Vladimir Nabokoy
PROBLEMS OF TRANSLATION:
"0 NEG IN" I N ENG
LI SH
I constantly find in reviews of verse translations the follow–
ing kind of thing that sends me into spasms of helpless fury: "Mr.
(or Miss) So-and-so's translation reads smoothly." In other words,
the reviewer of the "translation," who neither has, nor would be able
to have, without special study, any, knowledge whatsoever of the
original, praises as "readable" an imitation only because the drudge
or the rhymster has substituted easy platitudes for the breathtaking
intricacies of the text. "Readable," indeed! A schoolboy's boner is
less of a mockery in regard to the ancient masterpiece than its com–
mercial interpretation or poetization. "Rhyme" rhymes with "crime,"
when Homer or
Hamlet
are rhymed. The term "free translation"
smacks of knavery and tyranny. It is when the translator sets out
to render the "spirit"-not the textual sense--that he begins to tra–
duce his author. The clumsiest literal translation is a thousand times
more useful than the prettiest paraphrase.
For the last five )'tears or so I have been engaged, on and off,
in translating and annotating Pushkin's
Onegin.
In the course of this
work I have learned some facts and come to certain conclusions.
First, the facts.
The novel is concerned
with
the afflictions, affections and for–
~unes
of three young men-Onegin, the bitter lean fop, Lenski, the
temperamental minor poet, and Pushkin, their friend-and of three
young ladies-Tatiana, Olga, and Pushkin's Muse. Its events take
place between the end of 1819 and the spring of 1825. The scene
shifts from the capital to the countryside (midway between Opochka
and Moscow), and thence to Moscow and back to Petersburg. There
is a description of a young rake's day in town; rural landscapes and
rural libraries; a dream and a duel; various festivities in country
