Plate atlas The Map of Untranslatability

Atlas / Plate 17

Plate 17 · from Russian

тоска

The break is the range. Anguish, yearning, and boredom are different English words. Toska is one Russian word that travels the whole scale.

Russian тоска. Vladimir Nabokov, in his commentary to Eugene Onegin, says no single English word renders all its shades, and he runs it from spiritual anguish down to boredom.

Where the line breaks

RUParts
the deep endAnguish
the middleYearning
the low endBoredom
RUSourceтоска
the deep endSource
the middleSource
the low endSource
EN English Published translation no single word
anguish Thins Connotation
yearning Thins Connotation
boredom Breaks Lexical gap

Published translation. Nabokov’s own claim in the Eugene Onegin commentary. This plate paraphrases his scale and does not reproduce the paragraph.

DE German Common substitute Sehnsucht
Schwermut Thins Connotation
Sehnsucht Thins Connotation
Langeweile Breaks Connotation

Common substitute. The word German reaches for. It matches the yearning band and not the boredom band.

FR French Common substitute angoisse
angoisse Thins Connotation
nostalgie Thins Connotation
ennui Thins Connotation

Common substitute. A word that covers the painful end. The low end needs ennui, which French does have, as a separate item.

JA Japanese Gloss for this plate ものうい憂い
苦悶 Thins Connotation
憧れ Thins Connotation
退屈 Breaks Lexical gap

Gloss for this plate. A gloss, not a standard equivalent. Japanese, like English, splits the scale.

Text alternative

English “no single word” (published translation): breaks: lexical gap. German “Sehnsucht” (common substitute): breaks: connotation. French “angoisse” (common substitute): thins: connotation. Japanese “ものうい憂い” (gloss for this plate): breaks: lexical gap.

the deep end Anguish

At its heaviest, a spiritual anguish, often without a named cause. Nabokov’s description, paraphrased from the Onegin commentary, starts here.

What happens to “the deep end” in each lane
LaneFormStatusBreakWhat happens
English anguish Thins Connotation Covers the top of the scale only.
German Schwermut Thins Connotation Heaviness, melancholy. A different word, for the top.
French angoisse Thins Connotation Anguish. The top, with a more existential flavor than every use of toska.
Japanese 苦悶 Thins Connotation 苦悶 is torment. It will not also mean boredom.

the middle Yearning

A longing with nothing clearly longed for, or a longing for someone specific: nostalgia, lovesickness, restlessness.

What happens to “the middle” in each lane
LaneFormStatusBreakWhat happens
English yearning Thins Connotation Covers the middle only.
German Sehnsucht Thins Connotation The middle band. Real overlap, not identity.
French nostalgie Thins Connotation A neighboring middle, not the same middle.
Japanese 憧れ Thins Connotation Yearning. The middle only.

the low end Boredom

At the bottom of the scale it grades into ennui and boredom, skuka. One word, three weathers.

What happens to “the low end” in each lane
LaneFormStatusBreakWhat happens
English boredom Breaks Lexical gap An English translator who picks one of these has dropped the other two. The gap is the missing single word, which Nabokov says English does not have.
German Langeweile Breaks Connotation Boredom is a third German word. Toska’s scale is split across the lexicon.
French ennui Thins Connotation French can name the bottom. It cannot name all three with one noun.
Japanese 退屈 Breaks Lexical gap 退屈 is boredom. A translator picks a band.

The joint

Тоска is ordinary Russian. It is not a rare mystical noun. Nabokov’s note in the Eugene Onegin commentary is famous because he refuses the single English equivalent and lists the weather instead: spiritual anguish without a cause, a dull ache, yearning, lovesickness, and at the bottom ennui. The paraphrase here follows that scale and does not copy his paragraph.

The break is not that English cannot feel any of these. It is that English cannot feel them as one word. Choose “anguish” and the boredom is insulted. Choose “boredom” and the anguish is trivialized. German Sehnsucht catches the longing and misses the skuka. French has both angoisse and ennui, which is exactly the problem: two words, for one.

A good translation of a passage picks the band the passage is in. A glossary that equates toska with one band has made Nabokov’s point by accident.

Why this break matters to a reader

A reader who learns toska as “Russian melancholy” has been given a postcard. A reader who learns it as a scale can hear which step a sentence is standing on. In a novel, that step changes the scene. Boredom and spiritual anguish are not a matter of tone. They are different events. The Russian word can slide from one to the other without changing clothes. The translation has to change clothes, and should show that it did.