Thank you for introducing us to Roald Hoffmann. His biography makes
you wonder if he ever sleeps! I note that his family names include
"Safran" and wonder if he is related to Jonathan Safran Foer, the young
novelist, whose family is also from the Ukraine.
On another matter: I just finished reading "The Eye" which, as you
know, was translated by Nabokov and Dimitri into English from the
original Russian of 1930. I am wondering if anyone out there who has
read the Russian version can tell me if the translation changed things
from the original. The story in English seemed to me very akin to
Nabokov's later work. Is that simply consistency, or does it reflect
changes made in the translation? Thanks very much, Fran Assa
EDNote: I take this opportunity to remind subscribers of Jane Grayson's
Nabokov Translated (Oxford, 1977), which catalogs and discusses
many of the changes that were made in the English versions. More
recently, Joanna Trzeciak has been writing on Nabokov's
self-translations. ~SB