>>> Victor Fet will correct me, if I am wrong
>>>Where did Krylov see singing (or jumping,*** for that matter) dragon-flies?
Krylov’s strekoza – which today means only dragonfly -- indeed meant a grasshopper at his time!
This famous confusion is well known to beginning Russian entomologists.
Indeed, dragonflies [Order Odonata] do not make sounds (v.
strekotat’, the sound grasshopper [Order Orthopetera] or cicada [order Homoptera] would make) and are not jumpers.
But they have big mandibles… and their larvae have even scarier ones.
Victor Fet
From: Vladimir Nabokov Forum [mailto:NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU]
On Behalf Of Alexey Sklyarenko
Sent: Thursday, December 12, 2013 7:49 PM
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Subject: [NABOKV-L] cicadas & grasshoppers
In her unrhymed translation of Shade's poem Vera Nabokov makes a footnote to
"je nourris / Les pauvres cigales" (241-42):
"I feed the poor cicadas" (Krylov translated "strekoza"* instead of "tsikada"**).
From VN's story Lik (1939) set in the French Riviera:
In the dark garden, everything was in bloom and smelled of candy, and there was a continuous trilling of crickets, which he mistook (as all Russians do) for cicadas.
In the Russian original crickets are
kuznechiki (grasshoppers). Russian for "cricket" is sverchok.
Kuznechiki ("little smiths")
kuyut ("forge") with their feet, while cicadas "sing" with their wings (Victor Fet will correct me, if I am wrong).
Feminine of poprygun (fidget),
poprygun'ya does not mean "grasshopper" (what a perfect nonsense!). As a title of Chekhov's story, Poprygun'ya means "changeable woman."
*dragon-fly; btw., Krylov's fable "Strekoza i muravey" begins:
Poprygun'ya strekoza
leto krasnoe propela...
(The restless dragon-fly
sang through the fair summer...)
Where did Krylov see singing (or jumping,*** for that matter) dragon-flies? In the fable's punch line muravey (the ant) tells
strekoza (the dragon-fly) that she should now dance (tak podi-ka poplyashi).
**cicada
***poprygun and
poprygun'ya come from prygat' (to jump)
Alexey Sklyarenko
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