Vladimir Nabokov’s autobiography can be read as a stereo-text in two languages (English and Russian) and in three consecutive versions: Conclusive Evidence (1951) – Drugie berega (1954) – Speak,Memory (1964). Nabokov himself emphasized that these versions are far from being a mere translation, rather they relate to one another as a metamorphosis:

This re-Englishing of a Russian re-vision of what had been na English retelling of Russian memories in the first place, proved to be a diabolical task, but some consolation was given to me by the thought that such multiple metamorphosis, familiar to butterflies, had not been tried by any human before.  (Nabokov 1964: 12-13)

Here, at the crossroads of languages, a new work of stereo-poetry or stereo-prose is born which may be characterizied in Bakhtin’s words: ‘[I]n the process of literary creation, languages interanimate each other and objectify precisely that side of one’s own (ando f other’s) language that pertain to its world view, its inner form, the axiologically accentuaded system inherent in it’ (Bakhtin 1981:62).

Translation as the search for equuivalence among languages has dominated the epoch of national culturas and monolinguistic communities that needed simples bridges of understading rathern than rainbows of co-creativity...

Critical Theory in Russia and the West, Alastair Renfrew, Galin Tihanov Ed.

BASEES/Routledge Series on Russian and East European Studies, 2010.

ISBN-13: 978-0415673358

ISBN-10: 0415673356