In VN’s poem Slava (“Fame,” 1942) the author’s visitor mentions osobennyi privkus anisovyi (the particular anise-oil flavor) of those strainings when he happened to write in a foreign language:
В длинном стихотворении "Слава" писателя,
так сказать, занимает проблема, гнетет
мысль о контакте с сознаньем читателя.
К сожаленью, и это навек пропадет.
Повторяй же за мной, дабы в сладостной язве
до конца, до небес доскрестись: никогда,
никогда не мелькнет мое имя - иль разве
(как в трагических тучах мелькает звезда)
в специальном труде, в примечаньи к названью
эмигрантского кладбища и наравне
с именами собратьев по правописанью,
обстоятельством места навязанных мне.
Повторил? А случалось еще, ты пописывал
не без блеска на вовсе чужом языке,
и припомни особенный привкус анисовый
тех потуг, те метанья в словесной тоске.
И виденье: на родине. Мастер. Надменность.
Непреклонность. Но тронуть не смеют. Порой
перевод иль отрывок. Поклонники. Ценность
европейская. Дача в Алуште. Герой".
In a long piece of poetry, “Fame,” the author
is concerned, so to speak, with the problem, is irked
by the thought of contacting the reader's awareness
“This too, I'm afraid, will vanish for good.
So repeat after me (as one rakes a delicious
sore to get to the end, to its heaven): Not once,
not once will my name come up briefly, save maybe
—as a star briefly passing among tragic clouds—
In a specialist's work, in a note to the title
of some émigré churchyard and on a par
with the names of my co-orthographical brethren
which a matter of locus had forced upon me.
Repeated? And furthermore, not without brio,
you happened to write in some quite foreign tongue.
You recall the particular anise-oil flavor
of those strainings, those flingings in verbal distress?
And a vision: you are in your country. Great writer.
Proud. Unyielding. But no one dares touch you. At times,
A translation or fragment. Admirers. All Europe
Esteems you. A villa near Yalta. A hero.”
VN’s footnote: Line 91/anise-oil. An allusion to the false fox scent, a drag fooling hounds into following it in lieu of the game.
In Circe, Episode 15 of Ulysses (1922), Joyce mentions the drag behind Bloom, torn envelopes drenched in aniseed:
BELLA
Do you want me to call the police?
BLOOM
O, I know. Bulldog on the premises. But he's a Trinity student. Patrons of your establishment. Gentlemen that pay the rent. (He makes a masonic sign.) Know what I mean? Nephew of the vice-chancellor. You don't want a scandal.
BELLA
(Angrily.) Trinity. Coming down here ragging after the boatraces and paying nothing. Are you my commander here or? Where is he? I'll charge him! Disgrace him, I will! (She shouts.) Zoe! Zoe!
BLOOM
(Urgently.) And if it were your own son in Oxford? (Warningly.) I know.
BELLA
(Almost speechless.) Who are. Incog!
ZOE
(In the doorway.) There's a row on.
BLOOM
What? Where? (He throws a shilling on the table and shouts.) That's for the chimney. Where? I need mountain air.
(He hurries out through the hall. The whores point. Florry follows, spilling water from her tilted tumbler. On the doorstep all the whores clustered talk volubly, pointing to the right where the fog has cleared off. From the left arrives a jingling hackney car. It slows to in front of the house. Bloom at the halldoor perceives Corny Kelleher who is about to dismount from the car with two silent lechers. He averts his face. Bella from within the hall urges on her whores. They blow ickylickysticky yumyum kisses. Corny Kelleher replies with a ghastly lewd smile. The silent lechers turn to pay the jarvey. Zoe and Kitty still point right. Bloom, parting them swiftly, draws his caliph's hood and poncho and hurries down the steps with sideways face. Incog Harun al Raschid he flits behind the silent lechers and hastens on by the railings with fleet step of a pard strewing the drag behind him, torn envelopes drenched in aniseed. The ashplant marks his stride.
“Incog Harun al Raschid” brings to mind incognito, a word used by VN in “Fame:”
Но воздушным мостом мое слово изогнуто
через мир, и чредой спицевидных теней
без конца по нему прохожу я инкогнито
в полыхающий сумрак отчизны моей.
Я божком себя вижу, волшебником с птичьей
головой, в изумрудных перчатках, в чулках
из лазурных чешуй. Прохожу. Перечтите
и остановитесь на этих строках.
But my word, curved to form an aerial viaduct,
spans the world, and across in a strobe-effect spin
of spokes I keep endlessly passing incognito
into the flame-licked night of my native land.
To myself I appear as an idol, a wizard
bird-headed, emerald gloved, dressed in tights
made of bright-blue scales. I pass by. Reread it
and pause for a moment to ponder these lines.
VN’s footnote: Line 42/strobe-effect spin. The term renders exactly what I tried to express by the looser phrase in my text “sequence of spokelike shadows.” The strobe effect causes wheels to look as if they revolved backward, and the cross over to America (line 36) becomes an optical illusion of a return to Russia.