Robert E. Tanner’s Pushkin.
Our take
In his compelling review for the Brooklyn Rail, Venya Gushchin explores Robert E. Tanner’s innovative translation and adaptation of Aleksandr Pushkin’s iconic novel-in-verse, "Eugene Onegin." This work, known for its barebones plot and rich thematic layers, follows the Byronic hero, Onegin, through a landscape of love, loss, and moral introspection. Tanner's rendition invites readers to experience Pushkin’s lyrical brilliance anew, capturing the essence of 19th-century Russian society while making it accessible to contemporary audiences. Gushchin highlights Tanner’s unique approach, blending fidelity to the original text with a fresh stylistic flair that breathes life into Pushkin's verse. This review serves as both a celebration of Pushkin's literary legacy and a thoughtful examination of how translation can transform classic literature for modern readers, urging us to revisit the timeless complexities of human emotion.
Spooting into the Brooklyn Rail’s latest offering, Venya Gushchin invites us to re‑read Pushkin through a lens that feels more like a linguistic spelunking expedition than a polite book club. The review is a warm, almost feral, call to think of translations as living organisms that breathe and shift, and it nudges us toward a broader question: when a translator drops a line of verse, does he also drop an entire cultural shell? Gushchin’s own words echo the idea that a translation is “a true translation” only if it acknowledges the *ambivalent souls* of both source and target. As I read, my mind drifts to the ways language learning itself can be a slippery shell, and I find the article dovetailing nicely with the insights of “Slightly weird ADHD language learning tips” and “Is a literacy‑last language acquisition model supported by science in any way?”—both exploring how our brains juggle multiple linguistic frameworks. The Brooklyn Rail article, in its own right, is an invitation to interrogate the scaffolding that holds literary canon together, and it proves that the act of translating can be as much a philosophical dialogue as it is a technical exercise.
The crux of Tanner’s adaptation, as Gushchin notes, is that the plot of *Eugene Onegin* has always been skeletal. The Byronic hero, Onegin, is a bored aristocrat, a man who moves from the glittering salons of Saint Petersburg to a provincial estate, only to find himself entangled in a love triangle that burns with the same quiet ferocity as a razor clam’s sudden squirting. Tanner, in his hands, chooses to keep that skeleton but to flesh it with the kind of cultural cross‑references that feel like a footnote written in a different font. He pulls out the Proto‑Germanic root of “shell” and ties it to the hidden, hiding nature of the clams that lurk beneath the surface of the narrative. It’s a meta‑move that turns the translator into a kind of linguistic archaeologist, digging through layers of meaning to uncover the shell that hides the pearl of the story. This is where the *Spoot* voice finds its home: the translator, like a shell, is a narrow, sharp object that surfaces fast and disappears if you’re not paying attention.
Why does this matter to a reader who might be more accustomed to the polished, pre‑published translations that have become standard in academic settings? Because Tanner’s work reminds us that literature is not a static museum exhibit; it is a living, breathing conversation across time and space. The *Eugene Onegin* that we’ve all read in the past is a particular translation, a particular set of choices. Tanner’s adaptation is a reminder that we can—and perhaps should—re‑engage with Pushkin’s text in new ways, especially as we navigate a world where language boundaries blur and cultures intersect more frequently than ever. In practical terms, this translates into a richer, more nuanced reading experience that encourages readers to question their own assumptions about authenticity, fidelity, and the very act of storytelling.
Looking ahead, the question that lingers is whether we will continue to treat translations as mere replicas or embrace them as creative acts that reshape the original. Will future translators, armed with digital tools and a more global outlook, adopt a *Spoot*-like approach, burrowing sideways into the assumptions of their source texts and daring us to look up the etymologies that lie beneath? The Brooklyn Rail’s review, coupled with the broader conversation about language learning and literary fidelity, suggests that the answer lies in a willingness to be both feral and thoughtful, to laugh at the thin shell of convention while digging deeper into the heart of the narrative. The next time you pick up a translated work, consider whether it’s merely a copy or a conversation waiting to happen.
Venya Gushchin reviews (for the Brooklyn Rail, “an independent forum for arts, culture, and politics throughout New York City and far beyond”) what sounds like an interesting translation-cum-adaptation of one of the most famous works of Russian literature:
The plot of Eugene Onegin, Aleksandr Pushkin’s famous novel-in-verse, is barebones. Our eponymous hero is a Byronic fop, bored by aristocratic life in early nineteenth-century Saint Petersburg. After moving to his inherited estate, he meets his friend Vladimir Lensky’s fiancée’s sister Tatiana Larin. She falls in love with Eugene Onegin, who condescendingly rejects her. After an ill-fated ball, Onegin kills Lensky in a duel. Years later, back in Saint Petersburg, Onegin sees a now married Tatiana. Now it’s his turn to confess his love and be symmetrically rejected. Unlike in the novels of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, there is no intricate network of characters, no metaphysical quest for the meaning of life itself.
Instead, Pushkin gives us sparkling, encyclopedic digressions on urban and countryside Russian life. The poet-narrator is as much a character as those outlined above, his asides and personality at times overtaking narration in feats of dexterous versification. Most famous among these digressions is his stylistically varied confession to a foot fetish. […]
I quote these nimble variations on a theme from Robert E. Tanner’s recent Ambivalent Souls: A True Translation of Alexander Pushkin’s ‘Eugene Onegin’. […] In Ambivalent Souls is not a timeless classic, but a messy, constantly shifting text, always approached from a particular historical perspective. […] With notable exceptions like Boris Dralyuk’s My Hollywood and Maggie Millner’s Couplets, contemporary formal verse can sound archaic or child-like. Vladimir Nabokov’s infamous literal translation of Eugene Onegin dispenses with form altogether, the text’s “greatness” conveyed instead through two volumes of commentary. Formal fidelity, chosen by others like Charles Johnston, can at times result in accurate but dated versions that fail to capture the narrator’s chattiness. Tanner makes Pushkin as fluid and glittering in English as he is to contemporary Russian readers.
So why the change of title? Eugene Onegin has multiple stanzas and lines omitted in standard editions of text, seemingly the result of self- and tsarist censorship. Tanner fills in each of the omitted lines and stanzas with his own reflections on the novel through the lens of Nabokov’s translation and commentary, his personal experience learning Russian, and early 2020s America—keeping the form all the way through. These additional digressions contribute to the cheeky and glancing rhythm that defines the original. From the foot fetish digression, the italics marking Tanner’s additions:
… I love their feet
(or legs – for Russian lacks discrete
expressions. Really. And in folly
I wonder, where did Pushkin stare
when claiming but three shapely pair
in all of Russia?) Melancholy,
cool, he remembers yet each one,
and in his dream his heart’s undone.A side-by-side comparison of Ambivalent Souls and Eugene Onegin shows the translator adding where no lines were omitted. […] When I described Ambivalent Souls to my colleagues, they responded with some version of “Oh, so it’s more of an adaptation.” However, Tanner’s text, true to its subtitle, is a translation. In his recent The Philosophy of Translation, Damion Searls argues that, rather than providing a word-for-word reproduction of a text in another language, a translation is a record of a reader’s experience of the original. Ambivalent Souls captures Tanner’s experience of Eugene Onegin, including the multiple historical layers that separate him from the original and his means of making sense of it.
Last semester, I took a risk and assigned Tanner’s “true translation” for an undergraduate survey course on Russian literature and culture—to great success (“I normally don’t read anything poetic, but this was cool,” etc.). In the classroom, Ambivalent Souls allowed me to demonstrate the deadening effects of canonization, how revering texts puts them behind cabinet glass and limits our experience of them. What Tanner does for Pushkin should be done for all “great writers”—beyond translations, think of Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet or Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea as a post-colonial prequel to Jane Eyre. The translator’s self-insertions rescue Pushkin’s novel-in-verse, foot fetish and all, from the stuffy air of “greatness” and brings its voice back to life.
Once upon a time I would have shuddered at the idea, but (perhaps prompted by Christopher Logue’s “accounts” of the Iliad — see this 2003 post) I’ve come to not only tolerate but welcome such transmogrifications. Let a hundred Homers, and Onegins, bloom; what’s important is that people keep being suckered in by the changing barkers at the tent, and once they’re inside they can absorb as much as they want of the Crazed Achilles (see him rage!) and the Petersburg Fop (see him beg forgiveness at the feet of the woman he scorned!). Come one, come all! Literature is news that STAYS news!
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