Subject
[NABOKOV-L] [THOUGHTS] Onegin and Lusiadas: Mascodagama and
magic crystals
magic crystals
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Epic Poet Luis de Camões was born one hundred years after navigator Vasco da Gama's birthday, whose heroic feats he sung in his poem "Os Lusiadas". Being a warrior and sometimes imprisioned in forbidding dark cells (like another Iberic writer, Cervantes), Camões once had to carry his precious manuscript on his head while swiming for land, after a naufrage.
To be able to narrate Vasco da Gama 's adventures while, at the same time, praising the Portuguese Crown of his day, Camões created a literary "time-machine", which was given to Vasco by Venus. Through its mirrors and prisms the hero could see future events and describe their glory, together with his own present-day achievements and munificent King. Pushkin ( who had once praised the sonets by Camões) , in "Eugene Onegin", mentions a "magicheskii kristall", a glass ball that reveals some of destiny's many secrets, wherein he seeked ( in Nabokov's words) "the far stretch of a free novel."
As mentioned in a chapter about Russian Romanticisms ( C.Emerson, The Cambridge Introduction to Russian Literature, page 105), Pushkin employed particular metaphors to represent "his ideals for a well-balanced work of art" and the description of such a magic crystal is to be found near the end of Eugene Onegin when "the author admits to gazing into this crystal, many years earlier" to discover the future countours of EO's plot.
Emerson asks: "How can a free thing be sought in a closed, symmetrical structure?" and invites the reader to imagine a kaleidoscope while he indicates that a "poet-novelist's task is to rotate the kaleidoscope sho that these arbitrary shards, falling out in random heaps, are refracted withing the funnel of the novel to form patterns," in order to reach a complexity which "lies in the juxtaposition of multiple reflecting surfaces"...
I deduce that Pushkin's "magic crystal" metaphor had a function that was dissimilar to Camões' Olympic crystal time-machine, but Nabokov's own fascination with triptych mirrors and multiple reflective surfaces and patterns might have been spurred on by these two imaginary devices ( would he have read Sir R. Burton's translation of The Lusiads?) and been subtly acknowledged in his reference (Ada or Ardor) to topsy-turvy Mascodagama (or, as Van was addressed once: "Vasco da Gama, I presume?" - and here I haven't checked the exact quote ).
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To be able to narrate Vasco da Gama 's adventures while, at the same time, praising the Portuguese Crown of his day, Camões created a literary "time-machine", which was given to Vasco by Venus. Through its mirrors and prisms the hero could see future events and describe their glory, together with his own present-day achievements and munificent King. Pushkin ( who had once praised the sonets by Camões) , in "Eugene Onegin", mentions a "magicheskii kristall", a glass ball that reveals some of destiny's many secrets, wherein he seeked ( in Nabokov's words) "the far stretch of a free novel."
As mentioned in a chapter about Russian Romanticisms ( C.Emerson, The Cambridge Introduction to Russian Literature, page 105), Pushkin employed particular metaphors to represent "his ideals for a well-balanced work of art" and the description of such a magic crystal is to be found near the end of Eugene Onegin when "the author admits to gazing into this crystal, many years earlier" to discover the future countours of EO's plot.
Emerson asks: "How can a free thing be sought in a closed, symmetrical structure?" and invites the reader to imagine a kaleidoscope while he indicates that a "poet-novelist's task is to rotate the kaleidoscope sho that these arbitrary shards, falling out in random heaps, are refracted withing the funnel of the novel to form patterns," in order to reach a complexity which "lies in the juxtaposition of multiple reflecting surfaces"...
I deduce that Pushkin's "magic crystal" metaphor had a function that was dissimilar to Camões' Olympic crystal time-machine, but Nabokov's own fascination with triptych mirrors and multiple reflective surfaces and patterns might have been spurred on by these two imaginary devices ( would he have read Sir R. Burton's translation of The Lusiads?) and been subtly acknowledged in his reference (Ada or Ardor) to topsy-turvy Mascodagama (or, as Van was addressed once: "Vasco da Gama, I presume?" - and here I haven't checked the exact quote ).
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/