Subject
Re: Fw: Nabokov (1899-1977) burnt "El Quixote" ....a bizarre
mistranslation
mistranslation
From
Date
Body
Perhaps they should be fired [not shot].
-Sandy Drescher
On Thursday, February 17, 2005, at 11:58 AM, Donald B. Johnson wrote:
> Susan is right, it is mistranslation, and a bizarre one.
>
> In his interview to The Paris Review, 1967, VN said:
> (http://www.theparisreview.com/media/4310_NABOKOV.pdf, p. 15):
>
> "...What I intend to do is publish a number of twenty-page essays on
> several
> works - Ulysses, Madame Bovary, Kafka's Transformation, Don Quixote
> and
> others--all based on my Cornell and Harvard lectures. I remember with
> delight
> tearing apart Don Quixote, a cruel and crude old book, before six
> hundred
> students in Memorial Hall, much to the horror and embarrassment of
> some of my
> more conservative colleagues."
>
> Surely the esteemed writer Alberto Manguel took things too
> literally... but
> maybe he wanted to. Then he, and Mr Báez after him, just kept
> parroting the
> self-created useful quote. Amazing!
>
> Victor Fet
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Vladimir Nabokov Forum on behalf of D. Barton Johnson
> Sent: Wed 2/16/2005 8:58 PM
> To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
> Subject: Fw: Fw: Nabokov (1899-1977) burnt "El Quixote" in front of
> hisstudents.
> ...
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Susan Elizabeth Sweeney" <SSWEENEY@holycross.edu>
> To: <chtodel@cox.net>; <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>
> Sent: Wednesday, February 16, 2005 2:40 PM
> Subject: Re: Fw: Nabokov (1899-1977) burnt "El Quixote" in front of
> hisstudents. ...
>
>
> What a bizarre and preposterous claim! I wonder if it stems from some
> grotesque mistranslation of a statement about VN having illuminated the
> novel for a class or enlightened them about its meaning or something.
>
>
>>>> chtodel@cox.net 02/16/05 11:53 AM >>>
> Message
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Dmitri Nabokov
> Sent: Tuesday, February 15, 2005 4:03 AM
> Subject: TR : Nabokov (1899-1977) burnt "El Quixote" in front of his
> students. ...
>
>
> Dear Don (please post),
>
> What "expert" Báez says about my father is utter hogwash. He had best
> sit
> down before he topples onto his left flank. Shame on the IPS for
> printing
> undocumented disinformation.
>
> Dmitri Nabokov
>
>
> -----Message d'origine-----
> De : Sandy P. Klein [mailto:spklein52@hotmail.com]
> Envoyé : mercredi, 16. février 2005 04:03
> À : spklein52@hotmail.com
> Objet : Nabokov (1899-1977) burnt "El Quixote" in front of his
> students. ...
>
>
>
>
>
> http://www.ipsnews.net/new_nota.asp?idnews=27459
>
> 'Biggest Cultural Disaster Since 1258', Says Expert
> Inter Press Service (subscription), World - 5 hours ago
> ... Intellectuals have burnt books in the name of the Bible or the
> Koran.
> Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977) burnt "El Quixote" in front of his
> students.
> ...
>
>
>
>
>
>
> IRAQ-US:
> 'Biggest Cultural Disaster Since 1258', Says Expert
> Humberto Márquez
>
> CARACAS, Feb 15 (IPS) - One million books, 10 million documents and
> 14,000
> archaeological artifacts have been lost in the U.S.-led invasion and
> subsequent occupation of Iraq -- the biggest cultural disaster since
> the
> descendants of Genghis Khan destroyed Baghdad in 1258, Venezuelan
> writer
> Fernando Báez told IPS.
>
> "U.S. and Polish soldiers are still stealing treasures today and
> selling
> them across the borders with Jordan and Kuwait, where art merchants
> pay up
> to 57,000 dollars for a Sumerian tablet," said Báez, who was
> interviewed
> during a brief visit to Caracas.
>
> The expert on the destruction of libraries has helped document the
> devastation of cultural and religious objects in Iraq, where the
> ancient
> Mesopotamian kingdoms of Sumer, Akkad, and Babylon emerged, giving it a
> reputation as the birthplace of civilisation.
>
> His inventory of the destruction and his denunciations that the
> coalition
> forces are violating the Hague Convention of 1954 on the protection of
> cultural heritage in times of war have earned him the enmity of
> Washington.
>
> Báez said he was refused a visa to enter the United States to take
> part in
> conferences.
>
> In addition, he has been barred from returning to Iraq "to carry out
> further
> investigations," he added. "But it's too late, because we already have
> documents, footage and photos that in time will serve as evidence of
> the
> atrocities committed," said Báez, the author of "The Cultural
> Destruction of
> Iraq" and "A Universal History of the Destruction of Books", which were
> published in Spanish.
>
> IPS: What do you accuse the United States of doing?
>
> FB: In first place, of violating the Hague Convention, which states
> that
> cultural property must be protected in the event of armed conflict.
>
> That is a criminally punishable offence, which is why Washington has
> not
> signed the convention, or the 1999 protocol attached to it. And
> perhaps it
> is one reason the administration of George W. Bush is seeking immunity
> for
> its soldiers.
>
> But it is not only the United States; the rest of the coalition forces
> are
> also guilty.
>
> IPS: But according to the reports, it was Iraqi civilians and not U.S.
> soldiers who looted libraries and museums.
>
> FB: But the U.S. army was criminally negligent, failing to protect
> libraries, museums and archaeological sites despite clear warnings from
> UNESCO (the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation),
> the
> U.N., the University of Chicago's Oriental Institute and the former
> head of
> the U.S. president's Advisory Committee on Cultural Property, Martin
> Sullivan.
>
> The Iraqis who went out to loot interpreted the negligence as a green
> light
> to act without restraint.
>
> IPS: So the sin committed by the U.S. was one of omission?
>
> FB: Not only that. There was also direct destruction and looting. In
> Nasiriya in May 2004, a year after the formal end of hostilities,
> during
> fighting with (Shi'ite cleric) Muqtada el-Sadr's militants, 40,000
> religious
> manuscripts were destroyed in a fire (set by the coalition forces).
>
> And when soldiers found out that the Sumerian city of Ur (in southern
> Iraq)
> was the birthplace of the prophet Abraham, they took ancient bricks as
> souvenirs.
>
> IPS: You also accuse soldiers from other countries, besides U.S.
> troops.
>
> FB: That's right. In late May 2004, Italian Carabinieri were caught
> trying
> to smuggle looted cultural artifacts over the border into Kuwait. And
> the
> British Museum reported that Polish forces destroyed part of Babylon's
> ancient ruins, to the south of Baghdad.
>
> IPS: Can we suppose that these events are part of phases of the
> conflict
> that have already been left behind?
>
> FB: No. More recently it was found that Polish troops drove heavy
> vehicles
> near the Nebuchadnezzar Palace, which dates back to the sixth century
> B.C.,
> and then covered large areas of the site with asphalt, doing
> irreparable
> damage. There were also attempts to gouge out bricks at the Gate of
> Ishtar.
>
> To that is added the collapse of ancient walls due to the continuous
> passage
> of U.S. trucks and helicopters, and walls spraypainted with graffiti,
> like
> "I was here" or "I love Mary".
>
> IPS: Can we expect the situation to improve with time?
>
> FB: Another accusation that can be made against the United States is
> that it
> has created a less safe country overall, by generating the conditions
> for
> cultural destruction, which will be even worse in future years, due to
> the
> situation of legal insecurity.
>
> In the days of the looting of Baghdad, U.S. Defence Secretary Donald
> Rumsfeld went so far as to say that looting "isn't something that
> someone
> allows or doesn't allow. It's something that happens."
>
> Today Iraq is like a golf course for the world's terrorists, and its
> cultural treasures will not be safe in the future.
>
> IPS: What impact has there been on the United States?
>
> FB: One of its reactions was to rejoin UNESCO, which the U.S. had
> withdrawn
> from during the era of (Ronald) Reagan (1981-1989) on the pretext that
> the
> U.N. agency served as "a communist front".
>
> Experts at the U.S. state and defence departments are trying to
> mitigate the
> damages. U.S. military police helped Iraqi police track down the Lady
> of
> Warka, dubbed the "Mona Lisa of Mesopotamia", a 5,200-year-old marble
> sculpture that is one of the earliest known representations of the
> human
> face in the history of art.
>
> IPS: How significant are the losses?
>
> FB: The Lady of Warka may be worth 100 or 150 million dollars. A
> Sumerian
> cuneiform tablet or an Assyrian stela can fetch 57,000 dollars at the
> border.
>
> Some Iraqis have been purchasing books at used-book markets in Baghdad
> to
> return them to the libraries.
>
> But the damage is incalculable. In the Baghdad National Library,
> around one
> million books were burnt, including early editions of Arabian Nights,
> mathematical treatises by Omar Khayyam, and tracts by philosophers
> Avicena
> and Averroes.
>
> IPS: Thousands of relics were also lost from the National
> Archaeological
> Museum.
>
> FB: The initial reports spoke of 170,000 objects, but 25 major
> artifacts as
> well as 14,000 less important ones actually disappeared. An amnesty
> for the
> looters led to the recovery of around 3,500, according to the U.S.
> colonel
> who led the investigations, Matthew Bogdanos.
>
> But besides the national museum and library, the Al-Awqaf library,
> which
> held over 5,000 Islamic manuscripts, university libraries and the
> library of
> Bayt al-Hikma also suffered. At least 10 million documents have been
> lost in
> Iraq altogether.
>
> (Báez has said his research into the destruction of libraries and
> archives
> was first motivated by his painful childhood memories of a flash flood
> that
> wiped away the library in his hometown, San Félix in southeastern
> Venezuela.
> He cherished the municipal library because since his parents worked,
> he had
> often been left with relatives who worked there, and spent his days
> reading.
>
> His research culminated in "A Universal History of the Destruction of
> Books", which documents the catastrophic loss of books during wars,
> like the
> Library of Alexandria, which burnt down in 48 B.C., or the burning of
> millions of books by the Nazis.)
>
> IPS: Do you believe military forces have been the worst enemy of books?
>
> FB: No, actually I don't. I believe intellectuals are the worst
> enemies.
> Intellectuals have burnt books in the name of the Bible or the Koran.
> Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977) burnt "El Quixote" in front of his
> students.
> Destroyers like Adolph Hitler or Slobodan Milosevic were bibliophiles.
> Saddam Hussein himself, an archaeologist and philologist, published
> three
> novels. Joseph Goebbels, the genius of Nazi propaganda, was a
> philologist.
>
> And many of those who have led the U.S. to war in Iraq are academics.
> It is
> a paradox: the inventors of the electronic book returned to
> Mesopotamia,
> where books, history and civilisation were born, to destroy it.
> (END/2005)
>
>
> Send your comments to the editor
>
> Letters to the Editor: read what others say about the IPS Service
>
> ----- End forwarded message -----
>
----- End forwarded message -----
-Sandy Drescher
On Thursday, February 17, 2005, at 11:58 AM, Donald B. Johnson wrote:
> Susan is right, it is mistranslation, and a bizarre one.
>
> In his interview to The Paris Review, 1967, VN said:
> (http://www.theparisreview.com/media/4310_NABOKOV.pdf, p. 15):
>
> "...What I intend to do is publish a number of twenty-page essays on
> several
> works - Ulysses, Madame Bovary, Kafka's Transformation, Don Quixote
> and
> others--all based on my Cornell and Harvard lectures. I remember with
> delight
> tearing apart Don Quixote, a cruel and crude old book, before six
> hundred
> students in Memorial Hall, much to the horror and embarrassment of
> some of my
> more conservative colleagues."
>
> Surely the esteemed writer Alberto Manguel took things too
> literally... but
> maybe he wanted to. Then he, and Mr Báez after him, just kept
> parroting the
> self-created useful quote. Amazing!
>
> Victor Fet
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Vladimir Nabokov Forum on behalf of D. Barton Johnson
> Sent: Wed 2/16/2005 8:58 PM
> To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
> Subject: Fw: Fw: Nabokov (1899-1977) burnt "El Quixote" in front of
> hisstudents.
> ...
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Susan Elizabeth Sweeney" <SSWEENEY@holycross.edu>
> To: <chtodel@cox.net>; <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>
> Sent: Wednesday, February 16, 2005 2:40 PM
> Subject: Re: Fw: Nabokov (1899-1977) burnt "El Quixote" in front of
> hisstudents. ...
>
>
> What a bizarre and preposterous claim! I wonder if it stems from some
> grotesque mistranslation of a statement about VN having illuminated the
> novel for a class or enlightened them about its meaning or something.
>
>
>>>> chtodel@cox.net 02/16/05 11:53 AM >>>
> Message
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Dmitri Nabokov
> Sent: Tuesday, February 15, 2005 4:03 AM
> Subject: TR : Nabokov (1899-1977) burnt "El Quixote" in front of his
> students. ...
>
>
> Dear Don (please post),
>
> What "expert" Báez says about my father is utter hogwash. He had best
> sit
> down before he topples onto his left flank. Shame on the IPS for
> printing
> undocumented disinformation.
>
> Dmitri Nabokov
>
>
> -----Message d'origine-----
> De : Sandy P. Klein [mailto:spklein52@hotmail.com]
> Envoyé : mercredi, 16. février 2005 04:03
> À : spklein52@hotmail.com
> Objet : Nabokov (1899-1977) burnt "El Quixote" in front of his
> students. ...
>
>
>
>
>
> http://www.ipsnews.net/new_nota.asp?idnews=27459
>
> 'Biggest Cultural Disaster Since 1258', Says Expert
> Inter Press Service (subscription), World - 5 hours ago
> ... Intellectuals have burnt books in the name of the Bible or the
> Koran.
> Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977) burnt "El Quixote" in front of his
> students.
> ...
>
>
>
>
>
>
> IRAQ-US:
> 'Biggest Cultural Disaster Since 1258', Says Expert
> Humberto Márquez
>
> CARACAS, Feb 15 (IPS) - One million books, 10 million documents and
> 14,000
> archaeological artifacts have been lost in the U.S.-led invasion and
> subsequent occupation of Iraq -- the biggest cultural disaster since
> the
> descendants of Genghis Khan destroyed Baghdad in 1258, Venezuelan
> writer
> Fernando Báez told IPS.
>
> "U.S. and Polish soldiers are still stealing treasures today and
> selling
> them across the borders with Jordan and Kuwait, where art merchants
> pay up
> to 57,000 dollars for a Sumerian tablet," said Báez, who was
> interviewed
> during a brief visit to Caracas.
>
> The expert on the destruction of libraries has helped document the
> devastation of cultural and religious objects in Iraq, where the
> ancient
> Mesopotamian kingdoms of Sumer, Akkad, and Babylon emerged, giving it a
> reputation as the birthplace of civilisation.
>
> His inventory of the destruction and his denunciations that the
> coalition
> forces are violating the Hague Convention of 1954 on the protection of
> cultural heritage in times of war have earned him the enmity of
> Washington.
>
> Báez said he was refused a visa to enter the United States to take
> part in
> conferences.
>
> In addition, he has been barred from returning to Iraq "to carry out
> further
> investigations," he added. "But it's too late, because we already have
> documents, footage and photos that in time will serve as evidence of
> the
> atrocities committed," said Báez, the author of "The Cultural
> Destruction of
> Iraq" and "A Universal History of the Destruction of Books", which were
> published in Spanish.
>
> IPS: What do you accuse the United States of doing?
>
> FB: In first place, of violating the Hague Convention, which states
> that
> cultural property must be protected in the event of armed conflict.
>
> That is a criminally punishable offence, which is why Washington has
> not
> signed the convention, or the 1999 protocol attached to it. And
> perhaps it
> is one reason the administration of George W. Bush is seeking immunity
> for
> its soldiers.
>
> But it is not only the United States; the rest of the coalition forces
> are
> also guilty.
>
> IPS: But according to the reports, it was Iraqi civilians and not U.S.
> soldiers who looted libraries and museums.
>
> FB: But the U.S. army was criminally negligent, failing to protect
> libraries, museums and archaeological sites despite clear warnings from
> UNESCO (the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation),
> the
> U.N., the University of Chicago's Oriental Institute and the former
> head of
> the U.S. president's Advisory Committee on Cultural Property, Martin
> Sullivan.
>
> The Iraqis who went out to loot interpreted the negligence as a green
> light
> to act without restraint.
>
> IPS: So the sin committed by the U.S. was one of omission?
>
> FB: Not only that. There was also direct destruction and looting. In
> Nasiriya in May 2004, a year after the formal end of hostilities,
> during
> fighting with (Shi'ite cleric) Muqtada el-Sadr's militants, 40,000
> religious
> manuscripts were destroyed in a fire (set by the coalition forces).
>
> And when soldiers found out that the Sumerian city of Ur (in southern
> Iraq)
> was the birthplace of the prophet Abraham, they took ancient bricks as
> souvenirs.
>
> IPS: You also accuse soldiers from other countries, besides U.S.
> troops.
>
> FB: That's right. In late May 2004, Italian Carabinieri were caught
> trying
> to smuggle looted cultural artifacts over the border into Kuwait. And
> the
> British Museum reported that Polish forces destroyed part of Babylon's
> ancient ruins, to the south of Baghdad.
>
> IPS: Can we suppose that these events are part of phases of the
> conflict
> that have already been left behind?
>
> FB: No. More recently it was found that Polish troops drove heavy
> vehicles
> near the Nebuchadnezzar Palace, which dates back to the sixth century
> B.C.,
> and then covered large areas of the site with asphalt, doing
> irreparable
> damage. There were also attempts to gouge out bricks at the Gate of
> Ishtar.
>
> To that is added the collapse of ancient walls due to the continuous
> passage
> of U.S. trucks and helicopters, and walls spraypainted with graffiti,
> like
> "I was here" or "I love Mary".
>
> IPS: Can we expect the situation to improve with time?
>
> FB: Another accusation that can be made against the United States is
> that it
> has created a less safe country overall, by generating the conditions
> for
> cultural destruction, which will be even worse in future years, due to
> the
> situation of legal insecurity.
>
> In the days of the looting of Baghdad, U.S. Defence Secretary Donald
> Rumsfeld went so far as to say that looting "isn't something that
> someone
> allows or doesn't allow. It's something that happens."
>
> Today Iraq is like a golf course for the world's terrorists, and its
> cultural treasures will not be safe in the future.
>
> IPS: What impact has there been on the United States?
>
> FB: One of its reactions was to rejoin UNESCO, which the U.S. had
> withdrawn
> from during the era of (Ronald) Reagan (1981-1989) on the pretext that
> the
> U.N. agency served as "a communist front".
>
> Experts at the U.S. state and defence departments are trying to
> mitigate the
> damages. U.S. military police helped Iraqi police track down the Lady
> of
> Warka, dubbed the "Mona Lisa of Mesopotamia", a 5,200-year-old marble
> sculpture that is one of the earliest known representations of the
> human
> face in the history of art.
>
> IPS: How significant are the losses?
>
> FB: The Lady of Warka may be worth 100 or 150 million dollars. A
> Sumerian
> cuneiform tablet or an Assyrian stela can fetch 57,000 dollars at the
> border.
>
> Some Iraqis have been purchasing books at used-book markets in Baghdad
> to
> return them to the libraries.
>
> But the damage is incalculable. In the Baghdad National Library,
> around one
> million books were burnt, including early editions of Arabian Nights,
> mathematical treatises by Omar Khayyam, and tracts by philosophers
> Avicena
> and Averroes.
>
> IPS: Thousands of relics were also lost from the National
> Archaeological
> Museum.
>
> FB: The initial reports spoke of 170,000 objects, but 25 major
> artifacts as
> well as 14,000 less important ones actually disappeared. An amnesty
> for the
> looters led to the recovery of around 3,500, according to the U.S.
> colonel
> who led the investigations, Matthew Bogdanos.
>
> But besides the national museum and library, the Al-Awqaf library,
> which
> held over 5,000 Islamic manuscripts, university libraries and the
> library of
> Bayt al-Hikma also suffered. At least 10 million documents have been
> lost in
> Iraq altogether.
>
> (Báez has said his research into the destruction of libraries and
> archives
> was first motivated by his painful childhood memories of a flash flood
> that
> wiped away the library in his hometown, San Félix in southeastern
> Venezuela.
> He cherished the municipal library because since his parents worked,
> he had
> often been left with relatives who worked there, and spent his days
> reading.
>
> His research culminated in "A Universal History of the Destruction of
> Books", which documents the catastrophic loss of books during wars,
> like the
> Library of Alexandria, which burnt down in 48 B.C., or the burning of
> millions of books by the Nazis.)
>
> IPS: Do you believe military forces have been the worst enemy of books?
>
> FB: No, actually I don't. I believe intellectuals are the worst
> enemies.
> Intellectuals have burnt books in the name of the Bible or the Koran.
> Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977) burnt "El Quixote" in front of his
> students.
> Destroyers like Adolph Hitler or Slobodan Milosevic were bibliophiles.
> Saddam Hussein himself, an archaeologist and philologist, published
> three
> novels. Joseph Goebbels, the genius of Nazi propaganda, was a
> philologist.
>
> And many of those who have led the U.S. to war in Iraq are academics.
> It is
> a paradox: the inventors of the electronic book returned to
> Mesopotamia,
> where books, history and civilisation were born, to destroy it.
> (END/2005)
>
>
> Send your comments to the editor
>
> Letters to the Editor: read what others say about the IPS Service
>
> ----- End forwarded message -----
>
----- End forwarded message -----