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Verses and Versions: Three Centuries of Russian Poetry by Brian Boyd, Stanislav Shvabrin, Vladimir Nabokov

2009; University of Oklahoma; Volume: 83; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/wlt.2009.0301

1945-8134

David Shook,

Vladimir Nabokov Literary Studies

I ^ I > I I ^ I I z I ^ I I < I I ^ I I H I I o I I I ? I 1^1 as one inwhich thepoet defines the act ofwriting as not "work / but workmanship" and seals the defini tion by stressing the avidity with which writers must systematically invade and lacerate the self in order to practice their craft: "To evoke thought's form, / measure and trim it. / I thinkof a tailor /who ishis own fabric." Rita Signorelli-Pappas Princeton, New Jersey Gibbons Ruark.Staying Blue. Duluth, Minnesota. Lost Hills. 2008. 30 pages. $11.75. isbn978-0-9798535-3-1 Gibbons Ruark's thirty-page chap book may be thebest book ofpoetry, full-length or otherwise, published this year; it's certainly the best I've read. I have been an earnest reader ofRuark for thirty years, but I have always despaired athow fewpoems we have by this contemporary mas ter, whose earlier poem "Reeds" may be the best poem in English written in true terza rima. Given his stature as a poet, Ruark is depress ingly littleknown tomost readers, even among readers of contempo rary poetry. Perhaps his quiet, care ful,unaffected voice isdrowned out by the loud personalities and politi cally driven poetasters seizing the microphone of our cultural moment to force their message or selves upon us. Ruark takes seriously the ancient and careful art of poetry, and he knows that the way you say some thing is a largepart ofwhat you say. Here is poetry that aspires to Brodsky's definition: "Poetry is what every language hopes to become." Ruark knows Brodsky does not mean "elevation" but instead means a perfect aptness?a tone, stance, diction, rhythm just right for the subject.Take these few lines fromthe opening poem, "Words to Accompa ny a Bunch of Cornflowers": 'Those beads of lapis, even the classical / Blues of dawn, are dimmed by comparison. / When Ihand you this bunch of cornflowers / The only other color in the room / Illumines your eyes as you arrange them. // They are theblue reflectionofwhat ever /Moves in you, serene as cool water tipped / Into crystal..." Here theordinary diction and imageryare quietly gathered like the cornflow ers toproduce an unexpected quiet beauty, a privacy and intimacy that does not announce or trumpet itself. In a villanelle titled "Little Porch at Night," we read "Pull up a porch chair next to this chaise longue, / Tell me theempty darkwill fill with voices /And talk to me before I end my song . . . / That vacant angle where a hammock hung / Adopts thewhole moon in its loneliness. / Pull up a porch chair.Next to this chaise longue. // Summon the fire flies,matches struckand gone, /The Morse code of the starswho've lost theirplaces, /And talk to me before I end my song ..." Again, while writing quietly in a demanding form, Ruark master fullyestablishes a personal intimacy and presents an intricate relation ship among a sense of loss, our shared ephemerality, the difficulty in deciphering themeaning of our lives, loneliness and awareness of impending personal ending, and a clear desire for companionship. He even quietly insists on the French spelling of longuefortheadded mea sure of the "long" chair inwhich the experienced speaker has been sitting,already partially reclined. In a later poem referring to a bronze seated statue, we witness "a black bird dipping itsbill in the teacup's / Worth of rainwater pooled in that brazen lap." Maybe that's it: our endlessly posturing and driven popular culture doesn't have time for such still points, or ears for such quiet poetry. Too bad, but I hope timebrings us all toGibbons Ruark's poetry. Fred Dings ^^^H University of South Carolina ^^Hj Verses and Versions: Three Centu- ^^^M ries of Russian Poetry. BrianBoyd& ^^^J Stanislav Shvabrin, eds. Vladimir Nabo kov, comp. & tr.Orlando, Florida.Har- ^^^J court. 2008. xxxv + 441 pages. $40. isbn 978-0-15-101264-0 A collection ofVladimir Nabokov's translations from Russian to Eng lish had been planned by Nabokov and his publishers since at least the 1960s but never came to fruition ^^^H because of the writer's prolificpubli cation of other work. In Brian Boyd's introduction to Verses and Versions, ^^^H he introduces three purposes for ^^^H the 400-plus-page volume of trans- ^^^H lations, notes, and writings about ^^^H translation,which, he writes, aims ^^^H to be "a treasury of Russian verse, ^^^H a workshop in translation, and . . . ^^^H another showcase in the library of ^^^H Nabokov's literary diversity." Of ^^^H these, the firstand third are most ^^^H successfully achieved. ^^^H Nabokov's selections do intro duce Russian verse thoroughly, ^^^fl despite some glaring omissions ^^^H owing tohis own taste,now proven ^^^H to be more historically inaccurate ^^^H than his pretension would suggest. ^^^H Mayakovsky, Pasternak, Tsvetaeva, ^^^H and Akmatova (whom he consid- ^^^H ered, with Ezra Pound, "definitely ^^^H B-grade") are among his older Rus- ^^^H sian contemporaries not included. ^^^H The selection of poets included is ^^^H generous and enlightening, includ- ^^^H ing minor poets likeBatyushkov and ^^^H "intermediate" poets likeBarafinski. ^^^H Almost all poets' thumbnail biogra- ^^^H phies include somemention of their ^^^H IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIM 74 i World Literature Today VERSES and VERSIONS THREECENTURIES OF RUSSIANPOETRY SELECTEDANDTRANSLATED BY VLADIMIR NABOKOV EDITED BYBRIAN BOYD AND STANISlAV SHVABRIN relationship, through theirwork or lives, toPushkin, the reigning deity of Russian literature according to Nabokov. The thirdof thebook's intended purposes is the easiest to achieve, as Nabokov's literary diversity is not a topic of widespread debate. Its second purpose ismost difficult, since thebook contains translations from several stages of Nabokov's own development as a translator, from his early and ambitious ren derings of Pushkin's short lyrics to his post-i950s literal cribs,prepared especially with his students in mind. Nabokov's evolving ideas about the purpose of translation are well reflected in the collection, begin ning with his idea that the pro cess should render a self-sufficient, albeit incredibly faithful, English language poem, and progressing to his eventual idea thatcrib-like literal renderings could and should serve only to access poems from unknown languages. In this sense, the book can more accurately be described as a case study of a great, if con troversial, translator rather than a workshop. The editors' organization of the collection by theperiod of the poet rather than time of translation provides an interestingside-by-side comparison ofNabokov's evolving translation theory. For the contem porary translator,his cribs seem less valuable fortheir literary merit than their earlier counterparts?less gen uine, too considered. The editors of thisvolume have produced a companion website con taining Nabokov's annotated and marked transliterationsof his later Russian translations into theRoman alphabet, another manifestation of the idea of translationas access point rather than self-sufficient poem. Nabokov's eventual position was as polarizing in the 1950s as it is today, but the quality of his early transla tions, his mostly trustworthy taste regarding thework of the Russian lyric poets, and his essays about the process of translation?includ inghis poem "Pity theElderly Gray Translator"?make this collection worthwhile. David Shook OxfordUniversity MISCELLANEOUS PierreBayard.Le plagiat par anticipa tion. Paris. Minuit. 2009. 154 pages. 15. isbn978-2-7073-2066-7 Inhis latestessay, Pierre Bayard puts on display the provocative intelli gence, wit, and critical resourceful ness that characterize his previous books. Those qualities have won him a readership decidedly broader than thatofmost academics and the oreticians of literature,and for that he should be applauded. He bor rows theconstructannounced inhis titlefrom theOuvroir de Litterature Potentielle (or "Oulipo"), a group of literaryexperimentalists based in Paris, founded in i960 by Raymond Queneau and Francois Le Lionnais. The fact thatBayard documents his E borrowing so scrupulously means E thathe cannot be accused of plagia- E rism?but thatdoes not mean that 5 the Oulipo cannot be accused of E plagiarizing Bayard by anticipation. E Ifthe latter were indeed thecase, the E Oulipo would be in distinguished E company, forBayard contends con- E vincingly in this study that Vol- E taireplagiarized Conan Doyle; that E Maupassant plagiarized Proust; that E Racine plagiarized VictorHugo; and E thatFra Angelico cadged his "drip- E ping" technique from Jackson Pol- E lock.All of this is enough tomake E one's head spin, as Bayard asks us E to rethink the idea of influence from E top to bottom, arguing that literary E historymust be read in both direc- E tions, that is, both retrospectively E and prospectively. The history of E eventsmust be disintricated fromlit- E erary history,he suggests; how else E can we explain the fact that certain E authors, fromSophocles toLaurence E Sterne, seem so contemporary to E us, having as itwere assimilated E and reconfigured crucial insights in E Freud and Joyce,respectively? E More thanany other criticofhis E generation, Pierre Bayard delights E inwhat one might thinkof as "ear- E nest play." His approach to litera- E ture is fundamentally ludic in char- E acter, but he plays an extremely E focused, oriented kind of game that E testifiestoa deep seriousness ofpur- E pose, one whose outcomes deserve E to be considered in high sobriety. E His writing is animated by a most E refreshing (and contagious) faith in E literatureand itsuses.What he seeks E most of all, I think, is toprompt his E reader to consider literaturewith a E new eye, to make us read otherwise, E unfettered by the conventions and E constraints thathabitually condition E our reading. And if such a read- E ing should occasionally lead us into E July-August 2009175 H ...