Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0022817, Wed, 9 May 2012 22:47:04 -0400

Subject
Re: Goodson River
Date
Body
the problem with Mayakowsky poem is that the river is not the Hudson but the East River...otherwise it is still a grim portrait of the USA, written to please his "masters".



-----Original Message-----
From: Alexey Sklyarenko <skylark1970@MAIL.RU>
To: NABOKV-L <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>
Sent: Wed, May 9, 2012 10:19 pm
Subject: [NABOKV-L] Goodson River


In 'Ursus' Lucette asks Van: "please don't let me swill (hlestat') champagne any more, not only because I will jump into Goodson River if I can't hope to have you, and not only because of the physical red thing..." (2.8)

In "Бруклинский мост" (The Brooklyn Bridge, 1925) Mayakovsky (VN's "late namesake" who associates himself, in "Про это", About It, 1923, with an enamoured bear) mentions the unemployed jumping into Gudzon (the Hudson):

Отсюда
безработные
в Гудзон
кидались
вниз головой.

The poem's closing line is:

Бруклинский мост - это вещь.
(The Brooklyn Bridge is a thing.)

Goodson discovering the Goodson is mentioned in Part Four of Ada: Technological Sophists argue that by taking advantage of the Laws of Light, by using new telescopes revealing ordinary print at cosmic distances through the eyes of our nostalgic agents on another planet, we can actually see our own past (Goodson discovering the Goodson and that sort of thing)...

In Rip Van Winkle. A Posthumous Writing of Diedrich Knickerbocker (1819) Washington Irving mentions the navigator and explorer Henry Hudson revisiting the scenes of his enterprise: "it was affirmed that the great Hendrick Hudson, the first discoverer of the river and country, kept a kind of vigil there every twenty years, with his crew of the Half-Moon, being permitted in this way to revisit the scenes of his enterprise, and keep a guardian eye upon the river, and the great city called by his name."

In "Другие берега" (Chapter Eleven, 4) VN fancies himself revisiting Vyra and Rozhdestveno under the assumed name Knickerbocker: Часто думаю: вот, съезжу туда с подложным паспортом, под фамильей Никербокер.

In "Слава" (Fame, 1942) VN writes:

Но воздушным мостом моё слово изогнуто
через мир, и чредой спицевидных теней
без конца по нему прохожу я инкогнито
в полыхающий сумрак отчизны моей.
(for the translation see Poems & Problems)

Alexey Sklyarenko


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