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VN vs. Dostoevsky: What's Envy Got to Do With It? (fwd)
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From: Rodney Welch <rodney41@mindspring.com>
In a recent letter to Salon.com, second-hand comments attributed to the
translators Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky address Nabokov's
long-running feud with Dostoevsky.
First, a little background -- as the letter comes in response to Laura
Miller's Salon article, "Sentenced to Death," which addresses (rather
poorly, in my view) the issues raised by B.N. Myers' now-famous attack in
the Atlantic on modern literary prose, which urged a return to
plot-oriented, meat-and-potatoes literature.
Myers, as has been noted in this forum, proclaims himself a fan of
Nabokov, as well as James, Proust, Faulkner, Joyce, Woolf and Conrad -- all
of whom, as Lee Siegel demonstrated in a recent L.A. Times article, could
easily be attacked for the kind of stylistic fetishism Myers finds in
Proulx, DeLillo, Auster, McCarthy and Guterson. Myers' essay is a
bone-headed and demagogic thing that jointly proclaims the glories of great
literature and sneers at the idea of paying close attention to it; bad
writing, he frankly tells us, is writing that requires to be re-read,
raising the question as to just how much Proust, James or Nabokov he's ever
read to begin with.
Disappointingly, Salon Fiction Editor Laura Miller more or less came
down on Myers' side. Style, for her, is quite beside the point. "...DeLillo
can write circles around Dreiser," she states, "but when it comes to writing
novels, Dreiser wipes the floor with the author of `Underworld.' (Likewise,
people who read Russian say that Dostoyevsky is an equally inept stylist --
and he certainly in translation doesn't come across as a Nabokovian word
magician -- but that doesn't keep 'Crime and Punishment' from being a
brilliant book.)"
A Salon correspondent named David Bowman offered the following in
response:
Great essay but I have to talk to you about "Crime & Punishment." The
only reader of Russian lit who says Dostoyevsky reads poorly in Russian was
Nabokov. I always wondered about this and recently had the opportunity to
talk to Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, the husband and wife Russian
translating team. "Nabokov envied Dostoyevsky," Pevear told me. "Every time
Nabokov wanted to write something, he found Dostoyevsky had already written
it." Pevear also said Nabokov had Tolstoy-like nobility aspirations, and
scorn for Dostoyevsky's lower-class position. "He doesn't like Dostoyevsky's
religion either. Nabokov was -- what did our friend call him? --
'pseudo-aphoristic.'"
"He also hadn't read Dostoyevsky since he'd been a young man," Larissa
added. "Nabokov writes from memory about Dostoyevsky. He makes big
mistakes."
Nabokov also raged (correctly!) against Constance Garnett, the woman who had
a monopoly on translations of Dostoyevsky for most of the 20th century. "She
made everyone sound the same," Pevear told me. "Tolstoy sounds like
Dostoyevsky and they all sound like Chekhov ..."
"Dostoyevsky's humor," Larissa added, "is lost in Garnett, and he's
extremely funny." She also said, "Garnett actually influenced a lot of
English-language writing. Hemingway, for instance, thought he was influenced
by Dostoyevsky, but he was influenced by Mrs. Garnett."
Maybe you could say the following about French or German literature, but I
know that none of us really know the richness of a Russian sentence unless
we read Russian.
-- David Bowman
I am particularly intrigued by Ms. Volokhonsky's assertion that Nabokov
spoke from memory, which is absurd on its face. Nabokov, as we all know,
taught Russian Literature at Cornell and Wellesley in the 1950s and the
close, if hardly popular, analysis he gives to Dostoevsky's novels in the
printed lectures demonstrates (to me, anyway) that he knows the books well.
The envy charge seems to me similarly ridiculous, and I also know, from
previous correspondence with Galya Diment, that Nabokov is hardly alone in
thinking Dostoevsky a poor stylist in his native tongue.
As the Russian language is hardly my turf, I'd love to hear from the
experts.
Rodney Welch
Columbia, SC
In a recent letter to Salon.com, second-hand comments attributed to the
translators Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky address Nabokov's
long-running feud with Dostoevsky.
First, a little background -- as the letter comes in response to Laura
Miller's Salon article, "Sentenced to Death," which addresses (rather
poorly, in my view) the issues raised by B.N. Myers' now-famous attack in
the Atlantic on modern literary prose, which urged a return to
plot-oriented, meat-and-potatoes literature.
Myers, as has been noted in this forum, proclaims himself a fan of
Nabokov, as well as James, Proust, Faulkner, Joyce, Woolf and Conrad -- all
of whom, as Lee Siegel demonstrated in a recent L.A. Times article, could
easily be attacked for the kind of stylistic fetishism Myers finds in
Proulx, DeLillo, Auster, McCarthy and Guterson. Myers' essay is a
bone-headed and demagogic thing that jointly proclaims the glories of great
literature and sneers at the idea of paying close attention to it; bad
writing, he frankly tells us, is writing that requires to be re-read,
raising the question as to just how much Proust, James or Nabokov he's ever
read to begin with.
Disappointingly, Salon Fiction Editor Laura Miller more or less came
down on Myers' side. Style, for her, is quite beside the point. "...DeLillo
can write circles around Dreiser," she states, "but when it comes to writing
novels, Dreiser wipes the floor with the author of `Underworld.' (Likewise,
people who read Russian say that Dostoyevsky is an equally inept stylist --
and he certainly in translation doesn't come across as a Nabokovian word
magician -- but that doesn't keep 'Crime and Punishment' from being a
brilliant book.)"
A Salon correspondent named David Bowman offered the following in
response:
Great essay but I have to talk to you about "Crime & Punishment." The
only reader of Russian lit who says Dostoyevsky reads poorly in Russian was
Nabokov. I always wondered about this and recently had the opportunity to
talk to Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, the husband and wife Russian
translating team. "Nabokov envied Dostoyevsky," Pevear told me. "Every time
Nabokov wanted to write something, he found Dostoyevsky had already written
it." Pevear also said Nabokov had Tolstoy-like nobility aspirations, and
scorn for Dostoyevsky's lower-class position. "He doesn't like Dostoyevsky's
religion either. Nabokov was -- what did our friend call him? --
'pseudo-aphoristic.'"
"He also hadn't read Dostoyevsky since he'd been a young man," Larissa
added. "Nabokov writes from memory about Dostoyevsky. He makes big
mistakes."
Nabokov also raged (correctly!) against Constance Garnett, the woman who had
a monopoly on translations of Dostoyevsky for most of the 20th century. "She
made everyone sound the same," Pevear told me. "Tolstoy sounds like
Dostoyevsky and they all sound like Chekhov ..."
"Dostoyevsky's humor," Larissa added, "is lost in Garnett, and he's
extremely funny." She also said, "Garnett actually influenced a lot of
English-language writing. Hemingway, for instance, thought he was influenced
by Dostoyevsky, but he was influenced by Mrs. Garnett."
Maybe you could say the following about French or German literature, but I
know that none of us really know the richness of a Russian sentence unless
we read Russian.
-- David Bowman
I am particularly intrigued by Ms. Volokhonsky's assertion that Nabokov
spoke from memory, which is absurd on its face. Nabokov, as we all know,
taught Russian Literature at Cornell and Wellesley in the 1950s and the
close, if hardly popular, analysis he gives to Dostoevsky's novels in the
printed lectures demonstrates (to me, anyway) that he knows the books well.
The envy charge seems to me similarly ridiculous, and I also know, from
previous correspondence with Galya Diment, that Nabokov is hardly alone in
thinking Dostoevsky a poor stylist in his native tongue.
As the Russian language is hardly my turf, I'd love to hear from the
experts.
Rodney Welch
Columbia, SC