Subject
Re: On pathos (fwd)
Date
Body
From: Galya Diment <galya@u.washington.edu>
Nabokov's use of the word "pathetic" in both languages is consistently
the same, and nowhere is it more evident, it seems to me, than in Pnin.
Pnin is often characterized as "pathetic," mostly by Joan Clements ("Joan,
who used the word 'pathetic' perhaps a little too often, declared she
would ask that pathetic savant for a drink with their guests" -- 35-36)
but also by Nabokov himself when he wrote to a Doubleday editor
in 1955: "What I am offering you is a character new to literature -- a
character important and intensely pathetic -- and new characters in
literature are not born every day" (SL, 178). "Intensely pathetic" here
obviously has a somewhat different meaning than the way we usually use the
word now, and in that it is much closer to the Russian "pateticheskii." I
suspect Joan's usage, too, is closer to that than to a more contemporary
connotation. Important to note that the common dictionary definition of
"pathetic" still bears them both out for it's defined (in Webster's) as
"Affecting or exciting emotion, especially the tender emotions, as pity or
sorrow." So it's more "moving" and even, in that, inspiring, than just
pitiful as in "ridiculous."
Galya Diment
----------------
On Tue, 25 May 1999, Anatolii Vorbei 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
>
Nabokov's use of the word "pathetic" in both languages is consistently
the same, and nowhere is it more evident, it seems to me, than in Pnin.
Pnin is often characterized as "pathetic," mostly by Joan Clements ("Joan,
who used the word 'pathetic' perhaps a little too often, declared she
would ask that pathetic savant for a drink with their guests" -- 35-36)
but also by Nabokov himself when he wrote to a Doubleday editor
in 1955: "What I am offering you is a character new to literature -- a
character important and intensely pathetic -- and new characters in
literature are not born every day" (SL, 178). "Intensely pathetic" here
obviously has a somewhat different meaning than the way we usually use the
word now, and in that it is much closer to the Russian "pateticheskii." I
suspect Joan's usage, too, is closer to that than to a more contemporary
connotation. Important to note that the common dictionary definition of
"pathetic" still bears them both out for it's defined (in Webster's) as
"Affecting or exciting emotion, especially the tender emotions, as pity or
sorrow." So it's more "moving" and even, in that, inspiring, than just
pitiful as in "ridiculous."
Galya Diment
----------------
On Tue, 25 May 1999, Anatolii Vorbei 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
>