EUGENE ONEGIN (ЕВГЕНИЙ ОНЕГИН) IN ENGLISH
Eugene Onegin (Евгений Онегин) is a novel written by Aleksandr Pushkin. It is, moreover,
a novel in verse. As Pushkin wrote to a friend, “Я теперь пишу не роман, а роман в
стихахдьявольская разница.” [“I am now writing, not a novel, but a novel in versea
devil of a difference.”] The importance of Pushkin for Russian literature is, I think, very
much underestimated in the West, but certainly not by Russian writers themselves.
Moreover, most Russians are convinced that Eugene Onegin is Pushkin’s greatest work.
It was published in serial form between 1825 and 1832. The first complete edition was
published in 1833, the currently accepted version being based on the 1837 publication.
The first small passage translated into English (the last seven lines of Pushkin’s dedication)
was published in 1845 by Thomas Budd Shaw.
But the problem of making a complete translation is made extremely difficult by the
nature of the Onegin stanza, in which most of the novel is written. This consists of
rhymed iambic tetrameters with a strict rhyme scheme given on the handout. It has
occasionally been used in English, notably by Vikram Seth in his 1986 novel The Golden
Gate; a few other examples are quoted in the handout.
Translation is always difficult. As Tony Briggs in his short book on Eugene
Onegin says, “no translation transmits anything to its reader beyond the basic story line and
a pallid afterglow of Pushkin’s style.” Nevertheless, as quoted on the handout, Pushkin
himself did write in 1830 that «Переводчики почтовые лошади просвещения»
(“Translators are the post-horses of civilization”).
Tetrameters are not in themselves unusual in English, although it is probably fair to
say that, as Nabokov puts it, the tetrameter “has said in Russian what the pentameter has
said in English and the hexameter in French.” Rhyme is more difficult in English than in
Russian, the point being that Russian is a highly inflected language with a structure not
unlike Latin, although with a different vocabulary (compare amo, amas, amat, amamus,
amatis, amant with говорю, говориш, говорит, говорим, говорите, говорят). So the
problems of translation are particularly acute in this case.
Although there were a few more partial translations, the first complete translation
was made by Lt-Col. Spalding in 1881. Spalding apparently learned Russian while
stationed at the British Embassy in St. Petersburg. As you can see, he did write
tetrameters, and he took what Briggs described as a “brave decision” to stick to masculine
rhymes, so that for example the first four rhyme endings in the quoted stanza are ‘extreme /
disease / esteem / sees’. Those who try to stick more closely to Pushkin’s scheme and so
use feminine rhymes go for rhymes such as Elton’s ‘sickened / high / quickened / I’. But it
is arguable that it is more difficult to make schemes including feminine rhymes read easily
and naturally in English.
I shall ignore various unimportant translations which are, however, listed on the
handout.
The first translator who attempted to stick strictly to the metre and rhyme of the
original was Babette Deutsch (1895–1982), who was an American poet, critic, translator,
and novelist. Her translation first appeared in 1936 (and was revised in 1943 and 1964).
It was rapidly followed by one by Oliver Elton in 1937 (revised by Briggs in 1995).
One of the three most highly praised translations sticking to the rhyme and meter,
that of Walter Arndt, was published in 1963 (revised in 1992).
A very important development in 1964 was the appearance of the translation by
Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977), nowadays probably best known as the author of Lolita.
This translation provoked an enormous controversy. Nabokov entitled one of his books
Strong Opinions, and he certainly had strong opinions on translation.
He states that,
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‘attempts to render a poem in another language fall into three categories:
‘(1) Paraphrasistic: offering a free version of the original, with omissions and
additions prompted by the exigencies of form, the conventions attributed to the consumer,
and the translator’s ignorance
‘(2) Lexical (or constructional): rendering the basic meaning of words (and their
order)
‘(3) Literal: rendering, as closely as the associative and syntactical capacities of
another language allow, the exact contextual meaning of the original. Only this is true
translation.’
He goes on to say that, ‘I have always been amused by the stereotyped compliment
that a reviewer pays the author of a “new translation.” He says: “It reads smoothly.” In
other words, the hack who has never read the original, and does not know the language,
praises an imitation as readable because easy platitudes have replaced in it the intricacies of
which he is unaware.’
I think it will come as no surprise that this point of view was not shared by many
reviewers. Most famously, Edmund Wilson, who had until then been a friend of
Nabokov’s, wrote a stinging review in The New York Review of Books. He pointed out
that Nabokov’s translation caused the reader to have recourse to the OED for English
words he would never have seen and will never have occasion to use. He also took
exception to the style.
For what it is worth, I share many of Wilson’s opinions about the translation. But
it should be clearly understood that if you want to make sense of the Russian text,
Nabokov’s version is almost indispensable, being sensitive to nuances which it would be
very difficult to identify from a dictionary.
Among the translations that have appeared since Nabokov, one of the most highly
regarded is that by Sir Charles Johnston, a professional diplomat. Johnston, like Arndt
before him, tries to preserve the rhyme and meter, in defiance of Nabokov. It will be
found that (at least before 1995) many authorities recommending a translation tend to
recommend either that of Arndt or that of Johnston.
But Johnston’s was by no means the last verse translation. A distinguished
version, also faithful to the rhyme and meter, appeared in 1995, this one by James Falen,
Professor of Russian at the University of Tennessee. Ljuba Tarvi in her PhD thesis
Comparative Translation Assessment: Quantifying Quality attempts a quantitative measure
of the goodness of the translations available to her, and concluded that overall Falen’s was
the best. It was the verse translation chosen for inclusion in the edition of The Complete
Works of Alexander Pushkin which appeared in 1999 and was the first complete edition in
English, although that edition also included a prose translation by Roger Clarke.
A good summary of the differences between the translations is given by Barry P.
Scherr in the Encyclopedia of Literary Translation into English.
It is probably fair to say that, as Scherr puts it, in terms of quality there is little to choose
between the versions of Arndt, Johnson and Falen, although all three read quite differently.
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