JM: Victor Fet's
reproduction of VN's 1944 poem helped me to enjoy the
shimmer of Nabokov's verses in
the light of different contextualizations.
The use of "quick" set close to
"spirit" tickled me* - before I began to wonder at
this "exile-hungry" poet because, when
Nabokov writes that Art is his passport and emphasizes the strong links he
cultivates to his Russian childhood, I understand that he's
not indicating his exile
from a nation's terrestrial geography
or even history, but he is restating his choice of keeping alive
an "arcadian" golden past and of exploring a road to the
hereafter.
Enlisting the help of Priscilla Meyer's words ("See
What the Sailor" p.195): "Earthly life is equivalent to a play inasmuch
as both are illusions of reality. Since we are caught in life with no access to
the other world, life, and hence the language we use to express it, is a
metaphorical prison house. Nabokov's understanding is similar to that of the
Russian symbolists: the forms of this world are indistinct semblances of their
ideal counterparts in the other world. Art is a means of expressing what
little can be known" [...] "The Gift is the perfect original for
'Ultima Thule,' 'Solus Rex,' 'The Pole,' and 'Terra Incognita,' two
pairs of stories based on the themes of geographic and textual exploration of
the other world
................................................................................................
*
From the Book of Common Prayer's version of the Apostle's
Creed, which says that Jesus "shall come to judge the quick and the dead".www.economist.com/blogs/johnson/2011/08/changes-meaning