Dear List,
It's April first, and like The Gift's Fyodor on this date, the
list is moving--from Blackwell street to Sweeney way. Please
continue to contact both of us with your suggestions about list
guidelines. Now that about a month has passed under the new system, it
is a good time to reflect upon how well it is serving everyone's
needs. I'm sure that working together we can find some tweaks as
occasions arise.
A few weeks ago Evgeny Belodubrovsky and I had an off-list exchange
concerning two characters in Part 2, chapter 3 of Lolita, which
I've been intending to share: Pilvin and Zapel. In the Russian
translation, these appear as "Pil'ven" and "Zapel' " --in other words,
with added soft-signs in each word and one changed vowel. EB suggests
that these names evoke the Soviet (Boris) Pil'niak and the emigre
(Evgeny) Zamiatin. When I mentioned my immediate sense of the
"English" names' direct translation into Russian, (pil vin[o] i zapel,"
roughly "drank wine and started singing,") EB observed that wine
doesn't have the power to bring one to the point of song or tears!
What thoughts do others have about this, especially our Russian or
Russianist subscribers?
Happy spring to all,
Stephen Blackwell