Looking for a Nabokov quote
September 21, 2017 11:58 AM Subscribe
There's a quote by Nabokov that I have been looking for all over the place without success. It's about the transition from Russian to English, and as I remember it, it involved the image of traveling between two brightly lit cities with only a candle/lamp/something to that effect. Am I making this up?
I've done a variety of searches through Speak, Memory and I read through his Playboy interview, and neither seems to be turning anything up. I could have sworn it was in Speak, Memory.
Does this ring a bell? Anything somewhat different that could be what I'm remembering? Any comments at all people know of where he talks about switching languages? I did dig up some quote where he compares his English to his Russian and calls his Russian, basically, much better, but that's about it.
I've done a variety of searches through Speak, Memory and I read through his Playboy interview, and neither seems to be turning anything up. I could have sworn it was in Speak, Memory.
Does this ring a bell? Anything somewhat different that could be what I'm remembering? Any comments at all people know of where he talks about switching languages? I did dig up some quote where he compares his English to his Russian and calls his Russian, basically, much better, but that's about it.
Is this what you're thinking of:
posted by dis_integration at 12:15 PM on September 21, 2017 [4 favorites]
On Translating Eugene OneginMy emphasis.
1
What is translation? On a platter
A poet’s pale and glaring head,
A parrot’s screech, a monkey’s chatter,
And profanation of the dead.
The parasites you were so hard on
Are pardoned if I have your pardon,
O, Pushkin, for my stratagem:
I traveled down your secret stem,
And reached the root, and fed upon it;
Then, in a language newly learned,
I grew another stalk and turned
Your stanza patterned on a sonnet,
Into my honest roadside prose⎯
All thorn, but cousin to your rose.
2
Reflected words can only shiver
Like elongated lights that twist
In the black mirror of a river
Between the city and the mist.
Elusive Pushkin! Persevering,
I still pick up Tatiana’s earring,
Still travel with your sullen rake.
I find another man’s mistake,
I analyze alliterations
That grace your feasts and haunt the great
Fourth stanza of your Canto Eight.
This is my task⎯a poet’s patience
And scholastic passion blent:
Dove-droppings on your monument.
⎯Vladimir Nabokov, The New Yorker (1955 January 8)
posted by dis_integration at 12:15 PM on September 21, 2017 [4 favorites]
I assume one of the quotes you dug up was the fantastic afterword he wrote for 'Lolita' in 1956, which is not what you're looking for, most likely, but ends:
"After Olympia Press, in Paris, published the book, an American critic suggested that Lolita was the record of my love affair with the romantic novel. The substitution of 'English language' for 'romantic novel' would make this elegant formula more correct. But here I feel my voice rising to a much too strident pitch. None of my American friends have read my Russian books and thus every appraisal on the strength of my English ones is bound to be out of focus. My private tragedy, which cannot, and indeed should not, be anybody's concern, is that I had to abandon my natural idiom, my untrammelled, rich and infinitely docile Russian tongue for a second-rate brand of English, devoid of any of those apparatuses – the baffling mirror, the black velvet backdrop, the implied associations and traditions – with which the native illusionist, frac-tails flying, can magically use to transcend the heritage in his own way."
Just fantastic – the 'infinitely docile' Russian tongue, and the 'native illusionist'! Looking forward to someone locating your quote – it sounds pretty wonderful, too...
posted by considerthelilies at 12:49 PM on September 21, 2017 [1 favorite]
"After Olympia Press, in Paris, published the book, an American critic suggested that Lolita was the record of my love affair with the romantic novel. The substitution of 'English language' for 'romantic novel' would make this elegant formula more correct. But here I feel my voice rising to a much too strident pitch. None of my American friends have read my Russian books and thus every appraisal on the strength of my English ones is bound to be out of focus. My private tragedy, which cannot, and indeed should not, be anybody's concern, is that I had to abandon my natural idiom, my untrammelled, rich and infinitely docile Russian tongue for a second-rate brand of English, devoid of any of those apparatuses – the baffling mirror, the black velvet backdrop, the implied associations and traditions – with which the native illusionist, frac-tails flying, can magically use to transcend the heritage in his own way."
Just fantastic – the 'infinitely docile' Russian tongue, and the 'native illusionist'! Looking forward to someone locating your quote – it sounds pretty wonderful, too...
posted by considerthelilies at 12:49 PM on September 21, 2017 [1 favorite]
Best answer: Hi! Here it is on page 35 of the second volume of Brian Boyd's biography: "The déménagement from my palatial Russian to the narrow quarters of my English was like moving from one darkened house to another on a starless night during a strike of candlemakers and torchbearers." Awesome image. Boyd cites an "Unpublished note, Nabokov archives."
posted by 826628 at 1:26 PM on September 21, 2017 [13 favorites]
posted by 826628 at 1:26 PM on September 21, 2017 [13 favorites]
Response by poster: Awesome! Not quite how I remembered it, but, you know, memory is weird like that.
posted by pdq at 6:13 PM on September 21, 2017
posted by pdq at 6:13 PM on September 21, 2017
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posted by bdk3clash at 12:13 PM on September 21, 2017