| Translation has been recognized as a primary force in the shaping of Vladimir Nabokov's allusive style and unique stance at the crossroads of literary traditions. The present examination of his relationship with and attitude toward translation seeks to trace the development of his life-long devotion to translation from its roots in his Russian period. Making use of archival as well as published materials, the dissertation examines Nabokov's translations of French, German, English and Russian poets and writers across his linguistic range. It charts not only the progress of his transpositional technique, but also the fecund alliance between translation and original creation.;Part One deals with the versions of Alfred de Musset, Pierre Louys, Heinrich Heine and Lord Byron made prior to his escape from Russia in 1918, a hitherto little-studied aspect of his development.;Part Two examines the role played by translation at the outset of his career as a Russian emigre writer, paying close attention not only to his employment of the technique of literary adaptation in his versions of Romain Rolland's Colas Breugnon, John Keats's "La Belle Dame Sans Merci" and Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, but also to the rationale behind his translations of Seamus O'Sullivan, Musset, Rupert Brooke and Pierre de Ronsard.;As "Vladimir Sirin" Nabokov transferred into Russian such multifarious authors as Baudelaire, Goethe, Charles Lamb, Musset, Rimbaud, Jules Supervielle, Shakespeare, Tennyson and Verlaine. While Part Three concentrates primarily on the works of these authors in Nabokov's translations, it analyzes his earliest known English and French versions of poems by Fedor Tiutchev and Aleksandr Pushkin as well. It explicates the uses of translation in Nabokov's oeuvre and closes with an exegesis of his French versions of Pushkin's poetry published before his departure from Europe to the United States in 1940.;The present dissertation is the fullest account of Vladimir Nabokov as translator during his Russian period available to date. |
