Charles Nicol: Am I correct in remembering that VN wrote a poem
imagining his own death there under similar circumstances?
Dear Chaz,
You must be thinking of Lermontov's poem "The
Dream" ("In a noon's heat, in a dale of Dagestan..." 1841). It was translated by
VN and included in "Three Russian Poets" (1945) and later in the
Foreword to VN's translation (1958), in collaboration with DN, of
Lermontov's "A Hero of Our Time" (1841), where it is analysed as a "triple
dream" (a dream within a dream within a dream).
Let me add that in my article "Ada as
a Triple Dream" (The Nabokovian # 53) I cite this poem and argue that Nabokov's
novel is also a triple dream. In another article, "Fathers and Children in
Ada" (The Nabokovian # 54), I argue that Ada was in part
inspired by Pushkin's famous poem "Na kholmakh Gruzii lezhit nochnaya
mgla..." ("The night murk lies on the hills of Georgia; / The Aragva
thunders before me..." 1829).
Below are two anagrams that seem relevant involving
two Georgian rivers and Georgian capital:
ARAGVA + KURA (the two rivers flowing
in Georgia that were sung by Russian poets*) + G (the letter called
glagol', "gallows," in the old Russian alphabet) = KURVA (whore; the
phrase kurva Moskva in Mandelshtam's poem "Net, ne
spryatat'sya mne ot velikoy mury..."** was mistranslated by
Lowell; cf. "the violent dance called kurva" danced by young
gardeners in the garb of Georgian tribesmen in Ada: 1.2) +
GAGARA (loon, the bird Gavia; cf.
Yuriy Gagarin, 1934-68, the first astronaut; note that the name Yuriy is a form
of Georgiy, George)
KING
VICTOR
+ TBILISI
+ EROTIC
+ US
= VIKING
+ CLITORIS
+ COITUS
+ TIBER
(King Victor is a character of Ada, the ruler of the Antiterran United
Kingdom; besides the English meanings of the pronoun "us" and the abbreviation
US, us (pronounced as in German Fuss) is Russian for
"mustache hair;" Tiber is the river in Italy flowing
through Rome)
*cf. Lermontov, the beginning of Mtsyri
(as paraphrased by VN in Speak, Memory, p. 128 of the Penguin
edition): "a point where meet and flow / In sisterly embrace the fair /
Aragva and Kurah"
**No, I can't hide from the great
nonsense
Alexey Sklyarenko