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Fw: Nabokov's Worst Novel? King, Queen, Knave
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EDNOTE. Jeff Edmund (a.k.a. "The Wizard of Zembla") knows whereof he speaks.
If memory serves he published a substantial article on KQKn in NABOKOV
STUDIES: "Look at Valdemar! (A Beautified Corpse Revived)". Nabokov Studies
(Los Angeles), 2, 1995, pp. 153-171
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jeff Edmunds" <jhe2@psulias.psu.edu>
>
> ----------------- Message requiring your approval (23
lines) ------------------
>
> A provocative question. To my mind, King, Queen, Knave takes the prize. As
> I have argued elsewhere, the English version of the novel, written forty
> years after the original Russian, suffers from numerous improvements
> inflicted upon it by an older, wiser artist. Whereas Mary strikes me as a
> solid and fairly conventional beginning for a Russian writer of that era,
> and The Defense (the English translation of which, like Mary, is extremely
> faithful to the original) displays many of the mature Nabokov's themes and
> stylistic devices deftly handled, Korol', dama, valet strikes me as an
> experimental novel in which Nabokov was seeking his own voice, weaning
> himself from the Russian tradition reflected in Mary but not yet having
> attained the distinctly Nabokovian approach to prose reflected in The
> Defense. I find the Russian version, which is by Nabokovian standards
> siginificantly different from the English version, even in terms of the
> rhythm of the prose, much more successful a novel than the English
> translation. A faithful English translation of Korol', dama, valet, one
> that retains Nabokov's translation when it follows the original but omits
> the material Nabokov added much later and reinstates passages in the
> original absent from his English version, would, I think, be an interested
> project for an interested Nabokovian.
>
>
If memory serves he published a substantial article on KQKn in NABOKOV
STUDIES: "Look at Valdemar! (A Beautified Corpse Revived)". Nabokov Studies
(Los Angeles), 2, 1995, pp. 153-171
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jeff Edmunds" <jhe2@psulias.psu.edu>
>
> ----------------- Message requiring your approval (23
lines) ------------------
>
> A provocative question. To my mind, King, Queen, Knave takes the prize. As
> I have argued elsewhere, the English version of the novel, written forty
> years after the original Russian, suffers from numerous improvements
> inflicted upon it by an older, wiser artist. Whereas Mary strikes me as a
> solid and fairly conventional beginning for a Russian writer of that era,
> and The Defense (the English translation of which, like Mary, is extremely
> faithful to the original) displays many of the mature Nabokov's themes and
> stylistic devices deftly handled, Korol', dama, valet strikes me as an
> experimental novel in which Nabokov was seeking his own voice, weaning
> himself from the Russian tradition reflected in Mary but not yet having
> attained the distinctly Nabokovian approach to prose reflected in The
> Defense. I find the Russian version, which is by Nabokovian standards
> siginificantly different from the English version, even in terms of the
> rhythm of the prose, much more successful a novel than the English
> translation. A faithful English translation of Korol', dama, valet, one
> that retains Nabokov's translation when it follows the original but omits
> the material Nabokov added much later and reinstates passages in the
> original absent from his English version, would, I think, be an interested
> project for an interested Nabokovian.
>
>