Chapter 8 Translator's postscript

In the early 1960s, there was an argument in the United States that there was a crisis of novel form. It was believed that writers throughout the ages had exhausted the form of the novel, and it was impossible to make any breakthroughs.After Nabokov's novel was published in 1962, the famous female writer Mary McCarthy immediately praised the novel as "one of the great works of art of this century", and refuted the above statement based on this.British writer Anthony Burgess called it a brilliant collage of novels, and included Nabokov's other novel in his book "Modern Fiction: Ninety-Nine Masterpieces".

The structure of this novel is indeed very peculiar. The whole book is composed of four parts: "Preface", "Psalms", "Commentary" and "Index". The latter part is a cumbersome commentary on the long poem, and the "preface" and "index" are also purely fictitious.Nabokov's intention is for the reader to cooperate with the author to form a tortuous plot in his mind through repeated comparative reading. Nabokov once translated Pushkin's "Evgeny Onegin" into English.He has always opposed arty free translation, advocated literal translation, and relied on annotations to explain, so the poem was translated into four volumes of 2,000 pages, and the translation only occupied 208 pages, and the rest were annotations. The project is huge.Therefore, it can be said that his writing was undoubtedly inspired during the process of translating "Eugene Onegin".Nabokov was also familiar with English literature.Pope, an English poet in the 18th century, wrote "The Epic of Fools" to satirize his critics. The whole poem is written in heroic double rhymes in four chapters, with strange notes made by a fictional critic and A hilarious index (actually a parody of egotistical academic ostentation).When Knott was writing, he was obviously influenced by Pope's work.

The plot of the book is roughly like this: a fantasy king of Zambala (fictional country) in Europe fled to the United States after being deposed, and taught in an American university under the pseudonym Kim Porter.A gay and vegetarian, he influenced his neighbor, the poet Professor Shade, to write his life story into poetry.Later, a criminal mistook Shade for the judge who sentenced him to prison and shot him dead, but Kim Porter believed that the gunman was an assassin sent by the Zambar country after the revolution, and he was the one who wanted to kill him.With the consent of Mrs. Shade, he edited and published the manuscripts of Shade's poems, but found that there was no legendary experience in the poems, so he speculated wildly, added details, rambling, and commenting.The whole poem is actually a Robert Frost-style autobiographical narrative poem painstakingly worked out by the old American bourgeois poet who neither believed in Marx nor admired Freud. The meaning of life such as marriage, death and afterlife, reality and illusion, time and space, aesthetics, the relationship between art and reality, etc. are discussed.

The title of the poem comes from Shakespeare's tragedy "Timon of Athens", Act IV, Scene 3, which compares the light source of the sun and the moon, which means that although the sun may be a thief who absorbs the water of the sea, it returns to the earth to give fruit and is the source of vitality. , and the moon is a complete thief, a parasite, a capricious and deceitful source, whose dim fire is only reflected light rather than real light.Nabokov uses this as a metaphor in the book that the poet Shade is a figure like the sun, who draws experience from reality and turns it into real art to enrich life, while the crazy Kim Porter is a figure like the moon, illusory. Treating reality seriously, trying in vain to absorb the light from Scheider's poems.Nabokov seems to be writing about two very different kinds of writers, the healthy and the sick.Most Western critics praised Nabokov's long poem as a masterpiece, comparable to the works of the famous American poet Frost.

In this book, Nabokov demonstrates his vast intelligence and rich knowledge, employing a large number of literary allusions, allusions, multi-semantics, multilingual puns and mirror images, etc., and weaves his works into a maze. Readers need to read patiently to see through the mystery.He once said, "Literature, real literature, is not to be swallowed whole, like some potion which may be good for the heart or the mind - the stomach of the soul. Literature should be taken and broken into little pieces --then you will smell its lovely taste in the palm of your hand, put it in your mouth and chew it with relish; Taste it worthwhile, and its fragments will recombine in your mind to reveal a unity, and you have given a lot of your energy to that beauty." It is in line with Nabokov's kind of request.Therefore, it can be said that he has very high requirements for the readers in his mind: they must have rich literary accomplishments, be proficient in multiple languages, be a first-class poet and Sherlock Holmes, and also need to have rich imagination and strong memory.Nabokov once exclaimed: "Give me the creative reader. This story is for him." Indeed, the reader is not only required to have a creative imagination, but to be willing to take the trouble to participate in the intricate games of novels such as the above-mentioned The plot is only a superficial story, and after careful investigation, Kim Potkin may be a rotten professor in the Russian Department of that university. Chia may be Zambala, and the long poem and commentary may both be written by the poet Scheider, and so on.

In addition, this work coincides precisely with Nabokov's writing method.Generally, he does not write chapter after chapter sequentially when composing, but writes piecemeal on cards (this is how Shade, the protagonist in the novel, writes poems), and finally organizes them upside down and arranges them into chapters. .He also likes to use remote and ancient vocabulary. To read his works, you need to have a "Webster's Dictionary" at hand as a guide.Therefore, some Western critics say that he manipulates the characters in his works like a puppet, and his language is like the magnificent colors on the wings of a butterfly. They think that he is the most important writer in the United States since Faulkner, or the most stylistic, Most Original Writer.

In this novel, in spite of its eccentricity, in which the author both pedantically and satirizes pedantry, the reader will find a good deal of insight in it.The author also bitterly satirizes Freud's theory and psychoanalysis popular in the West, and satirizes American universities, publishing circles, literary criticism and social customs.The whole book is witty and shows a unique Nabokovian humor. As for the meaning of this novel, Western critics have different opinions.Some think it is a satire on the Western critics and publishing circles, some think it is a satire on the situation of European intellectuals in the United States, some think it is a farce-like caricature of American universities, and some critics simply think that the To clarify the meaning of this work is to ruin this ingenious work of art.Mary McCarthy said it well, "is a doll's case, a magnificent jewel, a wound toy, a difficult chess game, a hellish arrangement, a trap for critics, a novel organized by you In short, readers can realize completely different meanings from this confusing novel according to their own understanding.

In the summer of 1985, American writer John Hersey came to China for a visit. Accompanied by two teachers, Feng Yidai and Bi Shuowang, he had a small gathering in the humble house to talk about American literature.He learned that the author was studying Nessler's works and had already translated a book, and suggested that the best works of Nessler should be translated and introduced to Chinese readers.Due to the difficulty of translating this book, I only tried to translate the "Preface", the fourth chapter of "Psalms" and a small part of the relevant notes, and handed it to Senior Li Wenjun for publication in the fifth issue of "World Literature" in 1987.Ten years passed in a blink of an eye.I finally translated this 200,000-character novel in its entirety, but I heard that Mr. Hersey, who had encouraged me to translate this book, passed away in 1994. It makes people miss that friend who has always been friendly to China.

Nabokov, best known for his controversial 1955 novel, was largely dismissed by the average Western reader as a popular bestseller at the time.American writer and critic White MacDonald thinks that Nabokov wrote, as if with a kind of proud smile, saying to readers, "You think I am a bestseller, then please read this work." Try it!"