If it means anything at all, for years I have had on my office door a sports headline that reads, "Gwynn feels Larkin's Pain." Now R. S. Gwynn, poet, has often felt the pain of Philip Larkin, poet, with whom he identifies in many ways, but this innocent headline referred to the baseball players Tony Gwynn and Barry Larkin. As I recall, someone did in fact track down the actual sports headline about "Chapman's homer"; maybe it is in the archives.
In a message dated 8/8/2012 4:28:44 PM Central Daylight Time, nabokv-l@UTK.EDU writes:
I imagine there's been plenty of speculation on Pale Fire's 'On Chapman's Homer', relating to Keats' poem, CK's ignorance of baseball (assuming an editorial transposition -- well, he never excelled at sport), whether the Sox really did win 5-4. I suspect that there's been less ink spilled on Chapman himself, the one who performed the translation. His translation is probably not one that would have met with Nabokov's approval. 'Free' scarcely describes it, when you compare it to more literal efforts; at times it is a reinterpretation of, or commentary on Homer.
Chapman has been linked with Shakespeare's sonnets as possibly being the 'rival poet'. The only reason to mention this is that the game Nabokov concocts is between the Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees, whose rivalry is legendary, and already existed when he wrote Pale Fire. The juxtaposition of a famous/notorious sports rivalry with a poetic one is not inconceivable.
The case for Chapman as the rival poet was most extensively elaborated by Arthur Acheson in his 'Shakespeare and the Rival Poet' (1903), though the evidence doesn't always support his specific conclusions throughout the book. J. M. Robertson ('Shakespeare and Chapman', 1917) came to a similar conclusion about Chapman, albeit disavowing some of Acheson's methods. Robertson (p. 12, fn) draws attention to one very interesting example of Chapman's response to Shakespeare's verse. In his play Sir Gyles Goosecappe, written about 1602 it is believed, a doctor, called perversely Veroles, is consulting with his patient. Mid-way through his speech, Veroles says
" ... do not make / Those ground works of eternity, you lay / Means to your ruin, and short being here:'
No need to try to make sense of it. But look at Shakespeare's sonnet 125, whose lines 3-4 read like this:
"Or laid great bases for eternity, which prove more short than waste or ruining".
Shakespeare first, then Chapman, compare &contrast:
Laid = lay; great bases = ground works; eternity = eternity; short = short; ruining = ruin.
Robertson commented: "The coincidence is rather curious". I suppose when one poet (Chapman) butchers another's poetry, it is curious.
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