In his translation of Pushkin's Eugene Onegin (1964) VN renders the line V okno smotrel i mukh davil (Two: III: 4) as "looked through the window, and squashed flies:"
Он в том покое поселился,
Где деревенский старожил
Лет сорок с ключницей бранился,
В окно смотрел и мух давил.
Все было просто: пол дубовый,
Два шкафа, стол, диван пуховый,
Нигде ни пятнышка чернил.
Онегин шкафы отворил;
В одном нашел тетрадь расхода,
В другом наливок целый строй,
Кувшины с яблочной водой
И календарь осьмого года:
Старик, имея много дел,
В иные книги не глядел.
He settled in that chamber where the rural
old-timer had for forty years or so
squabbled with his housekeeper,
looked through the window, and squashed flies.
It all was plain: a floor of oak, two cupboards,
a table, a divan of down,
and not an ink speck anywhere. Onegin
opened the cupboards; found in one
a notebook of expenses and in the other
a whole array of fruit liqueurs,
pitchers of eau-de-pomme,
and the calendar for eighteen-eight:
having a lot to do, the old man never
looked into any other books.
An obsolete idiom, davit' mukh (literally: "to squash flies") means "take a shot" (drink a small amount of alcohol out of a shot glass). In his Universitetskaya poema ("The University Poem," 1927), VN uses the phrase "ya byl chut' s mukhoy (I was a little high):"
Он замолчал. Мы вышли вместе
из клуба. Говоря по чести,
я был чуть с мухой, и домой
хотелось. Солнце жгло. Сверкали
деревья. Молча мы шагали,-
как вдруг угрюмый спутник мой,-
на улице Святого Духа -
мне локоть сжал и молвил сухо:
"Я вам рассказывал сейчас... -
Смотрите, вот она, как раз.."
И шла навстречу Виолета,
великолепна, весела,
в потоке солнечного света,
и улыбнулась, и прошла.''
Then he fell silent. We went out
together from the club. To be sincere,
I was a little high,
and felt like going home. The sun was hot.
Trees sparkled. Silently we paced,
When suddenly my gloomy partner –
on Holy Ghost Street –
squeezing my elbow, dryly uttered:
‘I was just telling you … and look,
as chance would have it, here she is …’
and there was Violet, coming toward us,
gorgeous, happy, in a stream of sunlight.
She smiled at us, and off she went. ( LIII: 3)
VN's Universitetskaya poema, 63 fourteen-line stanzas, is written in the reversed (mirrored) Eugene Onegin stanza.