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Re: lastochka & other birds in Pale Fire
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Dear Carolyn:
yes.As early as 1927, Nabokov published an unflattening review of Pasternak's poetry in Rul' (The Rudder) (Berlin).
The experts wrote a lot about this uneasy relationship.
Quoting S. Karlinsky from:
http://revel.unice.fr/cycnos/?id=1453;<http://revel.unice.fr/cycnos/?id=1453>
"......his views on the poetry of Boris Pasternak had their ups and downs over the years. The interrelationship of Nabokov with Pasternak has been studied by D. Barton Johnson and, in very great detail, by Robert P. Hughes. it is on their research that the following remarks are based. Nabokov’s earliest mention of Pasternak’s poetry in a 1927 review of another, now forgotten poet is highly negative. Pasternak’s muse, says Nabokov, is popeyed and suffers from a goiter; Pasternak knows Russian poorly and expresses his ideas ineptly; and he brings to mind the poetry of Vladimir Benediktov. Forty-three years later in the already mentioned epigram, Pasternak was again likened to the unfortunate Benediktov.
But in the intervening period Nabokov occasionally wrote of Pasternak’s verse with enthusiasm, calling it “wonderful stuff” in a letter to Edmund Wilson and applauding Pasternak’s Nobel Prize on the basis of his poetry. Much has been written about Nabokov’s rejection of Pasternak’s novel Doctor Zhivago, which Nabokov was to mock and parody in both Pale Fire and Ada. Nabokov’s recoil from Zhivago occurred, interestingly enough, on the same grounds as Igor Stravinsky’s, who wrote to a friend: “I read Dr. Zhivago in Russian and, with sadness, I confess my disappointment. Of course this is real peredvizhnichestvo. How strange to read such a novel in the age of James Joyce.”(Peredvizhnichestvo refers to a group of primitively realistic, late 19th-century Russian painters, who proclaimed that the socially relevant aspect of a painting was more important than any pictorial values.)
As Robert P. Hughes pointed out, the 1970 Pasternak epigram follows Pasternak’s own poetic manner quite faithfully. It is thus not only an epigram, but also a successful parody. Nabokov’s other poetic response to Boris Pasternak is his reply in verse to the latter’s 1959 poem “The Nobel Prize.” It was written in 1959, at the time when Lolita and Doctor Zhivago kept vying for first place on the American list of best-sellers, but published only in 1961, after Pasternak’s death. Read by many as not only a parody but also a mockery of Pasternak’s suffering, Nabokov’s poem has been ably defended by D. Barton Johnson as “a tribute to Pasternak, the poet.”
________________________________
From: Vladimir Nabokov Forum <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU> on behalf of Carolyn Kunin <chaiselongue@ATT.NET>
Sent: Friday, November 20, 2015 1:19 PM
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Subject: Re: [NABOKV-L] lastochka & other birds in Pale Fire
Dear Victor Fet,
How do we know that Nabokov "read Pasternak very carefully"? We know his opinion of Zhivago, but did he ever comment on the poetry?
Carolyn
On Nov 18, 2015, at 9:59 AM, Fet, Victor wrote:
To Carolyn's query:
No, they are not synonyms.
A swift (Russ. strizh, стриж), Apodus, is a highly aerial bird that belongs to family Apodidae (order Apodiformes). They are the fastest fliers among birds (speed over 100 mph recorded)
They are superficially similar to swallows<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swallow> (Hirundinidae), but are not closely related. (Swifts are more closely related to hummingbirds.)
Nabokov’s swallow is a common barn swallow<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barn_swallow>, Hirundo rustica.
Barn swallow returning from its southern migration is the first European and Russian messenger of spring, as in a saying “one swallow does not make a spring” (μία χελίδὼν ἕαρ ού ποίεῖ), recorded in Aristotle<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristotle>'s Nicomachean Ethics<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicomachean_Ethics> - or a staple textbook poem by Alexandr Pleshcheyev<http://en.tchaikovsky-research.net/pages/Aleksey_Pleshcheyev> (1858), put to music by Chaikovsky (as "The Grass Grows Green...") in his “Sixteen Songs for Children, Op. 54”
Nabokov’s choice of a swift over a swallow in his line “That particular swift that went by” might just be an audible preference of a rushing bird in an one-syllable “swift”.
A highly feminine nature of Russian “lastochka” is lost in English translation (“strizh” in Russian is masculine), so I think the names are interchangeable.
Swallow is a very common bird in Russian poetry from Derzhavin to Akhmatova and Mandelstam.
A recent article (in Russian) is attached:
Bel’skaya, L.L. (2013) Lastochka v russkoi poezii [Swallows in Russian poetry], Russkaya rech’ 2: 45-51, which ends with a VN quote from The Gift poem,
Interestingly, Boris Pasternak, in his early Poverkh barierov book, had a well-known 1916 poem about swifts (Strizhi).
I am sure Nabokov knew it well – we know he read Pasternak very carefully.
Victor Fet
From: Vladimir Nabokov Forum [mailto:NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU] On Behalf Of Carolyn Kunin
Sent: Sunday, November 15, 2015 1:58 AM
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU<mailto:NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>
Subject: Re: [NABOKV-L] lastochka & other birds in Pale Fire
On Nov 14, 2015, at 6:52 AM, Alexey Sklyarenko wrote: Carolyn, you are not inventing or parodying. Lastochka (“The Swift”) in VN’s reading can be listened to here:
Thank you, Alexey. This poem in English and Russian is on an old Spoken Arts LP I still have somewhere. One one side of the record VN reads a chapter from Lolita and on the other a selection of poems. The recording on the web sounds exactly like the reading the way I remember it. So Lastochka is "swallow" and/or "swift"? Are they the same bird? No ornithologist, I.
Carolyn
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yes.As early as 1927, Nabokov published an unflattening review of Pasternak's poetry in Rul' (The Rudder) (Berlin).
The experts wrote a lot about this uneasy relationship.
Quoting S. Karlinsky from:
http://revel.unice.fr/cycnos/?id=1453;<http://revel.unice.fr/cycnos/?id=1453>
"......his views on the poetry of Boris Pasternak had their ups and downs over the years. The interrelationship of Nabokov with Pasternak has been studied by D. Barton Johnson and, in very great detail, by Robert P. Hughes. it is on their research that the following remarks are based. Nabokov’s earliest mention of Pasternak’s poetry in a 1927 review of another, now forgotten poet is highly negative. Pasternak’s muse, says Nabokov, is popeyed and suffers from a goiter; Pasternak knows Russian poorly and expresses his ideas ineptly; and he brings to mind the poetry of Vladimir Benediktov. Forty-three years later in the already mentioned epigram, Pasternak was again likened to the unfortunate Benediktov.
But in the intervening period Nabokov occasionally wrote of Pasternak’s verse with enthusiasm, calling it “wonderful stuff” in a letter to Edmund Wilson and applauding Pasternak’s Nobel Prize on the basis of his poetry. Much has been written about Nabokov’s rejection of Pasternak’s novel Doctor Zhivago, which Nabokov was to mock and parody in both Pale Fire and Ada. Nabokov’s recoil from Zhivago occurred, interestingly enough, on the same grounds as Igor Stravinsky’s, who wrote to a friend: “I read Dr. Zhivago in Russian and, with sadness, I confess my disappointment. Of course this is real peredvizhnichestvo. How strange to read such a novel in the age of James Joyce.”(Peredvizhnichestvo refers to a group of primitively realistic, late 19th-century Russian painters, who proclaimed that the socially relevant aspect of a painting was more important than any pictorial values.)
As Robert P. Hughes pointed out, the 1970 Pasternak epigram follows Pasternak’s own poetic manner quite faithfully. It is thus not only an epigram, but also a successful parody. Nabokov’s other poetic response to Boris Pasternak is his reply in verse to the latter’s 1959 poem “The Nobel Prize.” It was written in 1959, at the time when Lolita and Doctor Zhivago kept vying for first place on the American list of best-sellers, but published only in 1961, after Pasternak’s death. Read by many as not only a parody but also a mockery of Pasternak’s suffering, Nabokov’s poem has been ably defended by D. Barton Johnson as “a tribute to Pasternak, the poet.”
________________________________
From: Vladimir Nabokov Forum <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU> on behalf of Carolyn Kunin <chaiselongue@ATT.NET>
Sent: Friday, November 20, 2015 1:19 PM
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Subject: Re: [NABOKV-L] lastochka & other birds in Pale Fire
Dear Victor Fet,
How do we know that Nabokov "read Pasternak very carefully"? We know his opinion of Zhivago, but did he ever comment on the poetry?
Carolyn
On Nov 18, 2015, at 9:59 AM, Fet, Victor wrote:
To Carolyn's query:
No, they are not synonyms.
A swift (Russ. strizh, стриж), Apodus, is a highly aerial bird that belongs to family Apodidae (order Apodiformes). They are the fastest fliers among birds (speed over 100 mph recorded)
They are superficially similar to swallows<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swallow> (Hirundinidae), but are not closely related. (Swifts are more closely related to hummingbirds.)
Nabokov’s swallow is a common barn swallow<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barn_swallow>, Hirundo rustica.
Barn swallow returning from its southern migration is the first European and Russian messenger of spring, as in a saying “one swallow does not make a spring” (μία χελίδὼν ἕαρ ού ποίεῖ), recorded in Aristotle<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristotle>'s Nicomachean Ethics<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicomachean_Ethics> - or a staple textbook poem by Alexandr Pleshcheyev<http://en.tchaikovsky-research.net/pages/Aleksey_Pleshcheyev> (1858), put to music by Chaikovsky (as "The Grass Grows Green...") in his “Sixteen Songs for Children, Op. 54”
Nabokov’s choice of a swift over a swallow in his line “That particular swift that went by” might just be an audible preference of a rushing bird in an one-syllable “swift”.
A highly feminine nature of Russian “lastochka” is lost in English translation (“strizh” in Russian is masculine), so I think the names are interchangeable.
Swallow is a very common bird in Russian poetry from Derzhavin to Akhmatova and Mandelstam.
A recent article (in Russian) is attached:
Bel’skaya, L.L. (2013) Lastochka v russkoi poezii [Swallows in Russian poetry], Russkaya rech’ 2: 45-51, which ends with a VN quote from The Gift poem,
Interestingly, Boris Pasternak, in his early Poverkh barierov book, had a well-known 1916 poem about swifts (Strizhi).
I am sure Nabokov knew it well – we know he read Pasternak very carefully.
Victor Fet
From: Vladimir Nabokov Forum [mailto:NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU] On Behalf Of Carolyn Kunin
Sent: Sunday, November 15, 2015 1:58 AM
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU<mailto:NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>
Subject: Re: [NABOKV-L] lastochka & other birds in Pale Fire
On Nov 14, 2015, at 6:52 AM, Alexey Sklyarenko wrote: Carolyn, you are not inventing or parodying. Lastochka (“The Swift”) in VN’s reading can be listened to here:
Thank you, Alexey. This poem in English and Russian is on an old Spoken Arts LP I still have somewhere. One one side of the record VN reads a chapter from Lolita and on the other a selection of poems. The recording on the web sounds exactly like the reading the way I remember it. So Lastochka is "swallow" and/or "swift"? Are they the same bird? No ornithologist, I.
Carolyn
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All private editorial communications are read by both co-editors.
<Belskaya 2013.pdf>
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All private editorial communications are read by both co-editors.
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