University College London

Review
Author(s): Michael Rodgers
Review by: Michael Rodgers
Source: The Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 89, No. 2 (April 2011), pp. 329-330
Published by: the Modern Humanities Research Association and University College London,
School of Slavonic and East European Studies
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5699/slaveasteurorev2.89.2.0329
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 reviews 329
are based on the last published version to appear in Babels lifetime. In
exceptional cases, differences between the earlier and later versions are indi-
cated in the annotations. In those cases where Babels revisions were clearly
forced by the censor, the translation follows the earlier, uncensored publica-
tion (p. xvi). It is indeed remarkable that Babel scholars are still required to
rely on the twenty-year-old two-volume Sochineniia that was such an important
event in late-Soviet publishing (along with a number of other significant
earlier publications). Making judgements about Babels own revisions to his
works, and about the role of censorship (let alone self-censorship) in this
process, is a task requiring considerable discernment, and a fully annotated
Russian-language edition of his works, complete with all available variant
texts, is an acute scholarly priority. For undergraduates and curious general
readers, however, Isaac Babels Selected Writings contains not only nearly all of
the authors most important works, lightly but tellingly introduced and
annotated by Freidin, but also a selection of letters to his sister and mother
(themselves previously published in Isaac Babel: The Lonely Years, 19251939:
Unpublished Stories and Correspondence, New York, 1964), a series of newly trans-
lated memoirs, and a section devoted to significant instances of Babel criti-
cism (Shklovskii and Budennyi from the 1920s, followed by Lionel Trilling,
Sicher and Freidin himself from later on), all of which will continue to shape
and promote Babels English-language afterlife.
Wadham College, Oxford Philip Ross Bullock

Norman, Will and White, Duncan (eds). Transitional Nabokov. Peter Lang,
Oxford, Bern and New York, 2009. xiii + 311 pp. Illustrations. Notes.
Bibliography. Index. 38.00 (paperback).
Vladimir Nabokovs indefatigable relationship with aestheticism, exile and
death has seemingly allowed his penchant for all things protean to be too
often overlooked. A trilingual novelist, poet, dramatist, lecturer, lepidopterist,
tennis tutor (to name just a few vocations), who spent his life in Russia,
Europe, America and then Europe again, the seemingly staid Nabokov is
arguably the most prismatic novelist of the twentieth century. I think like a
genius, I write like a distinguished author, and I speak like a child, Nabokov
chuckles to himself in Strong Opinions (New York, 1973, p. 3), keen to splice
himself in three. It seems that Nabokov is as much a fan of combinational
delight (Pale Fire, London, 1962, p. 58) as his poet John Shade and as flighty
as his Russian alter ego Sirin.
Transitional Nabokov is an iridescent collection of essays from both world-
renowned and nascent Nabokov scholars concerning Nabokovs mercurial
status as a writer. Assembled from the fruits of the Transitional Nabokov
conference held at the University of Oxford in 2007, Will Norman and
Duncan White attempt to dispel the notion of the Nabokovian caricature
[. . .] all jowly arrogance and literary-patrician disdain for what he styled the
second-rate and the mediocre (p. 2). Indeed, the cover page, adorned with a
picture of a youthful Nabokov accompanied by sketchings of butterflies, serves

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330 seer, 89, 2, april 2011
to debunk this lazy literary stereotyping (p. 2). The collection itself presents
sixteen essays divided up into four sections Nabokov and Science,
Transnational Nabokov, Nabokov beyond Language, and Nabokov and
Ethics which help to compartmentalize the ways in which formal,
geographical, linguistic and moral transitions have been integral to how we
perceive Nabokovs art.
Nabokov and Science looks at the reciprocity of Nabokovs fiction and
scientific study; the overlap between etymology and entomology (we are
reminded that Nabokov worked at the Harvard Museum of Comparative
Zoology). Brian Boyds essay Literature, Pattern, Lolita: Or Art, Literature,
Science, focusing on Lolita, is particularly astute in its argument that [a]rt
is a form of cognitive play with pattern (p. 35). Transnational Nabokov
addresses the implications of the migrs nomadic existence between conti-
nents (Christine Raguets essay Beyond Creativity: Translation as a Transi-
tional Process is especially noteworthy) whilst Nabokov beyond Language
engages with the dexterity in which Nabokovs lambent prose goes beyond the
textual medium Yuri Levings curio Singing The Bells and The Covetous
Knight: Nabokov and Rachmaninoffs Operatic Translations of Poe and
Pushkin is at odds with Nabokovs claim to be tone-deaf (p. 205). Nabokov
and Ethics attempts to quell the oft-cited claim that Nabokov is solely
concerned with the aesthetes outlook and, instead, offers new paradigms for
engaging with the intentions and ethical responsibilities (p. 11) of Nabokovs
works. Especially striking is Michael Woods essay The Kindness of Cruelty
which attempts to reconcile the discord between the cruelty that Nabokov
displayed and the repugnance he claimed to show it.
Through no fault of its own however, one cannot but wish that the publica-
tion of The Original of Laura (with its metamorphosing wordplay and veiled
allusions) could have been pushed through slightly earlier in order to hear
what the scholars in this collection would have made of such a liminal text.
Niggling oversights such as belated (p. 4) instead of belatedly, Dickenss
and then Dickens (pp. 6465), and exclamation points-like dripping icicles
(p. 298) are simply dwarfed, however, by the insight of the books content.
Transitional Nabokov will be met with open arms by Nabokov Studies. Not only
does it compile essays addressing familiar problems alongside new theorems,
its scope knocks on the door of almost all of the topics of Nabokov scholarship.
An immaculate collection that never tires due to the breadth of scholars con-
tained within it, Transitional Nabokov is a verdant collection of essays illustrating
just how polymorphous Vladimir Nabokov/Vivian Darkbloom/Vladimir
Vladimirovich N. was.
University of Strathclyde Michael Rodgers

Maar, Michael. Speak, Nabokov. Translated by Ross Benjamin. Verso, London

and New York, 2009. viii + 148 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index.
14.99.
SPEAK, NABOKOV is a translation of Die schne bse Welt des Vladimir Nabokov (Berlin,
2007). The original title, emphasizing the polarities of Nabokovs work, has

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