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TEXNABSTRACTS:RobbieNester
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EDITOR'S NOTE: Below is another in the series of abstracts of papers
presented at the April 1995 Nabokov conference at Texas Tech.
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"Double or Nothing: Parody & Translation in Nabokov's _Onegin_"
Robbie Nester
Parody and translation are tropes of resemblance holding
significant places in the work of Vlaimir Nabokov. Indeed, the two become
inextricably entwined throughout his novels and "extraliterary"
productions. In _Pale Fire_ and _Ada_, translation and mistranslation
become parodic signals of characters' solipsism and outright insanity. In
autotranslations of his early Russian novels, nabokov creates what is
perhaps his most markedly parodic figure--his own authorial persona. But
the work by this writer that brings both parody and translation most
characteristically into play is Nabokov translation of _Eugene Onegin_.
Both parody and translation lend themselves to a view of
literary history as a Darwinian struggle for dominance. In this view,
the "strong" author overcomes previous texts, languages, and traditions
by assimilating and recontextualizing the alien work. A parody or
translation of this sort would, theoretically at least, obliterate its
predecessors. Kinbote's appropriation of Shade's text qualifies as this
kind of parody--an effort to "translate" or assimilate a work into one's
own personal and cultural mythology.
With his imperious pronouncements upon other writers and free use
of their textual modes and matter, VN may seem this century's best
candidate for the position of literary imperialist. However, such a view
would grossly oversimplify both Nabokov and his favorite doubling devices
of translation and parody. Polemic is not the only purpose of parody;
neither is appropriation translation's sole mode. By creating false
doubles of his pretexts, Nabokov initiates an interaction of previous and
present works, cultures, and languages that alters both the original and
its "double."
However attractive our metaphors of cultural or
evolutionary struggle might seem, literary language is incapable of
entirely blotting out what has come before. Rather, works of literature
reproduce or make possible a dialogue among the culture's modes of
discourse--or, in the case of translation, a dialogue between different
nations and languages, and cultures. Bakhtin attributes this function
especially to the novel, which he calls "an artistically organized system
for bringing different languages in contact with each other, a system
having as its goal the illumination of one language by another." In order
for literature to fulfill such a mission, readers must be aware of the
status of the present work as parody or translation, and as such, not
identical to its pretext. They must gauge the distance between original
and "copy."
Parody and translation alike advertise this distance and
difference. They cannot overcome previous texts without casting some
shadow on themselves, since by their very nature, they instruct readers
on how to become parodists/translators in their own right. But these
devices of parody and translation can signal a slow dance with the text
in question as well as duel. In this paper, I will try to arrive at a
concise theory of Nabokovian parody by way of Nabokov's enornmous
translation and critical commentary of Pushkin's _Eugene Onegin_, a
perfect manifestation of parody-as-slow-dance.
presented at the April 1995 Nabokov conference at Texas Tech.
-------------------------------------------
"Double or Nothing: Parody & Translation in Nabokov's _Onegin_"
Robbie Nester
Parody and translation are tropes of resemblance holding
significant places in the work of Vlaimir Nabokov. Indeed, the two become
inextricably entwined throughout his novels and "extraliterary"
productions. In _Pale Fire_ and _Ada_, translation and mistranslation
become parodic signals of characters' solipsism and outright insanity. In
autotranslations of his early Russian novels, nabokov creates what is
perhaps his most markedly parodic figure--his own authorial persona. But
the work by this writer that brings both parody and translation most
characteristically into play is Nabokov translation of _Eugene Onegin_.
Both parody and translation lend themselves to a view of
literary history as a Darwinian struggle for dominance. In this view,
the "strong" author overcomes previous texts, languages, and traditions
by assimilating and recontextualizing the alien work. A parody or
translation of this sort would, theoretically at least, obliterate its
predecessors. Kinbote's appropriation of Shade's text qualifies as this
kind of parody--an effort to "translate" or assimilate a work into one's
own personal and cultural mythology.
With his imperious pronouncements upon other writers and free use
of their textual modes and matter, VN may seem this century's best
candidate for the position of literary imperialist. However, such a view
would grossly oversimplify both Nabokov and his favorite doubling devices
of translation and parody. Polemic is not the only purpose of parody;
neither is appropriation translation's sole mode. By creating false
doubles of his pretexts, Nabokov initiates an interaction of previous and
present works, cultures, and languages that alters both the original and
its "double."
However attractive our metaphors of cultural or
evolutionary struggle might seem, literary language is incapable of
entirely blotting out what has come before. Rather, works of literature
reproduce or make possible a dialogue among the culture's modes of
discourse--or, in the case of translation, a dialogue between different
nations and languages, and cultures. Bakhtin attributes this function
especially to the novel, which he calls "an artistically organized system
for bringing different languages in contact with each other, a system
having as its goal the illumination of one language by another." In order
for literature to fulfill such a mission, readers must be aware of the
status of the present work as parody or translation, and as such, not
identical to its pretext. They must gauge the distance between original
and "copy."
Parody and translation alike advertise this distance and
difference. They cannot overcome previous texts without casting some
shadow on themselves, since by their very nature, they instruct readers
on how to become parodists/translators in their own right. But these
devices of parody and translation can signal a slow dance with the text
in question as well as duel. In this paper, I will try to arrive at a
concise theory of Nabokovian parody by way of Nabokov's enornmous
translation and critical commentary of Pushkin's _Eugene Onegin_, a
perfect manifestation of parody-as-slow-dance.