Subject
On pathos (fwd)
Date
Body
Apologies if this is well-known, but somehow eluded me:
In "The Gift", Chapter 3, Fyodor, describing to Zina his
first love, uses the expression "pateticheskaya bespechnost'".
I'm alarmed by his choice of words: how can _bespechnost'_ be
_pateticheskaya_? Here's the same sentence from the English
translation:
In all her ways there was something I found lovable to the
point of tears, something indefinable at the time, but now
appearing to me as a kind of pathetic insouciance (ouch! - AV).
"Pathetic insouciance" makes sense, unlike "pateticheskaya
bespechnost'". "Pateticheskij" is nothing like "pathetic" in English!
The Russian word means something like "very passionate, perhaps in
an inspiring way". Is Nabokov's Russian failing him here?
--
Anatoly Vorobey,
mellon@pobox.com http://pobox.com/~mellon/
"Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly" - G.K.Chesterton
In "The Gift", Chapter 3, Fyodor, describing to Zina his
first love, uses the expression "pateticheskaya bespechnost'".
I'm alarmed by his choice of words: how can _bespechnost'_ be
_pateticheskaya_? Here's the same sentence from the English
translation:
In all her ways there was something I found lovable to the
point of tears, something indefinable at the time, but now
appearing to me as a kind of pathetic insouciance (ouch! - AV).
"Pathetic insouciance" makes sense, unlike "pateticheskaya
bespechnost'". "Pateticheskij" is nothing like "pathetic" in English!
The Russian word means something like "very passionate, perhaps in
an inspiring way". Is Nabokov's Russian failing him here?
--
Anatoly Vorobey,
mellon@pobox.com http://pobox.com/~mellon/
"Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly" - G.K.Chesterton