Marian at Tanglewood is having a Eugene Onegin Read-Along for 5 weeks beginning January 7, 2014. Pushkin was seen as setting the foundation for Russian literature so if you are looking for an introduction, this work is a wonderful place to start.
Here is the schedule:
Ch. 1 & 2 – January 7 to 16
Ch. 3 & 4 – January 16 to 25
Ch. 5 & 6 – January 25 – February 3
Ch. 7 & 8 – February 3 to 12
She has decided to allow 1 1/2 weeks per every two chapters, which seems like a decent balance between going at a regular clip and dragging on too long.
Please see the Tanglewood blog for further instructions and also a lovely calendar for a visual schedule of the read.
Since I just finished reading Eugene Onegin, I am very excited to be participating in the discussion of Pushkin’s “untranslatable” poem. Thanks for organizing the read, Marian!
It's very tempting to join this read-along! I just might do it (although January is now heavily weighted with events on my calendar). I saw your comment in my email, but for some reason it didn't show up on the blog–it should have been in the moderation box and wasn't. But my translation is by Babette Deutsch. I would love to read a different one to compare, if you have a recommendation for a translator!
Please join in Jean! Since you've read it before you can't actually look at it as a full book, can you? 😉 How is that for trying to convince you? I know what you mean though; my January is looking very full, but I try not to think about it and just press on.
Wow, I hadn't even heard of Babette Deutsch! I had an awful translation by Lieut.-Col. Henry Spalding so I dumped that and changed to Sir Charles Johnston's translation, which I really liked. The Arndt and Nabokov translations are the standards but with Nabokov, it is said that if you read his translation, you are actually getting more Nabokov than Pushkin! :-Z Personally, I liked the Falen translation when I compared it with the Johnston. It would be interesting to read Nabokov one day too. I hope that helps a little. As you well know, when dealing with a work in translation, you are always trying to make the best of an imperfect situation. But I am not going to try to learn Russian to get the full understanding of this poem. Sorry Pushkin! 😉
I WISH I could read Russian. Imagine reading Pushkin and Tolstoy for real! I actually tried in college, but Russian is really really hard.
Falen's is a great translation (the first I read). 🙂 Someday it would be lovely to read it in Russian, but that's a long ways off! I am going to be reading Johnston; last time I read Stanley Mitchell's, which is pretty good as well.
LOL! I tried Russian on a Rosetta Stone demo. I would have bet money I was pronouncing the words correctly but I was always in the "red" area. Obviously they have sounds that my poor little brain has never heard before. 🙁 I figure it's better if I stick to practicing my French.
So we are both reading opposite translations from our first read! It will be fun at the end to compare. I would really like to read Nabokov's translation but I probably should read some of his works first to be able to recognize his style of writing so I have the ability to compare. There was some really interesting sniping back and forth between Nabokov and Arndt regarding their translations. Just wonderful literary structure; their wording is so lovely that you forget they are having a fight and get lost in the beauty of the sentences.