Alexey: working through your wonderful essays (“And still the wonder grows that one smart head could hold the things he knows”), I meet Derzhavin’s death-bed last-gasp. What a way to go. My last words (due soon) will probably be “You’re standing on my bleedin’ oxygen-supply pipe ...”
The river of time in its rush
Carries away all human cares
And drowns in the abyss of oblivion
Peoples, kingdoms and kings.
is taken (together with other verses and clues) to “imply” a crushing human mortality, albeit with some relief for poets whose choicest words may “live on.” VN’s view of the Life Hereafter is more complex, of course, and subject to ongoing debate.
It’s interesting to compare Derzhavin’s lament with the Anglican hymn O GOD OUR HELP IN AGES PAST, by Walter Greatorex (1873-1949) [that Gaulish name seems straight out of Obelisk, Asterisk & Assurancetoutrisk?], widely (& tunelessly) sung here before England purchased the “God Delusion” in chart-topping numbers, deserted the Church and reverted to Paganism (Synods are asking “how to put more bums on our pews!”)
Time like an ever-rolling stream bears all its sons away;
They fly forgotten as a dream dies at the ending day.
The two stanzas share the same imagery, not just the cliché of flowing Time, but Time as the rapid, inexorable torrent sweeping us all away to oblivion, forgotten like a fleeting dream. The metaphors drip with problems, theological and philosophical. That is, if you aim to discuss seriously the Nature of Time and the possible meanings of “survival-after-death.” As annoying lecturers say: Come back when you’ve read David Deutsch (MWI, MultiWorld Interpretation of Quantum Theory) and Leszek Kolakowski (restoring Religion as a valid branch of Philosophy — see NYRB, Oct 9, 2008).
Stan Kelly-Bootle
On 18/02/2009 09:44, "Alexey Sklyarenko" <skylark05@MAIL.RU> wrote:
Three more essays in English ("ADA as a Mystical Novel," "The Themes of Turgenev's Life and Work as Reflected in Nabokov's ADA" and "ADA as Nabokov's Anti-Utopia Set on Antiterra") are now available in Zembla. Here is a direct link: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/sklyarenko8.doc.
Alexey Sklyarenko
P. S. When speaking, in my previous posting, of Georgia and (female) homosexuality, I forgot to mention that TBILISI = BILITIS.