-------- Original Message --------
Subject: "Prophecy" in The Gift
Date: Thu, 6 Dec 2001 09:22:07 +0200
From: "Yuri Leving" <mslyuri@mscc.huji.ac.il>
To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>


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Just a couple of days ago, before reading the Pale Fire prophesy
message and overwhelming reaction to it, I noticed in The Gift:

“Est’ eshche, konechno, Bush… Delo ne pustiakovoe. Budet nastoiashchee
srazhenie s etimi razboinikami.” (Symposium edition, 2000, Vol. 4, P.
493)

The English translation transcripts Bush as Busch, and "the REAL"
battle turns into "regular", but still curiously: There's also Busch,
of course… It's not a trifling matter. We shall have a regular battle
with these gangsters. (The Gift, 1963, P. 302).

Busch, just to remind evrybody, is the author of the novel about the physicist
who "has brought his splitting down to the least essence of that very
atom, at which moment the Shadow of a Hand… falls on our universe with
catastrophic results" (201).

One can continue the "trivia", but please do not take it seriously!
Naboko
v has everything:  that's why we love him!

Yuri Leving
mslyuri@mscc.huji.ac.il