Subject
Re: Fiennes' Onegin (fwd)
Date
Body
From: Peter Kartsev <petr@glas.apc.org>
I have belatedly come across the comment quoted below about VN's
"Onegin". I cannot hope to change Mr. Wallace's perception of the work,
but I'd still like to register my opinion that it is precisely the
poetic English versions of EO that are the joke, and a finely nuanced
one at that: at times hilarious, at times sad, always instructive for
would-be translators. The comparison of these enthusiastic efforts with
Nabokov's literal text can be a source of many a happy chuckle. Highly
recommended, and even more enjoyable than comparing Pasternak's
Shakespeare to the original.
But seriously, and obviously, Nabokov's translation gives a non-speaker
of Russian (the one who can't be bothered to master the alphabet) his
only chance to know what Pushkin actually wrote.
I'd like to believe, by the way, that it was not Nabokov's version that
suggested Liv Tyler to Mr. Fiennes (whom I generally admire) as the
ideal actress for the part of Tatiana. Her "You do not return my
feelings?" (cutting to the chase amid Onegin's hemmings and hawings) may
be destined to become a classic of cinematic awfulness, on a par with
Garbo's "I want to be left alone". But never mind. On the whole the film
seems to be a splendid piece of solid surrealist entertainment, with
Onegin renting his estate to the serfs and Tatiana unconsciously quoting
some freedom-loving social thinker or other.
Peter.
> A substantial article in today's London Daily Telegraph (May 27, 99), headed
> RALPH TAKES A SHOT AT PUSHKIN, comments on a new "#11 million film adaptation
> of Alexander Pushkin's verse novel Eugen Onegin". The actor Ralph Fiennes,
> the prime mover in this enterprise, is quoted as follows: "I loved the poem,
> especially in the Nabokov translation, and the character."
>
> This is (perhaps) the strongest endorsement to date (known to me, at any
> rate) of what I cannot help thinking of as a bemusing curiosity. Whereas I
> tend to agree somewhat with Auberon Waugh, that Pale Fire is fundamentally
> serious --- and, for me, the most intellectually stimulating creative work
> in English prose since Carroll's equally stimulating (and ultimately serious)
> Through the Looking Glass --- N's Eugen Onegin has struck me as possibly a
> sort of monumental academic joke, of the most elevated and rarefied kind.
> >From under the magnificent mountain of riveting commentary, and through the
> literal Anglo-Zemblan of the version itself, I confess to being barely able
> to discern the beauties of what I know to be, but cannot access: a Russian
> verse masterpiece. Has here a butterfly not been broken upon a wheel? I am
> already ducking in anticipation of the brickbats that this opinion invites.
>
> Charles Harrison Wallace
>
I have belatedly come across the comment quoted below about VN's
"Onegin". I cannot hope to change Mr. Wallace's perception of the work,
but I'd still like to register my opinion that it is precisely the
poetic English versions of EO that are the joke, and a finely nuanced
one at that: at times hilarious, at times sad, always instructive for
would-be translators. The comparison of these enthusiastic efforts with
Nabokov's literal text can be a source of many a happy chuckle. Highly
recommended, and even more enjoyable than comparing Pasternak's
Shakespeare to the original.
But seriously, and obviously, Nabokov's translation gives a non-speaker
of Russian (the one who can't be bothered to master the alphabet) his
only chance to know what Pushkin actually wrote.
I'd like to believe, by the way, that it was not Nabokov's version that
suggested Liv Tyler to Mr. Fiennes (whom I generally admire) as the
ideal actress for the part of Tatiana. Her "You do not return my
feelings?" (cutting to the chase amid Onegin's hemmings and hawings) may
be destined to become a classic of cinematic awfulness, on a par with
Garbo's "I want to be left alone". But never mind. On the whole the film
seems to be a splendid piece of solid surrealist entertainment, with
Onegin renting his estate to the serfs and Tatiana unconsciously quoting
some freedom-loving social thinker or other.
Peter.
> A substantial article in today's London Daily Telegraph (May 27, 99), headed
> RALPH TAKES A SHOT AT PUSHKIN, comments on a new "#11 million film adaptation
> of Alexander Pushkin's verse novel Eugen Onegin". The actor Ralph Fiennes,
> the prime mover in this enterprise, is quoted as follows: "I loved the poem,
> especially in the Nabokov translation, and the character."
>
> This is (perhaps) the strongest endorsement to date (known to me, at any
> rate) of what I cannot help thinking of as a bemusing curiosity. Whereas I
> tend to agree somewhat with Auberon Waugh, that Pale Fire is fundamentally
> serious --- and, for me, the most intellectually stimulating creative work
> in English prose since Carroll's equally stimulating (and ultimately serious)
> Through the Looking Glass --- N's Eugen Onegin has struck me as possibly a
> sort of monumental academic joke, of the most elevated and rarefied kind.
> >From under the magnificent mountain of riveting commentary, and through the
> literal Anglo-Zemblan of the version itself, I confess to being barely able
> to discern the beauties of what I know to be, but cannot access: a Russian
> verse masterpiece. Has here a butterfly not been broken upon a wheel? I am
> already ducking in anticipation of the brickbats that this opinion invites.
>
> Charles Harrison Wallace
>