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Re: THOUGHTS: kot or in PF & learned cat in Pushkin
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Jansy: I do hope you are not overly bedazzled by Alexey¹s amusing, fanciful,
sky-larking ³links.² (Note the Brit idiom: ³Blimey, what a lark!²) It¹s
really a weird, wide stretch to take any mention of that most-widely used
word ³song² (even by Pushkin) and leap to VN¹s use of ³Canto² in Shade¹s
Pale Fire poem. First, although the prime meaning of the Italian ³canto²
(via Latin ³cantus²) is undoubtedly ³song,² a secondary, technical meaning
(the divisions of a long poem) gives Shade¹s ³Cantos² an obvious link to
Dante¹s Commedia* (We hardly need Shade¹s bust of Alighieri to help us).
Dante¹s masterpiece is not divided into songs; in whatever language it
appears, the divisions are cantos! The English for Dante¹s and Shade¹s
³Canto² is ³Canto.²
And my reading of VN¹s choice of ³Canto² as the height of deliberate irony
and sarcasm will be shared by the many who see Shade¹s poet-tasting as the
least Dantean conceivable. Both discuss the ³Afterlife,² of course, but
Dante, helped by a rime-rich emerging Italian, gives us a sublime, poetic
³solution!² (Namely, things can get pretty bad for sinners: prends garde á
toi!) Shade¹s account is brilliantly, hilariously banal, scraping the barrel
of an unhelpful English lexis for rimes that confirms VN¹s love of William
McGonagall (1825-1902), ³The world¹s worst poet ... so giftedly bad he
backed unwittingly into genius."
* ³Commedia,² recall, signifies ³a happy ending² rather than slapstick
comedy.
PS: GUESS WHAT I found in the Urban Dictionary ;=) Matt: forget that old
Webster II!
1. preterist
n. A collector of cold nests.
Earlier meanings include 'a person more interested in the past than present
or future.'
Here it applies specifically to those nostalgic and obsessed over past
shags. Compare the phrase 'A night on the nest' for a one-night-stand!
Stan Kelly-Bootle
On 10/04/2009 17:52, "jansymello" <jansy@AETERN.US> wrote:
> Alexey Sklyarenko:To the second edition (1828) of his Ruslan and Lyudmila
> (1820) Pushkin added a wonderful introductory poem that begins:
> U lukomor'ya dub zelyonyi,/Zlataya tsep' na dube tom./I dnyom i noch'yu kot
> uchyonyi/Vsyo khodit po tsepi krugom./Poidyot napravo - pesn' zavodit,/Nalevo
> - skazku govorit.("A green oak grows at the sea, / A golden chain is on that
> oak. / Night and day a learned cat / Paces the chain round the tree. / When he
> goes to the right, he sings a song, / When he goes to the left, he tells a
> fairy tale.")
> Pushkin's fairy tale cat paces a golden chain that winds round the oak (cf.
> Quercus ruslan Chat. that grows in Ardis park: Ada, 2.7) When he goes to the
> right, he sings a song ("Pale Fire" the poem consists of Cantos, i. e.
> "songs"), when he goes to the left, he tells a fairy tale (Kinbote's Zembla
> that makes up most of his Commentary is a fairy tale; note that, as a
> homosexual, Kinbote is "sexually left-handed"...)
> //snip
> Alexey's addition of Pushkin's poem is GREAT!!! It heads or entails another
> way of looking at Pale Fire, through Pushkin's perspective with cat, songs and
> fairty-tales.
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sky-larking ³links.² (Note the Brit idiom: ³Blimey, what a lark!²) It¹s
really a weird, wide stretch to take any mention of that most-widely used
word ³song² (even by Pushkin) and leap to VN¹s use of ³Canto² in Shade¹s
Pale Fire poem. First, although the prime meaning of the Italian ³canto²
(via Latin ³cantus²) is undoubtedly ³song,² a secondary, technical meaning
(the divisions of a long poem) gives Shade¹s ³Cantos² an obvious link to
Dante¹s Commedia* (We hardly need Shade¹s bust of Alighieri to help us).
Dante¹s masterpiece is not divided into songs; in whatever language it
appears, the divisions are cantos! The English for Dante¹s and Shade¹s
³Canto² is ³Canto.²
And my reading of VN¹s choice of ³Canto² as the height of deliberate irony
and sarcasm will be shared by the many who see Shade¹s poet-tasting as the
least Dantean conceivable. Both discuss the ³Afterlife,² of course, but
Dante, helped by a rime-rich emerging Italian, gives us a sublime, poetic
³solution!² (Namely, things can get pretty bad for sinners: prends garde á
toi!) Shade¹s account is brilliantly, hilariously banal, scraping the barrel
of an unhelpful English lexis for rimes that confirms VN¹s love of William
McGonagall (1825-1902), ³The world¹s worst poet ... so giftedly bad he
backed unwittingly into genius."
* ³Commedia,² recall, signifies ³a happy ending² rather than slapstick
comedy.
PS: GUESS WHAT I found in the Urban Dictionary ;=) Matt: forget that old
Webster II!
1. preterist
n. A collector of cold nests.
Earlier meanings include 'a person more interested in the past than present
or future.'
Here it applies specifically to those nostalgic and obsessed over past
shags. Compare the phrase 'A night on the nest' for a one-night-stand!
Stan Kelly-Bootle
On 10/04/2009 17:52, "jansymello" <jansy@AETERN.US> wrote:
> Alexey Sklyarenko:To the second edition (1828) of his Ruslan and Lyudmila
> (1820) Pushkin added a wonderful introductory poem that begins:
> U lukomor'ya dub zelyonyi,/Zlataya tsep' na dube tom./I dnyom i noch'yu kot
> uchyonyi/Vsyo khodit po tsepi krugom./Poidyot napravo - pesn' zavodit,/Nalevo
> - skazku govorit.("A green oak grows at the sea, / A golden chain is on that
> oak. / Night and day a learned cat / Paces the chain round the tree. / When he
> goes to the right, he sings a song, / When he goes to the left, he tells a
> fairy tale.")
> Pushkin's fairy tale cat paces a golden chain that winds round the oak (cf.
> Quercus ruslan Chat. that grows in Ardis park: Ada, 2.7) When he goes to the
> right, he sings a song ("Pale Fire" the poem consists of Cantos, i. e.
> "songs"), when he goes to the left, he tells a fairy tale (Kinbote's Zembla
> that makes up most of his Commentary is a fairy tale; note that, as a
> homosexual, Kinbote is "sexually left-handed"...)
> //snip
> Alexey's addition of Pushkin's poem is GREAT!!! It heads or entails another
> way of looking at Pale Fire, through Pushkin's perspective with cat, songs and
> fairty-tales.
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/