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Antonomasia's Reviews > Yevgeny Onegin
Yevgeny Onegin (Pushkin Collection)
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Antonomasia's review
bookshelves: arc, poetry, russia, 19th-century, edelweiss, aesthetes-decadents-and-romantics, 2016, 2017, 1001-books, epic-poems-and-novels-in-verse
Feb 09, 2016
bookshelves: arc, poetry, russia, 19th-century, edelweiss, aesthetes-decadents-and-romantics, 2016, 2017, 1001-books, epic-poems-and-novels-in-verse
ARC review: 2016 Pushkin Press edition, translated by Anthony Briggs
[3.75?] I've yet to be convinced that it's possible to translate Russian poetry into consistently excellent English verse. Translator Anthony Briggs' introduction suggests that it is easier to make Russian poems sound good in English than it is French ones - which contradicts my experience as a reader. (I loved Kinnell's Villon, Millay's Baudelaire, among others, and was disappointed by two different versions of Tsvetava.)
It had been my intention, if I ever read Onegin, to go for Stanley Mitchell's translation (for what I'd seen of the actual poetry, though I love the cover too), but this new* version was on offer as an ARC last year. I liked the beginning of Briggs' War & Peace enough that I'd have read his translation if it had been available as an ebook. (It wasn't, so I went for the ubiquitous P&V.) I wasn't so impressed with his translation of some Pushkin poems in a funny little miscellany from the eponymous publisher, under the title The Queen of Spades, but they were reasonable enough - and this ARC was, after all, free, and, what's more, praised by Nick Lezard in the Guardian. (Lezard quite often makes good recommendations, but admitted himself that he was no expert on Pushkin translation.)
I read perhaps a third of this Onegin in April 2016, when I found it clunky and packed with banal sing-song rhymes. Though it seemed to improve at times - inconveniently for me, as I'd have to rewrite the at-least-half a hatchet job I'd already typed out. Returning to the book in January 2017, reading straight through from Introduction to FIN, I thought it not so bad. Somewhat better than the frustratingly blurred reflection of a celestial original that seemed the usual offering for Russian translated poetry in the body of a book, compared with the way the original was described in the introduction. Some stanzas are indeed embarrassingly sing-song others rather good; and plenty more dependent on how each reader hears all the line-end rhymes - whilst a few are convoluted, with sense and meaning obscured by the struggle to attain the correct structure in English.
In Briggs' introduction, Stanley Mitchell is both praised - for his use of approximate rhyme - and criticised - for taking it too far. I found the list of Mitchell's rhymes more pleasing to the ear, less pat, than many of those Briggs uses, so perhaps I'd still prefer his version. (Perhaps what I am really looking for is the equivalent of Edna St Vincent Millay's Flowers of Evil, a highly liberal translation that uses the essential sense of the poems to create a[n IMO] beautiful work that sounds like true poetry in English.)
For the reader who'd prefer a thorough, scholarly intro of the Penguin/Oxford ilk, Briggs' isn't terrible. He provides a thorough and persuasive case for calling the protagonist "Yevgeny Onegin" in English, due to the name's musicality and scansion, and how this metrical beauty is at odds with the anti-hero's conduct. Otherwise, it omitted useful points: cultural background (which I at least had via reading Tolstoy in the last few years, and I see how scenes in Onegin likely inspired some in War and Peace); and the poet-narrator and his relationship with his muse as a significant feature of the poem (it took the blurb of another edition on GR to make me notice that and not near-skim those stanzas as inconsequential fluff interrupting the "real" story). Briggs also spent time on a critical debate about Onegin's moral character in a manner superfluous for the first time reader, as he reaches the same conclusion Pushkin does in the poem:
His secret inner court will hear
Him charged with multiple offences�
Charge One: He had been wrong to jeer
At timid, tender love so easily
And so off-handedly that evening.
Charge Two: The poet might have been
An ass, but this, at just eighteen,
Could be excused. Judge whose fault this is:
Yevgeny deeply loved the youth,
And should have proved to be, in truth,
No mere plaything of prejudices,
No fiery, strapping lad, but an
Honourable and thinking man.
Onegin, packed with of-its-time cultural references, desperately needs annotations, and this Pushkin Press edition sadly has none.
From chapter two, a handful of the many examples: I've at least heard of [Sir Charles] Grandison but wouldn't mind a reminder about plot and character, and it's hardly one of the best known bits of British C18th lit; would have liked something on origin and reputation of the following gothic behaviour, implied as a French import:
She took to using blood when scrawling
In sweet girls� albums
and in the same stanza, re-Russification as
she restored without mishap
The padded robe and floppy cap, some background to whose presumed nationalistic significance could, I think, only add to the edition.
This same allusiveness gives the poem a satirical, flippant air I hadn't anticipated. At first I was in two minds about use of noticeably contemporary phrases - a lodging with decent storage; a dashing officer who's the delight of local mums - but soon felt they sharpened the text. After all, the poem, picking over the mores of recently fashionable Romantic young things, would have felt as modern to readers of the 1830s as daft mockery of Millenials would to us. This sense of freshness is one of the impertinent advantages of a translated classic has over the original, and perhaps what I liked best about Briggs' Onegin, though not as much as in Clive James' Divine Comedy. I love noticing the cheeky wink of a half-hidden pop lyric; one especially deft example here amused me no end:
“I say, who is that lady, Prince,
There in the raspberry-coloured beret,
Near the ambassador from Spain?�
However, modernity occasionally went too far, and jarred: when Tatyana's nanny was wearing a "body-warmer"; and even brands crept in, albeit ones old enough to have been around at the time - so can't discount the possibility they were cited in Pushkin's original - Veuve Clicquot—or is it Moët? (I think that was when Robbie Williams' 'Party Like a Russian' started playing in my head...)
For much of the poem, I didn't feel a great deal for the characters. I was sorry for the infatuated Tatyana - I felt that fiction and film gave me a similarly misleading impression of social life and romance when I was younger - but it was a sympathy often out of step with the ironic relating of the silly girl's fandoms and mopings. May as well have been watching a black comedy about hipsters. (Натан Ячмень, Москва 1830?)
Among my favourite of the human scenes was when Tatyana, pining for Evgeny, reads his favourite books to try and understand him, and instead finds them an excellent way to get over him:
And my Tatyana comes by stages
To understand the very man
(Depicted clearly as outrageous?)
Destined for her by some weird plan,
Sent to unsettle and derange her,
A maverick oddball bringing danger,
A child of heaven, of hell perchance,
Devil and god of arrogance.
What is he? A copy of mischances,
A ghost of nothingness, a joke,
A Russian in Childe Harold’s cloak,
A ragbag of imported fancies,
A catchphrase-monger and a sham.
Is he more parody than man?
I've done similar in my time (sometimes the books - or films - are a key, sometimes they are not: not everyone sees themselves in their favourites, or loves works that reflect themselves, though Evgeny clearly did). But thankfully, in the early twenty-first century, it is easy to get one's own copies of those titles remembered, no trespass required.
Sardonic archness wasn't what I expected from Russian epic verse, so for some time I wondered whether this was a property of the translation (British dry wit) or of the original. The duel scene and its immediate aftermath altered my opinion: it was clearly meant to be that way. The stanzas from the fight itself were marked by an instantaneous a change of tone, gripping and utterly immediate, like a movie scene:
Out come the pistols (how they dazzle!),
The ramrods plunge, the mallets knock,
The leaden balls roll down the channels,
The triggers click, the guns are cocked.
The greyish powder streams out, steady,
Into the pan, while, waiting ready,
The solid, jagged, screwed-down flint
Stands primed. Guillot can just be glimpsed
Lurking behind a stump, much worried.
The two foes cast their cloaks aside.
Zaretsky walks thirty-two strides
With an exactitude unhurried,
Then leads each friend to his far place.
They draw their pistols from the case.
On its heels, verse reminiscent of one of Hilaire Belloc's Cautionaries, only for slightly older boys:
But the most fun comes from insisting
On plans for a noble death, somehow
Fixating on the man’s pale brow,
And aiming coolly from a distance.
But sending him to kingdom come�
Surely you won’t find that much fun.
Afterwards, there was profound feeling, which soon admixed back into the former social irony and the odd Keatesian landscape. The original's emotional trajectory, and the translator's control of his material became clear; my respect for Briggs increased again.
Friends who know my tastes will not be surprised to hear that it was mostly the stanzas about peasant customs, and winter, on which I was most swept away. I'm not sure whether these were also qualitatively better in translation than plenty of others, or if I'm simply so very susceptible to this type of scenery. (I suspect the latter, because so many of the spring and summer verses bored me.)
Through the cold murk the dawn comes searching,
The noisy field work has tailed off,
The wolf is on the road, emerging
With his half-starving lady wolf.
A passing horse scents him and bridles,
Snorting, at which the wary rider
Gallops away uphill flat-out.
At dawn no herdsmen are about,
Bringing to pasture hungry cattle,
At noon no horn is heard to sing
And bring the cows into a ring.
And girls stay home to sing and rattle
Their spinning wheels. Friendly and bright,
The pine logs sting the winter night...
A tubby goose, red-footed, fearful,
Hoping to breast the waters, crawls
Gingerly out, but skids and falls
Upon the ice. Here comes the cheerful
First fall of whirling, gleaming snow,
Star-scattered on the banks below...
Riding the prairie wild, of course, is
Perilous for your blunt-shod horses,
Who stumble on the treacherous ice
And down they clatter in a trice.
Stay in your bleak homestead. Try reading�
Here is your Pradt, here’s Walter Scott�
Or go through your accounts, if not,
Or fume, or drink. The endless evening
Will somehow pass, tomorrow too.
I've not read enough classic English poetry lately to be confident in comparing the quality - for instance, with Byron, one of Pushkin's inspirations, and whose verse forms Briggs hoped to emulate - but I have included ample quotes, so you may be able to make up your mind whether Briggs' translation is for you, if you wanted to read Onegin in the first place.
(Incidentally, does anyone else worry about whether reading Russian lit now means more, something unsavoury, compared with even six months ago; not the same configuration as it might have forty years ago, so more confusing? Or is it just me and that's laughably paranoid, even for these strange times?)
This translation is rather fun, especially if you enjoy the modern elements alongside the more typically early nineteenth century themes; if it were accompanied by a more detailed introduction, and some notes, I'd more readily recommend it; the lack of either is always a drawback to an edition of a classic, as far as I'm concerned. Like so much great literature of its time, Onegin is a story of youngsters and their betrothal intrigues, but the irony and detachment means that it may still appeal to those who are no longer in that phase of life (though I do think there much to be said for reading classics before or around that time), including those whose years have now outspanned Pushkin's own.
* A few days after reading, I've noticed that there's an Everyman edition of Yevgeny Onegin (same spelling) from 1995 translated by Briggs. As this Pushkin Press one clearly says "English language translation copyright A.D.P. Briggs, 2016", I'm assuming that it's is a revised version - although surely not entirely new as the blurb suggests.
Thank you to Edelweiss, and the publisher, Pushkin Press, for this free advance review copy.
[3.75?] I've yet to be convinced that it's possible to translate Russian poetry into consistently excellent English verse. Translator Anthony Briggs' introduction suggests that it is easier to make Russian poems sound good in English than it is French ones - which contradicts my experience as a reader. (I loved Kinnell's Villon, Millay's Baudelaire, among others, and was disappointed by two different versions of Tsvetava.)
It had been my intention, if I ever read Onegin, to go for Stanley Mitchell's translation (for what I'd seen of the actual poetry, though I love the cover too), but this new* version was on offer as an ARC last year. I liked the beginning of Briggs' War & Peace enough that I'd have read his translation if it had been available as an ebook. (It wasn't, so I went for the ubiquitous P&V.) I wasn't so impressed with his translation of some Pushkin poems in a funny little miscellany from the eponymous publisher, under the title The Queen of Spades, but they were reasonable enough - and this ARC was, after all, free, and, what's more, praised by Nick Lezard in the Guardian. (Lezard quite often makes good recommendations, but admitted himself that he was no expert on Pushkin translation.)
I read perhaps a third of this Onegin in April 2016, when I found it clunky and packed with banal sing-song rhymes. Though it seemed to improve at times - inconveniently for me, as I'd have to rewrite the at-least-half a hatchet job I'd already typed out. Returning to the book in January 2017, reading straight through from Introduction to FIN, I thought it not so bad. Somewhat better than the frustratingly blurred reflection of a celestial original that seemed the usual offering for Russian translated poetry in the body of a book, compared with the way the original was described in the introduction. Some stanzas are indeed embarrassingly sing-song others rather good; and plenty more dependent on how each reader hears all the line-end rhymes - whilst a few are convoluted, with sense and meaning obscured by the struggle to attain the correct structure in English.
In Briggs' introduction, Stanley Mitchell is both praised - for his use of approximate rhyme - and criticised - for taking it too far. I found the list of Mitchell's rhymes more pleasing to the ear, less pat, than many of those Briggs uses, so perhaps I'd still prefer his version. (Perhaps what I am really looking for is the equivalent of Edna St Vincent Millay's Flowers of Evil, a highly liberal translation that uses the essential sense of the poems to create a[n IMO] beautiful work that sounds like true poetry in English.)
For the reader who'd prefer a thorough, scholarly intro of the Penguin/Oxford ilk, Briggs' isn't terrible. He provides a thorough and persuasive case for calling the protagonist "Yevgeny Onegin" in English, due to the name's musicality and scansion, and how this metrical beauty is at odds with the anti-hero's conduct. Otherwise, it omitted useful points: cultural background (which I at least had via reading Tolstoy in the last few years, and I see how scenes in Onegin likely inspired some in War and Peace); and the poet-narrator and his relationship with his muse as a significant feature of the poem (it took the blurb of another edition on GR to make me notice that and not near-skim those stanzas as inconsequential fluff interrupting the "real" story). Briggs also spent time on a critical debate about Onegin's moral character in a manner superfluous for the first time reader, as he reaches the same conclusion Pushkin does in the poem:
His secret inner court will hear
Him charged with multiple offences�
Charge One: He had been wrong to jeer
At timid, tender love so easily
And so off-handedly that evening.
Charge Two: The poet might have been
An ass, but this, at just eighteen,
Could be excused. Judge whose fault this is:
Yevgeny deeply loved the youth,
And should have proved to be, in truth,
No mere plaything of prejudices,
No fiery, strapping lad, but an
Honourable and thinking man.
Onegin, packed with of-its-time cultural references, desperately needs annotations, and this Pushkin Press edition sadly has none.
From chapter two, a handful of the many examples: I've at least heard of [Sir Charles] Grandison but wouldn't mind a reminder about plot and character, and it's hardly one of the best known bits of British C18th lit; would have liked something on origin and reputation of the following gothic behaviour, implied as a French import:
She took to using blood when scrawling
In sweet girls� albums
and in the same stanza, re-Russification as
she restored without mishap
The padded robe and floppy cap, some background to whose presumed nationalistic significance could, I think, only add to the edition.
This same allusiveness gives the poem a satirical, flippant air I hadn't anticipated. At first I was in two minds about use of noticeably contemporary phrases - a lodging with decent storage; a dashing officer who's the delight of local mums - but soon felt they sharpened the text. After all, the poem, picking over the mores of recently fashionable Romantic young things, would have felt as modern to readers of the 1830s as daft mockery of Millenials would to us. This sense of freshness is one of the impertinent advantages of a translated classic has over the original, and perhaps what I liked best about Briggs' Onegin, though not as much as in Clive James' Divine Comedy. I love noticing the cheeky wink of a half-hidden pop lyric; one especially deft example here amused me no end:
“I say, who is that lady, Prince,
There in the raspberry-coloured beret,
Near the ambassador from Spain?�
However, modernity occasionally went too far, and jarred: when Tatyana's nanny was wearing a "body-warmer"; and even brands crept in, albeit ones old enough to have been around at the time - so can't discount the possibility they were cited in Pushkin's original - Veuve Clicquot—or is it Moët? (I think that was when Robbie Williams' 'Party Like a Russian' started playing in my head...)
For much of the poem, I didn't feel a great deal for the characters. I was sorry for the infatuated Tatyana - I felt that fiction and film gave me a similarly misleading impression of social life and romance when I was younger - but it was a sympathy often out of step with the ironic relating of the silly girl's fandoms and mopings. May as well have been watching a black comedy about hipsters. (Натан Ячмень, Москва 1830?)
Among my favourite of the human scenes was when Tatyana, pining for Evgeny, reads his favourite books to try and understand him, and instead finds them an excellent way to get over him:
And my Tatyana comes by stages
To understand the very man
(Depicted clearly as outrageous?)
Destined for her by some weird plan,
Sent to unsettle and derange her,
A maverick oddball bringing danger,
A child of heaven, of hell perchance,
Devil and god of arrogance.
What is he? A copy of mischances,
A ghost of nothingness, a joke,
A Russian in Childe Harold’s cloak,
A ragbag of imported fancies,
A catchphrase-monger and a sham.
Is he more parody than man?
I've done similar in my time (sometimes the books - or films - are a key, sometimes they are not: not everyone sees themselves in their favourites, or loves works that reflect themselves, though Evgeny clearly did). But thankfully, in the early twenty-first century, it is easy to get one's own copies of those titles remembered, no trespass required.
Sardonic archness wasn't what I expected from Russian epic verse, so for some time I wondered whether this was a property of the translation (British dry wit) or of the original. The duel scene and its immediate aftermath altered my opinion: it was clearly meant to be that way. The stanzas from the fight itself were marked by an instantaneous a change of tone, gripping and utterly immediate, like a movie scene:
Out come the pistols (how they dazzle!),
The ramrods plunge, the mallets knock,
The leaden balls roll down the channels,
The triggers click, the guns are cocked.
The greyish powder streams out, steady,
Into the pan, while, waiting ready,
The solid, jagged, screwed-down flint
Stands primed. Guillot can just be glimpsed
Lurking behind a stump, much worried.
The two foes cast their cloaks aside.
Zaretsky walks thirty-two strides
With an exactitude unhurried,
Then leads each friend to his far place.
They draw their pistols from the case.
On its heels, verse reminiscent of one of Hilaire Belloc's Cautionaries, only for slightly older boys:
But the most fun comes from insisting
On plans for a noble death, somehow
Fixating on the man’s pale brow,
And aiming coolly from a distance.
But sending him to kingdom come�
Surely you won’t find that much fun.
Afterwards, there was profound feeling, which soon admixed back into the former social irony and the odd Keatesian landscape. The original's emotional trajectory, and the translator's control of his material became clear; my respect for Briggs increased again.
Friends who know my tastes will not be surprised to hear that it was mostly the stanzas about peasant customs, and winter, on which I was most swept away. I'm not sure whether these were also qualitatively better in translation than plenty of others, or if I'm simply so very susceptible to this type of scenery. (I suspect the latter, because so many of the spring and summer verses bored me.)
Through the cold murk the dawn comes searching,
The noisy field work has tailed off,
The wolf is on the road, emerging
With his half-starving lady wolf.
A passing horse scents him and bridles,
Snorting, at which the wary rider
Gallops away uphill flat-out.
At dawn no herdsmen are about,
Bringing to pasture hungry cattle,
At noon no horn is heard to sing
And bring the cows into a ring.
And girls stay home to sing and rattle
Their spinning wheels. Friendly and bright,
The pine logs sting the winter night...
A tubby goose, red-footed, fearful,
Hoping to breast the waters, crawls
Gingerly out, but skids and falls
Upon the ice. Here comes the cheerful
First fall of whirling, gleaming snow,
Star-scattered on the banks below...
Riding the prairie wild, of course, is
Perilous for your blunt-shod horses,
Who stumble on the treacherous ice
And down they clatter in a trice.
Stay in your bleak homestead. Try reading�
Here is your Pradt, here’s Walter Scott�
Or go through your accounts, if not,
Or fume, or drink. The endless evening
Will somehow pass, tomorrow too.
I've not read enough classic English poetry lately to be confident in comparing the quality - for instance, with Byron, one of Pushkin's inspirations, and whose verse forms Briggs hoped to emulate - but I have included ample quotes, so you may be able to make up your mind whether Briggs' translation is for you, if you wanted to read Onegin in the first place.
(Incidentally, does anyone else worry about whether reading Russian lit now means more, something unsavoury, compared with even six months ago; not the same configuration as it might have forty years ago, so more confusing? Or is it just me and that's laughably paranoid, even for these strange times?)
This translation is rather fun, especially if you enjoy the modern elements alongside the more typically early nineteenth century themes; if it were accompanied by a more detailed introduction, and some notes, I'd more readily recommend it; the lack of either is always a drawback to an edition of a classic, as far as I'm concerned. Like so much great literature of its time, Onegin is a story of youngsters and their betrothal intrigues, but the irony and detachment means that it may still appeal to those who are no longer in that phase of life (though I do think there much to be said for reading classics before or around that time), including those whose years have now outspanned Pushkin's own.
* A few days after reading, I've noticed that there's an Everyman edition of Yevgeny Onegin (same spelling) from 1995 translated by Briggs. As this Pushkin Press one clearly says "English language translation copyright A.D.P. Briggs, 2016", I'm assuming that it's is a revised version - although surely not entirely new as the blurb suggests.
Thank you to Edelweiss, and the publisher, Pushkin Press, for this free advance review copy.
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Warwick
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Jan 19, 2017 10:27AM
Excellent review. You probably know that Nabokov's version, which you referred to, is a kind of translator's touchstone – for some a masterpiece, for others the antithesis of what good translation is about. Edmund Wilson's is one of my favourite ever hatchet jobs, and I guess the quotes will mean more to you having just read it.
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Thank you, and for the link. There's something so near and so far away, and compelling about [this] Onegin that I can understand the person who'd rush straight out to get two more different translations of the poem and devour them after reading one. (Not got time for that now.) Many other translated books (usually fiction) were satisfying enough that I felt I had Read It, properly. This, though it turned out quite enjoyable, seems like a couple of tilts of a mirror, and I can't help wondering what the thing looks like from other angles.
Briggs must be ancient old by now, but the Onegin is above all a witty work and Pushkin generally playful in his approach, so if the translation captures that then it is travelling in the rightish direction, I doubt if it will lead you to endorse paramilitary forces destabilising neighbouring countries though if that is what concerns you, it is not that playful...See if you can find Ostrovsky's "The Storm", not quite peasant customs but more in that direction
Oh, would he be aged now? I'd never heard of him before I started looking at editions of W&P (2012/13?), so assumed he'd be under 50.So glad to have comments from two of the people I'd most like to hear from about translation and Russian.
JM, you'll have read the original, yes?
Will make a note of the Ostrovsky, thank you.
Do you know, from older people you may have met as a student, if anyone thought it suspicious merely to read Russian classics in the Cold War? (I am historically curious as well...)
Antonomasia wrote: "Oh, would he be aged now? I'd never heard of him before I started looking at editions of W&P (2012/13?), so assumed he'd be under 50.So glad to have comments from two of the people I'd most like ..."
I'd have assumed that Briggs would be dead by now! A fair few people learnt Russian while on national service, including I think arnold bennett, one of my lecturers said it was always a give away because they were excellent at numbers from listening in to chatter from tanks on manoeuvres. Eventually I mustered the coverage to read the original -probably in an edition edited by Briggs, its probably one of the easier pieces of Russian literature to attempt for learners because the vocabulary is relatively small, never heard of people being suspicious of reading Russian literature, maybe in the kinds of places were reading was generally seen as something unnatural and improper?
I've found an interview with him that went with the release of his Onegin translation: Looks to be one of those, like Alan Bennett, who keeps his hair colour into old age. Interested to see he has translated Seven Hanged: a Russian friend I know slightly online recommended that. If I read it, I expected to go for public domain translations; sounds like there may be a better one now. Really interesting about the National Service Russian learners & Arnold Bennett.
I enjoyed Stephen Fry's audio version of Eugene Onegin much more than any new translation of Pushkin's novel.
Warwick wrote: "Excellent review. You probably know that Nabokov's version, which you referred to, is a kind of translator's touchstone – for some a masterpiece, for others the antithesis of what good translation is about. Edmund Wilson's 1965 review is one of my favourite ever hatchet jobs, and I guess the quotes will mean more to you having just read it. "Warwick - if you're still following the thread...
You know, I'd mistakenly revised my impression of the Nabokov version, based on another review which referred to his rewriting it substantially as his own poem, rather than, as was the understanding I was used to and had semi-forgotten, being ultra-literal in his approach. (Wilson explains it's not even that, given some of the weird, ugly vocab selections.) I'm going to remove the sentence in which I set the Nabokov Onegin alongside Edna St. Vincent Millay's Flowers of Evil, which actually takes the polar opposite approach, using the general sense to create new and IMO beautiful poetry in English.
Was surprised how very long a 1960s NYRB review was - and I thought I appreciated a Long Read! I love the elegance and sharpness of those old critics. Rarely see their like nowadays.
I'd previously not been interested in the Nabokov version, because I know I dislike such literal translation and would rather enjoy something that sounds good in English - and Wilson has discouraged me even from interest in it as a literal version giving a different view of the work, because, it seems, Vlad did not even go for the most direct translations of plenty of words.
I quoted Briggs' version of the lines about horses scenting winter wolves on the road, discussed by Wilson, so can compare those, at least, without looking back at the book.
Yeah I think these literal ‘translations� are fascinating if you're studying Russian, but completely hopeless as English poetry. The notes in Nabokov's version (which IIRC make up 3 of the 4 volumes, but I may be remembering this wrong, it's ages since I looked at a copy) are amazing and pretty much every subsequent translator seems to have acknowledged their debt to them. But putting the scholarship into practice was a different matter. Which, as Wilson says, is strange, since when Nabokov just wrote English he was one of the greatest prose masters we ever had.By the way – is that actually the same bit, about the horses? It seems really different if so!
His notes certainly sound worth reading, at any rate.This bit, from Wilson:
Again, with the description of the horse becoming aware of the wolf—“Ег� почуя, конь дорожный / Храпит”—I translated it “Sniffing him, the roadhorse snorts.� Now, the primary meaning of почуять is given by the small Müller-Boyanus dictionary and two others that I have consulted as to scent, to smell. Segal’s larger dictionary gives to scent, smell, hear; to get, have in the wind; Daum and Schenk’s Die Russischen Verben gives simply wittern. The great Russian dictionary of V. I. Dahl gives one of its meanings as нюхать, with an example, which is precisely to the point, “Почу� серого (волк), псы эалились!� “Smelling the gray one, the dogs began to bark.� The Soviet Pushkin Dictionary defines the word as “to feel, to perceive by the senses, principally by the sense of smell.� This word is used three times in Onegin in connection with the behavior of horses. Besides its occurrence in the passage above, we have it when the horses shy at Lensky’s corpse and in the passage describing winter. Nabokov always translates it “sensing.� Now, it is true that почуять, may mean to become aware of something by other ways than by smelling, but it is quite obvious in these passages that smelling is meant, and the three translators quoted by Nabokov for the passage describing winter who deal directly with the word at all make it either sniff or scent. Sniff goes a little further than scent, but it does not violate the sense.
This is Briggs' version of the lines about the peasant and his horse, which Wilson quotes from four different editions:Winter! A sledding peasant revels
In ploughing through a virgin plot.
His pony, snuffling snow, bedevilled,
Gets through it at a struggling trot
He links the celebratory feeling (which I suspect from the others is generally seasonal in the original) to the particular pleasure of being the first to walk through a patch of fresh snow, but I rather like it all the same - it gives an individual connection with this guy who's otherwise just an anonymous extra in the background. And those are quite alive and animated throughout the poem.
Ah yes I'd confused those two sections. Yeah I think the Briggs sounds quite fun!
