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Dear Maria,
I don't believe Nabokov knew ancient Greek, at least not well.
It was not taught at Tenishev, and unlike Latin it was never
used much in the natural sciences. I don't think it figured in
his Cambridge studies either--his areas were Russian and French
literature. It would have been fairly easy for him to use a
Greek lexicon (Greek-Russian, Greek-English, or Greek-French),
of course, because of the similarity between the Cyrillic and
Greek alphabets, and he certainly knew Greek mythology well.
I am currently working on an article that includes a discussion
of the ancient Greek word 'ardis' in ADA, and I will be arguing
that Nabokov could not have encountered the word in Greek
literature, because it appears very seldom there, but could have
been familiar with it through a couple of scientific terms, and
might subsequently have looked it up in a lexicon. ADA also
contains a specific mention of the mimes of Herodas (3rd-cent.
BCE poet, from Alexandria) "in the literal French translation
with the Greek en regard" (Part 2, chapter 5), editions, which
suggests that Nabokov may have been familiar with the French
Bude' series or the Anglo-American Loeb series of classical texts-with-translations.
Good luck with your work on "The historian as translator"!
Mary Bellino
Maria Yamalidou wrote:
>
> Two questions -if I may- to Nabokovian experts who dislike long e-mails
>
> 1. What was VN thinking about his potential translators?
> 2. Was VN familiar with ancient Greek?
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