Beautiful! The famous dueling scene in Onegin; Ralph and Laura found it and filmed it.
 But how many liberties are film makers allowed to take in dramatizing a famous literary work?

Onegin: the book and then the movie

First, the Book

How did Vladimir Nabokov see Onegin?  Most carefully

Vladimir Nabokov spent many years (some say decades) translating Aleksandr Pushkin's great Russian epic into English. Nabokov was a master of languages, besides being a great writer of fiction, and the very fact that he spent so much time turning his native Russian classic into fluent English is testimony to the importance he gave to it,  giving readers in England (where he went to school at Cambridge University) and in America (where he taught at Cornell University, and elsewhere as a visiting professor) indicates his mastery of both written language and idiom. He should have won the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Nabokov's book, Eugene Onegin, (1825-33) was originally serialized; thus, it is both a novel in verse (as it is subtitled) and a scholarly work, including a foreword, "revisitation," transliteration, calendar, and appendix of abbreviations and symbols. It includes the translator's introduction, in which may be found a "description of the text," discussion of the Onegin stanza, notes on structure, genesis of the story, Pushkin's remarks on the book itself, notes on its publication, and Pushkin's autographs: a bibliography.

Whew!

Nabokov admits he began the translation about 1950  [see page 85 of the text] and published it in 1972, that being a sweet span of 22 years, during which, of course, he published much excellent fiction and autobiography.

The fact that Nabokov spend that much time on a verse translation that closely approximates the original Pushkin stanzas should be seen as, and is, an indication of the importance he gave the book, for it is not an academic, "make work" project. Rather, it is a personal obsession--that of one of the best minds of our time. Accordingly, we need to give it our full attention.

Go to Nabokov for this.

Ed.

The story is deceptively simple, yet with ramifications that run tragically deep. Eugene's friend and foil is also a Vladimir--a point which is entirely without meaning. Vlody and Vlody2? Hence the attraction to Nabokov? I think not. But it should be noted, and then put aside.

Eugene is a landed, moneyed, young aristocrat in pre-revolutionary Russia. He is bored and cynical--an occupational (or  non-occupational) disease of protagonists in Nineteenth Century Russian novels. He is of the same social class as Oblomov (1858) in the novel by Ivan Goncharv. The ennui both experience is endemic enough to Russian life among the intelligentsia that many can identify with it, then and now. And perhaps in contemporary America, as well.

I am indebted to Wikipedia for the following plot synopsis:

Is that it? Basically, yes.

*   *   *

And Now, The Movie

Ralph Finnes (pronounced, he tells us, "Raf Fine") wrote the script, played the lead, and produced it. His sister Laura directed it. They did a first-rate job and the film is beautifully photographed and dramatized. Finnes was obsessed with the story and its plot and strived to execute it faithfully.

But there is a hitch. In the novel, when Onegin is provoked into fighting a duel with his friend, Lenski, he tries to talk his friend out of it. When he fails, he shoots with great lassitude, boredom, and sadness, and hits his colleague deftly in the head. He shoots first. There is no Western-style false chivalry involved in letting the other guy blast ahead. Onegin didn't want to fight the duel, tried to avoid it, failed at this effort, and shot to kill. And he did. Lenski lies dead.

But Finnes (I know not why) rewrote Pushkin's central plot. Nabokov would not have, did not, and is probably rapidly revolving in his tomb at the fact that this fine English actor, writer, and producer took such liberty with a Russian literary classic.

Why, why, why?

There is no satisfactory answer. It is as if Laurence Olivier decided Hamlet should not die in Act V, and spirited himself and Ophelia off to some Never-never-land, far from Denmark, where they lived happily thereafter and raised an attractive  family of psychotic children.

So, where does this discrepancy leave us? Well, it is still a pretty good flick.

Brother and Sister Finnes

 
Laura Finnes, director, and  her brother, Ralph, star, director, and producer of the film version

Ralph Finnes as Eugene, preparing to fire

Liv Tyler as Tatania, the Pensive

How Movies Are Made. . .

Shooting Pushkin

by Ralph Fiennes

{We maintain Finnes's spelling of the Russian names in his article. Ed]

It is January 13, 1998, and I'm on the overnight train from Moscow to Pskov, sharing a two-berth compartment with Andrei, my guide and interpreter. Our final destination is Mikhailovskoye, the country estate of Alexander Pushkin: my sister Martha and I are making a film of "Eugene Onegin," and this is the only important place in Pushkin's life that I have yet to visit. "Eugene Onegin" (oh-NYAY-gen) has been haunting me ever since I was introduced to it, in 1984, by Lloyd Trott, a teacher at my drama school [RADA] who passionately encouraged us to widen our reading. I watched an actress in the year above mine perform Tatyana's letter as a monologue, at Lloyd's suggestion; when he told me where the speech had come from, I immediately borrowed the Charles Johnston translation from the school library.

Pushkin greatly admired the poetry of Byron, but he is without Byron's cynical aloofness. in fact, this quality is more an attribute of Pushkin's eponymous hero, an aristocratic dandy who becomes bored with the amorous intrigues of St. Petersburg society and moves to the estate of his recently deceased uncle, in the country. There he meets a neighbor, the poet Vladimir Lensky, and these two begin a friendship of opposites: Onegin's cynicism versus Lensky's idealism. Lensky introduces Onegin to his fiancé, Olga Lagrina, and to her sister Tatyana. Pushkin gently mocks Lensky's naiveté, but he is full of tender affection for his heroine, Tatyana, when she writes the cool Onegin a letter declaring her love for him. Onegin pointedly rejects Tatyana, however, and soon afterward his rustic idyll comes to an end when he arouses his best friend's anger by dancing continually with Olga at Tatyana's nameday celebration. Lensky impetuously challenges Onegin to a duel, and is killed.

(For more: go to the link below)

http://members.tripod.com/~sci267/fiennesonegin.html

*   *   *

The Function of Zaretsky?

Robert C. Arnold
Editor

If he isn't still  humming, is it really Glenn Gould at the piano?

When Master Pianist Glenn Gould recorded The Goldberg Variations (J.S. Bach) over three days in New York City in January 1956, he instantly became world famous all over again.

It was a great rendition, marred by only one tiny flaw: Gould could not help himself from humming under the notes as they remerged from his piano. Either you overlooked the incessant soft sound, encompassed it as part of the music, or found it tolerably annoying. It made no difference: it was an in separate part of the performance. You couldn't escape it.

Now you can, and for those of us who reluctantly put up with it on our phonograph records, then our CDs, it was inherent in the performance.

No more. Modern audio technology has eliminated both the humming and whatever tiny faults may lie in the music hall performance. As Kevin Bazzana says in the liner notes to the brand, sparkling new release, "Here, albeit with his trademark vocalizing no longer accompanying the performance, Gould's musical personality is unquestionably present, even in Gould's own absence."

Yes, indeed, since Gould died 24 years ago. But he would probably like the Zenph Sudios Sonoma "Re-performance," as they call it. Or as Zenph puts it, ""a re-performance"--not a remastering or restoration of a recording, but a re-creation of the original performance behind the recording. And because the underlying pianist interpretation is separated from the specific media and circumstances of its original recording, it can be replayed on other pianos in new settings. In effect, a long-dead pianist can now give live performances or make recordings of interpretations that are still recognizably his."

Ah, isn't that what immortal truly means? You never die? You just get processed and perform all over again. Forever.

Three poets
and their books

One test of a good poet is his ability to crank out great lines; well, memorable ones and images that set you back on your heels. If he can't do this he might as well reel it in and take up literary criticism.

Here are three practicing poets and some of their work that in my opinion is significant:

Charles Wright, Littlefoot, A Poem. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007, 87 pages

Charles Wright

1

"Time to forget the lost eyelids,
                       the poison machine,
Time to retime the timer.

One's friends lie in nursing homes,
                         their bones broken, their hearts askew,
Time to retrench and retool.

*   *   *

Saturday's hard-boiled, easy to crack
                            Sunday is otherwise,
Amorphous and water-plugged.
Sunday's the poem without people, all disappeared
Before the shutter is snapped.

*   *   *

The leaves of the maple tree,
                      scattered like Post-it notes
Across the lawn with messages we'll never understand,
As we in ours,
                        red fire, yellow fire.

*   *   *

4

Well, the wings of time pass, the black wings,
And the light is not adumbrated,
                          or dampened down--
 

Like splendor, there is no end to it
Inside the imagination,
                            then inside of that,
Wind-beat, light of light, and even into the darkness.

Jim Harrison, Selected and New Poems, 1961-1981, Delta Seymour Lawrence, 1981, 212 pages.

Jim Harrison

(Now self is the first sacrament
who loves not the misery and taint
of the present tense is lost.
I strain for a lunar arrogance.
Light macerates
the lamp infects
warm, more warmth, I cry.) p. 5

A red-haired doll stares
at ma from a highchair,
her small pink limbs twisted about
her neck.
I salute the postures of women. p. 15

This is not the earth I walk across
but the pages of some giant magazine. p.34

III
Once in Nevada I sat on a boulder at twilight--

I had no ride and wanted to avoid the snakes.
I watched the full moon rise a fleshy red
out of the mountains, out of a distant sandstorm.

I thought then if I might travel deep enough
I might embrace the dead as equals,

not in their separate stillness as dead, but in music

one with another's harmonies.
The moon became paler,
rising, floating upwards in her arc
and I with her, intermingled in her whiteness,

until at dawn again she bloodied
herself with earth.
 p. 35

Glenn  Hughes, Sleeping At The Open Window, Pecan Grove Press, 2005, 35 pages.

Chip Hughes

from "Ignoring Buddha

"Somewhere inside me is a true
   patron who has hired
      proven scribes to
         work steadily on priceless

transcriptions, but this accumulation
   of treasure goes on
      without altering
         readiness to be bored. . .

from "America At The Turn of The Century"

It is us,
      it never disappears,
            this long, dry vista

with its approaching
      black figure, serious
              and lean. . . .
 p. 18

and from the start of "Legend"

Remember the night you welcomed me
      into your parents' Chinese bed?
             You were only

seventeen, I was
      the young fool hesitating
            in the streetlight rain

hunting courage,
      before walking for hours
             to your house, where you promised

you'd be waiting. . . .
p. 21

"Forgetting"

However much I try
      to remember your words,
           they are lost--

you at the door
     eyes blazing,
           your hands in  movements

lamenting and consoling,
      And the day, was it rainy?
            I only remember

gestures, made ridiculous
     from the strain
            of parting, and can't even

remember if you wore that beloved
      white dress with red flowers,
             or another.
 p.22

Received, Viewed, and Noted:

"The Place Where It All Began,"
documentary DVD, a little over one hour in length, recommended price $29.95

Jeff Stephen Maki made this film documentary for the Marysville Historical Society, State of Washington, which describes itself "a spectacular visual history on the settling of the Pacific Northwest! Includes archival photographs from three historical collections including: The University of Washington Special Collections, Everett Northwest Room, and The Marysville Historical Society. Not mentioned is the considerable input from the Tulalip Tribes and their substantial contribution to the history of the region, probably not previously acknowledged or written about.

Captain Vancouver first landed here in what is now the United States and Marysville is proud of the fact. Also, the region played a large part in the early days of logging, when the marvelous old growth cedar and Douglas firs were brought down and taken to the market. Settlements soon followed.

The DVD is an excellent source for historical photographs of the Tulalip tribe and early logging practices. Maki did a good job of bringing it all together and making it interesting.

He no doubt has other film documentary projects in mind.

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