I was recently trying to find a parody about a poem written by Marvell ( I
found only one of these, written by Sir Walter Raleigh: " The
Nymph's Reply to the Passionate Shepherd" ), when I remembered that the
same theme had also been employed by John Donne.
In Pale Fire we find John Shade writing of
...distant roads, one saw the steady
stream
Of carlights all returning to the
dream
Of college education. You went
on
Translating into French Marvell and
Donne.
It was a year of Tempests:
Hurricane
680 Lolita swept from Florida to Maine.
Also in the index
there is a reference to line 678:
Index:
Translations, poetical;
English into Zemblan, Conmal’s versions of Shakespeare, Milton, Kipling, etc.,
noticed, 962; English into French, from Donne and Marvell, 678;
German into English and Zemblan, Der Erlkönig, 662; Zemblan into English, Timon
Afinsken, of Athens, 39; Elder Edda, 79; Arnor’s Miragarl, 80.
I wonder
if the mention of both "Donne and Marvell" together could indicate
the famous lines both used in their poems?
Come live with me, and be my
love,
And we will some new pleasures prove,
Of golden sands, and crystal brooks,
With silken lines, and silver hooks.
John Donne
COME live with me and be
my Love,
And we will all the pleasures prove
That hills and
valleys, dale and field,
And all the craggy mountains yield.
“The
Passionate Shepherd to His Love,” Christopher
Marlowe.
This explicit link
bt. Marvell and Donne ( translated into French by Sybill) could be further
explored by us as it may unveil comments made by Nabokov on poetic echoes
and replies, plagiarism and the question of translation aside from the ones
we may encounter in Pale Fire.
Jansy