Don B.
Johnson posted "Speak, Poetry (Verses and Versions: Three Centuries
of Russian Poetry by Vladimir Nabokov)", by Marta Figlerowicz, a very rich
commentary - although I couldn'd discover if she'd seen Nabokov in the role
of Virgil or Beatrice moving along the evolving circles of
a dantesque linguistic universe.
In brief
strong strokes she sketches her vision of the Nabokovian voice
[ "Nabokov's hallmark as a novelist is an insistent
voice at once painfully intimate and painfully self-conscious about intimacy,
endlessly trusting as well as endlessly suspicious...As a critic, Nabokov shares
many of the qualities which make his characters endearing but also unsettling: a
sharpness of insight combined with a self-conscious eccentricity of focus; a
blind, passionate love of the objects of his attention mingled with a distrust
of the reader's ability to appreciate them...If it is inherently difficult to
draw the line between Nabokov the narrative voice and Nabokov the critical
voice."]
According to her,
Verses and Versions "is unlikely to storm into the canon of Russian
poetry translations. It skirts a border many of Nabokov's novels used to skirt:
one between careful study and delighted self-absorption...a fascinating study -
if not of Russian poetry per se - of Vladimir Nabokov's mind at work in
grappling with it". She misses in most of Nabokov's translations a
"melodic facility" that'd be equivalent to the one"that clearly
makes him love Russian poetry." She points out that, although VN is
"begrudgingly dismissive" of the early Romantics ( she quotes VN: "Zhukovski owned a strong and delicate instrument that he had
strung himself, but the trouble was he had very little to say."), it
shall be his rendering of Zhukovski's ballad that becomes one of
"Nabokov's most melodically successful ones."
For her, in"his
successes, he achieves heights not only of translation, but also of
self-revelation: allowing the essays, commentaries, and poems to flicker with
what is both a reflection of their subjects' brilliance and the eccentric
wit of their critic-translator. We make a step towards a better understanding of
Russian poetry, and a leap towards admiring - and genuinely liking - the
obsessively ironic, frequently indignant guide who condescended to accompany us
there."(The Harvard Book Review, Fall 2008:Back to Table of Contents)
JM: In
ADA, Van's observations concerning the Romantics are often
contradictory, as if he (Nabokov) was trying to expel from his
system all the delicately morbid chimes pertaining to a romantic
atmosphere. M.Fligerowicz' critical review sheds a little more light
on this matter and, tentatively at least, I suggest that VN never
succesfully overcame his own youthful romanticism with its special
"melody".