Subject
CORRECTION to VN/DN "Shakespeare" text
Date
Body
EDITOR's Note. A sharp-eyed reader has caught two errors in the version of
the poem that went out on NABOKV-L: 1) "USURER" NOT "Userer" in line 18,
2) in the poem's last line, insert a comma after "distance." Both errors
are corrected in the version below.
_________________________________________________________
SHAKESPEARE
Vladimir Nabokov
1924
translation by Dmitri Nabokov
Amid grandees of times Elizabethan
you shimmered too, you followed sumptuous customs;
the circle of ruff, the silv'ry satin that
encased your thigh, the wedge-like beard -- in all of this
you were like other men.... Thus was enfolded
your godlike thunder in a succinct cape.
Haughty, aloof from theatre's alarums,
you easily, regretlessly relinquished
the laurels twining into a dry wreath,
concealing for all time your monstrous genius
beneath a mask; and yet, your phantasms' echoes
still vibrate for us: your Venetian Moor,
his anguish; Falstaff's visage, like an udder
with pasted-on mustache; the raging Lear....
You are among us, you're alive; your name, though,
your image, too -- deceiving, thus, the world --
you have submerged in your beloved Lethe.
It's true, of course, a usurer had grown
accustomed, for a sum, to sign your work
(that Shakespeare -- Will -- who played the Ghost in _Hamlet_,
who lived in pubs, and died before he could
digest in full his portion of a boar's head)....
The frigate breathed, your country you were leaving.
To Italy you went. A female voice
called singsong through the iron's pattern,
called to her balcony the tall _inglese_,
grown languid from the lemon-tinted moon
amid Verona's streets. My inclination
is to imagine, possibly, the droll
and kind creator of _Don Quixote_
exchanging with you a few casual words
while waiting for fresh horses -- and the evening
was surely blue. The well behind the tavern
contained a pail's pure tinkling sound.... Reply --
whom did you love? Reveal yourself -- whose memoirs
refer to you in passing? Look what numbers
of lowly, worthless souls have left their trace,
what countless names Brantome* has for the asking!
Reveal yourself, god of iambic thunder,
you hundred-mouthed, unthinkably great bard!
No! At the destined hour, when you felt banished
by God from your existence, you recalled
those secret manuscripts, fully aware
that your supremacy would rest unblemished
by public rumor's unashamed* brand,
that ever, amidst the shifting dust of ages,
faceless you'd stay, like immortality
itself -- then vanished in the distance, smiling.
----
Copyright C1979 Vladimir Nabokov Estate
English version copyright c1988 Dmitiri Nabokov
---------------------------------
Notes appended by editor (DBJ).
* Brantome, Pierre de Bourdeilles (1535?-1614) was a courtier and soldier
of fortune whose _Vies des hommes illustres et grands capitaines_ and
_Livre des dames_ form a racy account of his times. His name, of course,
should bear a circumflex accent over the "o."
*"unashamed" should have a mark indicating that the final "-ed" is
pronounced as a fourth syllable.
the poem that went out on NABOKV-L: 1) "USURER" NOT "Userer" in line 18,
2) in the poem's last line, insert a comma after "distance." Both errors
are corrected in the version below.
_________________________________________________________
SHAKESPEARE
Vladimir Nabokov
1924
translation by Dmitri Nabokov
Amid grandees of times Elizabethan
you shimmered too, you followed sumptuous customs;
the circle of ruff, the silv'ry satin that
encased your thigh, the wedge-like beard -- in all of this
you were like other men.... Thus was enfolded
your godlike thunder in a succinct cape.
Haughty, aloof from theatre's alarums,
you easily, regretlessly relinquished
the laurels twining into a dry wreath,
concealing for all time your monstrous genius
beneath a mask; and yet, your phantasms' echoes
still vibrate for us: your Venetian Moor,
his anguish; Falstaff's visage, like an udder
with pasted-on mustache; the raging Lear....
You are among us, you're alive; your name, though,
your image, too -- deceiving, thus, the world --
you have submerged in your beloved Lethe.
It's true, of course, a usurer had grown
accustomed, for a sum, to sign your work
(that Shakespeare -- Will -- who played the Ghost in _Hamlet_,
who lived in pubs, and died before he could
digest in full his portion of a boar's head)....
The frigate breathed, your country you were leaving.
To Italy you went. A female voice
called singsong through the iron's pattern,
called to her balcony the tall _inglese_,
grown languid from the lemon-tinted moon
amid Verona's streets. My inclination
is to imagine, possibly, the droll
and kind creator of _Don Quixote_
exchanging with you a few casual words
while waiting for fresh horses -- and the evening
was surely blue. The well behind the tavern
contained a pail's pure tinkling sound.... Reply --
whom did you love? Reveal yourself -- whose memoirs
refer to you in passing? Look what numbers
of lowly, worthless souls have left their trace,
what countless names Brantome* has for the asking!
Reveal yourself, god of iambic thunder,
you hundred-mouthed, unthinkably great bard!
No! At the destined hour, when you felt banished
by God from your existence, you recalled
those secret manuscripts, fully aware
that your supremacy would rest unblemished
by public rumor's unashamed* brand,
that ever, amidst the shifting dust of ages,
faceless you'd stay, like immortality
itself -- then vanished in the distance, smiling.
----
Copyright C1979 Vladimir Nabokov Estate
English version copyright c1988 Dmitiri Nabokov
---------------------------------
Notes appended by editor (DBJ).
* Brantome, Pierre de Bourdeilles (1535?-1614) was a courtier and soldier
of fortune whose _Vies des hommes illustres et grands capitaines_ and
_Livre des dames_ form a racy account of his times. His name, of course,
should bear a circumflex accent over the "o."
*"unashamed" should have a mark indicating that the final "-ed" is
pronounced as a fourth syllable.