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
All private editorial communications are
read by both co-editors.