EDNote: apologies if formatting error came from here; some messages
require an extra step on my part that I may have overlooked. I re-paste
V. Fet's comment below, and SKB's in a separate mailing. -SB
What has happened with "formatting"
? Victor Fet's message was almost infinite in its (graphic)
extension, S.Kelly-Bootle's almost garbled at the place they reached me
( I understand it doesn't happen with everyone ).
Victor is able to be
entertainingly informative without missing the human heart. And yet,
after I read his comments I began to fear that in order to understand
Nabokov, even in his original American novels, one has to know all
about Russia ( then and now) and speak Russian fluently, with a little
French added, too.
Fortunately there is enough fun and
aesthetic bliss left over for mere "outsiders", specially when aided by
Victor Fet, Skylarenko and other experienced Nabokovians.
S. Kelly-Bootle, "wikipedophiles" are the occasional wikipedestrians
who suffer from an "encyclopaedic infantile disease" (or was it the
other way round)?
Jansy
--------------------
From V. Fet
Whether related or not, but much closer than troubadoure's times, the
term "L'envoi" ("posylka" in Russian translation) is very famously
featured as Rostand's (1897; I: 4) Cyrano de Bergerac fights while
composing a ballad:
"Cyrano (récitant comme une leçon). La ballade, donc, se compose de
trois
Couplets de huit vers...
Le vicomte (piétinant). Oh!
Cyrano (continuant). Et d'un envoi de quatre."
Cyrano's "At the envoi's end, I touch!" ("À la fin de l'envoi, je
touche") is well known to theatre-going Russians in classical
translation of Schepkina-Kupernik ("I ya popal v konce posylki!").
It somehow reminds me of Nabokov's "The rhyme is the line's birthday,
as you know" ("An Evening of Russian Poetry").
Furthering analogies with sad deaths of Lensky, Pushkin, Lermontov,
etc. we Russians always cheer for Cyrano, a rare poet who could defend
himself.
Victor Fet