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VN and Translating Bely
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From: naiman@socrates.berkeley.edu
If Bad Translations Did Not Exist, Would VN Have Had to Invent Them?
I've been working on an article about Nabokov's use of geometric imagery
and am being driven crazy by the following remark from his 1966 "Reply to
My Critics" (i.e. Wilson), reproduced in Strong Opinions (p.243). Nabokov
is talking about "the amount of unwillful deceit going on in the
translation trade." "I recall once opening a copy of Bely's Petersburg in
English, and lighting upon a monumental howler in a famous passage about a
blue coupe which had been hopelessly discolored by the translator's
understanding kubovyy (which means "Blue") as "cubic"! This has remained
a model and a symbol."
A model and a symbol of what? This mistake struck me as one that
would have been, obviously, fitting to Bely's own wordplay, perhaps even
a wordplay that Nabokov might have pocketed for his own use. I have
tried to find it in both versions of Petersburg and in the Cournos
translation -- the only one around at the time. The problem is -- I
can't. The phrase isn't used in the famous description of AA's trip to
the Ministry, and I haven't been able to find it elsewhere. AA's carriage
is black, not blue. Ableukhov is referred to as the "gosudarstvennyi
chelovek iz chernogo kuba karety", and Cournos renders this as "this
mighty official who was confined within the dark cube of his carriage".
Making this all the more mysterious is the difficulty of discerning
which adjective is actually meant if kubovyi/kubovoi modifies a feminine
noun. Finally, if we turn to John Malmstad's publication of Khodasevich's
letters to Nabokov, we find the following fragment from the other half of
the correspondence (Nabokov to Khodasevich): "Ia chital "Peterburg" raza
chetyre - v upoenii - no davno. ("Kubovyi kub karety," baron-borona,"
kakoe-to ochen' khoroshee krasnoe piatno -- kazhetsia ot maskaradnogo
plashcha, - ni pomniu tochno; frazy na daktilicheskikh ressorakh; tikanie
bomby v sortire...) [trans:I've read Petersburg 4 times, in rapture, but a
long time ago. ("The blue cube of the carriage," etc)]
If the phrase kubovyi kub karety actually exists in Petersburg,
the mistranslation would be a howler, indeed, since it would have to be
"the cubic cube of the carriage." But, as I noted above, I can't find it.
Has anyone else tried to find it in either the Russian Petersburg or the
Cournos translation? If it isn't there, it seems that a quarter of a
century before the discolored translation was published, Nabokov himself
came up with a pun on kubovyi/kubovoi, retrospectively inscribed it in
Petersburg and later attributed it to an inept translator. Is bad
translation an essential part of fiction? Is this unwillful deceit, or
VN's version of a creative critic crying wolf?
Any help would be greatly appreciated; kubovyi kub karety is
probably staring me in the face and I just haven't seen it.....If so,
I would be very grateful for a page citation in Bely or Cournos, and I'll
accept that the unwillful deceit has been mine.
Eric Naiman
If Bad Translations Did Not Exist, Would VN Have Had to Invent Them?
I've been working on an article about Nabokov's use of geometric imagery
and am being driven crazy by the following remark from his 1966 "Reply to
My Critics" (i.e. Wilson), reproduced in Strong Opinions (p.243). Nabokov
is talking about "the amount of unwillful deceit going on in the
translation trade." "I recall once opening a copy of Bely's Petersburg in
English, and lighting upon a monumental howler in a famous passage about a
blue coupe which had been hopelessly discolored by the translator's
understanding kubovyy (which means "Blue") as "cubic"! This has remained
a model and a symbol."
A model and a symbol of what? This mistake struck me as one that
would have been, obviously, fitting to Bely's own wordplay, perhaps even
a wordplay that Nabokov might have pocketed for his own use. I have
tried to find it in both versions of Petersburg and in the Cournos
translation -- the only one around at the time. The problem is -- I
can't. The phrase isn't used in the famous description of AA's trip to
the Ministry, and I haven't been able to find it elsewhere. AA's carriage
is black, not blue. Ableukhov is referred to as the "gosudarstvennyi
chelovek iz chernogo kuba karety", and Cournos renders this as "this
mighty official who was confined within the dark cube of his carriage".
Making this all the more mysterious is the difficulty of discerning
which adjective is actually meant if kubovyi/kubovoi modifies a feminine
noun. Finally, if we turn to John Malmstad's publication of Khodasevich's
letters to Nabokov, we find the following fragment from the other half of
the correspondence (Nabokov to Khodasevich): "Ia chital "Peterburg" raza
chetyre - v upoenii - no davno. ("Kubovyi kub karety," baron-borona,"
kakoe-to ochen' khoroshee krasnoe piatno -- kazhetsia ot maskaradnogo
plashcha, - ni pomniu tochno; frazy na daktilicheskikh ressorakh; tikanie
bomby v sortire...) [trans:I've read Petersburg 4 times, in rapture, but a
long time ago. ("The blue cube of the carriage," etc)]
If the phrase kubovyi kub karety actually exists in Petersburg,
the mistranslation would be a howler, indeed, since it would have to be
"the cubic cube of the carriage." But, as I noted above, I can't find it.
Has anyone else tried to find it in either the Russian Petersburg or the
Cournos translation? If it isn't there, it seems that a quarter of a
century before the discolored translation was published, Nabokov himself
came up with a pun on kubovyi/kubovoi, retrospectively inscribed it in
Petersburg and later attributed it to an inept translator. Is bad
translation an essential part of fiction? Is this unwillful deceit, or
VN's version of a creative critic crying wolf?
Any help would be greatly appreciated; kubovyi kub karety is
probably staring me in the face and I just haven't seen it.....If so,
I would be very grateful for a page citation in Bely or Cournos, and I'll
accept that the unwillful deceit has been mine.
Eric Naiman