Eugene Onegin: A Novel in Verse: Text (Vol. 1) (Princeton Classics, 36)

When Vladimir Nabokov's translation of Pushkins masterpiece Eugene Onegin was first published in 1964, it ignited a storm of controversy that famously resulted in the demise of Nabokovs friendship with critic Edmund Wilson. While Wilson derided it as a disappointment in the New York Review of Books, other critics hailed the translation and accompanying commentary as Nabokovs highest achievement. Nabokov himself strove to render a literal translation that captured "the exact contextual meaning of the original," arguing that, "only this is true translation." Nabokovs Eugene Onegin remains the most famous and frequently cited English-language version of the most celebrated poem in Russian literature, a translation that reflects a lifelong admiration of Pushkin on the part of one of the twentieth centurys most brilliant writers. Now with a new foreword by Nabokov biographer Brian Boyd, this edition brings a classic work of enduring literary interest to a new generation of readers.