Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0024655, Thu, 3 Oct 2013 01:13:22 +0000

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Re: quote query
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In a response to Michael Juliar off-list, I wrote almost the same thing: "It sounds like a Conmal version of the opening of "Pale Fire" then translated into Spanish and back to English."

Further digging (by the initial inquirer in New York) makes it seems likely that the actual, though not real, author is Vladimiro Nabukov (1812-1872), born in Kiev, died in Berlin:

VLADIMIRO NABUKOV

(1812-1872)


Nació en Kiev, murió en Berlín. Joven, fue amigo de Tolstoi. Luego se enfadaron. Era rico; murio harto, del corazón.

Sólo los pájaros pueden despegarse
de su sombra.
La sombra siempre es de tierra.

Nuestra imaginación vuela:
somos su sombra, en tierra.

Who in turn seems to have been invented by the real, if no longer actual, Max Aub (1903-1972), a Mexican-Spanish writer, in his Antología traducida (1963) rather than in his Versiones y subversions (1971) (no relation to Nabokov's Verse and Versions, 2008). See his entry in the Spanish Wikipedia, and this:

http://constelacion18.blogspot.co.nz/2006/10/algunos-poetas-apcrifos-i-la-antologa.html

Nabukov's poem was in turn picked up by Robert Bly, in his anthology The Sea and the Honeycomb: A Book of Tiny Poems (The Sixties Press, 1966). As Michal Juliar reports, "A note in the back of the book gives the four lines in Spanish. credits "Nabukov", and then says "Translated from the Russian by Max Aub."

A hall of mirrors, but it has an exit.

Brian Boyd


On 3/10/2013, at 2:11 AM, "Roth, Matthew" <mroth@MESSIAH.EDU<mailto:mroth@MESSIAH.EDU>>
wrote:

That sounds like a Kinbote translation of a Conmal translation of a John Shade poem!

Matt


“Only birds are able to throw off their shadows
The shadow always stays behind on earth.
Our imagination flies.
We are its shadow on the earth.”

Brian Boyd
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