Dear Don
A recording in VN´s voice had been available in the
internet. It could even have been in Zembla. I´m certain others will remember it
to offer you the address.
I would like to connect Pushkin´s poem "Prorok" to
a line in Pale Fire (Canto 2) in which VN speaks of a six winged
seraph.
I´ve been working on the "in a glass, darkly"
biblical reference and now I discovered a whole series of links with
Revelations 4.
Paintings with those "flamingo winged seraphs" can
be found in a book: "Revelations - Art of the Apocalypse" (Nancy Grubb,Abbeville
Press) but only if one is really looking after them. It is a
peculiarity of "seraphs" that one, having six wings. Cherubs and Angels have
them in a different count... There is also a Ieronimusch Bosch Triptych,
not the one several scholars studied in connection with ADA ( "The Garden
of Earthly delights" ) but "The Last Judgement" .
The six winged seraphs of Revelations 4 were there
described as "Beasts" and interpreted as the Four evangelists ( Lion, Eagle...)
or the various tribes of Judah.
These four winged beasts, once we know that, are to
be seen in Hans Memling´s "Saint John the Evangelist on Patmos", but not in
"flamingo wings". But in various places they are red ( Jacquemart de Hesdin,
Psalms of Penitence. Christ in Majesty, Book of Hours... and that makes sense!
Not only "hours" and time, but The Majestic Look...)
Christ in Majesty and the Four Evangelists
that is also suggestive is in the Westminster Psalter, at the British
Library.
Carolyn told me about Pushkin´s poem. She said that
the words "six wingued seraphs" sounds very beautiful in
Russian.
Could you find it in Russian for me in case I add
Pushkin as a reference, beside the Apocalypse? ( P.Meyer only wrote about
"Revelations" indirectly, by Alpha and Omega and
concerning Apocalypse, quoting the word from
Wordsworth)
Jansy
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Friday, September 16, 2005 3:54 AM
Subject: translation
Box #2 is out of reach without a lot of work, so I found this one
on the internet (I changed it a little):
The Prophet
Parched with the spirit's
thirst, I crossed
An endless desert sunk in gloom,
And where the tracks
met and I stood lost.
A six-winged seraph came to me.
Fingers light
as dream he laid
Upon my lids; I opened wide
My eagle eyes, and gazed
around.
He laid his fingers on my ears
And they with roaring sound
were filled:
The music of the spheres I heard,
The flight of angels
through the skies,
The beasts that creap beneath the sea,
The heady
uprush of the vine.
Then like a lover kissing me,
He tore at and
removed my tongue
Fluent in lies and vanity;
Then tore my fainting lips
apart
And, with his right hand steeped in blood,
He armed me with a
serpent's dart.
With his bright sword then he split my breast;
And
tore from thence the pulsing heart;
A glowing livid coal he thrust
Into
the empty place where once it beat.
I lay there in that desert,
dead,
And God called out to me and said:
'Arise my prophet, and
hear, and see,
And by those who have turned aside from me,
Let my works
be seen and heard
And with thy fiery words set them aflame.'
1827
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