Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Hofstader On Onegin
Hofstader On Onegin
html
Text:
A word about the poetic units out of which ''Eugene Onegin'' is constructed.
1 of 9 8/3/12 12:02 PM
The New York Times: Book Review Search Article http://adaweb.walkerart.org/influx/muntadas/nytbooks.html
As one reads, one quickly grows very used to and fond of the special lilt and
sway of Onegin stanzas. I can speak only of my sensual pleasure at reading
them in English, but I am sure that at this essentially musical level, the
experience in Russian is similar. The raw sounds are of course different -- by
definition one can do nothing about that -- but at a higher level of
abstraction, all the key relationships among sounds are preserved
isomorphically.
I now turn from the musical side of the experience to the more cerebral side.
There was great magic in the act of jumping back and forth between two
translations of each sonnet. Had there been just one, I would simply have had
to take the translator's word that this is more or less what Pushkin wrote,
having no idea how many liberties had actually been taken. But with two
translations side by side, each had the effect of keeping the other honest. If
they deviated from each other in any significant way, it was obvious that
somebody had changed something, though it was not clear who or what.
Interestingly, this happened very seldom. One always sensed how the two
English texts, different as they might be on the surface, were mirroring one
and the same hidden Russian text.
Indeed, the two English texts taken together gave a powerful impression of
what the underlying Russian had to be like. I compare this to the nautical
notion of triangulation, in which having two different landmarks to sight on a
coast allows you to pinpoint just where at sea you are, whereas having just
one is too little information. Scaled down, this is essentially the parallax
effect that we also exploit in binocular vision, allowing us to see a third
dimension despite having only two-dimensional images on our retinas. And
so, as I glimpsed Pushkin's poetry through a kind of intellectual stereopsis, I
2 of 9 8/3/12 12:02 PM
The New York Times: Book Review Search Article http://adaweb.walkerart.org/influx/muntadas/nytbooks.html
was having a ball at several different levels, getting to know Onegin and his
crowd and their times, gaining a strong and clear feeling for the brilliance of
the original Russian poetry as well as for Pushkin himself, and even coming
to sense the highly distinctive personalities and creativities of Charles
Johnston and James Falen. It was, by the way, this type of slow and
systematic line-by-line triangulation that gradually gave me the chutzpah I
referred to in my opening paragraph.
Once under the spell of ''Eugene Onegin,'' I started seeking more versions.
Eventually, I discovered and purchased two more English-language
translations still in print -- one completed in 1963 by Walter Arndt, the
distinguished linguist and scholar of Slavic and German, and the other
published in 1937 by Oliver Elton, who I believe was a professor of Russian
at Oxford, and recently revised by A. D. P. Briggs, a professor of Russian at
the University of Birmingham, England. Actually, there is a fifth English
version still in print, this one done by Vladimir Nabokov in 1964 -- but for
his own strange reasons, he chose to do a literal translation that dropped all
rhyme and meter, a decision so catastrophic that I won't deal further with the
Nabokov ''Onegin'' here.
Instead I wish to share with you the sheer verbal joy of the four English
versions mentioned earlier. From the 400-some sonnets I have selected just
two, one from the novel's opening and the other from its closing chapter. The
first (Chapter I, Sonnet 6) tells you a little about Onegin himself, while the
second (Chapter VIII, Sonnet 20) in effect encapsulates the novel's main plot
line: in it is the key moment when Onegin, having early on repudiated the
humble country girl Tatyana's innocently proffered declaration of love, years
later encounters her as a dignified married woman with high standing in St.
Petersburg social circles; as they meet again, Tatyana gives Onegin the cold
shoulder, leaving him reeling in pain and disbelief.
So take a look (the four versions are shown on the preceding page in a
''random'' order).
Though I have great respect for each of these poets, I am not indifferent. I
have my preferences! But first let me reveal the poets' hidden identities.
Upper left: Elton/Briggs. Upper right: Johnston. Lower left: Falen. Lower
right: Arndt.
Johnston is good but so are his rivals. Take, for instance, Oliver Elton's ''pat
in'' as a rhyme for ''Latin'' or Walter Arndt's ''in Russian'' as a rhyme for
''discussion'': what lovely finds, totally faithful to Pushkin's meaning while
simultaneously getting across that fantastic, brilliant snap of his style.
But now I leap to sing the praises of my favorite. The James Falen version,
for me, is consistently clear as a bell, not only in meaning but also in ease of
3 of 9 8/3/12 12:02 PM
The New York Times: Book Review Search Article http://adaweb.walkerart.org/influx/muntadas/nytbooks.html
reading aloud. Effortlessly, one hears each line's accents and makes sense of
the ideas. In the other versions, despite wonderful moments of brilliance,
there are too many spots where the rhythm goes momentarily awry; where
words are used with murk, sloppiness or phonetic imprecision; where
sentences are so twisted around that they become hard to parse; even times
where it's hard to be sure just who or what is being referred to. This is the
price occasionally paid for a lofty poetic tone. Mr. Falen, by contrast, is
nearly unfailingly graceful and limpid; time after time, he finds simple ways
of saying things with zip and panache, as in his ending of I.6: ''But knew by
heart a fine collection / Of anecdotes of ages past: / From Romulus to
Tuesday last.'' Taken together, these qualities mark his effort off, for me, as
topmost.
To some, this discussion may bring to mind a warning Robert Frost once
issued -- namely, that poetry is ''what gets lost in translation.'' In my opinion,
though, the exquisite artistic re-creations of Pushkin by James Falen, Walter
Arndt, Charles Johnston and the Elton/Briggs duo put the Frosty sound bite
completely to the lie. Yes, poetry translation is damned hard, but it can be
carried out with stunning success.
''Eugene Onegin,''
Chapter I, Sonnet 6
4 of 9 8/3/12 12:02 PM
The New York Times: Book Review Search Article http://adaweb.walkerart.org/influx/muntadas/nytbooks.html
5 of 9 8/3/12 12:02 PM
The New York Times: Book Review Search Article http://adaweb.walkerart.org/influx/muntadas/nytbooks.html
prime
6 of 9 8/3/12 12:02 PM
The New York Times: Book Review Search Article http://adaweb.walkerart.org/influx/muntadas/nytbooks.html
''Eugene Onegin,''
it? --
it! --
dreaming?
7 of 9 8/3/12 12:02 PM
The New York Times: Book Review Search Article http://adaweb.walkerart.org/influx/muntadas/nytbooks.html
unprotected?
deemed
8 of 9 8/3/12 12:02 PM
The New York Times: Book Review Search Article http://adaweb.walkerart.org/influx/muntadas/nytbooks.html
conjecture
seemed
9 of 9 8/3/12 12:02 PM