Describing his rented house, Kinbote (in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962, Shade’s mad Commentator who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla) compares himself to a participant in a regatta:
But perhaps the funniest note concerned the manipulations of the window curtains which had to be drawn in different ways at different hours to prevent the sun from getting at the upholstery. A description of the position of the sun, daily and seasonal, was given for the several windows, and if I had heeded all this I would have been kept as busy as a participant in a regatta. A footnote, however, generously suggested that instead of manning the curtains, I might prefer to shift and reshift out of sun range the more precious pieces of furniture (two embroidered armchairs and a heavy "royal console") but should do it carefully lest I scratch the wall moldings. I cannot, alas, reproduce the meticulous schedule of these transposals but seem to recall that I was supposed to castle the long way before going to bed and the short way first thing in the morning. My dear Shade roared with laughter when I led him on a tour of inspection and had him find some of those bunny eggs for himself. Thank God, his robust hilarity dissipated the atmosphere of damnum infectum in which I was supposed to dwell. On his part, he regaled me with a number of anecdotes concerning the judge's dry wit and courtroom mannerisms; most of these anecdotes were doubtless folklore exaggerations, a few were evident inventions, and all were harmless. He did not bring up, my sweet old friend never did, ridiculous stories about the terrifying shadows that Judge Goldsworth's gown threw across the underworld, or about this or that beast lying in prison and positively dying of raghdirst (thirst for revenge) - crass banalities circulated by the scurrilous and the heartless - by all those for whom romance, remoteness, sealskin-lined scarlet skies, the darkening dunes of a fabulous kingdom, simply do not exist. But enough of this. Let us turn to our poet's windows. I have no desire to twist and batter an unambiguous apparatus criticus into the monstrous semblance of a novel. (note to Lines 47-48)
In his Song of Myself (included in Leaves of Grass, 1855) Walt Whitman (an American poet, 1819-1892) mentions the regatta:
The regatta is spread on the bay, the race is begun, (how the white sails sparkle!) (15)
According to Kinbote, he has no desire to twist and batter an unambiguous apparatus criticus into the monstrous semblance of a novel. In his article Uitmen v russkoy literature ("Whitman in the Russian Literature") Korney Chukovski (a Russian poet and critic, born Nikolay Korneychukov, 1882-1969) says that the author of the first article about Walt Whitman in the Russian press (Otechestvennye Zapiski, January, 1861) thought that Leaves of Grass was a novel:
Первые статьи и заметки об Уитмэне. Первая в России заметка о стихах Уитмэна появилась в январьской,книге „Отечественных Записок" за 1861 год, при чем автор заметки был простодушно уверен, что эти стихи — не стихи, а роман!
В обзоре иностранных романов он пишет:
„Английские журналы сильно вооружается против-американского романа „Листья Травы" Уэльт Уайтмэна, — автора, в свое время рекомендованного Эмерсоном. Впрочем, нападение относится более к нравственной стороне романа. „Он должен бы быть напечатан на грязной бумаге, как книги, подлежащие лишь полицейскому обзору",— говорит один рецензент: „Это эмансипация плоти! " — восклицает другой. „По-видимому, автор, прикрываясь, словами, что он следует философии Гегеля, идет уже очень далеко на пути отступлений от общепринятой нравственности. Но должно быть его книга имеет какое-нибудь достоинство, хотя бы достоинство изложения, если ее не прошли, молчанием, а кричат о ней со всех сторон: shocking !".
The word regatta comes from the Venetian dialect of Italian (regata), originally meaning a "contest" or "contention for mastery". It dates back to the 17th century when it was used to describe organized boat and gondola races on the Grand Canal in Venice. In Chapter One (XLIX: 12) of Eugene Onegin Pushkin mentions a mysterious gondola:
Адриатические волны,
О Брента! нет, увижу вас
И, вдохновенья снова полный,
Услышу ваш волшебный глас!
Он свят для внуков Аполлона;
По гордой лире Альбиона
Он мне знаком, он мне родной.
Ночей Италии златой
Я негой наслажусь на воле,
С венецианкою младой,
То говорливой, то немой,
Плывя в таинственной гондоле;
С ней обретут уста мои
Язык Петрарки и любви.
Adrian waves,
O Brenta! Nay, I'll see you
and, filled anew with inspiration,
I'll hear your magic voice!
'Tis sacred to Apollo's nephews;
through the proud lyre of Albion
to me 'tis known, to me 'tis kindred.
In the voluptuousness of golden
Italy's nights at liberty I'll revel,
with a youthful Venetian,
now talkative, now mute,
swimming in a mysterious gondola;
with her my lips will find
the tongue of Petrarch and of love.
Petrarch is one of the seven famous sonneteers mentioned by Pushkin in his Sonnet (1830):
Scorn not the sonnet, critic.
Wordsworth
Суровый Дант не презирал сонета;
В нём жар любви Петрарка изливал;
Игру его любил творец Макбета;
Им скорбну мысль Камоэнс облекал.
И в наши дни пленяет он поэта:
Вордсворт его орудием избрал,
Когда вдали от суетного света
Природы он рисует идеал.
Под сенью гор Тавриды отдаленной
Певец Литвы в размер его стесненный
Свои мечты мгновенно заключал.
У нас ещё его не знали девы,
Как для него уж Дельвиг забывал
Гекзаметра священные напевы.
Scorn not the sonnet, critic.
Wordsworth
Stern Dante did not despise the sonnet;
Into it Petrarch poured out the ardor of love;
Its play the creator of Macbeth loved;
With it Camoes clothed his sorrowful thought.
Even in our days it captivates the poet:
Wordsworth chose it as an instrument,
When far from the vain world
He depicts nature's ideal.
Under the shadow of the mountains of distant Tavrida
The singer of Lithuania in its constrained measure
His dreams he in an instant enclosed.
Here the maidens did not yet know it,
When for it even Delvig forgot
The sacred melodies of the hexameter.
(tr. Ober)