I wouldn't want to ever get into any kind of debate with SKB, but I don't think N's notion of "literal translation" had anything to do with the idea that one NL, to use SKB's intialing, has its exact equivalence in another. I'm pretty sure he said just exactly the opposite, that you can only appreciate Pushkin's poem in the atmosphere of its original language. He called his translation a "pony", a means of getting an idea of Pushkin's art by way of an elaborate, clumsy demonstration in English, with a bloated gloss. N also went further, as SKB pointed out, to say that even Russians couldn't really understand Onegin without his massive excavation of the cultural sensibility out of which it was produced. All of which reminds me of some of the epistolary sparring N and Edmund Wilson engaged in on the subject of whether
or not the society and material backgrounds that produced an artist were of importance. We all know what N thought, which begs the question of why we should need all of the extensive information about Pushkin to understand his work, all he read, what languages he understood, or even the background of his ancestors. But I suppose, as Jansy suggested, a kind of paradox has cropped up: according to N. you're duty-bound to translate literally when one, any translation at some level, as we saw in N.'s detailed response to Wilson (reprinted in Strong Opinions) is always a matter of at least some guesswork and inclination. That "sapajous" which N. had such a gleeful explanation for is certainly brilliant, but is it necessarily the one and best word choice? And two, there are, as we all know, things in different languages that don't translate--they are either adopted from one NL to another wholesale (like
schadenfreude) or they remain foggy and require awkward explanations, like say, endless volumes of footnotes to explain a relatively short poem that most people except Nabokov have said was reasonably easy to understand in its original language (I know no Russian and make no claims on the subject).
--- On Thu, 12/11/08, Jansy <jansy@AETERN.US> wrote:
From: Jansy <jansy@AETERN.US>
Subject: Re: [NABOKV-L] [NABOKOV-L] Query on Alps, Bera range, Algonquin...Birches
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Date: Thursday, December 11, 2008, 5:36 PM
Stan K-B: to see/hear the Birch Tree Cliché in Soviet Realistic excess, dig the Red Army Choir’s folksy rendition: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?SKC4M0dQ8AE&NR=1 [...] this clip was filmed in the KATYN Forest, before, during, or after the Massacre? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyn_massacre [...] Nabokov is RIGHT about the ESSENTIAL equivalence of ALL NLs (Natural Languages). Whatever can be imagined & expressed in one NL can be imagined & expressed in any other NL. This axiom essentially DEFINES what an NL is! You [ JM} draw the wrong conclusions from the fact that Nabokov’s Onegin “translation” takes 4 volumes[...] Much of this background is, in fact, also essential to the majority of
contemporary Russian speakers, separated by time & kultur from 18th century usages.
JM: My most recent literary reference to birches was easy to locate. It's in Penelope Fitzgerald's "The Beginning of Spring", related to an English follower of Tolstoy who wrote poetry in Russian: "Frank expected Russian poetry to be about birch trees and snow..."
Like Pollyana I cannot be but glad that I make so many mistakes: their correction is so exciting! (often frightening, too.)
Is the NL-equivalence axiom extensive to the impact produced by a metaphor that relies on non-verbal devices? If there is no definite meaning attached to a specific signifier, how does this axiom operate?
A. Sklyarenko: The leaving out of the "t" in the second (or rather third, if we count the particule in the middle) component of her nom de plume should make it more intime (1.31). In the old Russian alphabet, the letter "t" was called tvyordo ("hard," used as an adverb in the sense "firmly," "solidly," etc.). I would have amused you with my observations on the subject, if I had not been somewhat disappointed with the List's cool response to my ideas about dobro ("good," used as a noun), yet another letter of the old Russian alphabet, a few months ago.
JM: I wish I could respond to your ideas about the Russian "t" and "dobro" because I wonder what lies hidden by VN's "t-warning" in ADA. VN's instructions (somewhere in SO) about how to pronounce the "t" in "Lolita" admits a necessary "iberization" and he demonstrates this effect in HH's opening lines in a tongue in teeth way.
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