from Alexey Sklyarenko:
Among Russian
rhyme-words of Nitsa (Nice) is also ptitsa
("bird"). Here is a poem by Tyutchev, in F. Jude's English translation (see
attachment for the original of this and another Tyutchev poem cited
below), in which the Nitsa-ptitsa rhyme occurs:
Oh, this south, oh, this Nice!
How their glitter troubles me.
Life's
like a bird that's been shot
and wants to rise but cannot.
It wants to
spread its wings,
it wants to fly again
but they just hang,
feeble,
broken things,
and it grips the ground
and shivers in impotent pain.
Note that bol' ("pain"), of which I
spoke in my previous posts, is also mentioned in this poem.
Note that Tyutchev was the first Russian poet who
felt, and attempted to express, the otherworldly chaos that surrounds us
(a prominent theme in Pale Fire, whatever our interpretations of
the novel can be).
Note that Shade's collections of poetry
is entitled Hebe's Cup - probably an allusion to the lines
from Tyutchev's famous poem "Spring Thunderstorm": "You will say that fickle Hebe, feeding Zeus’
eagle, laughing, poured from the heavens onto the earth a goblet seething with
thunder" (anon. translation found in the internet; I dared to change one
epithet).
Note that Nice is also mentioned (in connection
with VN's grandfather who suffered in his last years from a mental illness) in
Speak, Memory.
Note that (if only I remember this correctly)
Pale Fire the poem was in part written by Nabokov in Nice.
Note that the said poem begins with the image
of a slained bird.
Finally, note that another Russian writer, Chekhov,
spent several winters in Nice (the fact reflected in VN's ADA). Chekhov's
play The Sea Gull (1897) begins with a character
(Treplev) shooting dead a sea gull and ends with the same character
shooting dead himself. There is in Pale Fire the English tourist in Nice feeding "les pauvres
cigales".
Last but not least, Shade's collection of
essays is entitled An Untamed Seahorse. I know that "Neptune taming a
sea horse" is a bronze art object mentioned in the closing lines
of Browning's My Last Duchess. All the same, here is
Tyutchev's poem The Sea Horse (1830) in F.
Jude's translation:
Ardent horse, sea-horse,
pale-green maned,
gentle,
loving-tamed,
raging, wild-playing,
fed by violent storms
in God's open
plains!
He taught and trained you
to play, to leap at
will.
..........
I love you when you bound
madly, arrogantly
strong,
tossing your thick mane,
sweating, foaming,
dashing fast storms
against the shore,
gaily neighing, galloping,
drumming cliffs with your
hooves,
white-flecked, flying!