Subject
THOUGHTS: kot or in Pale Fire and otrok in Pushkin
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Date
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from Alexey Sklyarenko:
In one of my recent kot or posts I mentioned that this Zemblan phrase meaning "what is the time" was the anagram of otrok (Russian for "boy", "lad"). But otrok is the word that occurs twice in the opening line of Pushkin's "homoerotic" poem Podrazhanie arabskomu ("Imitation of the Arabic", 1835):
Otrok milyi, otrok nezhnyi...
Here is an English translation (found in Gregory Wood's article "Literary Historiography and the Gay Common Reader": http://www.hum.uit.no/nordlit/4/woods.html) of this eight-line piece:
Sweet lad, tender lad,
Have no shame, you're mine for good;
We share a sole insurgent fire,
We live in boundless brotherhood.
I do not fear the gibes of men;
One being split in two we dwell,
The kernel of a double nut
Embedded in a single shell.
It seems to me that several years ago I have already quoted this poem in Nabokv-l and asked the List if also Shade and Kinbote might be dvoinoi oreshek pod edinoi skorlupoi ("the kernel of a double nut under a single shell"), two parts of the split One? And, if they are, what we should make of Gradus, whom Carolyn thinks to be the multiple personality's third aspect?
Hazel is of course a nut-bearing shrub or tree. Like peanuts or almonds, hazel nuts sometimes have a twin kernel.
Somewhat off theme, I remember the lines of T. Ardov (pen-name of Vladimir Tardov, a minor poet and a major specialist in Persian culture whom I mentioned in connection with ADA) are:
Na etom pire vsesozhzheniy
Ya zhertva, zhertvennik i zhrets.
(On this feast of holocaust / I am the sacrifice, the sacrificial altar and the priest). "Pir" (Russian for "feast") happens to be the Russian title of Plato's Symposium. According to G. Wood (the author of the above-mentioned article), the image of One being split in two in Pushkin's poem goes back to Aristophanes' speech in Plato's Symposium.
On the other hand, pir occurs in the title of Pushkin's little tradedy Pir vo vremya chumy (Pushkin's version of Wilson's City of the Plague), and Piry ("The Feasts", 1821) is the title of Baratynsky's first long poem.
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In one of my recent kot or posts I mentioned that this Zemblan phrase meaning "what is the time" was the anagram of otrok (Russian for "boy", "lad"). But otrok is the word that occurs twice in the opening line of Pushkin's "homoerotic" poem Podrazhanie arabskomu ("Imitation of the Arabic", 1835):
Otrok milyi, otrok nezhnyi...
Here is an English translation (found in Gregory Wood's article "Literary Historiography and the Gay Common Reader": http://www.hum.uit.no/nordlit/4/woods.html) of this eight-line piece:
Sweet lad, tender lad,
Have no shame, you're mine for good;
We share a sole insurgent fire,
We live in boundless brotherhood.
I do not fear the gibes of men;
One being split in two we dwell,
The kernel of a double nut
Embedded in a single shell.
It seems to me that several years ago I have already quoted this poem in Nabokv-l and asked the List if also Shade and Kinbote might be dvoinoi oreshek pod edinoi skorlupoi ("the kernel of a double nut under a single shell"), two parts of the split One? And, if they are, what we should make of Gradus, whom Carolyn thinks to be the multiple personality's third aspect?
Hazel is of course a nut-bearing shrub or tree. Like peanuts or almonds, hazel nuts sometimes have a twin kernel.
Somewhat off theme, I remember the lines of T. Ardov (pen-name of Vladimir Tardov, a minor poet and a major specialist in Persian culture whom I mentioned in connection with ADA) are:
Na etom pire vsesozhzheniy
Ya zhertva, zhertvennik i zhrets.
(On this feast of holocaust / I am the sacrifice, the sacrificial altar and the priest). "Pir" (Russian for "feast") happens to be the Russian title of Plato's Symposium. According to G. Wood (the author of the above-mentioned article), the image of One being split in two in Pushkin's poem goes back to Aristophanes' speech in Plato's Symposium.
On the other hand, pir occurs in the title of Pushkin's little tradedy Pir vo vremya chumy (Pushkin's version of Wilson's City of the Plague), and Piry ("The Feasts", 1821) is the title of Baratynsky's first long poem.
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/