----- Original Message -----
Sent: Tuesday, April 27, 2004 2:06
PM
Subject: Fw: Russian paper delivered
electronically
EDNOTE. Alexey Sklyarenko, Petersburg Nabokovian
and translator of ADA, presents his paper "ADA's Russian Anagrams" in
honor of VN's birthday.
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----- Original Message -----
Sent: Friday, April 23, 2004 7:28 AM
Subject: Russian paper delievered electronically
Dear List members (particularly those of you who
read Russian and can read the Cyrillic on your computers),
I didn't participate this year in the annual Nabokov conference
("Nabokovskie chteniya") which took place yesterday at the Nabokov
museum. In compensation, I would like to offer you a short article I have just
finished. Alas, it is in Russian and has still to be translated (I hope,
the English translation will appear in the fall issue of The Nabokovian). I
know the electronic Russian version of my paper will have a not very
wide readership, but on the other hand, I will find in you the most
intelligent audience imaginable. In fact, there will be among you several
people whose opinion about my work I value most.
-------------------------------------------------
Much to my regret, Ada still remains the antiterra
incognita not only for most Russian readers, but also for most Russian Nabokov
scholars, including several unfortunate "translators" of that novel. And this
despite the fact that Ada fits so well in Russian cultural
tradition that it can be termed, as I do it at the end of my note, "a Russian
novel written in English."
My dear friend Carolyn Kunin has promised to continue to help me
translating my notes into English. But at the moment she is busy translating
v. Lichberg's "Lolita" for the benefit of the non-German-reading part of the
List. She says my difficult Russian note has to wait. Well, I don't protest.
May be she is right after all?
Alexey Sklyarenko