Dear List,
In relation to Pale Fire and Russian lore,
filtering through Soviet movies, I came to Eisenstein's Bezhin
Meadow, a movie which "was long thought lost in the wake of
World War II bombings. In the 1960s, however, cuttings and partial prints of the
film were found; from these, a reconstruction of Bezhin Meadow, based on the
original script, was undertaken.Rich in religious symbolism...The film was
extensively discussed both inside and outside of the film industry for its
historical nature, the odd circumstances of its production and failure, and its
imagery, which is considered some of the greatest in cinema. In spite of the
failure of Bezhin Meadow, Eisenstein would rebound to win Soviet acclaim and
awards, and become artistic director of a major film studio.
The film was
based in part on a story by Ivan Turgenev, a 19th-century
Russian scholar and novelist, but was adapted to incorporate the folk story of
Pavlik Morozov, a supposed Young Pioneer glorified by Soviet Union propaganda as
a martyr. Turgenev's original short fiction titled "Bezhin Meadow" or "Bezhin
Lea" was a story about peasant boys in the 1850s, in the Oryol region,
discussing supernatural signs of death, while they spend the night in the Bezhin
Meadow with a lost hunter.Eisenstein would later remove any direct references to
Turgenev's fiction, aside from the title, from the film. It is a part of A
Sportsman's Sketches, a collection of short stories." (wiki)
The link to Pale Fire derives from these lines
by Kinbote: "I am happy to report that
soon after Easter my fears disappeared never to return....Balthasar, Prince of
Loam...regularity fell asleep at nine and by six in the morning was planting
heliotropes (Heliotropium turgenevi).
This is the flower whose odor evokes with timeless intensity the dusk, and the
garden bench, and a house of painted wood in a distant northern
land."
I think that Nabokov mentions Pentecostes in
Pale Fire (no time to check this but Im' almost sure when he reports
on Shade's birthday) and I'd like to remind the List that today is
the Sunday of Pentecostes. It somehow reminds me of Nabokov's pungent lines
about an infinity of sensations (including pain) in a finite body. The
indirect dialogue between Kinbote and Shade, when we take out his Zemblan
ramblings from CK's notes, is profoundly expressive of this kind of suspended
agony of transience and the limitless universe.
.........................................................
Note: I sympathize with
C.Kunin's annoyance with Nabokov blind idolizers - but this is hardly Nabokov's
fault, is it?