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Re: VN and Translating Bely
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From:Dolinin <dolinin@facstaff.wisc.edu>
I think I have a plausible solution of Eric Naiman's riddle. Bely
does use the adjective "kubovyi" (dark blue) in Chapter Five of his
*Petersburg* ("kubovyi vozdukh, nastoiannyi na zvezde"). However, it has
no connections either to a cube or to Ableukhov's coupe. As the word is
very rare, Nabokov probably learned it from the novel when he was reading
it in his youth. Many years later, in 1934, under the influence of Bely's
death and Khodasevich's necrological memoir, he tried to "rememorate" the
novel but his memory failed him and he actually invented a Belyesque
phrase, telescoping "kubovyi" and "kub karety" (the cube of the carriage).
Then, in the fifties, he came across "the dark cube of his carriage" in
Cournos's translation and, relying solely on his memory, took it for a
howler. To borrow from Brian Boyd's title, "Even Homais nods."
Alexander Dolinin
I think I have a plausible solution of Eric Naiman's riddle. Bely
does use the adjective "kubovyi" (dark blue) in Chapter Five of his
*Petersburg* ("kubovyi vozdukh, nastoiannyi na zvezde"). However, it has
no connections either to a cube or to Ableukhov's coupe. As the word is
very rare, Nabokov probably learned it from the novel when he was reading
it in his youth. Many years later, in 1934, under the influence of Bely's
death and Khodasevich's necrological memoir, he tried to "rememorate" the
novel but his memory failed him and he actually invented a Belyesque
phrase, telescoping "kubovyi" and "kub karety" (the cube of the carriage).
Then, in the fifties, he came across "the dark cube of his carriage" in
Cournos's translation and, relying solely on his memory, took it for a
howler. To borrow from Brian Boyd's title, "Even Homais nods."
Alexander Dolinin