Books: Great Performance

(3 of 3)

Scholar's Craft. But such scholarly capering should not obscure the worth of Nabokov's commentary. The translation can be enjoyed but not really understood without it. And Nabokov, who learned his craft during years of professing at Wellesley and Cornell, is not merely a translator; he is also a truly remarkable teacher. He keeps the students awake.

Doubtless Nabokov will not win the war against paraphrased translation, which is his main concern. Perhaps it should not be won—not all paraphrases are profanations—but certainly it should be fought. But translators should be reminded that uprooting a masterpiece is not a job to be undertaken lightly ("Poetry is what is lost in translation," Robert Frost once observed); students, for their part, should be warned that a translation must never be read with complete trust.