Subject
dream-bright America in Ada
From
Date
Body
But (even more absurdly), if, in Terrestrial spatial terms, the Amerussia of Abraham Milton was split into its components, with tangible water and ice separating the political, rather than poetical, notions of 'America' and 'Russia,' a more complicated and even more preposterous discrepancy arose in regard to time - not only because the history of each part of the amalgam did not quite match the history of each counterpart in its discrete condition, but because a gap of up to a hundred years one way or another existed between the two earths; a gap marked by a bizarre confusion of directional signs at the crossroads of passing time with not all the no-longers of one world corresponding to the not-yets of the other. (1.3)
Ardis Hall - the Ardors and Arbors of Ardis - this is the leitmotiv rippling through Ada, an ample and delightful chronicle, whose principal part is staged in a dream-bright America - for are not our childhood memories comparable to Vineland-born caravelles, indolently encircled by the white birds of dreams? (5.6)
Translator's Introduction to VN's translation of Pushkin's Eugene Onegin has two epigraphs:
...Il' k devstvennym lesam
Mladoy Ameriki...
...Or to the virgin woods
Of young America...
Pushkin, from a rough draft of Autumn (1830-33)
Nowadays - an unheard-of case! - the foremost French writer is translating Milton word for word and proclaiming that an interlinear translation would be the summit of his art, had such been possible.
Pushkin, from an article (late 1836 or early 1837) on Chateaubriand's translation Le Paradis perdu, Paris, 1836
Pushkin's Osen' ("Autumn") has an epigraph from Derzhavin's poem Evgeniyu. Zhizn' Zvanskaya ("To Eugene. Life at Zvanka," 1807): Chego v moy dremlyushchiy togda ne vkhodit um? ("What does not enter then my slumbering mind?") At the end of his poem (written in octaves) Pushkin compares his verses to a ship:
И забываю мир — и в сладкой тишине
Я сладко усыплён моим воображеньем,
И пробуждается поэзия во мне:
Душа стесняется лирическим волненьем,
Трепещет и звучит, и ищет, как во сне,
Излиться наконец свободным проявленьем —
И тут ко мне идет незримый рой гостей,
Знакомцы давние, плоды мечты моей.
И мысли в голове волнуются в отваге,
И рифмы лёгкие навстречу им бегут,
И пальцы просятся к перу, перо к бумаге,
Минута — и стихи свободно потекут.
Так дремлет недвижим корабль в недвижной влаге,
Но чу! — матросы вдруг кидаются, ползут
Вверх, вниз — и паруса надулись, ветра полны;
Громада двинулась и рассекает волны.
Плывёт. Куда ж нам плыть?. .
X
And I forget the world - in silence sweet,
I'm sweetly lulled by my imagination,
And poetry awakens deep inside:
My soul is churned with lyric agitation,
It trembles, moans, and strives, as if in sleep,
To pour out in the end a free statement-
And here they come - a ghostly swarm of guests,
My long-lost friends, the fruits of all my dream.
XI
My mind is overcome by dashing thoughts,
And rhymes come running eagerly to meet them,
My hand demands a pen; the pen - a sheet of paper.
Another minute - and my verse will freely flow.
Thus slumbers an immobile ship caught in immobile waters,
But lo! - the sailors rush all of a sudden, crawl
Up top, then down - sails billow, filled with wind;
The massive structure moves, and cuts the waves.
XII
It sails. But whither do we sail?...
paradis + rus = parus + Ardis
paradis - Fr., paradise (cf. Chateaubriand's translation Le Paradis perdu)
rus - Lat., country (cf. epigraphs to Chapter Two of Pushkin's EO: O rus! Horace, O Rus'!)
parus - Rus., sail (mentioned by Pushkin in Osen')
Re "a gap of up to a hundred years" between Terra and Antiterra (aka Demonia, Earth's twin planet on which Ada is set): Pushkin was born in May, 1799, VN was born in April, 1899, ninety nine years and eleven months later.
Abraham Milton blends Abraham Lincoln (1809-65), 16th president of the U.S., with John Milton (1608-74), the author of Paradise Lost (1667) and Paradise Regained (1671). On the other hand, he brings to mind Abram Petrovich Gannibal (a godson of Peter I, the tsar who founded VN's home city), Pushkin's black great-grandfather who was born in Africa.
America + Flora + skin = Africa + Amor + Lenski
Flora and Amor are blended in foramors (the palatial brothels in Eric Veen's essay "Villa Venus: an Organized Dream"). (2.3)
Lenski is a character in Pushkin's EO.
Pushkin wanted "beneath the sky of my Africa to sigh for somber Russia" (EO, One: L: 11-12) and beckoned to the sails of ships. In Speak, Memory (Chapter Three, 5) VN says:
The nostalgia I have been cherishing all these years is a hypertrophied sense of lost childhood, not sorrow for lost banknotes.
And finally: I reserve for myself the right to yearn after an ecological niche:
…Beneath the sky
Of my America to sigh
For one locality in Russia.
Alexey Sklyarenko
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Ardis Hall - the Ardors and Arbors of Ardis - this is the leitmotiv rippling through Ada, an ample and delightful chronicle, whose principal part is staged in a dream-bright America - for are not our childhood memories comparable to Vineland-born caravelles, indolently encircled by the white birds of dreams? (5.6)
Translator's Introduction to VN's translation of Pushkin's Eugene Onegin has two epigraphs:
...Il' k devstvennym lesam
Mladoy Ameriki...
...Or to the virgin woods
Of young America...
Pushkin, from a rough draft of Autumn (1830-33)
Nowadays - an unheard-of case! - the foremost French writer is translating Milton word for word and proclaiming that an interlinear translation would be the summit of his art, had such been possible.
Pushkin, from an article (late 1836 or early 1837) on Chateaubriand's translation Le Paradis perdu, Paris, 1836
Pushkin's Osen' ("Autumn") has an epigraph from Derzhavin's poem Evgeniyu. Zhizn' Zvanskaya ("To Eugene. Life at Zvanka," 1807): Chego v moy dremlyushchiy togda ne vkhodit um? ("What does not enter then my slumbering mind?") At the end of his poem (written in octaves) Pushkin compares his verses to a ship:
И забываю мир — и в сладкой тишине
Я сладко усыплён моим воображеньем,
И пробуждается поэзия во мне:
Душа стесняется лирическим волненьем,
Трепещет и звучит, и ищет, как во сне,
Излиться наконец свободным проявленьем —
И тут ко мне идет незримый рой гостей,
Знакомцы давние, плоды мечты моей.
И мысли в голове волнуются в отваге,
И рифмы лёгкие навстречу им бегут,
И пальцы просятся к перу, перо к бумаге,
Минута — и стихи свободно потекут.
Так дремлет недвижим корабль в недвижной влаге,
Но чу! — матросы вдруг кидаются, ползут
Вверх, вниз — и паруса надулись, ветра полны;
Громада двинулась и рассекает волны.
Плывёт. Куда ж нам плыть?. .
X
And I forget the world - in silence sweet,
I'm sweetly lulled by my imagination,
And poetry awakens deep inside:
My soul is churned with lyric agitation,
It trembles, moans, and strives, as if in sleep,
To pour out in the end a free statement-
And here they come - a ghostly swarm of guests,
My long-lost friends, the fruits of all my dream.
XI
My mind is overcome by dashing thoughts,
And rhymes come running eagerly to meet them,
My hand demands a pen; the pen - a sheet of paper.
Another minute - and my verse will freely flow.
Thus slumbers an immobile ship caught in immobile waters,
But lo! - the sailors rush all of a sudden, crawl
Up top, then down - sails billow, filled with wind;
The massive structure moves, and cuts the waves.
XII
It sails. But whither do we sail?...
paradis + rus = parus + Ardis
paradis - Fr., paradise (cf. Chateaubriand's translation Le Paradis perdu)
rus - Lat., country (cf. epigraphs to Chapter Two of Pushkin's EO: O rus! Horace, O Rus'!)
parus - Rus., sail (mentioned by Pushkin in Osen')
Re "a gap of up to a hundred years" between Terra and Antiterra (aka Demonia, Earth's twin planet on which Ada is set): Pushkin was born in May, 1799, VN was born in April, 1899, ninety nine years and eleven months later.
Abraham Milton blends Abraham Lincoln (1809-65), 16th president of the U.S., with John Milton (1608-74), the author of Paradise Lost (1667) and Paradise Regained (1671). On the other hand, he brings to mind Abram Petrovich Gannibal (a godson of Peter I, the tsar who founded VN's home city), Pushkin's black great-grandfather who was born in Africa.
America + Flora + skin = Africa + Amor + Lenski
Flora and Amor are blended in foramors (the palatial brothels in Eric Veen's essay "Villa Venus: an Organized Dream"). (2.3)
Lenski is a character in Pushkin's EO.
Pushkin wanted "beneath the sky of my Africa to sigh for somber Russia" (EO, One: L: 11-12) and beckoned to the sails of ships. In Speak, Memory (Chapter Three, 5) VN says:
The nostalgia I have been cherishing all these years is a hypertrophied sense of lost childhood, not sorrow for lost banknotes.
And finally: I reserve for myself the right to yearn after an ecological niche:
…Beneath the sky
Of my America to sigh
For one locality in Russia.
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
Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
AdaOnline: "http://www.ada.auckland.ac.nz/
The Nabokov Society of Japan's Annotations to Ada: http://vnjapan.org/main/ada/index.html
The VN Bibliography Blog: http://vnbiblio.com/
Search the archive with L-Soft: https://listserv.ucsb.edu/lsv-cgi-bin/wa?A0=NABOKV-L
Manage subscription options :http://listserv.ucsb.edu/lsv-cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=NABOKV-L