When Vladimir Nabokov's translation of Pushkin's masterpiece Eugene
Onegin was first published in 1964, it ignited a storm of controversy
that famously resulted in the demise of Nabokov's 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 Nabokov's 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." Nabokov's 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 century's 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.