Subject
Hebrew translation of _Invitation_
Date
Body
From: Toker Leona <toker@HUM.HUJI.AC.IL>
NABOKOV IN HEBREW: INVITATION TO A BEHEADING
In the fall of 1995 "Invitation to a Beheading" was published
in Hebrew by "HaKibutz Hameuhad." The translator is Peter Kriksunov,
originally from the USSR, whose command of modern Hebrew and of its stylistic
potentialities is quite stunning. The translation makes excellent
reading: Kriksunov has managed to keep all the Nabokovian interplay of
stylistic registers as well as most of the elegance and emotional effect.
He has produced an excellent nonce creation to render the "nonnons"; but
the charge on which Cincinnatus is arrested is rendered as "epistemological
turpitude," an interpretation of the Russian "gnoseologicheskaya gnustnost,'"
rather than of the English "gnostic turpitude." Some of Kriksunov's
separate lexical choices might have been different had he been more
attentive to the English version and to the English-language critical
studies of the novel. But whatever connotations may be regarded as lost
in his version of the text, the loss in partly compensated by Biblical
echoes (e.g. from Isiah) of which even modern Hebrew tends to be quite
productive and which are thematically quite appropriate in a novel
about the fall of a kingdom.
The issue of gnosticism and related themes is dealt with in the Afterword
written by Maya Kaganskaya. The afterword is followed by an analytic
narratological essay by Menahem Perry, who is also the editor of the book.
Leona Toker
The Hebrew University, Jerusalem
NABOKOV IN HEBREW: INVITATION TO A BEHEADING
In the fall of 1995 "Invitation to a Beheading" was published
in Hebrew by "HaKibutz Hameuhad." The translator is Peter Kriksunov,
originally from the USSR, whose command of modern Hebrew and of its stylistic
potentialities is quite stunning. The translation makes excellent
reading: Kriksunov has managed to keep all the Nabokovian interplay of
stylistic registers as well as most of the elegance and emotional effect.
He has produced an excellent nonce creation to render the "nonnons"; but
the charge on which Cincinnatus is arrested is rendered as "epistemological
turpitude," an interpretation of the Russian "gnoseologicheskaya gnustnost,'"
rather than of the English "gnostic turpitude." Some of Kriksunov's
separate lexical choices might have been different had he been more
attentive to the English version and to the English-language critical
studies of the novel. But whatever connotations may be regarded as lost
in his version of the text, the loss in partly compensated by Biblical
echoes (e.g. from Isiah) of which even modern Hebrew tends to be quite
productive and which are thematically quite appropriate in a novel
about the fall of a kingdom.
The issue of gnosticism and related themes is dealt with in the Afterword
written by Maya Kaganskaya. The afterword is followed by an analytic
narratological essay by Menahem Perry, who is also the editor of the book.
Leona Toker
The Hebrew University, Jerusalem