Remembrance and Its Variations: Issues of Translation (Nabokov’s 'Drugie berega' and 'Speak, Memory')

• In Event: Translation and the Problem of Preservation of Cultural Memory

Abstract

"Remembrances grant reprieve from the new abnormal,” to paraphrase an American author Ryan Chapman’s conclusion about reading Nabokov’s Speak, Memory during the Covid pandemic. Bridging translation and memory studies, the paper will discuss the Russian and English versions of Nabokov’s autobiography to show how translation serves as a temporal, spatial and cultural relay connecting both “back” with Russian culture and past and “forward” with the English–language target culture and audience in overcoming the trauma of both physical and linguistic displacement.

Author

• Julia Trubikhina, CUNY Hunter College