close reading

[Earl Sampson]

Paul Klanderud wrote:

>At 10:38 AM 11/19/97 +0100, you wrote:
>>Dear Seelangers,
>>would anyone know how to translate the literary term 'close reading' in
>>Russian (blizkoe chtenie, perhaps?).
>>Thanks in advance,
>>Wim Coudenys
>>Dr. Wim Coudenys
>
>Didn't Gershenzon use the phrase "medlennoe chtenie" with regard to Pushkin
>(and essentially implying "close" reading)?
>
>Paul Klanderud

When I took a course on SLOVO O POLKU IGOREVE from Roman Jakobson in the
early 60's, he told us on the first day that "Filologiia - eto nauka
medlennogo chteniia." I think he presented it as a quotation, but don't
remember who he attributed it to. Maybe some of my classmates out there on
the list will remember. In any case, he proceeded to illustrate the
concept: as I recall, we spent about two weeks on the title. Of course,
between sessions of "explication du texte" he lectured, brilliantly and
fascinatingly, on numerous aspects of the work as a whole, but in the
course of the semester the "close reading" part of the class reached only
through three or four "paragraphs" of the text (with, of course, leaps
ahead to parallel passages later in the work). That was also the course in
which he claimed that in Nabokov's translation the "plach Iaroslavny"
sounded like "plach Lolity Iaroslavny".

Earl Sampson
Boulder, CO
esampson at cu.campus.mci.net