Vladimir Nabokov

Third volume of Pléiade Nabokov published!

By dana_dragunoiu, 6 February, 2021

Dear colleagues,  

It is with great pleasure that I can announce that the third (and final!) volume of “La Pléiade” is out. 

It was edited by Maurice Couturier, and the annotators are members of the French Vladimir Nabokov Society, past or present. The first two novels, Pnin and Pale Fire, were annotated by Maurice Couturier, and the last three, Transparent ThingsLook at the Harlequins! and The Original of Laura, by René Alladaye.  

At its heart lies the monumental work Ada or Ardor. It was annotated by an all-female team of brilliant researchers: Marie Bouchet, Yannicke Chupin, Agnès Edel-Roy and Monica Manolescu. You can also find a note on the French translation by Lara Delage-Toriel, the President of the IVNS. The set of annotations is both innovative and very complete: more than 150 pages that offer new analysis to the novel. 

In this volume, you can find another monumental work, Pale Fire, translated as Feu pâle by Raymond Girard and the famous Maurice Coindreau (whose role for American literature in France was so tremendous that Sartre said about him: “La littérature américaine, c’est la littérature Coindreau” or “American literature is Coindreau literature”). In this third volume, there are also the other ‘historical’ translations of Nabokov’s works – ‘historical’ because of the author’s close collaboration –, more precisely:  Ada ou L’Ardeur by Chahine and Blandenier, La Transparence des choses by Harper and Blandenier, and Regarde, regarde les arlequins! by Blandenier, once again. But it is also thrilling to find, at the beginning and at the end of the volume, two translations by Maurice Couturier: L’Original de Laura, published for the first time in 2010, and especially his retranslation of Pnin, published here for the first time. 

Brian Boyd also took part in the volume by providing a detailed chronology of the author’s life, which is translated by Maurice Couturier. 

Please find below the presentation of the publisher, Gallimard: 

http://www.la-pleiade.fr/Catalogue/GALLIMARD/Bibliotheque-de-la-Pleiade/OEuvres-romanesques-completes29

Julie Loison-Charles, 
President of the French Vladimir Nabokov Society (The Enchanted Researchers) 
https://www.vladimir-nabokov.org/?lang=en

 

Comments