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Re: On pathos (fwd)
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>From Peter Kartsev petr@glas.apc.org
Dahl defines "pateticheskii" as "trogatel'nyi, vozbuzhdayushchii chuvstva,
strasti". I would suggest that this is exactly what VN meant and what he
wrote.
Why this obsessive search for all sorts of failings in VN? Anyway, Russian
language seems to be a wrong place to start looking.
Peter.
Donald Barton Johnson wrote:
> Apologies if this is well-known, but somehow eluded me:
>
> In "The Gift", Chapter 3, Fyodor, describing to Zina his
> first love, uses the expression "pateticheskaya bespechnost'".
> I'm alarmed by his choice of words: how can _bespechnost'_ be
> _pateticheskaya_? Here's the same sentence from the English
> translation:
>
> In all her ways there was something I found lovable to the
> point of tears, something indefinable at the time, but now
> appearing to me as a kind of pathetic insouciance (ouch! - AV).
>
> "Pathetic insouciance" makes sense, unlike "pateticheskaya
> bespechnost'". "Pateticheskij" is nothing like "pathetic" in English!
> The Russian word means something like "very passionate, perhaps in
> an inspiring way". Is Nabokov's Russian failing him here?
>
> --
> Anatoly Vorobey,
> mellon@pobox.com http://pobox.com/~mellon/
> "Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly" - G.K.Chesterton