In Mr. Wilson's collection of betes noires my favorite is «sapajou». He wonders why I render dostoyno staryh obez'yan as «worthy of old sapajous» and not as «worthy of old monkeys». True, obez'yana means any kind of monkey but it so happens that neither «monkey» nor «ape» is good enough in the context.
«Sapajou» (which technically is applied to two genera of neotropical monkeys) has in French a colloquial sense of «ruffian», «lecher», «ridiculous chap». Now, in lines 12 and 911 of Four: vii («the less we love a woman, the easier 'tis to be liked by her . . . but that grand game is worthy of old sapajous of our forefathers' vaunted times») Pushkin echoes a moralistic passage in his own letter written in French from Kishinev to his young brother in Moscow in the autumn of 1822, that is seven months before beginning Eugene Onegin and two years before reaching Canto Four. The passage, well known to readers of Pushkin, goes: «Moins on aime une femme et plus on est sur de I'avoir . . . mats cettepuissance est digne d'un vieux sapajou du dixhuittemesiicle».
Not only could I not resist the temptation of retranslating the obez'yan of the canto into the AngloFrench «sapajous» of the letter, but I was also looking forward to somebody's pouncing on that word and allowing me to retaliate with that wonderfully satisfying reference. Mr. Wilson obliged — and here it is.
«There are also actual errors of English», continued Mr. Wilson, and gives three examples: «dwelled» which I prefer to «dwelt»; «about me», which in Two: xxxix: 14 is used to render obo mne instead of the better «of me»; and the word «loaden», which Mr. Wilson «had never heard before». But «dwelled» is marked in my dictionary only «less usual» — not «incorrect»; «remind about» is not quite impossible (e.g., «remind me about it tomorrow»); as to «loaden», which Mr. Wilson suggests replacing by «loadened», his English wobbles, not mine, since «loaden» is the correct past participle and participial adjective of «load».
In the course of his strange defense of Arndt's version — in which, according to Mr. Wilson, I had been assiduously tracking down Germanisms — he asserts that «it is not difficult to find Russianisms in Nabokov» and turns up one, or the shadow of one («left us» should be «has left us» in a passage that I cannot trace). Surely there must be more than one such slip in a work fifteen hundred pages long devoted by a Russian to a Russian poem; however, the two other Russianisms Mr. Wilson lists are the figments of his own ignorance:
In translating slushat' shum morskoy (Eight: iv: 11) I chose the archaic and poetic transitive turn «to listen the sound of the sea» because the relevant passage has in Pushkin a stylized archaic tone. Mr. Wilson may not care for this turn — I do not much care for it either — but it is silly of him to assume that I lapsed into a naive Russianism not being really aware that, as he tells me, «in English you have to listen to something». First, it is Mr. Wilson who is not aware of the fact that there exists an analogous construction in Russian prislushivat'sya k zvuku, «to listen closely to the sound» — which, of course, makes nonsense of the exclusive Russianism imagined by him, and secondly, had he happcned to leaf through a certain canto of Don Juan, written in the year Pushkin was beginning his poem, or a certain Ode to Memory, written when Pushkin's poem was being finished, my learned friend would have concluded that Byron («Listening debates not very wise or witty») and Tennyson («Listening rhe lordly music») must have had quite as much Russian blood as Pushkin and I.
In the mazurka of Canto Five one of the dancers «leads Tatiana with Olga» (podvyol Tat'yanu s Ol'goy) towards Onegin. This has little to do with the idiomatic my s ney (which is lexically «we with her», but may mean «she and I») that Mr. Wilson mentions. Actually, in order to cram both girls into the first three feet of Five: xiiv: 3, Pushkin allowed himself a minor solecism. The construction
Tat'yanu i Ol'gu would have been better Russian (just as «Tatiana and Olga» would have been better English), but it would not have scanned. Now Mr. Wilson should note carefully that this unfortunate Tat'yanu s Ol'goy has an additional repercussion: it clashes unpleasantly with the next line where the associative form is compulsory: Onegin s Ol'goyu poshyol, «Onegin goes with Olga». Throughout my translation I have remained a thousand times more faithful to Pushkin's Russian than to Wilson's English and therefore in these passages I did not hesitate to reproduce both the solecism and the ensuing clash.
«The handling of French is peculiar», grimly observes Mr. Wilson, and adduces three instances:
«The name of Rousseau's heroine is», he affirms, «given on one page as Julie and on the next as Julia». This is an absurd cavil since she is named Julie all the thirteen times she is mentioned in the course of the four-page note referring to her (the note to Three: ix: 7), as well as numerous times elsewhere (see Index); but maybe Mr.
Wilson has confused her with Augustus' or Byron's girl (see Index again).
The second «peculiar» example refers to the word monde in the world-of-fashion sense copiously described in my note to One: v: 8 (le monde, le beau monde, le grand monde). According to Mr. Wilson it should always appear with its «le» in the translation of the poem. This is an inept practice, of course (advocated mainly by those who, like Mr. Wilson, are insecure and self-conscious in their use of le and la), and would have resulted in saying «le noisy monde» instead of «the noisy monde» (Eight: xxxiv: 12). English writers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries wrote «the monde», not «le monde». I am sure that if Mr. Wilson consults the OED, which I do not have here, he will find examples from Walpole, Byron, Thackeray, and others. What was good enough for them is good enough for Pushkin and me.
Finally, in this peculiar group of peculiar French there is the word sauvage, which according to Mr. Wilson should not have appeared in my rendering of Two: xxv: 5, dika, pechal'na, molchaliva, «sauvage, sad, silent»; but apart from the fact that it has no exact English equivalent, I chose this signal word to warn readers that Pushkin was using dika not simply in the sense of wild or «unsociable but in a Gallic sense as a translation of «sauvage». Incidentally, it often occurs in English novels of the time along with monde and ennui.
«As for the classics», says Mr. Wilson, «Zoilus should be Zu'ilus and Eol, Aeolus». But the diacritical sign is quite superfluous in the first case (see, for instance, Webster) and «Eol» is a poetical abbreviation constantly cropping up in English poetry. Moreover, Mr, Wilson can find the full form in my Index. I am unable to prevent my own Zoilus from imitating a bright and saucy schoolboy, but really he should not tell me how to spell the plural of «automaton» which has two endings, both correct. And what business does he have to rebuke me for preferring Theocritus to Virgil and to insinuate that I have read neither?
There is also the strange case of «stuss». «What does N. mean», queries Mr. Wilson, «when he speaks of Pushkin's addiction to stuss? This is not an English word and if he means the Hebrew word for nonsense which has been absorbed into German, it ought to be italicized and capitalized. But even on this assumption it hardly makes sense». This is Mr. Wilson's nonsense, not mine. «Stuss» is the Knglish name of a card game which I discuss at length in my notes on Pushkin's addiction to gambling. Mr. Wilson should really consult some of my notes (and Webster's dictionary).
Then there is Mr. Nabokov's style. My style may be all Mr. Wilson says, clumsy, banal, etc. But in regard to the examples he gives it is not unnecessarily clumsy, banal, etc. If in translating toska lyubvi Tat'yanu-gonit (Three: xvi: 1), «the ache of love chases Tatiana» (not «the ache of loss», as Mr. Wilson nonsensically misquotes), I put «chases» instead of the «pursues» that Mr. Wilson has the temerity to propose, I do so not only because «pursues» is in Russian not gonit but presleduet, but also because, as Mr. Wilson has not noticed, it would be a misleading repetition of the «pursue» used in the preceding stanza (tebya presleduyut mechty, «daydreams pursue you»), and my method is to repeat a term at close range only when Pushkin repeats it.