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Re: madness and avian theme in Pale Fire
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Dear Carolyn,
Yes, the author of Dushen'ka ("Little Psyche", 1783) is Bogdanovich (1743-1803), not Batyushkov (1787-1855). In his article on the former (1939), Khodasevich says that in writing his poem Bogdanovich imitated La Fontaine rather than Apuleius whose tale he probably didn't even know. Only one line from Bogdanovich's poem is now memorable:
Vo vsekh ty, Dushen'ka, naryadakh khorosha ("you are beautiful, little Psyche, in every attire"),
mainly, because men often misquote it, when making a compliment to their beloved and using it in the sense "all your dresses, my dear, are very becoming".
I am neither a doctor, nor a historian of literature and can not say more than Nabokov does in his Commentary (see note to Six:XII:9 of VN's Commentary to his Translation of Pushkin's Eugene Onegin; vol. 3, pp. 13-14) about the circumstances of Batyushkov's madness. All I can do is reproduce one of Batyushkov's last poems, a little masterpiece, written (during a lucid interval in 1824?) with a charcoal on the wall of his room (or perhaps scratched on the windowpane, I don't remember exactly), in Nabokov's translation:
Do you recall the cry
Of gray Melchizedek when he prepared to die?
Man, he exclaimed, is born a slave; a slave
He must descend into the grave,
And Death will hardly tell him why
He haunts the magic vale of tears,
Suffers and weeps, endures and disappears.
Batyushkov attempted to take his own life several times. He continued to write poetry (that a promising Wunderkind might have composed) during his illness. In the late 1820s or early 1830s he wrote a letter to Lord Byron, in which he asked the long dead English poet to send him, Batyushkov, his, Byron's, works in the original and to pray for his, Batyushkov's, future fiance.
Switch to Tyutchev (imitating a bird's sound). Frank Jude's pretty good English translation of Tyutchev's Complete Poetry, with a massive Commentary, can be found here: http://bookz.ru/authors/tut4ev-fedor/tutchew_english/1-tutchew_english.html
Nabokov's wonderful versions of several poems by Tyutchev (including the famous Silentium) can be found in The Three Russian Poets (1944).
Alexey
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Yes, the author of Dushen'ka ("Little Psyche", 1783) is Bogdanovich (1743-1803), not Batyushkov (1787-1855). In his article on the former (1939), Khodasevich says that in writing his poem Bogdanovich imitated La Fontaine rather than Apuleius whose tale he probably didn't even know. Only one line from Bogdanovich's poem is now memorable:
Vo vsekh ty, Dushen'ka, naryadakh khorosha ("you are beautiful, little Psyche, in every attire"),
mainly, because men often misquote it, when making a compliment to their beloved and using it in the sense "all your dresses, my dear, are very becoming".
I am neither a doctor, nor a historian of literature and can not say more than Nabokov does in his Commentary (see note to Six:XII:9 of VN's Commentary to his Translation of Pushkin's Eugene Onegin; vol. 3, pp. 13-14) about the circumstances of Batyushkov's madness. All I can do is reproduce one of Batyushkov's last poems, a little masterpiece, written (during a lucid interval in 1824?) with a charcoal on the wall of his room (or perhaps scratched on the windowpane, I don't remember exactly), in Nabokov's translation:
Do you recall the cry
Of gray Melchizedek when he prepared to die?
Man, he exclaimed, is born a slave; a slave
He must descend into the grave,
And Death will hardly tell him why
He haunts the magic vale of tears,
Suffers and weeps, endures and disappears.
Batyushkov attempted to take his own life several times. He continued to write poetry (that a promising Wunderkind might have composed) during his illness. In the late 1820s or early 1830s he wrote a letter to Lord Byron, in which he asked the long dead English poet to send him, Batyushkov, his, Byron's, works in the original and to pray for his, Batyushkov's, future fiance.
Switch to Tyutchev (imitating a bird's sound). Frank Jude's pretty good English translation of Tyutchev's Complete Poetry, with a massive Commentary, can be found here: http://bookz.ru/authors/tut4ev-fedor/tutchew_english/1-tutchew_english.html
Nabokov's wonderful versions of several poems by Tyutchev (including the famous Silentium) can be found in The Three Russian Poets (1944).
Alexey
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/