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Weird. I read the New York Review of Books articles about Eugene Onegin last week, because I'm reading it (in a different translation) at the moment. Douglas H
by dri_ft 10y ago
Weird. I read the New York Review of Books articles about Eugene Onegin last week, because I'm reading it (in a different translation) at the moment.
Douglas Hofstadter spends a chapter in Le Ton Beau De Marot, his book about translation, talking about and comparing various translations of Eugene Onegin, and he covers the Wilson/Nabokov feud described here. He is deeply antithetical to Nabokov's approach to translating it (I have to agree) and says that he finds some of Nabokov's remarks about Wilson unspeakably cruel.
He also says that his favourite translation is James Falen's; I can't comment on how it compares to the others, not having looked at them, but I can confirm that it seems excellent.
- idlewords 10y agoRussian lit student here, can confirm that Falen is the best translator of Pushkin into English. Nabokov's Onegin translation is more like a piece of (unbelievably well-researched) performance art. But be sure to read the book-length footnote about dueling.