the article, but from what I understand, Johnston's translation is closer in spirit to Arndt's, trying to preserve Pushkin's iambic stanzas, sacrificing precise literal meaning here and there. From this limited experience I have to say that I very much prefer Johnston's (or - supposedly - Arndt's) translation to Nabokov's. It is very close to the original and - most of the time - precise _enough_, and it recreates this unbelievable feeling of the "flying" verse one experiences reading Pushkin in Russian. To get a feeling what I am talking about, try to read aloud few verses from Johnston's translation http://lib.ru/LITRA/PUSHKIN/ENGLISH/onegin_j.txt http://lib.ru/LITRA/PUSHKIN/ENGLISH/onegin_j.txt Side note: I also enjoy poetry in English, in particular William Blake, Robert Burns, John Keats, and Alfred, Lord Tennyson; but it took me a while to get accustomed to an approximate rhyming as opposed to the perfect rhyming that was used almost exclusively in classical Russian poetry, including Pushkin. Johnston's translation follows that too.

dang 11y ago
Most of the now-approximate rhymes in classic English poets were precise at the time the poems were written, but got dislocated as pronunciations shifted. In some cases no one really knows whether the rhymes were originally precise. See this pretty neat Language Log thread (read the comments—skip the top post) about Pope's "obey/tea" and Blake's "eye/symmetry": http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1421 http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1421
idlewords 11y ago
Have you read Falen's translation? I think he's the best translator of Pushkin into English.
- mynegation 11y ago
  No, I have not. I managed to find only a few stanzas of Falen online after a quick search, so my assessment is definitely too quick and too dirty. I had an impression that Falen's translation is similar to Johnston's, but tries to be even closer to the original at the price of using more archaic and arcane words (at least for non-native English speakers like me). I was immediately thrown off by the usage of "base" as adjective meaning "dishonourable", and "pat" as "glib". I also had to look up words, such as "prate". Not a problem of translation per se, but rather of the expanse of my English vocabulary. Interesting trade-off.

idlewords 11y ago

For context, Wilson and Nabokov were friends, but this was a nearly suicidal literary gesture by Wilson, whose Russian was as shaky as his judgement. Here is Nabokov training his guns on Wilson in a letter to the editor, and sending him to the bottom of the sea: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1965/aug/26/letters-the-strange-case-of-nabokov-and-wilson/ http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1965/aug/26/letters... Nabokov's Onegin translation is I believe intentionally unreadable, but as a work of scholarship it stands alone. One of the footnotes, for example, is a forty-page essay on the history of dueling.

maehwasu 11y ago
Yeah, Nabokov pwned him pretty hard. It's always a bit weird/uncomfortable to witness non-native speakers of a language confidently and incorrectly expound on the language to people who have a far stronger command of it than they. Pretty much guarantees errors of the type Wilson makes.
david927 11y ago
Reading the reply, which is as brilliantly witty and lethal as I would expect from Nabokov, I can't help but pine for intellectuals of that caliber to exist today.
mynegation 11y ago
Yes, it also struck me that, with regard to usage of Russian, most of the time Wilson is either flat out wrong or argues about inconsequential things. I wonder if Nabokov's translation was meant to serve as a reference for more traditional, future translators, like Johnston and Falen, as a source of very precise meaning. An "intermediate representation" of sorts...
- idlewords 11y ago
  That's exactly what I think. Plus a scary head-on-a-pike to frighten those who think you can translate poetry. It's a piece of scholarly performance art and love letter to Pushkin all in one.
11y ago