1 About Nabokov’s translation of Evgenij Onegin, especially his use of humour, see the chapter by Paul B. Grant in this volume (editors’ note).

2 For a more evolved, textual-evidence enhanced substantiation of this position, along with its theoretical underpinnings, see Shvabrin 2019.

3 The “alien word” is different from the “foreign word.” On foreign words in Nabokov’s work, see the chapter by Julie Loison-Charles in this volume (editors’ note).

4 Eric Naiman has called Nabokov “the most promiscuously allusive author of our time” (Naiman 2001: 360). Tempting as it may be to accept this metaphor as a designator uniquely suited for Nabokov’s playful allusiveness, a closer study of his translation suggests that instead of being compulsively random, his allusions are integrated into his dialogically-motivated search for meaning and significance in his encounters with other creative minds.

5 For this translation, read Alexia Gassin’s article in this volume (editors’ note).

6 Steiner cited Nabokov’s case as an exponent of a writer whose multilingual achievement throws into doubt “[t]he equation of a single pivot of language, of native deep rootedness, with poetic authority” (Steiner 1971: 6). For Nabokov’s dismissal of Steiner’s attempt to qualify him as an “extraterritorial” writer, see Nabokov 1973: 288.

7 See her laconic preamble to her husband’s Stihi.

8 In connection with which one is reminded of his first published work, an appropriative Russian rendition of Alfred de Musset’s “La Nuit de décembre,” 1914, the relevance of which has been persuasively demonstrated by Jane Grayson (see Grayson 1995).

9 The Vladimir Nabokov Archive with the Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature, New York Public Library.

10 “[of] enthralling/captivating mysteries of otherworldly plains”.

11 It is instructive to see that Nabokov uses the phrase “rude prying” in connection with his effort to detect the presence of “alien” constituents within the unity of Pushkin’s style: “Some rude prying into Pushkin’s workshop is inevitable, nor can one help being surprised at a great man’s stealing from lesser men” (Nabokov 1966: 109).

12 Renate Lachmann’s Gedächtnis und Literatur. Intertextualität in der russischen Moderne (1990) presents a cautionary tale on the perils of connecting Bakhtin and Nabokov while presenting little textual evidence in which to ground this parallel, John Burt Foster Jr. Nabokov’s Art of Memory and European Modernism (1993) shows that Bakhtin-enlightened approach to Nabokov advances our understanding of the writer’s relationship with his peers. Among recent studies of the Bakhtin-Nabokov nexus stands out Francisco Javier Picon’s PhD dissertation “Bakhtin and Nabokov: The Dialogue That Never Was” (Columbia, 2016).

13 Bakhtin’s “Author and Hero in Aesthetic Activity” (ca. 1920-23) may be among his earlier works, yet it retains its relevance to the analysis of the dialogic aspects of Nabokov’s creativity.

14 Brian Boyd’s Vladimir Nabokov’s Pale Fire: The Magic of Artistic Discovery (1999) demonstrates the potential of an interpretative strategy rooted in the interactive, indeed dialogic, implications of this pronouncement.

15 In and of itself Nabokov’s 1941-43 translation of Fëdor Tjutchev’s poetic meditation on the limits of interpersonal communication and understanding “Silentium” (ca. 1825-29) supplies us with much valuable information on the centrality of this philosophical conundrum to Nabokov’s thought. Tjutchev’s “Silentium” also provides an excellent example of a literary phenomenon deeply integrated into the texture of Nabokov’s original compositions according to the scenario of Bakhtin’s understanding of the dialogic aspect of creativity. “Cloud, Castle, Lake” (1937) is one example among many of how “Silentium” motivates Nabokov to grapple with its implications in his own work.

16 It is no accident that such modifiers begin to proliferate in Nabokov’s translation-centered discourse on the eve of his conversion to the literalist creed in the late nineteen-forties and thereafter in anticipation of his programmatic “On Translating Eugene Onegin” (1955), the purpose of which was to prepare the ground for the upcoming publication of the Eugene Onegin project. The direction of Nabokov’s evolution as translator and translation theorist is encapsulated in the shifts in his translation-centered rhetoric. In 1925, he privately equated creativity with translation as a way to communicate with God, no less: “[w]e are translators of God’s creations” (see Boyd 1990: 245). If in 1941 his programmatic statement on the subject was unambiguously titled “The Art of Translation,” its revised version opened “this pathetic business of translating” and qualified translation as “a controversial subject” (see Nabokov 2008: 2), foreshadowing “Rimes” (“Pity the elderly gray translator,” 1952) and “On Translating Eugene Onegin” (1955), with its “profanation of the dead” and “dove-droppings on your monument.”

17 An important facet behind Nabokov’s conversion to literalism was the fact that the accumulation of such and similar compromises he had accrued in the course of his life in translation weighed on him. Understanding that the only logical solution was to disown his poetic translations after arriving at literalism, Nabokov did just that after Walter Arndt had used them in an attempt to expose Nabokov’s position as hypocritical (see Arndt 1964: 16).

18 Attentive readers of the Eugene Onegin commentary know that it features a number of poetic and literary, not literal, translations. Nabokov continued to translate poetry as poetry even after Eugene Onegin (or as he worked on its last edition of 1975); it often escapes the attention of his critics that “On Adaptation” takes issue with Robert Lowell’s ignorance of Russian first and foremost, without insisting on literalism as the only way to translate Mandel′štam.