Posted by Steven
on 18/4/2009, 8:54:55, in reply to "Re: Petersburg"
76.187.98.74
I think Nabokov may have been one of those people who exaggerated his opinions for the sake of flamboyance. In addition, where Russian literature is concerned, his exile and family losses had to have influenced his judgment, so we can't assume he is influenced purely by literary merit.
It's interesting that Harold Bloom considers Nabokov little more than a stylist. He finds little to admire in Lolita beyond the language because Nabokov rejects Freud, one of Bloom's heroes.
Regarding Petersburg and translations--I may pick up a copy of another translation if I run across it cheap, but with over 1000 books in this room that I haven't read, many of them among the "essentials," I'm still not motivated to do much wholesale re-reading.
--Previous Message--
:
: Yeah, I guess I've never heard of that elsewhere
: either. Because it's more recent, I didn't think of
: it. Hamsun's Hunger might be considered a little
: obscure. I'd read that way before the Burt book
: though. I learned of it from reading Henry Miller. I
: guess a lot of those novels are obscure to people who
: don't read or don't read beyond the best seller list.
: I've even met someone who'd never heard of Don
: Quixote . I think I surely knew something of Don
: Quixote before I left junior high school. I don't
: know where I learned such stuff. My school wasn't much
: good, and my parents weren't readers. I guess maybe my
: school was good enough to slip in the fact of Don
: Quixote 's existence at least.
:
: About Nabokov's judgement, I got distracted from the
: point. His judgement could be quite quirky, but I
: didn't mean to say I don't think Petersburg is a
: great novel. It certainly doesn't get talked about as
: much as those other three, but I liked it. I thought
: the style was interesting and the story entertaining.
: The M/M translation has good notes, I think. Do you
: think you'll replace that Cournos? Last year, as I
: mentioned here, I replaced the Ginsberg translation of
: The Master and Margarita , which I'd read twice. That
: was another case of a really messed up translation.
: I've replaced three others. I think the Muir
: translation of Kafka's Trial was a similar mess. I
: found that the Steegmuller translation of Madame
: Bovary was much preferred. And as that also seems to
: be the case with the PV translations of Dostoievski, I
: replaced Sidney Monas with that.
:
: Once again, I got distracted from the point. I think
: Nabokov's judgement is based on formal concerns that
: we wouldn't be able to see. I think he admires the
: architecture of the book, the way it's parts fit
: together and such as that. It's too bad he didn't
: lecture on it. If he did lecture on it, that lecture
: isn't in the Lectures on Russian Literature which I
: haven't read but should probably get.
:
:
:
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