-------- Original Message --------
| Subject: |
Re: Re: Robin in Pale Fire]] |
| Date: |
Fri, 13 Jan 2006 19:12:23 +0300 |
| From: |
Alexey Sklyarenko <skylark05@mail.ru> |
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According to dictionaries, 'robin' means
'maliniovka', but but in fact
malinovka is not at all like robin, it is small bird with a thin, tender
voice. Robin is closer to Russian 'drozd', and S. Il'in makes sense
translating it so. [S. Senderovich]
That's why it should be translated
"malinovka" as Vera Nabokov does in her translation. Here is the
passage from PF (Kinbote's note to lines 1-4):
"How hard I found to fit the name
'robin' to the suburban impostor, the gross fowl, with its untidy
dull-red livery and the revolting gusto it showed when consuming long,
sad, passive worms."
According to my dictionary (a Random
House Webster), 'robin' can mean both "any of several small Old World
birds having a red or reddish breast" (our malinovka); or "a large
American thrush, Turdus migratorius, having a chestnut-red
breast and abdomen" (which bird, Il'in's incorrect "drozd," Kinbote
probably sees).
Alexey Sklyarenko