Although I'm able to find excellent Brazilian translations
of Dostoievsky, Tolstoy, Tchekov and a host of other Russian authors and
poets, I've not been able to read any Russian novel by Nabokov, or his
short-stories, except when intermediated by English. I wonder if this is
also a problem with the French and the Spanish translations.
I looked for a few titles in the internet, for example:
"Risa en la Oscuridad" (Laughter in the Dark), but could gain no access to
further informations, except that the editions are unavailable.
My navigational resources aren't enough... Can anyone be of help?
In the meantime, I came to an interesting site which begins
citing Vladimir Nabokov's words about "Toska".
"There are at least 250,000 words in the English language. However, to
think that English – or any language – could hold enough expression to convey
the entirety of the human experience is as arrogant of an assumption as it is
naive. HERE ARE A FEW examples of instances where other languages have found the
right word and English simply falls speechless.
1. Toska
Russian – Vladmir Nabokov describes it best:
“No single word in English renders all the shades
of toska. At its deepest and most painful, it is a sensation of great spiritual
anguish, often without any specific cause. At less morbid levels it is a dull
ache of the soul, a longing with nothing to long for, a sick pining, a vague
restlessness, mental throes, yearning. In particular cases it may be the desire
for somebody of something specific, nostalgia, love-sickness. At the lowest
level it grades into ennui, boredom.”
.......
......
20. Saudade*
Portuguese –
One of the most beautiful of all words, translatable or not, this word “refers
to the feeling of longing for something or someone that you love and which is
lost.” Fado music, a type of mournful singing, relates to saudade.
(Altalang.com)
................................
* - In his Quixote lectures Nabokov mentions
"saudade":
On VN´s Don Quixote (69) we read: “The wretched sense of poverty mingles with his general dejection
and he finally goes to bed, moody and heavy-hearted. Is it only Sancho´s absence
and the burst threads of his stockings that induce this sadness, this Spanish
soledad, this Portuguese saudades, this French angoisse, this German Sensucht,
this Russian toska? We wonder – we wonder if it does not go deeper”. The
Encyclopaedia Britannica (1968) under
“Camões” offers a description of the meaning of this special
Portuguese word,“saudade”, experienced by Camões: “So profound was the anguish he experienced
because of his exile from home and the trials he underwent, that it became an
integral part of his being, enabling him to give to saudade-soledad (“yearning
fraught with loneliness”) a new and convincing undertone unique in Portuguese
literature” .