Did Nabokov find Russian ‘TOSKA’ in the English language?
When translating Pushkin's ‘Eugene Onegin’ into English, writer Vladimir Nabokov experienced a number of difficulties with the Russian word ‘toska’ (‘тоска’). At least, it seemed to Nabokov that the words available in English were not accurate enough and did not reflect the full depth of the meaning of this rather Russian concept. So, he began to look for words that would convey the shades of typical Pushkin's ‘toska’
Pushkin, meanwhile, loved the word. In ‘Eugene Onegin’, words with the root ‘tosk-’ are used as many as 16 times. These are ‘toskovat’ (‘to yearn’) and ‘toskuyuschiy’ (‘yearning’) and actually ‘toska’ (‘longing’). And, each time, Nabokov accepted the poet's challenge and tried to find an English equivalent that would most accurately convey the shade of feeling needed in a given situation.
As a result, he chose seven different words to define the Russian ‘toska’. Their semantic range is, however, huge: from the closest and most expected ‘anguish’ to the more appropriate in a doctor's office ‘ache’.
And still, none of these variants chosen by Nabokov completely translate ‘toska’. How would you translate Pushkin's melancholy into English?