NABOKV-L post 0021570, Mon, 25 Apr 2011 23:32:21 +0300

At the end of Nabokov's Razgovor ("The Conversation," a poem, 1928, that imitates Pushkin's, Lermontov's and Nekrasov's conversations in iambic tetrameter between writers/poets, critics and booksellers), izdatel' (editor) mentions N. I. Grech (a prominent journalist of Pushkin's time, co-editor of "The Northern Bee" and other periodicals, 1787-1867):

Сто лет назад целковых двести
вам дал бы Греч за разговор,
такой по-новому проворный,
за ямб искусно-разговорный...
Увы: он устарел с тех пор.

In a letter of January 24, 1822, to his brother Lev from Kishinev Pushkin calls Grech "a bearded connoiseur of bookish intelligence" with whom he (Pushkin) would bargain hard:

Къ тому-же ни Гн?дичь со мной ни я съ Гн?дичемъ не будемъ торговаться и слишкомъ наблюдать каждый свою выгоду а съ Гречемъ я сталъ бы безсов?стно торговаться какъ со всякимъ брадатымъ ц?нителемъ книжнаго ума

Alexey Sklyarenko

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