Academic Studies Press

Chapter Title: From the Other Shore: Nabokov’s Translation into Russian of Goethe’s
“Dedication” to Faust

Book Title: Close Encounters

Book Subtitle: Essays on Russian Literature
Book Author(s): Robert Louis JACKSON
Published by: Academic Studies Press. (2013)
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1zxshr0.26

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms

This book is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0

International License (CC BY-NC 4.0). To view a copy of this license, visit
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/. Funding is provided by Knowledge
Unlatched.

Academic Studies Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to
Close Encounters

This content downloaded from 77.243.23.179 on Thu, 19 Mar 2020 19:53:22 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 From the Other Shore: Nabokov’s Translation into
Russian of Goethe’s “Dedication” to Faust1

Iz Gete
Posviashchenie k “Faustu”

Vy snova blizko, reiushchiia teni.

Moi smutnyi vzor uzhe vas videl raz.
Khochu-l’ teper’ bezumiia videnii?
Zapechatlet’ poprobuiu li vas?
Tesnites’ vy! Sred’ dymnykh isparenii
—da budet tak!—vy iavites’ seichas;
po-iunomu mne serdtse potriasaet
tuman chudes, chto vas soprovozhdaet.

Otrada v vas mne chuditsia bylaia,

i ten’ vstaet rodnaia ne odna;
vstaet liubov’ i druzhba molodaia,
kak poluzvuk, predan’e, starina;
i snova—bol’, i zhaluias’, bluzhdaia
po labirintu zhiznennago sna,
zovu ia milykh, schastiem zhestoko
Obmerennykh, ischeznuvshikh do sroka.

Te, dlia kogo ia pel pervonachal’no,

ne slyshat pesen nyneshnykh moikh;
ushli druz’ia, i zamer otzvuk dal’nii
ikh pervago priveta. Dlia chuzhikh,
nevedomykh, zvuchit moi stikh pechal’nii,
boius’ ia dazhe odobren’ia ikh,
a vernyia mne dushi, esli zhivy,
skitaiutsia v izgnan’e sirotlivo.

Po istovom i tikhom tsarstve dukha

vo mne toska zabytaia zazhglas’,
trepeshchet pesn’, neiasnaia dlia slukha,
kak po strunam eolovym struias’,
i plachu ia, i uzhasaius’ glukho,
v surovom serdtse nezhhnost’ razlilas’;
vse nastoiashchee vdali propalo,
a proshloe deisvitel’nost’iu stalo.

—V. Sirin [Vladimir Nabokov]

1
Published here for the first time.

This content downloaded from 77.243.23.179 on Thu, 19 Mar 2020 19:53:22 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
From the Other Shore: Nabokov’s Translation of “Dedication” to Faust 355

Zueignung

Ihr naht euch wieder, schwankende Gestalten,

Die früh sich einst dem trüben Blick gezeigt.
Versuch’ ich wohl, euch diesmal festzuhalten?
Fühl’ ich mein Herz noch jenem Wahn geneigt?
Ihr drängt euch zu! nun gut, so mögt ihr walten,
Wie ihr aus Dunst und Nebel um mich steigt;
Mein Busen fühlt sich jugendlich erschüttert
Vom Zauberhauch, der euren Zug umwittert.

Ihr bringt mit euch die Bilder froher Tage,

Und manche liebe Schatten steigen auf;
Gleich einer alten, halbverklungnen Sage
Kommt erste Lieb’ und Freundschaft mit herauf;
Der Schmerz wird neu, es wiederholt die Klage
Des Lebens labyrinthisch irren Lauf,
Und nennt die Guten, die, um schöne Stunden
Vom Glück getäuscht, vor mir hinweggeschwunden.

Sie hören nicht die folgenden Gesänge,

Die Seelen, denen ich die ersten sang;
Zerstoben ist das freundliche Gedränge,
Verklungen ach! der erste Widerklang.
Mein Lied ertönt der unbekannten Menge,
Ihr Beifall selbst macht meinem Herzen bang,
Und was sich sonst an meinem Lied erfreuet,
Wenn es noch lebt, irrt in der Welt zerstreuet.

Und mich ergreift ein längst entwöhntes Sehnen

Nach jenem stillen, ernsten Geisterreich,
Es schwebet nun in unbestimmten Tönen
Mein lispelnd Lied, der Äolsharfe gleich,
Ein Schauer fasst mich, Träne folgt den Tränen,
Der strenge Herz, es fühlt sich mild und weich;
Was ich besitze, seh’ ich wie im Weiten,
Und was verschwand, wird mir zu Wirklichkeiten.

—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

This content downloaded from 77.243.23.179 on Thu, 19 Mar 2020 19:53:22 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
356 Poetry of Parting

And yet the ear cannot right now part with the music and
allow the tale to fade; the chords of fate itself continue to
vibrate; and no obstruction for the sage exists where I have
put The End.
(I vse zh slukh ne mozhet srazu rasstat’sia s myzykoi,
rasskazu dat’ zameret’ . . . sud’ba sama esche zvenit—i dlia
vnimatel’nogo net granitsy.)
—Vladimir Nabokov, The Gift (Dar)

In the preceding chapter we began our discussion of the last stanza of

Eugene Onegin with Nabokov’s search for the source of Pushkin’s so-
called Saadi line, “Some are no more, others are distant” (Inykh uzh net,
a te daleche), and begin this one with a question: Why did Nabokov pass
over specific allusions to Goethe’s “Dedication” (Zueignung) to Faust
and to Zhukovsky’s “Imitation of Goethe”? Nabokov had composed
a verse translation of Goethe’s poem into Russian in 1923. He published
that poem in 1932 on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of Goethe’s
death.2 He was thoroughly familiar with Zhukovsky’s well-known
adaptation of Goethe’s “Dedication,” as well as with his theory of
translation. It cannot be said, then, that in his commentary on the two
final stanzas of Eugene Onegin he overlooked Goethe and Zhukovsky.
He simply passed them over in silence.
In his commentary in general, Nabokov addresses various
matters pertaining to Pushkin and Goethe. He is occasionally testy
with Goethe.3 He acknowledges that Pushkin had a “boundless
admiration” for Goethe and “placed him above Voltaire and Byron,
next to Shakespeare.”4 It is noteworthy, however, that he chooses not to

2
Nabokov, using the pseudonym V. Sirin, published his translation of
Goethe’s poem under the heading, “Iz Gete. Posviashchenie k Faustu,” in
the Paris-based Russian newspaper, Poslednie novosti (December 15, 1932), 3.
3
Nabokov was deeply ambivalent about Goethe. As Omry Ronen puts it,
“Nabokov manifested throughout his art mixed feelings toward Goethe:
a proud attraction tinged with a streak of equally deep revulsion.” See Ronen,
“The Triple Anniversary of World Literature: Goethe, Pushkin, Nabokov,”
in Nabokov at Cornell, ed. Gavriel Shapiro (Ithaca: Cornell University Press,
2003), 175, as well as his “Nabokov and Goethe” in Cold Fusion: Aspects of
the German Cultural Presence in Russia, ed. Gennady Barabtarlo (New York:
Berghahn Books, 2000), 241–251.
4
Aleksandr Pushkin, Eugene Onegin: A Novel in Verse, translated from Russian,

This content downloaded from 77.243.23.179 on Thu, 19 Mar 2020 19:53:22 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 From the Other Shore: Nabokov’s Translation of “Dedication” to Faust 357

mention Pushkin’s lavish praise of Goethe’s Faust as a “supreme creation

of the poetic spirit,” a work, Pushkin wrote, that is “a representative
example of contemporary poetry in the same way that The Iliad is
a monument of classical antiquity.”5 This omission fully accords with
Nabokov’s decision to ignore echoes of “Dedication” in the last stanzas
of Eugene Onegin. In any case, Pushkin’s testimony in behalf of Faust
would not have resonated well with Nabokov’s dismissive remark that
“there are readers who prefer Pushkin’s ‘Scenes from Faust’ (1825) to
the whole of Goethe’s Faust, [a work] in which they distinguish a queer
strain of trivality impairing the pounding of its profundities.”6
In his commentary, Nabokov minimizes any serious impact on
Pushkin of the German language, literature, or culture. Though he had
earlier, and elsewhere, argued that Pushkin had a good knowledge of
German, English, and Italian,7 he reaches the opposite conclusion in
his commentary. He flatly states that “Pushkin had even less German
than he had English, and only vaguely knew German literature. He
was immune to its influence and hostile to its trends. The little he
read of it was either in French versions (which quickened Schiller but
asphyxiated Goethe) or in Russian adaptations.”8 In fact, Nabokov
writes again, “All that Pushkin knew of German literature and culture
was through Zhukovsky’s adaptations and translations and through
Mme. de Stael’s De l’Allemagne.”9 Nabokov bars Pushkin’s way to any
first-hand knowledge Goethe and Faust. At the same time he leaves open

with a commentary by Vladimir Nabokov in Two Volumes, Bollingen Series

LXXII (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1975) 2: Part 1, 236.
5
See Pushkin o literature, ed. N. B. Bogoslovskii (Leningrad: Academia, 1934),
116.
6
Nabokov, op. cit., Part 1, 235–236. “There is dreadful streak of poshlost
running through Goethe’s Faust,” Nabokov writes in his book on Gogol in
connection with the subtleties of the Russian word “poshlost’” (the banal,
the trivial, the mediocre, etc.). See Nabokov, Nikolai Gogol (New York: New
Directions, 1961), 64. Véra Nabokov was one of the people who shared her
husband’s view of Faust. “I consider Faust one of the shallowest plays ever
written,” she is reported to have remarked, much to the delight of Nabokov.
See Stacy Schiff, Véra: Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov (New York: Modern Library,
1999), 187.
7
See “Zametki peredvodchika,” in Novyi zhurnal 49 (1957): 131–132.
8
Nabokov, Eugene Onegin, op. cit., 235.
9
Ibid., 230.

This content downloaded from 77.243.23.179 on Thu, 19 Mar 2020 19:53:22 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
358 Poetry of Parting

a path to Goethe through Zhukovsky’s “adaptations and translation.”

He does not go down that path, however, in his commentary on the last
two stanzas of Eugene Onegin.
In general, Nabokov’s discussions of Zhukovsky’s poetics, style,
literary sensibilities, adaptations of English and German writers, and
of the poet’s literary relations with Pushkin, are abundant, subtle, and
generous, though marked occasionally by a gentle irony. Nabokov’s fine
critical understanding and appreciation of Zhukovsky’s work may be
felt, for example, in his observations on Zhukovsky’s Zamok Smal’gol’m
(Smaylhome Castle, 1822), an adaptation of Sir Walter Scott’s The Eve of
St. John—a work, Nabokov notes, that in the hands of Zhukovsky takes
on “a more romantic and pathetic air.”10 This observation could have
been directed as well to Zhukovsky’s “Imitation of Goethe.”
Nabokov’s comments on Zhukovsky’s work as a translator
or adaptor are always acute. “His versions of foreign poetry are not
really translations but talented adaptations remarkably melodious and
engaging; and they seem especially so when the original is not known
to the reader. Zhukovsky at his best communicates to his reader much
of the enjoyment he obviously experiences himself in molding and
modulating a young language while having his verses go through this
or that impersonation act.”11 Zhukovsky’s “Imitation of Goethe” is an
example of just such an act of impersonation.
In the jigsaw puzzle of his commentary, Nabokov left a space for
a piece called “A Dream. An Imitation of Goethe.” That space remains
invisible, however, and Nabokov holds the fitting piece tightly in his
hand, as he does Goethe’s “Dedication” and his own “Dedication to
Faust.” How can one explain Nabokov’s reluctance to raise the question
of Goethe’s presence in the last stanzas of Eugene Onegin?
In the period of Nabokov’s Eugene Onegin project, a time when
he was formulating, defending, and putting into practice his theory of
literal faithfulness in translation, a discussion of Goethe’s “Dedication,”
Zhukovsky’s adaptation of it, and, perhaps, allusion to his own
verse translation of Goethe’s work, might well have complicated his
polemical arguments. Nabokov’s harsh criticism of verse translations
of Eugene Onegin into English, as well as his polemics with Edmund

10
Ibid., Part Two, 146.
11
Ibid., Part Two, 145.

This content downloaded from 77.243.23.179 on Thu, 19 Mar 2020 19:53:22 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 From the Other Shore: Nabokov’s Translation of “Dedication” to Faust 359

Wilson on matters pertaining to his own literal translation of Eugene

Onegin, are well known. In characteristically strong opinions Nabokov
had denounced what he called the “dictatorship” of verse translation.
He had referred scornfully to the “facile beauty” which results from
an effort to imitate verse forms. “Why adaptation rather than faithful
translation,” Nabokov asks in a scathing review of Robert Lowell’s
adaptation of the poetry of Osip Mandelstam (1892–1938). “What . . .
is there especially adaptive or adaptational in an obvious travesty? . . .
‘Adapted’ to what? To the needs of an idiot audience? To the demands of
good taste? To the level of one’s own genius?”12 One recalls Nabokov’s
remark that Zhukovsky’s adaptations of German and English poetry
seemed especially “melodious and engaging” to the Russian reader
who did not know the original.
Nabokov would hardly have adopted strident tones in
addressing the poetic extravagances of “gentle Zhukovsky,” as he dubs
him in his commentary, had the latter’s “Imitation of Goethe” come
under his microscope. In that work Zhukovsky had engaged in the
kind of fanciful circumlocutions that Nabokov later found intolerable
in American translators of Eugene Onegin. Zhukovsky, as a theoretician
and practitioner of translation, had also advanced a militant translator’s
declaration of independence.13 He had insisted that the translator
“necessarily must have almost the same [degree of] imagination as his
model, the same literary art, the same power of mind and feelings.”
In the same breath Zhukovsky denounced translators who “slavishly”
adhere to the text. The translator of Eugene Onegin surely did not want
to complicate his task by getting into a discussion of Zhukovsky’s
theory of translation or of the merits and demerits of his translation of
Goethe’s “Dedication.” Such a discussion would inevitably open the
gates to a consideration of his own verse translation of Goethe’s poem.
Nabokov’s “Dedication to Faust,” however, is in no sense a “sla-
vish” translation; it is not a melodious adaptation for readers who do
not know the original; nor does it involve “impersonation.” It is an
empathetic yet at the same time independent response to the poem, its
poignant motifs of parting and loss, and its poetics of transcendence. It
is a translation on the highest level of the young Nabokov’s genius. His

12
New York Review of Books, December 4, 1969.
13
For a discussion of Zhukovsky’s theory of translation, see footnote 19 in the
preceding chapter.

This content downloaded from 77.243.23.179 on Thu, 19 Mar 2020 19:53:22 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
360 Poetry of Parting

rhymed translation, lithe and alive, is a feat of Pushkinian compression

and economy of means: it conveys the power that created a great style,
as well as the power of the translator to make a poetic statement of
his own. All this is accomplished with a remarkable degree of fidelity
to the form and content of the original, that is, with a minimum of
compromise of the original text. Nabokov’s “Dedication to Faust” is an
important poem in its own right.
Nabokov not only translated Goethe’s poem, he “translated”
himself into the poem: his exile, the loss of his native cultural milieu,
the scattering and death of friends and family. To the loss of his
homeland (he left Russia in April 1919) was added the death of his
father—murdered by an assassin in Berlin, March 28, 1922. In his
translation Nabokov relates directly to the pathos of Goethe’s poem,
its motifs of parting and loss and—the crux of poem—its movement
towards an imaginative evocation and renewal of the past in art, the
poet-narrator’s decision in the face of anxiety and nostalgia to plunge
again into the creative process.
Remarkable with respect to Nabokov’s own artistic genius is
the way Russian word and image in his translation maximally convey
the poetic idea and material of the original text, while at the same
signalling his, the translator-poet's, own heightened emphases with
respect to the poem’s major themes. This double-action is one of the
major poetic achievements of Nabokov’s poem; it marks the opening
line of Nabokov’s translation of the second stanza of “Dedication”
where Goethe refers again to those wavering forms or figures from out
of his past that have come before his inner gaze:

Otrada v vas mne chuditsia bylaia,

i ten’ vstaet rodnaia ne odna

[Past joy in you appears before me,

And not alone the familiar shadows of home]14

The phrase “ten’ . . . rodnaia” (dear shadows) well approximates

Goethe’s “liebe Schatten” (dear or precious shadows). At the same
time, the word “rodnaia,” through its root, “rod” (family, kin, clan),
also conveys the idea of something that is close, familiar or native,

14
Goethe’s German text reads: “Ihr bringt mit euch die Bilder froher Tage,/
Und manche liebe Schatten steigen auf.”

This content downloaded from 77.243.23.179 on Thu, 19 Mar 2020 19:53:22 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 From the Other Shore: Nabokov’s Translation of “Dedication” to Faust 361

as in “rodnoi iazyk” (mother tongue) or “rodina” (one’s native land,

motherland). “Ten’ . . . rodnaia,” then, suggests native shadows or
shadows of home. “Rodnoi” here contrasts with Nabokov’s use of
the word “chuzhoi” (alien, foreign) in the third stanza to characterize
Goethe’s “unknown multitude” who hear the poet’s song.
Meanwhile, Nabokov in his rendition of Goethe's lines about
“die Guten, die, um schöne Stunden/ Vom Glück getäuscht, vor
mir hinweggeschwunden” (those dear ones who, cheated of joy by
fortune, have vanished before me), without the slightest doubt conveys
personal pain ("bol'"—Goethe's "Schmerz"), anguish and bitterness
over the suffering and loss of his own dear ones. Nabokov’s narrator-
poet cries out: “Zovu ia milykh, schastiem zhestoko/ obmerennykh,
ischeznuvshikh do sroka (I call out to the dear ones/ by fortune cruelly
struck, vanished before their time). The word “zhestoko” (cruelly,
savagely) stands out starkly. “Schast’e” is used not as “happiness,” but
as “lot,” “fortune,” “fate.”15 The “cruel” lot, indeed, the tragedy of the
poet’s “dear ones” is highlighted in Nabokov’s rendition of Goethe’s
third stanza:

Te, dlia kogo ia pel pervonachal’no,

ne slyshat pesen nyneshnykh moikh;
ushli druz’ia, i zamer otzvuk dal’nii
ikh pervago priveta. Dlia chuzhikh,
nevedomykh, zvuchit moi stikh pechal’nii,
boius’ ia dazhe odobren’ia ikh,
a vernyia mne dushi, esli zhivy,
skitaiutsia v izgnan’e sirotlivo.

[Those for whom I originally sang,

do not hear my present songs;
friends have gone, the far off echo
of their first greetings fades. To strangers,
unknown people, my sad verse rings out,
I even fear their applause,
while souls true to me, if alive,
are wandering like orphans in exile.]

15
Nabokov, unlike Zhukovsky who translates “Glück” as “rok” (dark
inescapable fate or doom), uses the Russian word “schast’e,”one that
matches Goethe’s “Glück.” “Sud’ba” suggests a notion of “fate” or “fortune”
as something that is not inevitable; one can alter one’s “fate” (sud’ba).
“Rok,” or destiny, on the other hand, represents absolute fatality.

This content downloaded from 77.243.23.179 on Thu, 19 Mar 2020 19:53:22 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
362 Poetry of Parting

The words and lines are as close as possible to Goethe’s original

text, to its basic idea. Yet to the Russian reader of the time Nabokov’s
verses evoke the bitter taste of exile and loss.
Goethe’s poet first sang to a friendly audience, one that has
passed away; now he sings his song (Lied) to an “unknown crowd”
(unbekannten Menge). In Nabokov’s translation the poet who sang his
first songs to friends, now sings his “sad verse” (stikh pechal’nyi) to
foreigners, alien people, strangers.16 These people, the chuzhie, contrast
with the “rodnye” (kin, family) referred to in the first stanza. The poet,
in fact, is living in exile. Nabokov declares this outright in his rendering
of Goethe’s lines, “Und was sich sonst an meinem Lied erfreuet/ Wenn
es noch lebt, irrt in der Welt zerstreuet,” as “a vernye mne dushi,
esli zhivy,/ skitaiutsia v iz’gnan’e sirotlivo” (while souls true to me,
if alive,/are wandering like orphans in exile). Nabokov’s verse, more
directly than Goethe’s, draws upon a biblical subtext: the ancient Jews
who unwillingly and sadly saing the Lord’s song in a foreign land
(Psalm 137). Like the biblical Jews with their harps, Nabokov’s poet is
orphaned and exiled. Quite understandably, he is uncomfortable with
the applause or acclamation (“Beifall,” “odobren’e”) of his audiences.
Nabokov’s open reference not only to personal exile, but to the exile
of a people, a nation; his reference to the poet’s “sad verse,” and to the
poet’s reluctance to sing, inevitably awakens in the reader’s mind the
oath of the weeping Jews: “If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right
hand wither.” Thus Nabokov in the third stanza of his translation of
“Dedication,” like Pushkin in the opening sentence of the last stanza of
Eugene Onegin (But those to whom at friendly meetings/the first strophes
I read . . .), historicizes Goethe’s poem. Where Pushkin’s subtext alludes
to the tragedy of the Decembrists,17 friends and acquaintances whose
lives were cut short or exiled, Nabokov’s subtext points to the tragedy
of other Russian people a century later—friends, families, political
figures, artists, poets, indeed, representatives of a whole nation, country,

16
“Stikh pechal’nyi”: The first edition of Goethe’s Faust contained a misprint
(“Leid” for “Lied”) which Goethe subsequently retained. Modern editions
of the poem return to “Lied.”: “Mein Lied ertönt der unbekannten Menge.”
In his use of “Leid” as opposed to “Lied,” in this instance, Nabokov adheres
to an earlier tradition.
17
Pushkin’s purely literary subtext, of course, is Goethe’s line from
“Dedication”: Sie hören nicht die folgenden Gesänge,/ Die Seelen, denen
ich die ersten sang.”

This content downloaded from 77.243.23.179 on Thu, 19 Mar 2020 19:53:22 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 From the Other Shore: Nabokov’s Translation of “Dedication” to Faust 363

or rodina—who were cast into exile or perished in the whirlwind

of the Bolshevik revolution. Such is the brutal and tragic subtext of
Nabokov’s translation of “Dedication.” In its subtext Nabokov’s poem
echoes Zhukovsky’s somber and tragic (albeit Romantic) evocation of
Goethe’s “Dedication” in his “Imitation of Goethe.”
As in Goethe’s poem, however, Nabokov moves toward a reso-
lution of pain and nostalgia in renewed creative activity. He renders
Goethe’s powerful, but emotionally restrained and spiritual—“Und
mich ergreift ein lãngst entwöhntes Sehnen/ Nach jenem stillen, ernsten
Geisterreich . . .”—with a line that begins (as Goethe’s line ends) in
spiritual quiet, but ends (as Goethe’s line begins), with a moving inner
event: “Po istovom i tikhom tsarstve dukha/ o mne toska zabytaia
zazhglas’” (a forgotten and quiet yearning has been kindled in me/ for
the deep and quiet kingdom of the spirit). The yearning, the kindling
of inspiration to create, comes almost as a response to the final lines
of the third stanza with its cold and bleak vision of orphaned souls
wandering in exile.
Pain and bitteress are not forgotten, but sublimated now in a new
and powerful yearning to create. The words, “I plachu ia i uzhasaius’
glukho,/ v surovom serdtse neshnost’ razlilas’” (And I weep, and feel
a silent terror/ Tenderness floods the severe heart) signal a catharsis, an
end to a crisis, a movement toward creation, self-mastery, overcoming
of history, reappropriation of the past and its renewal, in art, in the
present:
Vse nastoiashchee vdali propalo,
a proshloe deistvitel’nost’iu stalo.

[Everything present has disappeared in the distance

while the past has become present.]

The theme of loss and grief, one may note in conclusion, might
well have been a factor in inclining Nabokov to undertake in 1923
a translation into Russian of Charles Lamb’s popular poem, “The Old
Familiar Faces” (1798; 1817). Lamb sums up the pervasive theme of loss
in the final lines of the poem:

So might we talk of the old familiar faces—

How some they have died, and some they have left me,
And some are taken from me; all are departed—
All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.

This content downloaded from 77.243.23.179 on Thu, 19 Mar 2020 19:53:22 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
364 Poetry of Parting

In the first lines of the original 1798 poem (lines deleted from the
1817 edition), Lamb alludes to the horrendous death of his mother—
she had been stabbed to death by his deranged sister, Mary Lamb:

Where are they gone, the old familiar faces?

I had a mother, but she died, and left me,
Died prematurely in a day of horrors—
All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.

Nabokov, of course, had had a similar day of horrors: the assassination

of his father in 1922. It is of special interest, in this connection, that
he renders the last three words of the poem’s refrain—“old familiar
faces”—in a way that vastly and emotionally intensifies the notion of
familiar faces: he writes of “indescribably familiar faces” (neskazanno-
znakomye litsa).18
Nabokov’s translation of Lamb’s poem, finally, is of interest in
the context of his later search for the origin and echoes in literature of
Pushkin’s so-called “Saadi” line in the opening lines of the last stanza
of Eugene Onegin:

No te, kotorym v druzhnoi vstreche

Ja strofy pervye chital . . .
“Inykh uzh net, a te daleche”,
Kak Sadi nekogda skazal.

[But those to whom at friendly meetings

the first strophes I read . . .
“Some are no more, others are distant,”
as erstwhile Saadi said.]

In his commentary on Eugene Onegin, Nabokov was as aware of Lamb’s

“Saadi” line, “How some they have died, and some they have left me,”
as he was of Goethe’s “Dedication” to Faust, Zhukovsky’s “Imitation
of Goethe,” and his own “Dedication to Faust.” He prefered not to
introduce these works into the discussion for a complex of reasons,
not the least of which were his own painful and tragic parting with

18
Nabokov, however, translates the title of Lamb’s poem, “The Old Familiar
Faces,” as simply “Znakomye litsa” (Familiar Faces). The original
unpublished draft of Nabokov’s translation into Russian of Lamb’s poem is
held in the Archives of Vladimir Nabokov in the New York Public Library.

This content downloaded from 77.243.23.179 on Thu, 19 Mar 2020 19:53:22 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 From the Other Shore: Nabokov’s Translation of “Dedication” to Faust 365

family (rod) and country (rodina). Nabokov left a puzzle behind him
in his commentary on Pushkin's last stanza of Eugene Onegin. True to
his creative method, however, he left clues to that puzzle—“something
in a scrambled picture . . . that the finder cannot unsee once it is seen”
(Speak, Memory).

This content downloaded from 77.243.23.179 on Thu, 19 Mar 2020 19:53:22 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms