Dear Ms. Kunin,
I didn't recognize your use of "flawless" as
hyperbole. Nemser's critique, in my opinion,
was intentionally mean and unfair, and thereby
fundamentally flawed.
You shouldn't assume that Markov didn't include
some nineteenth-century material
in his course where he lectured on Derzhavin, who
died in 1816. "Ruina-chti" means
"Honor (or venerate) this ruin!" It has nothing
to do with reading. Chtit' is the verb -
"to honor." Chitat' would be "to read," but the
imperative would be "chitai."
Boyd and Shvabrin did some hard, serious work
putting together Verses and Versions
to present a book that Nabokov would have liked
and recognized as representing
his many-decades' romance and engagement with
literary translation. It's fine to be
critical about Nabokov as a translator, or writer
for that matter, but fairness and
insight based of verified knowledge should be the
goal.
Jerry Katsell