Yesterday I enquired about two verses found in
Pushkin's play "Mozart and Salieri", since I had the impression these had been
mentioned in our List. Unfortunately the only
reference about Pushkin's "Mozart and Salieri" in the VN-List dates from a
long time ago ( there was also a posting about the performance of the play,
sent by Sandy Klein).
The information now retrieved is pertinent in
the context of Pale Fire, since it deals with academic or poetic rivalry:
The theme of artist's envy in
"Mozart and Salieri" became a blueprint for a number of situations in Nabokov's
novels in which a pair of artists of unequal talent compete for supremacy. Not
unlike Salieri, the lesser talent contemplates or actually commits an ethical or
aesthetical crime against his superior rival. On a more arcane level, Salieri's
syndrome
develops into a conflict between the hero-artist, writing inside the
novel, and his ultimate creator, Nabokov, the deity outside the
novel.
Nabokov's Metapoetics and
Metaphysics/Sergei Davydov
Middlebury College at VN-L - Subject: Nabokov Festival abstracts:
Sept. 10-12, 1989