Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0017397, Fri, 28 Nov 2008 00:53:53 +0300

Subject
Re: VN on allegory?
Date
Body
>Perhaps "metaphoric" is a term that is better than "allegoric" in dealing with how VN uses his life in his work. "Allegoric" is a prose term; "metaphoric" is a poetic one. We are, after all, dealing with a poet here.

Kakoe b schast'e ili gore
Ni pelo v prezhnie goda,
Metafor, dazhe allegoriy
Ya ne chuzhdalsya nikogda.

Whatever happiness or grief
Would sing in the past years,
I have never shunned
Metaphors, or even allegories.

The first stanza of a Russian poem (the fifth one in the cycle "Seven Poems") written in the nineteen fifties. There is an allegory (or metaphor?) of death in the second (and last) stanza. I apologize to Nabokov's shadow for my translation.

I also apologize to Borges' shadow for misspelling the title of his story ("Aleph").

Alexey Sklyarenko

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