Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0002219, Fri, 4 Jul 1997 10:55:14 -0700

Subject
Re: Different VNs in Russian & English? (fwd)
Date
Body
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 03 Jul 97 20:02:37 EDT
To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum <NABOKV-L@UCSBVM.ucsb.edu>
Subject: Re: Different VN's in Russian & English?

From: "J. A. Rea" <JAREA@UKCC.uky.edu>


This is a generalization with examples if there be such a genre, not
strictly a reply to the query.

1. The Roman (originally Greek) author Ennius said (roughly translated),
"I have three souls, because I speak three languages." (The third was, of
course, Oscan.

2. Two of my students came up to me after class one day, and said, "Professor
Rea, when you speak Italian, you are somebody else." (It wasn't an Italian
class, by the way.)

Much has been said on the "intimate" relation between cultures and languages
(Whorf, following Sapir, frinstance) and on language and personality. There
may be more answer to the question than DBJ is expecting.

John
---------------------------------------------------------------
EDITOR's RESPONSE. I too have had some experiences wherein I had the
strong impression of different personalities represented in different
languages. Both cases were women.
The first involved a Russian woman circa 18 who had been raised in
Santa Barbara by her aged Russian grandmother. Her English was faultless
(?) eighteen-year-old Southern Californian. Her Russian voice, however,
was old, quavery, and rather shrill -- based, I suppose, on her
grandmother. Speaking Russian with her was an almost uncanny experience.
The second was an English women in her mid to late 20s who shared
a flat with us in Bulgaria. She had studied Bulgarian in London and had
been in Bulgaria for, I think, a couple or three years. She had a
long-term Bulgarian companion and spoke excellent Bulgarian. My wife and I
spent a good deal of time with the two of them in bilingual conversation.
The Bulgarian had no English with the result that the Brit shifted back
and forth with great rapidity. Again, her whole manner and set of gestures
changed from minute to minute with the language shift. She was unaware of
the shifts of manner.
That said, I am not sure that the question posed by Mari Yamaguchi
is one that lends itself to clear-cut answers. In the case of VN we are
talking about writing rather than speech. Further, "personality" is an
almost indefinable quality. How might one meaningfully define "different"
in re "personality." In the case of VN, there are also factors of age,
language setting, subject matter, and so on.
I sense that the "natural" vs. "scientific" distinction that has
been proposed about VN's Russian vs English prose has some merit, but this
is not a matter of personality. It seems to me that VN's Russian prose is
more natural than his English. But again there is the age factor. Russians
often have remarked on how un-Russian (or English) VN seemed to them, but
certainly no Anglo would have ever taken him for British or American -
either in person or in prose.
Although the statement is near worthless, my sense is that VN was
the same "personality" in both of the languages he spoke from childhood.

Don Johnson