EDNote: Apologies to all; this submission was overlooked on Sunday due
to a server hiccup . . . ~SB
-------- Original Message --------
>
> I
> wonder if Makine is translated into Russian. When looking more
closely
> at his writing it is interesting to detect that under this
excellent
> and seemingly perfectly mastered French language a subtle but
steady
> Russian rhythm flows.
>
> _________________________________________________________________
I was reading recently this book by Makine ("La vie d'un homme
inconnu"). I visit Russia relatively often, and I've been looking
for translations in the bookstores there but never seen any
(I read him in French myself, but I wanted to give some of his
books to my friends there). Probably he is not liked by the
editors in Russia by some reason, or he doesn't like them, or they
pay too little, or they don't want author's translation, or.... I am
not sure, maybe something was translated and published in
a literary journal.
The passage (quoted below) is attributed to the narrator (the book is
written in the first person). Biographically to some extent
he looks as Makine himself, but one cannot be sure (many books
of Makine are in the first person, and some narrators are
quite different - for example, a former soviet agent in Africa).
In "La vie d'un homme inconnu" the narrator looks less successfull
and more dull and embittered than Makine.
As to the "perfectly mastered french language" there are some
nuances. To me, indeed, some subtle presence of Russian is felt
below. Almost complete absence of dialogue (in all his books)
shows probably that not all the domains of French are perfectly
mastered.
Several of my French friends read Makine, their opinion was
that he writes a very good language, but a bit too scholarly and
regular.
Best,
Sergei Soloviev
> At the beginning of the most
> recent novel of the Franco-Russian writer Andreï Makine there is a
several
> pages long passage about Nabokov. I was wondering if anyone could
tell for
> sure whether the anecdote he writes
> about is true or not:
> Makine writes that when leaving
> Yalta on a ferry, Nabokov was playing chess on deck and instead of
> watching the last piece of land fade out in the distance his eyes
were
> riveted to the chessboard, a fact he later was to regret. It is
> possible of course Makine just used his artistic freedom and
invented
> this. The short critique of Lolita that follows it makes me think
so:
> "That aesthete Nabokov cared more about a pretty metaphor than
about his
> fatherland! And Lolita was his punishment. A sickening book which
caresses
> the basest instincts of the Western bourgeoisie..." Nabokov did,
after
> all, yearn for his home country.
>
> And finally a short passage where Makine likens entomology to
writing:
> "Nabokov wrote: 'There was a diction, rough as a wet sugarcube...'
This is
> genious! [...] -Well, I can see our good Vladimir suck on his
sugar cube
> there, but it's not "genious", Léa. It's ingenious;
> there's a nuance there. On top of this, your Nabo doesn't care
about
> knowing whom this accent belonged to. If it was a tortured
prisonner it
> doesn't change a thing. He writes like a collector of butterflies:
he
> catches a pretty insect, knocks it out with formalin, impales it
on a
> needle. He proceeds the same with words..."
>
> I also wonder whether anyone could place the quote about the
> sugar quote? (my translation of this sentence may be very clumsy
here)
>
>
> I
> wonder if Makine is translated into Russian. When looking more
closely
> at his writing it is interesting to detect that under this
excellent
> and seemingly perfectly mastered French language a subtle but
steady
> Russian rhythm flows.
>
> ______