Translations: The Bestest of the Best, TWENTY-THREE, Afanasy Fet, "Ласточки," SWALLOWS

 

Afanasy Fet
(1820-1892)

          Ласточки

Природы праздный соглядатай,
Люблю, забывши все кругом,
Следить за ласточкой стрельчатой
Над вечереющим прудом.
 
Вот понеслась и зачертила -
И страшно, чтобы гладь стекла
Стихией чуждой не схватила
Молниевидного крыла.
 
И снова то же дерзновенье
И та же темная струя,-
Не таково ли вдохновенье
И человеческого я?
 
Не так ли я, сосуд скудельный,
Дерзаю на запретный путь,
Стихии чуждой, запредельной,
Стремясь хоть каплю зачерпнуть?

1884

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                                                                     Literal Translation
 
                                 Swallows
 
Nature’s idle spy,
I [the poet] love, forgetting all around me,
To follow the arrow-like [movements of a] swallow
Over a pond as twilight approaches.
 
There it went rushing, and sketched out its pattern,
And you fear that the smooth glassy surface,
With its elemental force, might seize
The lightning zig-zag of the wing.
 
Then once again comes the same daring [swoop]
And the same dark spurt [of flight].
Does not inspiration work like that
Within the human soul?
 
Do not I, a clay vessel, in the same way
Dare to venture onto a forbidden path,
With its elemental force, beyond the pale,
Striving to scoop up at least one small drop?
 
         d
 
                                             Literary Translation by Vladimir Nabokov
 
              The Swallow
 
When prying idly into Nature
I am particularly fond
Of watching the arrow of a swallow
Over the sunset of a pond.
 
See—there it goes, and skims, and glances:
The alien element, I fear,
Roused from its glassy sleep might capture
Black lightning quivering so near.
 
There—once again that fearless shadow
Over a frowning ripple ran.
Have we not here the living image
Of active poetry in man—
 
Of something leading me, banned mortal,
To venture where I dare not stop—
Striving to scoop from a forbidden
Mysterious element one drop?
 
Date of translation: 1943. From Vladimir Nabokov, Verses and Versions (compilation published by Harcourt, Inc., 2008), p. 307
 
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                                                Literary Translation/Adaptation by U.R. Bowie
 
              Swallows
 
I love to play the idle spy,
And watch, oblivious to all,
A swoop-flit swallow on the fly,
O’er pond as evening nears nightfall.
 
Look there, see how she darts and skims
Along the lip of glazed-smooth mere;
I’m worried lest a ripple’s whims
Snatch up her blitzwing on the veer.
 
But she dares more exuberation,
Pursues her games of dark spurt-swoop;
Is this not much like lucubration,
Inspired poets’ loop-de-loop?
 
Is this not how I soar where banned,
O’er God’s wild seas with my tin cup,  
Illicit veers through barred dreamland,
In hopes one drop I can scoop up?
 
Date of translation: March 30, 2020
 

Translator’s Notes

 In the original (last stanza, first line), the poet refers to himself as “sosud skudel’nyj,” which is a Biblical phrase, meaning “earthen vessel” or “clay vessel.” Now archaic, the phrase appears in the works of many Russian writers of the nineteenth century, in reference to the limits on man, his transient nature; it is an allusion to human weakness in the face of universal forces.

 Fet’s first-person poet takes this “earthen vessel,” or “clay pot”—the embodiment of his mortal self—with him when inspiration sends him off on a flight like a swallow over a universal pond, or over the seas of God’s vast universe. He strives to scoop up at least a meager droplet of the liquid of Ultimate Reality, which he will turn into immortal art—somehow stepping on the toes of deities in his illegal quest. We are reminded of Prometheus. The best I could do with this phrase in translation was “tin cup.” After all, the poet on his quest flight needed something to do the scooping with. Also apparently stumped, in translating “sosud skudel’nyj,” Nabokov gave up on referring to any kind of vessel or container; he settled on “banned mortal,” a different paraphrase.

 But then, any attempt to translate rhymed and metered poetry, while retaining the meter and rhymes, amounts to paraphrase. When I go through the process, I hope to come up with a good new poem in English. I don’t pretend that my poem (translation/adaptation) is an exact, word-to-word transcription of the original in Russian. I do hope, however, that the new poem in English captures the gist and spirit of the original Russian poem.

 In 1943, when Nabokov translated this Fet poem, “Lastochki,” he was still trying to do the same thing I’m doing now. Later, after his struggles with translating Pushkin’s great narrative in verse, Evgeny Onegin, he gave up on this kind of translation altogether, stating in his usual peremptory way that such paraphrase is illegal, an affront to the original poem and poet. The best we can do with poetry, he said, is make a literal translation, such as the one I have provided for “Lastochki” above. Take a look at it. It’s not poetry, is it?

Or take a look at Nabokov’s translation of Eugene Onegin. That may be an accurate effort, but it’s not poetry either. Of course, his four-volume translation of Pushkin’s immortal work is magnificent, a genuine tour de force; not for the first volume (the pony translation), but for the remaining three, the voluminous scholarly notes and articles.

Playing With Words, Vladimir Nabokov

 

The Underside of Words

“I like to take a word and turn it over to see its underside, shiny or dull or adorned with motley hues absent on its upperside . . . one finds all sorts of curious things by studying the underside of a word—unexpected shadows of other words, harmonies between them, hidden beauties that suddenly reveal something beyond the word.”

When given a demonstration of “serious word play, the good reader suddenly sees a completely new facet of an iridescent sentence.”

Vladimir Nabokov, Think, Write, Speak

[excerpted from book by U.R. Bowie, Here We Be. Where Be We?]

Famous Botkins in Russian History

                                                              Dr. Sergei Petrovich Botkin

Famous Botkins in Russia

Vasily Petrovich Botkin, a man who was born in both 1811 and 1812, was a writer, critic, and translator. He was an acquaintance of the great critic Belinksy, with whom he carried on a long correspondence, later published. Letters from Spain is Botkin’s most well-known published work. A typical Western liberal, Botkin wanted social change but opposed the idea of violent revolution. In his article on the poet A.A. Fet’s work (1857), he spoke out in favor of “pure art.” He died in 1869. Why was he born in two different years? Because in his day Russia still went by the old Julian calendar, which lagged behind the Gregorian calendar of the West. He was born on December 27, 1811, in Russia, which was January 8, 1812, in Western Europe. Lots of people in Russia were born, or died, in two different years. But nobody was born, or died, in two different millennia. Because in 1918, long before the changing of the millennium that you and I were lucky enough to experience, the Soviets adopted the Gregorian calendar.

 

One of the most famous doctors in Russian history was Sergei Petrovich Botkin (1832-1889). He studied at the medical faculty of Moscow State University (1850-1855); served as field doctor in the Crimean War (1855); wrote his dissertation “On Absorption of Fat in the Bowels” (1860); served as field doctor in the Russo-Turkish War, worked out novel ways to treat wounded soldiers on the battlefield (1877). A specialist in internal diseases, Botkin was one of the first to work out diagnosis and treatment of floating kidney. He played an active role in women’s rights, helped organize medical courses for women in 1872. He was curator of St. Petersburg city hospitals and member of the city Duma, 1881-1889.

 

The Botkin Hospital in Moscow is named after the great physician. In the summer of 1972, I was a patient there. In 1959, Lee Oswald was a patient there.

 

Porfiry Petrovich Goes to Visit Dr. Botkin

In Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment the examining magistrate Porfiry Petrovich is a hypochondriac. He complains of problems with hemorrhoids, of his “confounded laughter,” which causes him to shake for half an hour at a time; he’s afraid he might have a stroke. He goes to consult with the renowned Dr. Botkin, who spends thirty minutes examining each patient.

 

“He just laughed when he looked at me. He sounded me and listened to my chest. ‘Incidentally,’ he says to me, ‘tobacco is no good for you; your lungs are affected.’”

C and P, Part 6, Chapter 2

And then, of course, there's Vladimir Nabokov's Botkin (Kinbote), lunatic protagonist of the novel Pale Fire.

[excerpted from the book by U.R. Bowie, Here We Be. Where Be We?]

Vasily Petrovich Botkin

Pninian English

 

Pninian English

 A recent archive issue of The New Yorker (September 6, 2021) featured the story by Vladimir Nabokov, “Pnin Gives a Party,” published originally in the magazine on November 12, 1955. Later, considerably reworked, with a good many additional passages, this story made up Chapter Six in the novel Pnin, published by Doubleday in 1957.

Toward the end of his soirée, Pnin takes two of the guests, Joan Clements and Margaret Thayer, a university librarian, upstairs to show off his digs. There they come upon bookshelves “loaded with three hundred [and] sixty-five items from the Waindell College Library.” Here’s the rest of the passage, as it reads in the New Yorker:

“‘And to think I have stamped all these,’ sighed Mrs. Thayer, rolling [up] her eyes in mock dismay.

“‘Some stamped [by] Mrs. Miller,’ said Pnin, a stickler for historical truth.”

 The words I have placed in brackets above do not appear in the book. In the first two instances this makes little difference, but that word “by” in the last instance distorts a wonderful sentence in Pninian English, where “Some stamped Mrs. Miller” is perfectly logical.

The Russian syntax in Pnin’s mind allows for the direct object to come at the beginning and the subject at the end; the use of case endings in Russian nouns makes for a flexibility in word order that is impossible in English. As near as I can figure the Russian sentence would read, “Некоторые [штампы] [по]ставила госпожа Миллер.”

“Some stamped Mrs. Miller” is a nice joke, ruined by a “by.” I’m not sure whether Nabokov originally had that word in his sentence, or (more likely) proofreaders at the New Yorker, unconversant in Pninian English, felt the need to insert the “by.”

Citations from book by VLADIMIR NABOKOV, "THINK, WRITE, SPEAK"

MORE WORDS OF WISDOM FROM VLADIMIR NABOKOV

Once again, the redoubtable Brian Boyd, who has dedicated himself for years now to commendable scholarship on Nabokov, is to be congratulated. His latest publication is Vladimir Nabokov, Think, Write, Speak: Uncollected Essays, Reviews, Interviews, and Letters to the Editor, edited by Brian Boyd and Anastasia Tolstoy (NY: 2019). What follows below is not a book review, but a series of citations.

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“For good reason, Nabokov has often been considered the finest prose stylist in English. He knew that if he worked at what he wrote he could make it sing, sometimes with the complex amplitude of choral polyphony.” (Introduction, xxxii)

“I write what I like and some like what I write.” (Nab. quoted, xxxvi)

We darkly know, by Faith we cry,

The future is not Wholly Dry.

Mud unto mud! – Death eddies near –

Not here the appointed End, not here!

But somewhere, beyond Space and Time,

Is wetter water, slimier slime!

Citation from the Rupert Brooke poem “Heaven,” written from a fishy viewpoint, in an early book review by Nabokov on Brooke (8-9)

“History as an exact science is just for convenience, ‘for the simple folk,’ as the museum guard used to say, showing two skulls of one and the same criminal, in youth and old age.” (56)

“As for the whiff of revolution, it, too, having appeared by chance, will disappear by chance, as has already happened a thousand times in human history. In Russia simpleminded communism will be replaced by something more intelligent . . .” (58)

This opinion is from an essay written in 1926. Nabokov did not live to see the demise of communism in Russia, but, as he might have guessed from contemplating a thousand years of Russian history, his hapless homeland remains luckless when it comes to political systems. They got rid of the Soviets, they brought God back, but the new system turned out to be far from intelligent.

“…how eagerly and how adroitly the very slightest thing strives to slip away from man, and how inclined it is to suicide. A dropped coin, with the haste of a desperate fugitive, traces a wide arc on the floor and disappears into the farthest corner under the farthest sofa.” (69) From an essay titled “Man and Things,” 1928.

On the other hand, some things are more likely to vanish not at the hands of suicide, but of homicide. Take a donut, for example.

In Russian hotels during pre-Soviet times people would leave their footwear outside their rooms at night to be cleaned. The man in the next room, say, leaves his boots by the door. What do I care about the downtrodden, dirty clompers, as they sit there forlornly in the corridor? Not a jot. “But were my neighbor to die tonight, [be found dead in his bed in Room 606], what human warmth, what pity, what live and tender beauty would these shabby old boots—with their eyelet flaps sticking out like little ears—radiate over me.” (70) From “Man and Things.”

A small child (Nabokov) has an uncle who has died of diphtheria. They disinfect his rooms, and the child understands the disinfection as a means of separating the essence of the uncle from the things that had belonged to him, “removing from the things the dust, the smell, [all of that avuncular something] that had made these things precisely his.” (Ibid)

“A pencil is, by its very nature, softer, kinder than a pen. The pen speaks, the pencil whispers.” (72)

Идиосинкразия (idiosinkrazija) vs. Idiosyncrasy

In some of his books Nabokov likes to emphasize how paronomasia and wordplay can be overdone, to the point where the character, or even author, finds himself skipping about in a madhouse of dancing sounds and consonants. This is especially noticeable in Bend Sinister and in the index to his Gogol book.

In November, 1937, prior to the publication of his first novel published in the U.S.—Laughter in the Dark, in English—Nabokov filled out a publicity questionnaire for the publisher, Bobbs-Merrill.

In answer to one question he was thrown by the different meanings of what looks like the same word in two different languages. Here is the definition of idiosinkrazija in Russian: “an acute morbid sensitivity of the organism to certain substances or influences.” You can say, in Russian, “I have an idiosinkrazija to (morbid sensitivity to) the squeak of cotton wool.” In other words, cotton wool squeaking makes my skin crawl.

The most common meaning of the word idiosyncrasy in English is “a physiological or temperamental peculiarity.” When the questionnaire reads, “Idiosyncrasies, if any,” it is requesting a listing of odd or eccentric habits or characteristics, quirks. Nabokov might have mentioned, e.g., his synesthesia, or the way he cannot get started in the morning without the squeezed juice from two oranges. But reading the word in its Russian meaning, he answers, “The squeak of cotton wool, the touch of satin.” (133)

Coincidence

“Once, in London, I dreamt of a green wall and the very next day I was introduced to a person whose name turned out to be Greenwall. I never met him again, nor did that meeting in any way affect the course of my existence, but several years later I picked up a book from a stall and its title was Dreams and Their Meaning, by A. Greenwall.” (134)

“All writers that are worth anything are humorists. I’m not P.G. Wodehouse. I’m not a funny man, but give me an example of a great writer who is not a humorist. The best tragedian is O’Neill. He is probably the worst writer. Dostoevsky’s slapstick is wonderful, but in his tragedy he is a journalist.” (310)

“Some of my readers have read my books better than I have written them.” (314)

“The highest virtue of a writer, of any artist, is to stimulate in others an inward thrill.” (256)

In 1959, back in Paris for the first time since 1940, Nabokov doesn’t like the way it smells. “It doesn’t smell like before. What has become of the smell of dead leaves? I imagine they treat the trees with pesticide and that kills the autumn odor, or God knows what.” (273)

Reminds me of Kiev in the fall of 1986, right after Chernobyl. You wonder about the irradiated leaves that fell from the horse chestnut trees downtown. Did they smell any different?

Three Kinds of Readers

“You have lowbrow readers, for whom only the sentimental side of a book counts; middlebrows, fond of ideas, and finally the highbrows, responsive to art.” (274)

A beautiful name, Dolores, “A name with a long veil, a name with liquid eyes.” (283)

“My pleasures are the most intense known to man: butterfly hunting and writing.” (319)

“One could define a pun as two words caught in flagrante.” (370)

“I like to take a word and turn it over to see its underside, shiny or dull or adorned with motley hues absent on its upperside . . . . one finds all sorts of curious things by studying the underside of a word—unexpected shadows of other words, harmonies between them, hidden beauties that suddenly reveal something beyond the word.” (469)

“the good reader [when presented with “serious wordplay”] suddenly sees a completely new facet of an iridescent sentence.” (Ibid)

                                                  Natan Altman, "Landscape in Blue"

Translation of Poem by Михаил Лермонтов, MIKHAIL LERMONTOV, "THE SAIL" "Парус"

From the Series: Lermontov's Earliest Verse

Михаил Лермонтов

(1814-1841)

Парус

Белеет парус одинокой
В тумане моря голубом!..
Что ищет он в стране далекой?
Что кинул он в краю родном?..

Играют волны — ветер свищет,
И мачта гнется и скрыпит…
Увы! он счастия не ищет
И не от счастия бежит!

Под ним струя светлей лазури,
Над ним луч солнца золотой…
А он, мятежный, просит бури,
Как будто в бурях есть покой!

1832

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Translation by Vladimir Nabokov

The Sail

Amid the blue haze of the ocean

A sail is passing, white and frail.

What do you seek in a far country?

What have you left at home, lone sail?

The billows play, the breezes whistle,

And rhythmically creaks the mast.

Alas, you seek no happy future,

Nor do you flee a happy past.

Below the mirrored azure brightens,

Above the golden rays increase—

But you, wild rover, pray for tempests,

As if in tempests there was peace!

From Vladimir Nabokov, Verses and Versions (compilation copyright, 2008), p. 287

                                                      Dates of translation: 1944-46

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Translation by U.R. Bowie

The Sail

A lone white sail that glistens, gleams,

On seascape haze cerulean blue.

What distant realms attract his dreams?

In dear homeland what’s left to rue?

The billows surge, the winds are shrieking,

The creaking mast writhes in distress,

Alas, not happiness he’s seeking,

Nor flight from once-sought happiness.

Beneath him azure water’s streaks,   

Above him sun without surcease . . .

While he, wild one, for tempests seeks,   

As if in tempests there were peace.

                                                            Date of translation: January 21, 2020

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                                                [Lermontov wrote this poem at age 18]

Anonymous commentary, from the website RuStikh (RusVerse):

Анализ стихотворения «Парус» Михаила Лермонтова

Лермонтов написал стихотворение «Парус» в 1832 г. Юный поэт еще только начинал свой творческий путь. Тем не менее, в произведении он уже затрагивает серьезные философские вопросы, разработкой которых будет заниматься в течение всей жизни.

По жанру «Парус» является лирическим стихом. Его тема непосредственно связана с реальным событием в жизни Лермонтова. В возрасте семнадцати лет поэт бросает учебу в Московском университете и переезжает в Петербург, где под давление бабушки поступает в школу прапорщиков. Переезд в столицу был первым ответственным решением Лермонтова. От него зависела вся дальнейшая судьба поэта. В стихотворении «Парус» в полной мере отразились его размышления и надежды.

Центральный образ стихотворения – одинокий парус в безбрежном море, который сравнивается с состоянием лирического героя. Лермонтов сразу ставит риторические вопросы о цели своего существования. В них аллегорически противопоставляются Москва («в краю родном») и Петербург («в стране далекой»).

Спокойное море поэт сравнивает со своей прежней безмятежной жизнью. Романтическая натура Лермонтова жаждет перемен. Карьера военного не была его идеалом, просто в ней поэт видел возможность активной деятельности. На самом деле он еще находился на жизненном перепутье.

В стихотворении просматривается мотив одиночества и неприятия окружающего мира, свойственный поздней лирике Лермонтова. Беспокойная натура поэта подобна «мятежному» парусу, который «просит бури». Большое значение имеет утверждение: «он счастия не ищет». Лермонтов признается, что его стремление к активной деятельности не связано с улучшением собственного положения. Он сознательно готов к жизненным лишениям и страданиям ради свершения какого-либо великого поступка.

Философский смысл стиха не умаляет его художественных достоинств. «Парус» — прекрасный образец пейзажной лирики. Яркие эпитеты создают перед читателем удивительно правдивую картину («голубом», «золотой»).

Произведение проникнуто особой динамикой. Автор применяет риторические вопросы и восклицания. Многоточия подчеркивают глубину размышлений лирического героя.

В целом стихотворение «Парус» — очень глубокое. В нем молодой Лермонтов смог показать наличие большого многогранного таланта. Мастерское сочетание чистой лирики с философской темой – редкое поэтическое качество. Лермонтов заявил о себе, как о поэте, которого ждет великое будущее.

                                                                      Ivan Aivazovsky

Poem declaimed in Russian by Svetlana Smirnova:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhOcBRhMvzc

Translation of Poem by MIKHAIL LERMONTOV, "Небо и звезды" "SKY AND STARS"

Photograph of Dniepr River, Taken from Space

From the Series: Lermontov's Earliest Verse

Михаил Лермонтов
(1814-1841)

Небо и звезды

Чисто вечернее небо,
Ясны далекие звезды,
Ясны как счастье ребенка;
О! для чего мне нельзя и подумать:
Звезды, вы ясны, как счастье мое!

Чем ты несчастлив,
Скажут мне люди?
Тем я несчастлив,
Добрые люди, что звезды и небо
Звезды и небо! — а я человек!..

Люди друг к другу
Зависть питают;
Я же, напротив,
Только завидую звездам прекрасным,
Только их место занять бы желал.

1831

Translation by Vladimir Nabokov

The Sky and the Stars

Fair is the evening sky,

Clear are the stars in the distance,

As clear as the joy of an infant.

Oh, why can’t I tell myself even in thought:

The stars are as clear as my joy!

What is your trouble?

People might query.

Just this is my trouble,

Excellent people: the sky and the stars

Are the stars and the sky, whereas I am a man.

People are envious

Of one another.

I, on the contrary,

Only the beautiful stars do I envy,

Only to be in their place do I wish.

                                                       Date of translation: 1944-47

From Vladimir Nabokov, Verses and Versions (compilation copyright, 2008), p. 279

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Translation by U.R. Bowie

Sky and Stars

Pure is the sky in the gloaming,

Clear are the faraway stars,

Clear as a happiness is in a child.

O why am I forbidden to think:

Stars, you are clear as my happiness!

What makes you unhappy?

The people might ask me.

What makes me unhappy,

Kind people, is this:

That stars and the sky

Are all stars and all sky,

While me, what mere I am is man!

People nurse envy

The one for the other;

But I, as for me, not at all,

Envy I only the stars in their loveliness,

Only one wish do I have: to be stars.
                                                          Date of translation: Jan. 18, 2020

                                                      [Lermontov wrote this poem at age 17]

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Anonymous commentary, from the website RuStikh (RusVerse):

Анализ стихотворения «Небо и звезды» Лермонтова

Произведение «Небо и звезды» Михаила Юрьевича Лермонтова – сочетание экспериментальной формы с глубиной философской лирики.

Стихотворение написано в 1831 году. Его автору исполнилось в эту пору 17 лет, он студент университета с похвальными оценками по гуманитарным предметам. Осенью этого года он лишился отца, умершего от чахотки. По жанру – элегия, дума, по размеру – дактиль без рифм, 3 строфы. Лирический герой – сам автор. Образы просты и вечны. Помимо тех, что стали названием стихотворения, есть еще: ребенок, счастье, люди. Поэт стремится к безыскусной красоте. Интонация человека, заговорившего после потока долгих одиноких слез. В ней чувствуется беззащитность и детскость: чисто небо, ясны звезды. Сравнение: как счастье ребенка. Для героя это, видимо, самое высокое сравнение из всех существующих. Анафора: ясны (в заключительной строфе она выражена словом «только»). Междометие «о!» и восклицание подчеркивают удрученность героя. Ему примерно 17 лет и он желал бы, чтобы его радость и принятие жизни вновь стали бы такими, как в раннем детстве. Разные события могли его настроить на минорный лад: смерть матери, разлука с отцом, а теперь и его смерть, поиск своего призвания, дружбы, две восторженные влюбленности, отрезвленные насмешливостью или холодностью избранниц его сердца. Конечно, чтение Д. Байрона также не прошло даром. Вторая строфа – воображаемый диалог с людьми, обществом, знакомыми, родными. Здесь применен прием параллелизма: «Чем ты несчастлив?» И ответ: я человек!.. В этом пятистишии есть и инверсия (скажут люди), и вопрос с ответом: чем ты-тем я, простонародное обращение «добрые люди», парадоксальное сравнение. Наконец, в 3 строфе констатация факта: люди зависть питают. Их привлекает статус, власть, материальные блага, внешность. Но герой смотрит не на них, а вверх. «Завидую звездам». Более того, «их место занять бы желал». В сиянии этих небесных тел он видит подлинную простоту, мудрость, величие. В их молчании куда больше смысла, чем в беседах людей. Свой путь им известен, и они не отклоняются от него. Есть здесь и некоторый вызов, очередное противопоставление себя обществу, возможно, даже толпе. Финальная строка звучит вполне пророчески: на литературном небосклоне М. Лермонтов такой звездой стал.

Впервые стихи «Небо и звезды» М. Лермонтова были опубликованы в «Библиотеке для чтения» уже после смерти поэта.

Poem declaimed in Russian by I. Kvasha:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmqibDI8K6k

On Literary Influences: NABOKOV AND UPDIKE

ON LITERARY INFLUENCES: NABOKOV AND UPDIKE

“Writing shows its influences by the contagion of rhythm and pacing more often than by exact imitation or ideas. We know that Updike read Nabokov in the nineteen-sixties by the sudden license Updike claims to unsubdue his prose, to make his sentences self-consciously exclamatory, rather than by an onset of chess playing or butterfly collecting.”

Adam Gopnik

Caricatures by David Levine

Simon Karlinsky, and Russian Writers, on THE DOWNSIDE OF DOSTOEVSKY: ДОСТОЕВЩИНА

Simon Karlinsky, and Russian Writers, on The Downside of Dostoevsky

Despite my admiration for Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky (FMD) as a psychologist and philosopher, there are things I do not appreciate about his fiction. Far from all Russian writers accept Dostoevsky’s greatness. Well-known figures such as Chekhov, Bunin, Tsvetaeva and Nabokov are often contemptuous in their disdain of FMD.

For a thorough account of objections to Dostoevsky’s writings, a good place to start is the article by Simon Karlinsky, “Dostoevsky as Rorschach Test” [originally published in "The New York Times," June 13, 1971; reprinted in The Norton Critical Edition of Crime and Punishment, p. 629-36]. Here are a few quotations from that article.

“All accepted standards of literary criticism and textual analysis tend to break down when applied to Dostoevsky. His prose has always been a magnet for the kind of reader (and commentator) who does not give a hoot about the art of literature, who mistrusts sober observation of reality, and who primarily looks for a reflection of his own self and for a possible vehicle of self-expression in every book he reads.”

Often “neither his biography, nor his general views are familiar to those who modishly bandy his name about. Someone ought to translate the set of disgustingly chauvinistic, jingoist and anti-Semitic poems (yes, poems) that Dostoevsky wrote in the late 1850s, urging that Russia conquer other countries, calling down God’s blessing on Russian conquests and denouncing the Jews as leeches who torture Russia; copies of these poems should be handed out to all the starry-eyed champions of the progressive, revolutionary Dostoevsky. Of course, a simple reading of The Possessed [The Devils] and of The Diary of a Writer might also help.”

“There somehow has to be room for a more balanced appraisal that takes into full cognizance Dostoevsky’s obscurantist, reactionary ideology, the excessively nagging and hysterical tone of his narrators, the cheap and flashy effects with which he stages some of his dramatic confrontations, and the occasional but undeniable sloppiness of his plots and of his Russian style.”

“One of the best kept secrets in Western criticism is that Dostoevsky does not happen to be everyone’s cup of tea. Many intelligent, compassionate, sensitive people find his overheated universe of stormy passions, gratuitous cruelty, tormented children and hysterical women definitely uncongenial.”

“Russian dictionaries list a common noun, derived from the writer’s name, достоевщина (dostoevshchina), which is a derogatory term describing an undesirable mode of behavior. A person guilty of dostoevshchina is being deliberately difficult, hysterical or perverse. Another possible meaning of this word is excessive and morbid preoccupation with one’s own psychological processes. The word, incidentally, is part of the normal Russian vocabulary.”

“Tolstoy tried to reread The Brothers Karamazov in 1910, the year of his death. ‘I’ve started reading it,’ he wrote to one of his correspondents, ‘but I cannot conquer my revulsion for its lack of artistic quality, its frivolity, posturings and wrong-headed attitude toward important matters.’”

“First reading Dostoevsky at age twenty-nine, Anton Chekhov wrote to his publisher Suvorin: ‘It’s all right but much too long and lacking in modesty. Too pretentious.’ In Chekhov’s stories and personal letters, the name of Dostoevsky usually occurs in passages condemning some high-strung, hysterical or hypocritical female.”

During his lifetime Vladimir Nabokov qualified Dostoevsky as “a cheap sensationalist, clumsy and vulgar,” “a prophet, a claptrap journalist, and a slapdash comedian,” and “a much overrated sentimental and Gothic novelist.”

But “it was none other than Nabokov who in Lolita gave the world a full-scale treatment of a subject around which Dostoevsky circled like a cat around a saucer of hot milk in novel after novel, only to recoil from it in horror.” Pedophilia.