Tuesday, October 30, 2012

News at Eleven: Dmitri Nabokov was an experienced translator

of his father [Vladimir Nabakov]'s work and his rendering of "The University Poem", about a love affair in Cambridge, is a triumph of understated felicity. There are, however, occasions when his versions prove intrusive. Take the translation of "Easter", a poem written in the weeks after Nabokov's father's death, which begins as follows:

I see a radiant cloud, I see a rooftop glisten
like a mirror, far away . . . I listen
to breathing shade, light's stillicide . . .

from The Telegraph: Collected Poems by Vladimir Nabokov, ed by Thomas Karshan: review

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