It was fun to read it all
over again, ready for the eyes, after Nabokov's
birthday homage offered the List the entire collection from TNR.
I hope the present
posting represents an invitation for further discussion (I confess I've been feeling a bit
lonely in the List - like a clown delivering idle chatter atop a crate
- I hope others will join in this time!).
I selected one of the
opening paragraphs: "whenever we are faced with a thing
that cannot be measured by the tools we have, we must invent others. Beckett's
and Nabokov's rewriting of their own works in their other languages is a very
special form of literary work, closely resembling but not identical with
translation. The difference between these feats and ordinary translation...can
only be surmised, but one suspects that it is like the little abyss between zero
and one...Nabokov's own Russian Lolita (first drafted as a brief Russian sketch
in wartime Paris) is in truth the same book, which we see now in one of its
manifold dormant aspects, hitherto withheld by the
author."
The words that
caught my attention this time were "the same book...in one of its manifold
dormant aspects."
Nabokov's writings
still hide a wealth of different "dormant aspects," which
his commentators - now that he is no longer around to author their
unfolding - are often daring enough to explore with greater or lesser
success.
I cannot judge the
quality of A. Sklyarenko's advertised achievement in relation to ADA, since it
is kept in Russian and his plea might only reach a limited audience,
but I hope someone can advise him about how to
proceed.
There are
digital-books obtainable after paying a fee: wouldn't this work for
AS?