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Re: VN vs. Dostoevsky: What's Envy Got to Do With It? (fwd)
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From: Galya Diment <galya@u.washington.edu>
There are quite a few people on the list -- like Sasha Dolinin and Julian
Connolly, for example -- who have written extensively on Dostoevsky and
Nabokov, and I hope they respond as well but since Rodney refers to me in
this message,I just want to add a couple of thoughts of my own.
There are so many things that are wrong with the statement Richard Pevear
and Larissa Volokhonsky allegedly made that, like Rodney, I am not even
sure where to start. "Aristocratic snobbery" is, of course, totally inept
as an explanation for Nabokov's feelings about Dostoevsky since one of
Nabokov's favorite Russian writers was Chekhov, a grandson of a serf. In
his origins (impoverished nobility on one side, merchants on the other)
Dostoevsky is also not all that different from Gogol who was, of course,
someone whose literary gift Nabokov greatly admired. Likewise, neither
Gogol's fervent religiosity nor Tolstoy's ever kept Nabokov from
appreciating them as great writers and brilliant craftsmen.
That VN did not consider Dostoevsky to be a great master of Russian
language should not be all that surprising. Even people who admire
Dostoevsky much more than Nabokov ever did are often ready to admit that
as a stylist he is no match to the likes of Gogol or Tolstoy. It is
also important to remember that Nabokov was not totally indiscriminate in
his criticism of Dostoevsky -- he did like "The Double," for example, and
did note in his lectures quite a few other things that he thought
Dostoevsky did well. In addition to what he perceived as Dostoevsky's
deficiency in verbal/stylistic skills, what rubbed VN the wrong way was
what he considered to be Dostoevsky's excessive "emoting," sentimentality
and, perhaps, certain humorlessness in his longer novels. I suspect,
however, that if Dostoevsky had not been such an absolute icon in the West
and Nabokov's own favorite Russian writers (like Pushkin and Gogol) had
been better known and appreciated here, he would have not felt quite as
compelled to attack Dostoevsky (and even go as far as to call him, very
unfairly, a "third-rate" writer) in order to deflate his established image
and standing.
As to "Dostoevsky envy," it's of course total hogwash. Not that I
believe Nabokov never envied anyone -- he probably did envy Joyce some,
especially the writer's total and native mastery of English -- but
that is beyond the point. While it is true that in terms of their
so-called "themes" D. and N. could be quite similar -- to name but a few
and in a very simplified manner, insanity ("The Double" and _Despair_),
"father-daughter" incest ("The Landlady" and _Lolita_), imprisonment
(_Notes from the House of the Dead_ and _Invitation_,) the nature and
"curse" of obsession (_The Gambler_ and _Luzhin's Defense_) -- they
approach these themes so differently that their affinity, it seems to
me, pretty much stops as soon as their respective texts begin. But this
is, of course, something on which different critics and readers may, and
perhaps should, disagree since the network of links is quite extensive,
including, as many noted, even some rather uncommon names -- like Luzhin
(Crime and Punishment), Ganin (Ganya in Idiot), etc. And yet, even if the
affinity and indebtedness go deeper than I suggest, from this to "envy" as
a reason for N's dislike of Dostoevsky is, it seems to me, still a huge
and unwarranted step.
Finally, regarding VN's re-readings of Dostoevsky, here Pevear and
Volokhonsky should have just kept their mouths shut since, as Rodney
points out, in this they are wrong on plain and indisputable facts...
Galya Diment
On Sat, 25 Aug 2001, Galya Diment wrote:
>
>
> From: Rodney Welch <rodney41@mindspring.com>
>
> In a recent letter to Salon.com, second-hand comments attributed to the
> translators Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky address Nabokov's
> long-running feud with Dostoevsky.
> First, a little background -- as the letter comes in response to Laura
> Miller's Salon article, "Sentenced to Death," which addresses (rather
> poorly, in my view) the issues raised by B.N. Myers' now-famous attack in
> the Atlantic on modern literary prose, which urged a return to
> plot-oriented, meat-and-potatoes literature.
> Myers, as has been noted in this forum, proclaims himself a fan of
> Nabokov, as well as James, Proust, Faulkner, Joyce, Woolf and Conrad -- all
> of whom, as Lee Siegel demonstrated in a recent L.A. Times article, could
> easily be attacked for the kind of stylistic fetishism Myers finds in
> Proulx, DeLillo, Auster, McCarthy and Guterson. Myers' essay is a
> bone-headed and demagogic thing that jointly proclaims the glories of great
> literature and sneers at the idea of paying close attention to it; bad
> writing, he frankly tells us, is writing that requires to be re-read,
> raising the question as to just how much Proust, James or Nabokov he's ever
> read to begin with.
> Disappointingly, Salon Fiction Editor Laura Miller more or less came
> down on Myers' side. Style, for her, is quite beside the point. "...DeLillo
> can write circles around Dreiser," she states, "but when it comes to writing
> novels, Dreiser wipes the floor with the author of `Underworld.' (Likewise,
> people who read Russian say that Dostoyevsky is an equally inept stylist --
> and he certainly in translation doesn't come across as a Nabokovian word
> magician -- but that doesn't keep 'Crime and Punishment' from being a
> brilliant book.)"
> A Salon correspondent named David Bowman offered the following in
> response:
>
> Great essay but I have to talk to you about "Crime & Punishment." The
> only reader of Russian lit who says Dostoyevsky reads poorly in Russian was
> Nabokov. I always wondered about this and recently had the opportunity to
> talk to Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, the husband and wife Russian
> translating team. "Nabokov envied Dostoyevsky," Pevear told me. "Every time
> Nabokov wanted to write something, he found Dostoyevsky had already written
> it." Pevear also said Nabokov had Tolstoy-like nobility aspirations, and
> scorn for Dostoyevsky's lower-class position. "He doesn't like Dostoyevsky's
> religion either. Nabokov was -- what did our friend call him? --
> 'pseudo-aphoristic.'"
>
> "He also hadn't read Dostoyevsky since he'd been a young man," Larissa
> added. "Nabokov writes from memory about Dostoyevsky. He makes big
> mistakes."
>
> Nabokov also raged (correctly!) against Constance Garnett, the woman who had
> a monopoly on translations of Dostoyevsky for most of the 20th century. "She
> made everyone sound the same," Pevear told me. "Tolstoy sounds like
> Dostoyevsky and they all sound like Chekhov ..."
>
> "Dostoyevsky's humor," Larissa added, "is lost in Garnett, and he's
> extremely funny." She also said, "Garnett actually influenced a lot of
> English-language writing. Hemingway, for instance, thought he was influenced
> by Dostoyevsky, but he was influenced by Mrs. Garnett."
>
> Maybe you could say the following about French or German literature, but I
> know that none of us really know the richness of a Russian sentence unless
> we read Russian.
>
> -- David Bowman
>
> I am particularly intrigued by Ms. Volokhonsky's assertion that Nabokov
> spoke from memory, which is absurd on its face. Nabokov, as we all know,
> taught Russian Literature at Cornell and Wellesley in the 1950s and the
> close, if hardly popular, analysis he gives to Dostoevsky's novels in the
> printed lectures demonstrates (to me, anyway) that he knows the books well.
> The envy charge seems to me similarly ridiculous, and I also know, from
> previous correspondence with Galya Diment, that Nabokov is hardly alone in
> thinking Dostoevsky a poor stylist in his native tongue.
>
> As the Russian language is hardly my turf, I'd love to hear from the
> experts.
>
> Rodney Welch
> Columbia, SC
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
There are quite a few people on the list -- like Sasha Dolinin and Julian
Connolly, for example -- who have written extensively on Dostoevsky and
Nabokov, and I hope they respond as well but since Rodney refers to me in
this message,I just want to add a couple of thoughts of my own.
There are so many things that are wrong with the statement Richard Pevear
and Larissa Volokhonsky allegedly made that, like Rodney, I am not even
sure where to start. "Aristocratic snobbery" is, of course, totally inept
as an explanation for Nabokov's feelings about Dostoevsky since one of
Nabokov's favorite Russian writers was Chekhov, a grandson of a serf. In
his origins (impoverished nobility on one side, merchants on the other)
Dostoevsky is also not all that different from Gogol who was, of course,
someone whose literary gift Nabokov greatly admired. Likewise, neither
Gogol's fervent religiosity nor Tolstoy's ever kept Nabokov from
appreciating them as great writers and brilliant craftsmen.
That VN did not consider Dostoevsky to be a great master of Russian
language should not be all that surprising. Even people who admire
Dostoevsky much more than Nabokov ever did are often ready to admit that
as a stylist he is no match to the likes of Gogol or Tolstoy. It is
also important to remember that Nabokov was not totally indiscriminate in
his criticism of Dostoevsky -- he did like "The Double," for example, and
did note in his lectures quite a few other things that he thought
Dostoevsky did well. In addition to what he perceived as Dostoevsky's
deficiency in verbal/stylistic skills, what rubbed VN the wrong way was
what he considered to be Dostoevsky's excessive "emoting," sentimentality
and, perhaps, certain humorlessness in his longer novels. I suspect,
however, that if Dostoevsky had not been such an absolute icon in the West
and Nabokov's own favorite Russian writers (like Pushkin and Gogol) had
been better known and appreciated here, he would have not felt quite as
compelled to attack Dostoevsky (and even go as far as to call him, very
unfairly, a "third-rate" writer) in order to deflate his established image
and standing.
As to "Dostoevsky envy," it's of course total hogwash. Not that I
believe Nabokov never envied anyone -- he probably did envy Joyce some,
especially the writer's total and native mastery of English -- but
that is beyond the point. While it is true that in terms of their
so-called "themes" D. and N. could be quite similar -- to name but a few
and in a very simplified manner, insanity ("The Double" and _Despair_),
"father-daughter" incest ("The Landlady" and _Lolita_), imprisonment
(_Notes from the House of the Dead_ and _Invitation_,) the nature and
"curse" of obsession (_The Gambler_ and _Luzhin's Defense_) -- they
approach these themes so differently that their affinity, it seems to
me, pretty much stops as soon as their respective texts begin. But this
is, of course, something on which different critics and readers may, and
perhaps should, disagree since the network of links is quite extensive,
including, as many noted, even some rather uncommon names -- like Luzhin
(Crime and Punishment), Ganin (Ganya in Idiot), etc. And yet, even if the
affinity and indebtedness go deeper than I suggest, from this to "envy" as
a reason for N's dislike of Dostoevsky is, it seems to me, still a huge
and unwarranted step.
Finally, regarding VN's re-readings of Dostoevsky, here Pevear and
Volokhonsky should have just kept their mouths shut since, as Rodney
points out, in this they are wrong on plain and indisputable facts...
Galya Diment
On Sat, 25 Aug 2001, Galya Diment wrote:
>
>
> From: Rodney Welch <rodney41@mindspring.com>
>
> In a recent letter to Salon.com, second-hand comments attributed to the
> translators Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky address Nabokov's
> long-running feud with Dostoevsky.
> First, a little background -- as the letter comes in response to Laura
> Miller's Salon article, "Sentenced to Death," which addresses (rather
> poorly, in my view) the issues raised by B.N. Myers' now-famous attack in
> the Atlantic on modern literary prose, which urged a return to
> plot-oriented, meat-and-potatoes literature.
> Myers, as has been noted in this forum, proclaims himself a fan of
> Nabokov, as well as James, Proust, Faulkner, Joyce, Woolf and Conrad -- all
> of whom, as Lee Siegel demonstrated in a recent L.A. Times article, could
> easily be attacked for the kind of stylistic fetishism Myers finds in
> Proulx, DeLillo, Auster, McCarthy and Guterson. Myers' essay is a
> bone-headed and demagogic thing that jointly proclaims the glories of great
> literature and sneers at the idea of paying close attention to it; bad
> writing, he frankly tells us, is writing that requires to be re-read,
> raising the question as to just how much Proust, James or Nabokov he's ever
> read to begin with.
> Disappointingly, Salon Fiction Editor Laura Miller more or less came
> down on Myers' side. Style, for her, is quite beside the point. "...DeLillo
> can write circles around Dreiser," she states, "but when it comes to writing
> novels, Dreiser wipes the floor with the author of `Underworld.' (Likewise,
> people who read Russian say that Dostoyevsky is an equally inept stylist --
> and he certainly in translation doesn't come across as a Nabokovian word
> magician -- but that doesn't keep 'Crime and Punishment' from being a
> brilliant book.)"
> A Salon correspondent named David Bowman offered the following in
> response:
>
> Great essay but I have to talk to you about "Crime & Punishment." The
> only reader of Russian lit who says Dostoyevsky reads poorly in Russian was
> Nabokov. I always wondered about this and recently had the opportunity to
> talk to Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, the husband and wife Russian
> translating team. "Nabokov envied Dostoyevsky," Pevear told me. "Every time
> Nabokov wanted to write something, he found Dostoyevsky had already written
> it." Pevear also said Nabokov had Tolstoy-like nobility aspirations, and
> scorn for Dostoyevsky's lower-class position. "He doesn't like Dostoyevsky's
> religion either. Nabokov was -- what did our friend call him? --
> 'pseudo-aphoristic.'"
>
> "He also hadn't read Dostoyevsky since he'd been a young man," Larissa
> added. "Nabokov writes from memory about Dostoyevsky. He makes big
> mistakes."
>
> Nabokov also raged (correctly!) against Constance Garnett, the woman who had
> a monopoly on translations of Dostoyevsky for most of the 20th century. "She
> made everyone sound the same," Pevear told me. "Tolstoy sounds like
> Dostoyevsky and they all sound like Chekhov ..."
>
> "Dostoyevsky's humor," Larissa added, "is lost in Garnett, and he's
> extremely funny." She also said, "Garnett actually influenced a lot of
> English-language writing. Hemingway, for instance, thought he was influenced
> by Dostoyevsky, but he was influenced by Mrs. Garnett."
>
> Maybe you could say the following about French or German literature, but I
> know that none of us really know the richness of a Russian sentence unless
> we read Russian.
>
> -- David Bowman
>
> I am particularly intrigued by Ms. Volokhonsky's assertion that Nabokov
> spoke from memory, which is absurd on its face. Nabokov, as we all know,
> taught Russian Literature at Cornell and Wellesley in the 1950s and the
> close, if hardly popular, analysis he gives to Dostoevsky's novels in the
> printed lectures demonstrates (to me, anyway) that he knows the books well.
> The envy charge seems to me similarly ridiculous, and I also know, from
> previous correspondence with Galya Diment, that Nabokov is hardly alone in
> thinking Dostoevsky a poor stylist in his native tongue.
>
> As the Russian language is hardly my turf, I'd love to hear from the
> experts.
>
> Rodney Welch
> Columbia, SC
>
>
>
>
>
>
>