Translation
The text was translated by the author's son, Dmitri Nabokov, and published in English in 1971. The Russian title, Podvig, also translates as "feat" or "exploit." Its working title was Romanticheskiy vek (romantic times) as Nabokov indicates in his foreword and continues to characterize Martin as the "kindest, uprightest, and most touching of all my young men" whose goal is fulfillment. Nabokov remarks that he has given Martin neither talent nor artistic creativity.
Read more about this topic: Glory (novel)
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“To translate, one must have a style of his own, for otherwise the translation will have no rhythm or nuance, which come from the process of artistically thinking through and molding the sentences; they cannot be reconstituted by piecemeal imitation. The problem of translation is to retreat to a simpler tenor of one’s own style and creatively adjust this to one’s author.”
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