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REPLY re VN, Agression, Georga
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Charles Nicol: Am I correct in remembering that VN wrote a poem imagining his own death there under similar circumstances?
Dear Chaz,
You must be thinking of Lermontov's poem "The Dream" ("In a noon's heat, in a dale of Dagestan..." 1841). It was translated by VN and included in "Three Russian Poets" (1945) and later in the Foreword to VN's translation (1958), in collaboration with DN, of Lermontov's "A Hero of Our Time" (1841), where it is analysed as a "triple dream" (a dream within a dream within a dream).
Let me add that in my article "Ada as a Triple Dream" (The Nabokovian # 53) I cite this poem and argue that Nabokov's novel is also a triple dream. In another article, "Fathers and Children in Ada" (The Nabokovian # 54), I argue that Ada was in part inspired by Pushkin's famous poem "Na kholmakh Gruzii lezhit nochnaya mgla..." ("The night murk lies on the hills of Georgia; / The Aragva thunders before me..." 1829).
Below are two anagrams that seem relevant involving two Georgian rivers and Georgian capital:
ARAGVA + KURA (the two rivers flowing in Georgia that were sung by Russian poets*) + G (the letter called glagol', "gallows," in the old Russian alphabet) = KURVA (whore; the phrase kurva Moskva in Mandelshtam's poem "Net, ne spryatat'sya mne ot velikoy mury..."** was mistranslated by Lowell; cf. "the violent dance called kurva" danced by young gardeners in the garb of Georgian tribesmen in Ada: 1.2) + GAGARA (loon, the bird Gavia; cf. Yuriy Gagarin, 1934-68, the first astronaut; note that the name Yuriy is a form of Georgiy, George)
KING VICTOR + TBILISI + EROTIC + US = VIKING + CLITORIS + COITUS + TIBER (King Victor is a character of Ada, the ruler of the Antiterran United Kingdom; besides the English meanings of the pronoun "us" and the abbreviation US, us (pronounced as in German Fuss) is Russian for "mustache hair;" Tiber is the river in Italy flowing through Rome)
*cf. Lermontov, the beginning of Mtsyri (as paraphrased by VN in Speak, Memory, p. 128 of the Penguin edition): "a point where meet and flow / In sisterly embrace the fair / Aragva and Kurah"
**No, I can't hide from the great nonsense
Alexey Sklyarenko
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Dear Chaz,
You must be thinking of Lermontov's poem "The Dream" ("In a noon's heat, in a dale of Dagestan..." 1841). It was translated by VN and included in "Three Russian Poets" (1945) and later in the Foreword to VN's translation (1958), in collaboration with DN, of Lermontov's "A Hero of Our Time" (1841), where it is analysed as a "triple dream" (a dream within a dream within a dream).
Let me add that in my article "Ada as a Triple Dream" (The Nabokovian # 53) I cite this poem and argue that Nabokov's novel is also a triple dream. In another article, "Fathers and Children in Ada" (The Nabokovian # 54), I argue that Ada was in part inspired by Pushkin's famous poem "Na kholmakh Gruzii lezhit nochnaya mgla..." ("The night murk lies on the hills of Georgia; / The Aragva thunders before me..." 1829).
Below are two anagrams that seem relevant involving two Georgian rivers and Georgian capital:
ARAGVA + KURA (the two rivers flowing in Georgia that were sung by Russian poets*) + G (the letter called glagol', "gallows," in the old Russian alphabet) = KURVA (whore; the phrase kurva Moskva in Mandelshtam's poem "Net, ne spryatat'sya mne ot velikoy mury..."** was mistranslated by Lowell; cf. "the violent dance called kurva" danced by young gardeners in the garb of Georgian tribesmen in Ada: 1.2) + GAGARA (loon, the bird Gavia; cf. Yuriy Gagarin, 1934-68, the first astronaut; note that the name Yuriy is a form of Georgiy, George)
KING VICTOR + TBILISI + EROTIC + US = VIKING + CLITORIS + COITUS + TIBER (King Victor is a character of Ada, the ruler of the Antiterran United Kingdom; besides the English meanings of the pronoun "us" and the abbreviation US, us (pronounced as in German Fuss) is Russian for "mustache hair;" Tiber is the river in Italy flowing through Rome)
*cf. Lermontov, the beginning of Mtsyri (as paraphrased by VN in Speak, Memory, p. 128 of the Penguin edition): "a point where meet and flow / In sisterly embrace the fair / Aragva and Kurah"
**No, I can't hide from the great nonsense
Alexey Sklyarenko
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/