It has been one of the list's most enervating days, I think, and I'm
full of admiration, gratitude, and more than a little envy towards
those who've produced the day's discoveries (especially those heavy,
star-produced elements in the scissors!). I'm particularly intrigued
that Richard Burton's translations have come up, since I offered his
translation of Catullus as one possible source of the phrase "light of
my life" in the latest Nabokovian--although I preferred Philip
Sidney's Astrophil and Stella in the end. But even there--it's
the "star" theme, and one remembers "the star, the star" from The
Gift, Starover Blue in PF, "Gray Star" and "Stella
Fantasia," in Lolita, exploding stars in "Father's
Butterflies", and--what else? I'm sure there's much more, but these
are the ones that come immediately to mind.
Stephen Blackwell
Gholamreza Shafiee:Another possible model for Kinbote is
Richard Burton, the famous translator of 1001 Nights, whose kinky and
highly personal notes VN might have read while working on his Eugene
Onegin translation/annotation. This is of course not my find. It is
Robert Irwin’s view in The Companion to Arabian Nights.
JM: Richard Burton is mentioned in “Ada” at least twice ( and “The
Perfumed Garden”), so it is highly probable that VN was acquainted with
the bulk of his translations. Nevertheless, I don’t see Kinbote as
being modeled after Burton, perhaps a little of Sheherazade? Nabokov
once denied being familiar with John Barth, so I don’t think thered be
any link with Barth’s works and “Chimera” comes later, anyway (1971?)