Eugene Onegin | 
 enlarge | Author: Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
Creator: Vladimir Nabokov
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Category: Book
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Avg. Customer Rating:  10 reviews
Sales Rank: 131651
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 362
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 4.8 x 0.9
ISBN: 0691019053
Dewey Decimal Number: 891.713
EAN: 9780691019055
ASIN: 0691019053
Publication Date: January 1, 1991
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Product Description
"In an era of inept and ignorant imitations, whose piped-in background music has hypnotized innocent readers into fearing literality's salutary jolt, some reviewers were upset by the humble fidelity of my version. . . ." Such was Vladimir Nabokov's response to the storm of controversy aroused by the first edition of his literal translation of Eugene Onegin. This bold rendering of the Russian masterpiece, together with Nabokov's detailed and witty commentary, is itself a work of enduring literary interest, and reflects a lifelong admiration for Pushkin on the part of one of this century's most brilliant stylists.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 5 more reviews...
 An intriguing blend of poetry and fiction March 29, 2008
I adore Pushkin's poetry and have admired it since my college days long ago. He has a tenderness, elegance of metaphor, eye for beauty and connection to the Russian landscape, which truly set him apart. I consider him the Wordsworth of Russia, although Pushkin admired Byron, whom he quotes in Chapter 8. Eugene Onegin had much in common with Childe Harold. That is, Onegin is a man who is overwhelmed by the simple beauty of the Russian countryside in which Pushkin loved to dwell. Yet somehow he is a misfit and outcast within a rather anti-heroic context or, as Lermontov called it, as an unwilling driver of "the axe of fate." Onegin definitely has a deeply romantic aspect to his soul, as did Pushkin. In the dual with Lenski we see Pushkin foreshadowing his own demise in much the same way that Pechorin's experience in a Hero of Our Time was prescient of the demise of Lermontov. I am intrigued by Pushkin's attempt to structure his novel with the framework of poetry. The net effect is a mini-epic or short lyrical poem, which brings to mind the style of verse of, say, Virgil or Homer but with a more contemporary structure. I bought this translation by Nabokov who is as full of himself as ever in this rendition in which he seeks to translate with a vernacular style of which I would find it hard to believe that Pushkin would approve. It's hard to imagine that Pushkin would have described the friendship of Onegin and Lenski as "pals." Nabokov becomes an intrusive figure in this rendition instead of a silent, creative partner quietly and humbly adding value to the work. In the translation we depend upon the creative gifts of the translator and my experience with Pushkin in the past leads me to wonder if Nabokov does justice to Pushkin in this version of Eugene Onegin. If so, then clearly Pushkin is a far better poet than he is a novelist. However, Pushkin does bring to the novel elegant descriptive beauty and romantic sensibility, which inform Eugene Onegin. For my money, Lermontov's Hero of Our Time is a vastly superior novel to Eugene Onegin. If you want to read a truly great Russian novel, try Lermontov, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Gogol, Turgenev or Bulghakov. If you want the finest poetry ever written by a Russian, then read Pushkin's poetry. If you seek to gain insight into the fusion of poetry and fiction into a single genre, then you may be intrigued, as I was, by Eugene Onegin.
 Of recipes and desserts November 2, 2006
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
I completely agree with D.S. Heersink's assessment of Nabokov's Onegin translation. While undoubtedly accurate to the nth degree, it is tedious to read, to say the least. If you are studying Russian, perhaps the Nabokov translation might be appropriate; however, if you expect to derive pleasure from reading Eugene Onegin, by all means go with Falen.
Someone else commented on the fact that poetry cannot be translated. That is pure nonsense, though reading Nabokov's English version of Eugene Onegin, one would indeed come to the conclusion that a translation of the work from the Russian is impossible. To quickly correct that erroneous impression, pick up the James Falen translation.
Those interested in translation issues of all kinds should not miss Douglas Hofstadter's "Le ton beau de Marot" (which, incidentally, has much to say about Nabokov in general and his Eugene Onegin in particular). Come to think of it, you might want to read Hofstadter's own translation of Eugene Onegin. It's a little more playful and jazzy than Falen's. Which of the two is better is a matter of personal preference.
Eugene Onegin is a novel in verse. It makes absolutely no sense whatsoever to read it without rhyme or meter. A student of Russian might glean some insight from Nabokov's literal translation, but lovers of poetry and beauty in language will not get much from it.
It really depends on what you are after. Nabokov gives you a detailed recipe, Falen a delicious dessert. If you want to know what it FEELS like to read Pushkin yourself, pick up a copy of Falen's (or Hofstadter's) translation. If you want to ANALYZE in painstaking detail what exactly every word means, go with Nabokov, but in that case be aware that you won't be reading verse. You'll know exactly what's in it, but it won't "taste" good.
 From Russia with tough love June 21, 2004
16 out of 18 found this review helpful
There is an old, politically-incorrect adage regarding the translation of a literary work from one language to another. A translation is like a woman: if it's beautiful, it's not faithul; if it's faithful, it's not beautiful. This saw kept buzzing through my brain while I was reading Vladimir Nabokov's 1964 English translation of Alexander Pushkin's novel-in-verse "Eugene Onegin". The poem has a unique place in Russian literature, required reading in schools -- required memorization, from what I understand. It seems an odd choice for school rooms, being an ironic love story with a sardonic edge; but then American students are required to read "Silas Marner", George Eliot's tale of greed and redemption. Nabokov, the author of the dazzling "Pale Fire", was born in Old Russia in 1899 and became a master of his native language as well as English. His version of Pushkin's masterpiece doesn't attempt to maintain the meter or rhyming scheme of the original, thereby leading to the danger of "piped-in background music", but presents a literal translation of "humble fidelity". There have been several English translations, and Nabokov sternly appraises them all. (Tchaikovsky's opera is dismissed as "slapdash".) He even goes so far as to compare his work with that of other translators. Thus, Onegin's flirtation with a serf in Book Four is translated by Nabokov as: "sometimes a white-skinned, dark-eyed girl's young and fresh kiss". In his notes Nabokov is amused by an earlier translator's "And, if a black-eyed girl permitted, sometimes a kiss as fresh as she" and is positively aghast at this rendering: "A kiss at times from some fair maiden, dark-eyed, with bright and youthful looks". Now, to an English-only reader, these don't really sound that ridiculous; but Nabokov, in his bilingual security, can be a caustic critic. (As evidently are some of his admirers: I've noticed in Amazon.com that "Eugene Onegin" causes some emotional responses.) By the way, the notes alone are worth the price of admission. Ferociously erudite, Nabokov can also be extremely witty, as when he is discussing Byronic heroes: "Judged by a number of early-nineteenth-century English and French novels that I have perused, the four main outlets or cures for ennui found by the characters suffering from it were: (1) making a nuisance of oneself; (2) committing suicide; (3) joining some well-organized religious group; and (4) quietly submitting to the situation." So, you've been alerted. Get out your dictionary (you'll need it), dust off your French (there's lots of it), and settle down to what might be called Nabokov's labor of tough love.
A weird translation that works January 3, 2004
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
At the end of his writing career, Vladimir Nabokov predicted he'd be remembered for two things: Lolita and his translation of Alexander Pushkin's Russian classic Eugene Onegin. He was half right. Critics took Nabokov's literal translation to task, almost a half-century ago. Edmund Wilson (a friend of Nabokov's) drove the hardest, instigating a famous literary feud.
Wilson maintained that Nabokov's translation was an unreadable mixture of obscure words and sloppy writing that betrayed Pushkin's poetry, and he squabbled over Nabokov's Russian-to-English equivalents. For his part, Nabokov--usually one to ignore critical appraisals of his work, good or bad--defended his translation's difficulty by claiming that, percentage-wise, most of the words he used were easy to understand. He added, more seriously, that a measure of obscurity was necessary. To the English reader, Pushkin would essentially be a new poet. Why then should a translation of such a poet be entirely relaxed and familiar? So what if the reader has to open a dictionary? And Nabokov assured Wilson, who was then only learning to speak Russian, that his Russian-to-English equivalents were correct. (Nabokov, who prided himself on being able to pack everything he owned in a single afternoon, just in case he had to change countries, was trilingual from childhood, and he composed novels, poems and plays in both Russian and English.)
In Nabokov's opinion, Pushkin was Russia's Shakespeare, and Eugene Onegin was Pushkin's Hamlet. He had to introduce the English-speaking world to the poem--the right way. Since Nabokov took exception to all the English translations of Eugene Onegin, and since he had already translated pieces of it in his free time, his wife Vera suggested that he just go ahead and do the whole thing right and publish. But he was uneasy. Translating for sport was one thing, publishing another. To him, translating poetry meant perverting ingenuity. He was afraid that Pushkin's original Russian would be worn thin by the changing of hands, especially if the poem's rhyme scheme and meter were attempted. So he devised a compromise that he thought fair. He would create a translation that focused on the mot juste. He went for what can be called cognitive accuracy. That is to say, he scrapped the poem's rhymes, meter, and music for a mountainous and sometimes overbearing Webster's Dictionary. If his best English equivalents ruined the poetics, even the grammar of the line, so be it. There were worse offenses, in his opinion. He couldn't stomach the inventions of translators--a rhyme, a turn of phrase, any sentiment forced into the true poet's mouth. So when he was finished, Nabokov had what many will consider a raw and sometimes clumsy Eugene Onegin.
Robert Frost once quipped that poetry is what doesn't come across in translation. That said, the translator of poetry (against all odds) has two general approaches. One, like Nabokov, find and use the most appropriate equivalents possible, and in so doing, leave the poetry out; or two, create new poetry in the translation's language by using inexact equivalents to fit the rhyme and meter. It's up to you as a reader to decide what you're looking for. What do you consider the essence of poetry? Pick Nabokov for word equivalent accuracy--the best that's available, the best we're likely to get. Pick someone else for poetry. But, in a way, you can have both...
With that in mind, I suggest you read both Nabokov and James E. Falen's translations. Being a contemporary, conscientious writer, Falen's work benefits from the range of previous translations, especially Nabokov's. But Falen retains Pushkin's poetic stuff--the rhyme scheme, the metrics--and his translation is a pleasure, especially to recite. For extra fun, read Nabokov's awkward rendering aloud, right after. Shock your friends.
Still, if he lived to read it, Nabokov would have likely called Falen's translation "piped-in background music" like he did all the others. Would he be right? Well, Falen couldn't avoid betraying Pushkin's Russian; it would be, as Nabokov phrased it, mathematically impossible not to. And, to be sure, Falen's voice is noticeable in places--his translation reads beautifully for a reason. However, Nabokov does Pushkin just as big a disservice. How is it that Nabokov could harp on about inauthentic and "piped in" music when the music he pipes in under the name of Pushkin is so hard on the ear? Just because Nabokov ignores Pushkin's music doesn't mean his translation makes no sound. Who, then, is right?
No matter how hard and ably they try, translators are always wrong. Two different languages are just too different. It is necessary, then, that English readers without Russian make a leap of faith. They're hands are tied, so they must ultimately place their trust in the translator's method. Or reputation. By reputation, of course, English readers can't do better than the writer of Lolita. His writing expertise aside, if you're familiar with Nabokov's "Lectures on Literature", you know how painstaking and intelligent a reader he was. Most comforting of all, Nabokov spent more time researching and translating Eugene Onegin than writing any three of his fictions combined. And this research was added to an already lifelong love of Pushkin, whom he first translated as a boy (his aristocratic family kept a library). His commentary to the poem--sold in a separate edition--is witty, massive, and laughably too informative for the common reader. But the writing's vivid. Where the translation is purposefully short on poetry, the commentary picks up the slack. If you venture to read it all, you'll know what Pushkin was up to, at all times. It's Nabokov's penance, really, for making messes of the original Russian.
The whole of the work convinces me that Nabokov's translation methods are correct, or at least noble, if for no other reason than its baffling modesty. Ironically, the most elegant prose stylist of the Twentieth-Century sought to make his translation clunkier with every revision. But as ugly as it is, it's possible to actually enjoy Nabokov's "humble pony" on its own artistic merit. It owns a certain haggard beauty, a kind of bare-bones poetry. Besides, in an age that considers a word-spiral on a page or a flip-book at the end of a novel poetic, why can't room be made for Nabokov's translation as poetry? You could tell your guests, when they sample it from your bookshelf and then gasp at the lines, that it is poetically fastidious.
Refuting D Stephen Heersink's Poshlust* review January 3, 2004
24 out of 28 found this review helpful
Ignorant Heersink ignobly writes, besides other trite nonsense, "But Nabokov's Pushkin is too literal to be any good. James Falen's trans. is far superior, ... Falen, while also literal, also is metered and rhymes. Nabokov's thuds."In reply, I quote Nabokov from his Foreword, "Literal: rendering, as closely as the associative and syntactical capacities of another language allow, the exact contextual meaning of the original. Only this is true translation." Later, Nabokov asks: "can a rhymed poem Like Eugene Onegin Be truly translated with the retention of its rhymes? The answer, of course, is no. To reproduce the rhymes and yet translate the entire poem literally is mathematically impossible. But in losing its rhyme the poem loses its bloom, which neither marginal description nor the alchemy of a scholium can replace. Should one then content oneself with an exact rendering of the subject matter and forget all about form? Or should one still excuse an imitation of the poem's structure to which only twisted bits of sense stick here and there, by convincing oneself and one's public that in mutilating its meaning for the sake of a pleasure-measure rhyme one has the opportunity of prettifying or skipping the dry and difficult passages? I have been always amused by the stereotyped compliment that a reviewer pays the author of a "new translation." He says: "It reads smoothly." In other words, the hack who has never read the original, and does not know its language, praises an imitation as readable because easy platitudes have replaced in it the intricacies of which he is unaware. "Readable," indeed! A schoolboy's boner mocks the ancient masterpiece less than does its commercial poetization, and it is when the translator sets out to render the "spirit," and not the mere sense of the text, that he begins to traduce his author." If you, like me, agree only with Heersink's sentiment that "it's worth while to read the very best Pushkin", I wholeheartedly endorse Nabokov's sublime Eugene Onegin, but on condition you find the original 4 volume set (vol. 1 Introduction Translation, vol. 2 Commentary One to Five, vol. 3 Commentary Six to End, vol. 4 1837 Russian Text). Nabokov's Commentaries are like the blood to the heart that is his translation, it "thuds" for a reason! EO is the counterpoint: completing a simplified stylistic publishing triptych of Nabokov the writer, the lepidopterist, the scholar. * Nabokov writes "Russians have, or had, a special name for smug philistinism -poshlust." From Essay 'Philistines and Philistinism'.
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