Subject
swine law,
Ferdinand & Nina's death in Spring in Fialta; Franz in King,
Queen, Knave
Ferdinand & Nina's death in Spring in Fialta; Franz in King,
Queen, Knave
From
Date
Body
In VN’s story Vesna v Fialte (“Spring in Fialta,” 1938) the narrator speaks of Ferdinand’s books and mentions the terrible, little explored yet svinoy zakon (swine law):
Меня всегда раздражало самодовольное убеждение, что крайность в искусстве находится в некоей метафизической связи с крайностью в политике, при настоящем соприкосновении с которой изысканнейшая литература, конечно, становится, по ужасному, ещё мало исследованному свиному закону, такой же затасканной и общедоступной серединой, как любая идейная дребедень.
Now, frankly speaking, I have always been irritated by the complacent conviction that a ripple of stream consciousness, a few healthy obscenities, and a dash of communism in any old slop pail will alchemically and automatically produce ultramodern literature; and I will contend until I am shot that art as soon as it is brought into contact with politics inevitably sinks to the level of any ideological trash.
This svinoy zakon seems to hint at svinye ryla (pigs’ snouts) mentioned by the Town Mayor at the end of Gogol’s play Revizor (“The Inspector,” 1836):
Городничий. Вот когда зарезал, так зарезал! Убит, убит, совсем убит! Ничего не вижу. Вижу какие-то свиные рыла вместо лиц, а больше ничего... Воротить, воротить его! (Машет рукою.)
Town Mayor. He has cut my throat and cut it for good. I'm done for, completely done for. I see nothing. All I see are pigs' snouts instead of faces, and nothing more. Catch him, catch him! [Waves his hand.] (Act V, scene 8)
In Gogol’s story Zapiski sumasshedshego (“A Madman’s Notes,” 1835) Poprishchin imagines that he is the King of Spain Ferdinand VIII. The name Poprishchin comes from poprishche (obs., field; walk of life; profession; career), the word that was used by Count Uvarov on the occasion of Pushkin’s death. In Chapter Four of VN’s novel Dar (“The Gift,” 1937) Fyodor quotes Uvarov’s words:
«Для гения недостаточно смастерить Евгения Онегина», – писал Надеждин, сравнивая Пушкина с портным, изобретателем жилетных узоров, и заключая умственный союз с Уваровым, министром народного просвещения, сказавшим по случаю смерти Пушкина: «Писать стишки не значит ещё проходить великое поприще».
“To be a genius it is not enough to have manufactured Eugene Onegin” wrote the progressive Nadezhdin, comparing Pushkin to a tailor, an inventor of waistcoat patterns, and thus concluding an intellectual pact with the reactionary Count Uvarov, Minister of Education, who remarked on the occasion of Pushkin’s death: “To write jingles does not mean yet to achieve a great career.”
In Vesna v Fialte one of Nina’s admirers mentions her pushkinskie nozhki (“Pushkinian feet;” in the English version, “lyrical limbs”):
Сам не понимаю, что значила для меня эта маленькая узкоплечая женщина, с пушкинскими ножками (как при мне сказал о ней русский поэт, чувствительный и жеманный, один из немногих людей, вздыхавших по ней платонически), а ещё меньше понимаю, чего от нас хотела судьба, постоянно сводя нас.
I still wonder what exactly she meant to me, that small dark woman of the narrow shoulders and “lyrical limbs” (to quote the expression of a mincing émigré poet, one of the few men who had sighed platonically after her), and still less do I understand what was the purpose of fate in bringing us constantly together.
According to Fyodor, for Chernyshevski Pushkin was sochinitel’ ostren’kikh stishkov o nozhkakh (“a writer of witty little verses about women’s little feet”):
Пушкина нет в списке книг, доставленных Чернышевскому в крепость, да и немудрено: несмотря на заслуги Пушкина («изобрёл русскую поэзию и приучил общество её читать»), это всё-таки был прежде всего сочинитель остреньких стишков о ножках (причем «ножки» в интонации шестидесятых годов – когда вся природа омещанилась, превратившись в «травку» и «пичужек» – уже значило не то, что разумел Пушкин, – а скорее немецкое «фюсхен»).
Pushkin does not figure in the list of books sent to Chernyshevski at the fortress, and no wonder: despite Pushkin's services ("he invented Russian poetry and taught society to read it" – two statements completely untrue), he was nevertheless above all a writer of witty little verses about women's little feet – and "little feet" in the intonation of the sixties-when the whole of nature had been philistinized into travka (diminutive of "grass") and pichuzhki (diminutive of "birds") already meant something quite different from Pushkin's "petits pieds" – something that had now become closer to the mawkish Füsschen." (“The Gift,” Chapter Four)
In Vesna v Fialte the narrator says that Ferdinand particularly prided himself on being sochinitel’ (a weaver of words), a title he valued higher than that of a writer (pisatel’), and mentions maskarady (masquerades):
В совершенстве изучив природу вымысла, он особенно кичился званием сочинителя, которое ставил выше звания писателя: я же никогда не понимал, как это можно книги выдумывать, что проку в выдумке; и, не убоясь его издевательски
любезного взгляда, я ему признался однажды, что будь я литератором, лишь сердцу своему позволял бы иметь воображение, да ещё, пожалуй, допускал бы память, эту длинную вечернюю тень истины, но рассудка ни за что не возил бы по маскарадам.
Having mastered the art of verbal invention to perfection, he particularly prided himself on being a weaver of words, a title he valued higher than that of a writer; personally, I never could understand what was the good of thinking up books, of penning things that had not really happened in some way or other; and I remember once saying to him as I braved the mockery of his encouraging nods that, were I a writer, I should allow only my heart to have imagination, and for the rest rely upon memory,
that long-drawn sunset shadow of one’s personal truth.
In Lermontov’s play in verse Maskarad (“Masquerade,” 1835) the name of Arbenin’s slandered wife is Nina. At the beginning of Smert’ poeta (“The Poet’s Death,” 1837), a poem written after Pushkin’s death, Lermontov says that the Poet “fell, by rumor slandered:”
Погиб поэт! - невольник чести-
Пал, оклеветанный молвой,
С свинцом в груди и жаждой мести,
Поникнув гордой головой!..
The Poet's dead! - a slave to honor -
He fell, by rumor slandered,
Lead in his breast and thirsting for revenge,
Hanging his proud head!..
In the poem’s next lines obid (Gen. pl. of obida, insult) rhymes with ubit (slain) and dar (the gift) rhymes with pozhar (flame):
Не вынесла душа поэта
Позора мелочных обид,
Восстал он против мнений света
Один, как прежде... и убит!
Убит!.. к чему теперь рыданья,
Пустых похвал ненужный хор
И жалкий лепет оправданья?
Судьбы свершился приговор!
Не вы ль сперва так злобно гнали
Его свободный, смелый дар
И для потехи раздували
Чуть затаившийся пожар?
The Poet's soul could not endure
Petty insult's disgrace.
Against society he rose,
Alone, as always...and was slain!
Slain!...What use is weeping now,
The futile chorus of empty praise
Excuses mumbled full of pathos?
Fate has pronounced its sentence!
Was it not you who spitefully
Rebuffed his free, courageous gift
And for your own amusement fanned
The nearly dying flame?
Lermontov repeats the word ubit (slain) twice. Lermontov compares Pushkin to Lenski, in Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin (1823-31) the poet whom Onegin kills in a duel, and for the third time uses the word ubit:
И он убит - и взят могилой,
Как тот певец, неведомый, но милый,
Добыча ревности глухой,
Воспетый им с такою чудной силой,
Сражённый, как и он, безжалостной рукой.
He's slain - and taken by the grave
Like that unknown, but happy bard,
Victim of jealousy wild,
Of whom he sang with wondrous power,
Struck down, like him, by an unyielding hand.
In EO (Six: XXXV: 1-7) Pushkin, as he speaks of Lenski’s death, repeats the word ubit (dead) twice:
В тоске сердечных угрызений,
Рукою стиснув пистолет,
Глядит на Ленского Евгений.
"Ну, что ж? убит", - решил сосед.
Убит!.. Сим страшным восклицаньем
Сражен, Онегин с содроганьем
Отходит и людей зовёт.
In the ache of the heart’s remorse,
his hand squeezing the pistol,
at Lenski Eugene looks.
“Well, what – he’s dead,” pronounced the neighbor.
Dead!.. With this dreadful interjection
smitten, Onegin with a shudder
walks hence and calls his men.
Now, in Gogol’s Inspector the Town Mayor, just before he mentions svinye ryla (pigs’ snouts), repeats the word ubit (“done;” see the quote above) three times. 3 + 2 + 3 = 8. Gogol’s madman imagines that he is the King Ferdinand VIII. The narrator of “Spring in Fialta” refuses to mention the real name Nina’s husband and calls him “Ferdinand:”
I will not mention the name (and what bits of it I happen to give here appear in decorous disguise) of that man, that Franco-Hungarian writer. … I would rather not dwell upon him at all, but I cannot help it—he is surging up from under my pen.
VN’s story ends in Nina’s death in a car crash:
Но камень был, как тело, тёплый, и внезапно я понял то, чего, видя, не понимал дотоле, почему давеча так сверкала серебряная бумажка, почему дрожал отсвет стакана, почему мерцало море: белое небо над Фиальтой незаметно налилось солнцем, и теперь оно было солнечное сплошь, и это белое сияние ширилось, ширилось, всё растворялось в нём, все исчезало, и я уже стоял на вокзале, в Милане, с газетой, из которой узнал, что желтый автомобиль, виденный мной под платанами, потерпел за Фиальтой крушение, влетев на полном ходу в фургон бродячего цирка, причём Фердинанд и его приятель, неуязвимые пройдохи, саламандры судьбы, василиски счастья, отделались местным и
временным повреждением чешуи, тогда как Нина, несмотря на своё давнее, преданное подражание им, оказалась всё-таки смертной.
But the stone was as warm as flesh, and suddenly I understood something I had been seeing without understanding—why a piece of tinfoil had sparkled so on the pavement, why the gleam of a glass had trembled on a tablecloth, why the sea was a shimmer: somehow, by imperceptible degrees, the white sky above Fialta had got saturated with sunshine, and now it was sun-pervaded throughout, and this brimming white radiance grew broader and broader, all dissolved in it, all vanished, all passed, and I stood on the station platform of Mlech with a freshly bought newspaper, which told me that the yellow car I had seen under the plane trees had suffered a crash beyond Fialta, having run at full speed into the truck of a traveling circus entering the town, a crash from which Ferdinand and his friend, those invulnerable rogues, those salamanders of fate, those basilisks of good fortune, had escaped with local and temporary injury to their scales, while Nina, in spite of her long-standing, faithful imitation of them, had turned out after all to be mortal.
At the end of Pushkin’s story Pikovaya dama (“The Queen of Spades,” 1833) Chekalinski tells Herman (the gambler who ends up in a madhouse): dama vasha ubita (“Your queen has lost”):
Чекалинский стал метать, руки его тряслись. Направо легла дама, налево туз.
— Туз выиграл! — сказал Германн и открыл свою карту.
— Дама ваша убита, — сказал ласково Чекалинский.
Chekalinsky began to deal; his hands trembled. On the right a queen turned up, and on the left an ace.
"Ace has won!" cried Hermann, showing his card.
"Your queen has lost," said Chekalinsky, politely.
Korol’, dama, valet (“King, Queen, Knave,” 1928) is a novel by VN that ends in Martha’s death. While the queen’s name is Martha, the novel’s “knave” is Martha’s young lover Franz. Franz + Ferdinand = Franz Ferdinand (1863-1914), the archduke of Austria whose assassination in Sarajevo precipitated the outbreak of World War I. “The Balkan Novella” mentioned in VN’s poem Slava (“Fame,” 1942) is no doubt Vesna v Fialte. In “The Poet’s Death” Lermontov mentions slava (glory):
Его убийца хладнокровно
Навел удар... спасенья нет:
Пустое сердце бьётся ровно,
В руке не дрогнул пистолет.
И что за диво?... издалёка,
Подобный сотням беглецов,
На ловлю счастья и чинов
Заброшен к нам по воле рока;
Смеясь, он дерзко презирал
Земли чужой язык и нравы;
Не мог щадить он нашей славы;
Не мог понять в сей миг кровавый,
На что он руку поднимал!..
Cold-bloodedly his murderer
Took aim...there was no chance of flight:
His empty heart beat evenly,
The pistol steady in his hand.
No wonder...from far away
The will of fate sent him to us
Like hundreds of his fellow vagrants
In search of luck and rank;
With impudence he mocked and scorned
The tongue and сustoms of this strange land;
He could not spare our glory,
Nor in that bloody moment know
gainst what he'd raised his hand!...
In Lermontov’s poem slavy (Gen. of slava) rhymes with nravy (customs). Zemli chuzhoy yazyk i nravy (the strange land’s tongue and customs), a line in Lermontov’s poem, brings to mind Kinbote’s Zembla in VN’s novel Pale Fire (1962). In Canto Three of his poem Shade mentions a Balkan King:
It did not matter who they were. No sound,
No furtive light came from their involute
Abode, but there they were, aloof and mute,
Playing a game of worlds, promoting pawns
To ivory unicorns and ebony fauns;
Kindling a long life here, extinguishing
A short one there; killing a Balkan king;
Causing a chunk of ice formed on a high-
Flying airplane to plummet from the sky
And strike a farmer dead; hiding my keys,
Glasses or pipe. (ll. 816-826)
Btw., in Chapter Eight of his Eugene Onegin Pushkin compares Princess N. to Nina Voronskoy, that Cleopatra of the Neva.
Alexey Sklyarenko
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Меня всегда раздражало самодовольное убеждение, что крайность в искусстве находится в некоей метафизической связи с крайностью в политике, при настоящем соприкосновении с которой изысканнейшая литература, конечно, становится, по ужасному, ещё мало исследованному свиному закону, такой же затасканной и общедоступной серединой, как любая идейная дребедень.
Now, frankly speaking, I have always been irritated by the complacent conviction that a ripple of stream consciousness, a few healthy obscenities, and a dash of communism in any old slop pail will alchemically and automatically produce ultramodern literature; and I will contend until I am shot that art as soon as it is brought into contact with politics inevitably sinks to the level of any ideological trash.
This svinoy zakon seems to hint at svinye ryla (pigs’ snouts) mentioned by the Town Mayor at the end of Gogol’s play Revizor (“The Inspector,” 1836):
Городничий. Вот когда зарезал, так зарезал! Убит, убит, совсем убит! Ничего не вижу. Вижу какие-то свиные рыла вместо лиц, а больше ничего... Воротить, воротить его! (Машет рукою.)
Town Mayor. He has cut my throat and cut it for good. I'm done for, completely done for. I see nothing. All I see are pigs' snouts instead of faces, and nothing more. Catch him, catch him! [Waves his hand.] (Act V, scene 8)
In Gogol’s story Zapiski sumasshedshego (“A Madman’s Notes,” 1835) Poprishchin imagines that he is the King of Spain Ferdinand VIII. The name Poprishchin comes from poprishche (obs., field; walk of life; profession; career), the word that was used by Count Uvarov on the occasion of Pushkin’s death. In Chapter Four of VN’s novel Dar (“The Gift,” 1937) Fyodor quotes Uvarov’s words:
«Для гения недостаточно смастерить Евгения Онегина», – писал Надеждин, сравнивая Пушкина с портным, изобретателем жилетных узоров, и заключая умственный союз с Уваровым, министром народного просвещения, сказавшим по случаю смерти Пушкина: «Писать стишки не значит ещё проходить великое поприще».
“To be a genius it is not enough to have manufactured Eugene Onegin” wrote the progressive Nadezhdin, comparing Pushkin to a tailor, an inventor of waistcoat patterns, and thus concluding an intellectual pact with the reactionary Count Uvarov, Minister of Education, who remarked on the occasion of Pushkin’s death: “To write jingles does not mean yet to achieve a great career.”
In Vesna v Fialte one of Nina’s admirers mentions her pushkinskie nozhki (“Pushkinian feet;” in the English version, “lyrical limbs”):
Сам не понимаю, что значила для меня эта маленькая узкоплечая женщина, с пушкинскими ножками (как при мне сказал о ней русский поэт, чувствительный и жеманный, один из немногих людей, вздыхавших по ней платонически), а ещё меньше понимаю, чего от нас хотела судьба, постоянно сводя нас.
I still wonder what exactly she meant to me, that small dark woman of the narrow shoulders and “lyrical limbs” (to quote the expression of a mincing émigré poet, one of the few men who had sighed platonically after her), and still less do I understand what was the purpose of fate in bringing us constantly together.
According to Fyodor, for Chernyshevski Pushkin was sochinitel’ ostren’kikh stishkov o nozhkakh (“a writer of witty little verses about women’s little feet”):
Пушкина нет в списке книг, доставленных Чернышевскому в крепость, да и немудрено: несмотря на заслуги Пушкина («изобрёл русскую поэзию и приучил общество её читать»), это всё-таки был прежде всего сочинитель остреньких стишков о ножках (причем «ножки» в интонации шестидесятых годов – когда вся природа омещанилась, превратившись в «травку» и «пичужек» – уже значило не то, что разумел Пушкин, – а скорее немецкое «фюсхен»).
Pushkin does not figure in the list of books sent to Chernyshevski at the fortress, and no wonder: despite Pushkin's services ("he invented Russian poetry and taught society to read it" – two statements completely untrue), he was nevertheless above all a writer of witty little verses about women's little feet – and "little feet" in the intonation of the sixties-when the whole of nature had been philistinized into travka (diminutive of "grass") and pichuzhki (diminutive of "birds") already meant something quite different from Pushkin's "petits pieds" – something that had now become closer to the mawkish Füsschen." (“The Gift,” Chapter Four)
In Vesna v Fialte the narrator says that Ferdinand particularly prided himself on being sochinitel’ (a weaver of words), a title he valued higher than that of a writer (pisatel’), and mentions maskarady (masquerades):
В совершенстве изучив природу вымысла, он особенно кичился званием сочинителя, которое ставил выше звания писателя: я же никогда не понимал, как это можно книги выдумывать, что проку в выдумке; и, не убоясь его издевательски
любезного взгляда, я ему признался однажды, что будь я литератором, лишь сердцу своему позволял бы иметь воображение, да ещё, пожалуй, допускал бы память, эту длинную вечернюю тень истины, но рассудка ни за что не возил бы по маскарадам.
Having mastered the art of verbal invention to perfection, he particularly prided himself on being a weaver of words, a title he valued higher than that of a writer; personally, I never could understand what was the good of thinking up books, of penning things that had not really happened in some way or other; and I remember once saying to him as I braved the mockery of his encouraging nods that, were I a writer, I should allow only my heart to have imagination, and for the rest rely upon memory,
that long-drawn sunset shadow of one’s personal truth.
In Lermontov’s play in verse Maskarad (“Masquerade,” 1835) the name of Arbenin’s slandered wife is Nina. At the beginning of Smert’ poeta (“The Poet’s Death,” 1837), a poem written after Pushkin’s death, Lermontov says that the Poet “fell, by rumor slandered:”
Погиб поэт! - невольник чести-
Пал, оклеветанный молвой,
С свинцом в груди и жаждой мести,
Поникнув гордой головой!..
The Poet's dead! - a slave to honor -
He fell, by rumor slandered,
Lead in his breast and thirsting for revenge,
Hanging his proud head!..
In the poem’s next lines obid (Gen. pl. of obida, insult) rhymes with ubit (slain) and dar (the gift) rhymes with pozhar (flame):
Не вынесла душа поэта
Позора мелочных обид,
Восстал он против мнений света
Один, как прежде... и убит!
Убит!.. к чему теперь рыданья,
Пустых похвал ненужный хор
И жалкий лепет оправданья?
Судьбы свершился приговор!
Не вы ль сперва так злобно гнали
Его свободный, смелый дар
И для потехи раздували
Чуть затаившийся пожар?
The Poet's soul could not endure
Petty insult's disgrace.
Against society he rose,
Alone, as always...and was slain!
Slain!...What use is weeping now,
The futile chorus of empty praise
Excuses mumbled full of pathos?
Fate has pronounced its sentence!
Was it not you who spitefully
Rebuffed his free, courageous gift
And for your own amusement fanned
The nearly dying flame?
Lermontov repeats the word ubit (slain) twice. Lermontov compares Pushkin to Lenski, in Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin (1823-31) the poet whom Onegin kills in a duel, and for the third time uses the word ubit:
И он убит - и взят могилой,
Как тот певец, неведомый, но милый,
Добыча ревности глухой,
Воспетый им с такою чудной силой,
Сражённый, как и он, безжалостной рукой.
He's slain - and taken by the grave
Like that unknown, but happy bard,
Victim of jealousy wild,
Of whom he sang with wondrous power,
Struck down, like him, by an unyielding hand.
In EO (Six: XXXV: 1-7) Pushkin, as he speaks of Lenski’s death, repeats the word ubit (dead) twice:
В тоске сердечных угрызений,
Рукою стиснув пистолет,
Глядит на Ленского Евгений.
"Ну, что ж? убит", - решил сосед.
Убит!.. Сим страшным восклицаньем
Сражен, Онегин с содроганьем
Отходит и людей зовёт.
In the ache of the heart’s remorse,
his hand squeezing the pistol,
at Lenski Eugene looks.
“Well, what – he’s dead,” pronounced the neighbor.
Dead!.. With this dreadful interjection
smitten, Onegin with a shudder
walks hence and calls his men.
Now, in Gogol’s Inspector the Town Mayor, just before he mentions svinye ryla (pigs’ snouts), repeats the word ubit (“done;” see the quote above) three times. 3 + 2 + 3 = 8. Gogol’s madman imagines that he is the King Ferdinand VIII. The narrator of “Spring in Fialta” refuses to mention the real name Nina’s husband and calls him “Ferdinand:”
I will not mention the name (and what bits of it I happen to give here appear in decorous disguise) of that man, that Franco-Hungarian writer. … I would rather not dwell upon him at all, but I cannot help it—he is surging up from under my pen.
VN’s story ends in Nina’s death in a car crash:
Но камень был, как тело, тёплый, и внезапно я понял то, чего, видя, не понимал дотоле, почему давеча так сверкала серебряная бумажка, почему дрожал отсвет стакана, почему мерцало море: белое небо над Фиальтой незаметно налилось солнцем, и теперь оно было солнечное сплошь, и это белое сияние ширилось, ширилось, всё растворялось в нём, все исчезало, и я уже стоял на вокзале, в Милане, с газетой, из которой узнал, что желтый автомобиль, виденный мной под платанами, потерпел за Фиальтой крушение, влетев на полном ходу в фургон бродячего цирка, причём Фердинанд и его приятель, неуязвимые пройдохи, саламандры судьбы, василиски счастья, отделались местным и
временным повреждением чешуи, тогда как Нина, несмотря на своё давнее, преданное подражание им, оказалась всё-таки смертной.
But the stone was as warm as flesh, and suddenly I understood something I had been seeing without understanding—why a piece of tinfoil had sparkled so on the pavement, why the gleam of a glass had trembled on a tablecloth, why the sea was a shimmer: somehow, by imperceptible degrees, the white sky above Fialta had got saturated with sunshine, and now it was sun-pervaded throughout, and this brimming white radiance grew broader and broader, all dissolved in it, all vanished, all passed, and I stood on the station platform of Mlech with a freshly bought newspaper, which told me that the yellow car I had seen under the plane trees had suffered a crash beyond Fialta, having run at full speed into the truck of a traveling circus entering the town, a crash from which Ferdinand and his friend, those invulnerable rogues, those salamanders of fate, those basilisks of good fortune, had escaped with local and temporary injury to their scales, while Nina, in spite of her long-standing, faithful imitation of them, had turned out after all to be mortal.
At the end of Pushkin’s story Pikovaya dama (“The Queen of Spades,” 1833) Chekalinski tells Herman (the gambler who ends up in a madhouse): dama vasha ubita (“Your queen has lost”):
Чекалинский стал метать, руки его тряслись. Направо легла дама, налево туз.
— Туз выиграл! — сказал Германн и открыл свою карту.
— Дама ваша убита, — сказал ласково Чекалинский.
Chekalinsky began to deal; his hands trembled. On the right a queen turned up, and on the left an ace.
"Ace has won!" cried Hermann, showing his card.
"Your queen has lost," said Chekalinsky, politely.
Korol’, dama, valet (“King, Queen, Knave,” 1928) is a novel by VN that ends in Martha’s death. While the queen’s name is Martha, the novel’s “knave” is Martha’s young lover Franz. Franz + Ferdinand = Franz Ferdinand (1863-1914), the archduke of Austria whose assassination in Sarajevo precipitated the outbreak of World War I. “The Balkan Novella” mentioned in VN’s poem Slava (“Fame,” 1942) is no doubt Vesna v Fialte. In “The Poet’s Death” Lermontov mentions slava (glory):
Его убийца хладнокровно
Навел удар... спасенья нет:
Пустое сердце бьётся ровно,
В руке не дрогнул пистолет.
И что за диво?... издалёка,
Подобный сотням беглецов,
На ловлю счастья и чинов
Заброшен к нам по воле рока;
Смеясь, он дерзко презирал
Земли чужой язык и нравы;
Не мог щадить он нашей славы;
Не мог понять в сей миг кровавый,
На что он руку поднимал!..
Cold-bloodedly his murderer
Took aim...there was no chance of flight:
His empty heart beat evenly,
The pistol steady in his hand.
No wonder...from far away
The will of fate sent him to us
Like hundreds of his fellow vagrants
In search of luck and rank;
With impudence he mocked and scorned
The tongue and сustoms of this strange land;
He could not spare our glory,
Nor in that bloody moment know
gainst what he'd raised his hand!...
In Lermontov’s poem slavy (Gen. of slava) rhymes with nravy (customs). Zemli chuzhoy yazyk i nravy (the strange land’s tongue and customs), a line in Lermontov’s poem, brings to mind Kinbote’s Zembla in VN’s novel Pale Fire (1962). In Canto Three of his poem Shade mentions a Balkan King:
It did not matter who they were. No sound,
No furtive light came from their involute
Abode, but there they were, aloof and mute,
Playing a game of worlds, promoting pawns
To ivory unicorns and ebony fauns;
Kindling a long life here, extinguishing
A short one there; killing a Balkan king;
Causing a chunk of ice formed on a high-
Flying airplane to plummet from the sky
And strike a farmer dead; hiding my keys,
Glasses or pipe. (ll. 816-826)
Btw., in Chapter Eight of his Eugene Onegin Pushkin compares Princess N. to Nina Voronskoy, that Cleopatra of the Neva.
Alexey Sklyarenko
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