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Fw: [NABOKV-L] JM to SS: expert help needed!
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I just came across a quote from one of Pushkin's letters, where he wrote: "mais le bonheur [...] c?est um grand peut-etre, comme le disait Rabelais du paradis ou de l' eternite. Je suis l' Athee du bonheur." (Boldino, Fall,1830) and Sergei Soloviev brought up Shade's lines on "L'if, lifeless tree! Your great Maybe, Rabelais..."
In Pushkin's lines from Mozart and Salieri, as A.Bouzza kindly allowed me to read in VN's rendering, there is something like a "shade of the word between": Even now/ I seem to see him sitting here with us,making a third, but there is no direct use of that preposition.
Now, in VN's translation of "Irregular Iambics", although this time it is possible to discern meshdu in "leaves that flow /Between the fingers of the air", I now missed a "scuddable" "If" (esli) - unless it was likewise hidden, this time by a "conditional shade": For the last time... the poor olive ripples... had there not been..
Questions:
Once the word "if" doesn't concretely appear in the poem, why did VN note "there is no reason,however,why this other light and fluid dissyllable should not be treated similarly, especially at the begining of an iambic line" ?
The date at the end of the translation was 1953 (Ithaca), but VN's introduction to the Poems was written in 1969 ( Montreux). When was the note added: 1953? 1969?
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In Pushkin's lines from Mozart and Salieri, as A.Bouzza kindly allowed me to read in VN's rendering, there is something like a "shade of the word between": Even now/ I seem to see him sitting here with us,making a third, but there is no direct use of that preposition.
Now, in VN's translation of "Irregular Iambics", although this time it is possible to discern meshdu in "leaves that flow /Between the fingers of the air", I now missed a "scuddable" "If" (esli) - unless it was likewise hidden, this time by a "conditional shade": For the last time... the poor olive ripples... had there not been..
Questions:
Once the word "if" doesn't concretely appear in the poem, why did VN note "there is no reason,however,why this other light and fluid dissyllable should not be treated similarly, especially at the begining of an iambic line" ?
The date at the end of the translation was 1953 (Ithaca), but VN's introduction to the Poems was written in 1969 ( Montreux). When was the note added: 1953? 1969?
Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html
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