Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0023551, Tue, 1 Jan 2013 03:52:19 +0300

Subject
VN's Paris Poem
Date
Body
From The Paris Poem:

От кочующих, праздно плутающих
(From those wandering, those idly straying)

VN's footnote: The original imitates much more closely Nekrasov's line calling the poet away from those jubilant, those idly babbling (от ликующих, праздно болтающих) to the camp (стан) of those revolutionaries "who perish in the name of the great deed of love."* Nikolay Alekseevich Nekrasov, 1821-77, a famous poet who successfully transcended, in a few great poems, the journalist in him, who wrote topical jingles.

Не любил он ходить к человеку,
а хорошего зверя не знал.
He did not like visiting people,
and did not know any nice animal

Chelovek (man, person) and zver' (animal, beast) mentioned by VN also occur in Nekrasov's famous Poet i grazhdanin (Poet and Citizen, 1856):

В ночи, которую теперь
Мы доживаем боязливо,
Когда свободно рыщет зверь,
А человек бредёт пугливо
In the night we are now
timidly living through,
when the animal roams freely
and the man shuffles timorously

*In Nekrasov's poem Rytsar' na chas (Knight for an Hour, 1862)

Alexey Sklyarenko

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