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Pushkin and Rabelais in PF
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After a perfunctory search in B Boyd's book on Pale Fire for any reference to Pushkin's letters to Natalia N. Gontcharova, with no special results, I chose to bring up one of these letters, written during the poet's quarantine in Boldino, to indicate its affinity with some of Shade's lines, in Pale Fire ( "L'if, lifeless tree! Your great Maybe, Rabelais: The grand potato.") and with Kinbote's commentary to line 502( "An execrable pun, deliberately placed in this epigraphic position to stress lack of respect for Death. I remember from my schoolroom days Rabelais' soi-disant "last words" among other bright bits in some French manual: Je m'en vais chercher le grand peut-être.").]
Puskin writes (the quote is in French): "notre marriage semble toujours fuir devant moi, et cette peste avec ses quarantines n'est elle pas la plus mauvaise plainsanterie que le sort ai pu imaginer" [ ] "c'est un grand peut-être, comme le disait Rabelais du paradis ou de l'eternité. Je suis l´Athée du bonheur."*
Perhaps John Shade (and Nabokov) saw the "otherword" differently. Nabokov most certainly wasn't an "athée du bonheur"
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* Pequenas tragédias,A.S,Púchkin. Tradução, notas e posfácio de Irineu Franco Perpétuo. Ed. Globo, 2006 (p.109/110)
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Puskin writes (the quote is in French): "notre marriage semble toujours fuir devant moi, et cette peste avec ses quarantines n'est elle pas la plus mauvaise plainsanterie que le sort ai pu imaginer" [ ] "c'est un grand peut-être, comme le disait Rabelais du paradis ou de l'eternité. Je suis l´Athée du bonheur."*
Perhaps John Shade (and Nabokov) saw the "otherword" differently. Nabokov most certainly wasn't an "athée du bonheur"
.................................................................
* Pequenas tragédias,A.S,Púchkin. Tradução, notas e posfácio de Irineu Franco Perpétuo. Ed. Globo, 2006 (p.109/110)
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
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/