TO NABOKV-L SUBSCRIBERS
E-mail forums are marvellous institutions. In
predigital days it took years to reveal the full extent of one's
carelessness. Now, thanks to NABOKV-L, I can display my inattentive goofs
to 800 Nabokovians simultaneously. As any first
year student of Russian knows, 'beryozy' can be either
nominative plural or genitive single. Of course, only the latter makes sense.
So far (and I'm sure I haven't heard the last of
this), I have had good natured corrections and ellucidations from Dmitri
Nabokov, Olga Voronina (of the St.Petersburg Nabokov Museum, Board of
Directors), ADA translator Alex Sklyarenko, and V. Viner & S.
Karpukhin.
On the brighter side, some were kind enough to shed
provide a good deal of information about poem translated by Van near the end of
ADA, Part I, Chapter 38. I shall pass on that information in separate messages
so as to avoid drowning the baby in my bathwater.