On 23/05/2012 19:32, "Jay Livingston" <livingstonj@MAIL.MONTCLAIR.EDU> wrote:
Written in 1926 but translated only recently, it seems, by DN. In the London Review of Books (here <http://www.lrb.co.uk/2012/05/23/vladimir-nabokov/the-university-poem> ).
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Thanks, Jay. I do subscribe to the LRB (London Review of Books) but that issue has not yet reached me. Some VN-listers may not know that the LRB is by far the most ‘lefty-pinko’ of the main literary journals, but, as an ex-Stalinist, I find it intriguing to see the emerging spectra of neo-Red, supplementing my other two regular deliveries (Times Literary Supplement and New York Review of Books).
The poem does not directly name the university ‘townlet’ (sic) as Cambridge, but every detail of architecture, fauna, and college life is unmistakably Cantabrigian beyond the bounds of student cliché. Nabokov’s general disdain for his Cambridge years emerges in overplus, a flaw we Cantabrigian Nabokovians have learned to shrug off. Nobody (recall VN’s misreading of his own name?!) is perfect.
I really hope the original 1926 Russian text survives. And, if it does, we urgently seek prosodic and bio analysis with better translations. Are you reading this, esteemed Victor Fet? The Russian can’t possibly be as UNPOLISHED as Dmitri’s apparently DRAFT, over-literal rendition (on a CIA plane to Libya?). In spite of which, many gemlets [sic] shine through.
The attraction of female tennis players’ limbs, for example, reminds one of Betjeman at his guilty, British best. Then come couplets with all the cloth-eared bathos of John Shade at his worst (thanks to VN’s sublime gifts of parody ;=))
I crammed with textbooks through the night,
with ice against my brow pressed tight.
Whenever DN translated it (any clues on this?), he was clearly confused at the time over basic university terminology, suggesting that VN did NOT get round to editing or approving this translation.
We find ‘capes’ rather than ‘gowns’ (the origin of the well-known Oxbridge Town-Gown dichotomy), and a parenthetical gloss over college headwear where ‘mortarboard’ is intended. It would be interesting to see VN’s Russian for these ever-so-Brit items. ‘Bedders,’ the wonderful college-room cleaning ladies who DID for us (Can I DO you now, Sir?) are described as ‘crones,’ which is unbelievably offensive. As are ‘boobs’ for the elderly ladies VN encounters at ‘dreary’ parties.
We do find ‘Bulldog’ correctly translated, but possibly as an accidental literal meaning of VN’s Russian. DN would know Bulldog as the American derog. slang for police-vigilante man, popularized by Woodie Guthrie in his hobo* and Wobbly ballads. But it’s unclear whether DN knew Bulldog as the ancient student term for the Oxbridge ceremonial semi-cops maintaining the diverse Proctorial protocols, and authorised to fine you on the spot.
VN escapes their canine clutches when a late date with Violet (another mystery girl-friend to explore, this one well beyond the age-of-consent) finds him on the streets after hours unsuitably attired.
There are many biographical plums to pluck, worthy of comparison with other sources for this period — best left to BB and others better informed than me. The football match, described in Verse 21 with a strange mix of poetic and journalistic zeal, has VN and Violet as spectators, but no hint at VN’s own prowess as a Goalie.
Your average fan: under his cap
a squeamish lip and a strong whiff
of Virginia smoke. But now,
his lips unclench, his pipe’s withdrawn;
another minute, mouth’s agape;
another and he is howling. Hands
by the hundreds victory inciting:
an artful player propels the ball,
darts like a swallow the field’s full length,
two men rush him, he swerves, he breaks through –
neat piece of work – and, on the run,
nets the tanned ball from afar
with a shot from his well-practiced toe.
VN’s mild literary misogyny can now be dated as early as 1926:
... some literary lady or
dime-a-dozen poetaster
will bemoan the dances of the past;
Relevant to recent exchanges on VN’s knowledge & affection for the English Romantics (including that MONSTROUS [sic] but otherwise missing link from Lolita’s Humbert Humbert to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein) is VN’s dismissal of Byron (a Trinity College student like VN) in favour of Keats.
Clutching his bear from Muscovy,
esteemed the boxer’s fate,
of Italic beauty dreaming
lame Byron passed his student days.
I remembered his distress –
his swim across the Hellespont
to lose some weight.
But I have cooled toward his creations …
so do forgive my unromantic side –
to me the marble roses of a Keats
have more charm than all those stagey storms.
(Verse 10)
For what it’s worth, we do know that both Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley (Mary’s then 18-year-old lover) were present swapping ghost stories when the seeds of her Frankenstein plot were sown.
The sudden mysterious appearance of such a long poem (63 verses each of approx 12 lines) after DN’s tragic exit suggests to me that DN probably considered it an unfinished draft unworthy of publication. I’m sure the combined VN-list expertise will be quickly ahead of me with helpful hypotheses.
Stan Kelly-Bootle, MA (Cantab)
* Interestingly, ‘hobo’ appears in verse 56, describing VN’s post-Cambridge travails:
And I, a liberated idler now,
with my free and hungry soul
went soaring off to other shores,
to a familiar port, where in an office
the indifferent sea recruits
simple hoboes such as me.
I have already squandered all my riches:
the well-known abbey’s portrait
in two copies is all I have left.
Again, knowing VN’s Russian for ‘hobo’ would be handy. Is there a ‘gobo’ matching ‘hero/geroi?’ Much personal irony here, comparing the changes in Cambridge entrance opportunities between VN’s 1920s and mine in the 1940s. Both periods were dominated by limited, elitist, admission-by-wealth/class, but post-World-War-Two UK saw the first trickle of working-class admissions via competitive Open Scholarships/Exhibitions, now rewarded with State grants to cover the fees.