Ganin V. N., Kiselev P. A.

Two Variants of “Lolita” by V. V. Nabokov: a Dialogue of Russian and English Literatures P. 99-107.

УДК 821.161.1-31.09«19»

DOI 10.37724/RSU.2020.68.3.011

 

The article focuses on the differences between the Russian and English variants of V. V. Nabokov’s novel “Lolita”. The relevance of the research consists in the philological approach to the issue of the author-created translation of the novel and in the analysis of the text through the prisms of two different languages. The aim of the research is to compare the two variants of V. V. Nabokov’s novel “Lolita”, to analyze the literary and linguistic material employed by the author to create the original novel, and to assess whether the Russian translation equals the English original from the point of view of its stylistics and poetics. The article attempts to find out what made V. V. Nabokov translate his own novel into the Russian language. It also attempts to identify whether the subject matter of the novel and its language correlate with the traditions of the Russian culture which serves as a prism through which the Russian reader will see the text.

The object of the article is the linguistic peculiarities of the two texts, and the literary tradition used by Vladimir Nabokov to create the novel. The research substantiates the valency of the Russian text within the new linguistic environment and proves the necessity of textological transformations used by Nabokov in the process of translation. The research maintains that the author of “Lolita” did not simply translate the original text into another language he knew equally well, but, relying on his writer’s and reader’s experience, created an absolutely new original text. The results of the research can be used by philologists and linguists for the purposes of analysis of such a rare phenomenon as author’s translation.

author’s translation; Vladimir Nabokov; literary tradition; “Lolita”; original text; translation

 

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