Бледный огонь - Владимир Набоков

Canto Four

Now I shall spy on beauty as none hasSpied on it yet. Now I shall cry out asNone has cried out. Now I shall try what noneHas tried. Now I shall do what none has done.And speaking of this wonderful machine:840 I'm puzzled by the difference betweenTwo methods of composing: A, the kindWhich goes on solely in the poet's mind,A testing of performing words, while heIs soaping a third time one leg, and B,The other kind, much more decorous, whenHe's in his study writing with a pen.

In method В the hand supports the thought,The abstract battle is concretely fought.The pen stops in mid-air, then swoops to bar850 A canceled sunset or restore a star,And thus it physically guides the phraseToward faint daylight through the inky maze.

But method A is agony! The brainIs soon enclosed in a steel cap of pain.A muse in overalls directs the drillWhich grinds and which no effort of the willCan interrupt, while the automatonIs taking off what he has just put onOr walking briskly to the corner store860 To buy the paper he has read before.

Why is it so? Is it, perhaps, becauseIn penless work there is no pen-poised pauseAnd one must use three hands at the same time,Having to choose the necessary rhyme,Hold the completed line before one's eyes,And keep in mind all the preceding tries?Or is the process deeper with no deskTo prop the false and hoist the poetesque?For there are those mysterious moments when870 Too weary to delete, I drop my pen;I ambulate — and by some mute commandThe right word flutes and perches on my hand.

My best time is the morning; my preferredSeason, midsummer. I once overheardMyself awakening while half of meStill slept in bed. I tore my spirit free,And caught up with myself — upon the lawnWhere clover leaves cupped the topaz of the dawn,And where Shade stood in nightshirt and one shoe.880 And then I realized that this half tooWas fast asleep; both laughed and I awokeSafe in my bed as day its eggshell broke,And robins walked and stopped, and on the dampGemmed turf a brown shoe lay! My secret stamp,The Shade impress, the mystery inborn.Mirages, miracles, midsummer morn.

Since my biographer may be too staidOr know too little to affirm that ShadeShaved in his bath, here goes:                                «He'd fixed a sort890 Of hinge-and-screw affair, a steel supportRunning across the tub to hold in placeThe shaving mirror right before his faceAnd with his toe renewing tap-warmth, he'dSit like a king there, and like Marat bleed.»

The more I weigh, the less secure my skin;In places it's ridiculously thin;Thus near the mouth: the space between its wickAnd my grimace, invites the wicked nick.Or this dewlap: some day I must set free900 The Newport Frill inveterate in me.My Adam's apple is a prickly pear:Now I shall speak of evil and despairAs none has spoken. Five, six, seven, eight,Nine strokes are not enough. Ten. I palpateThrough strawberry-and-cream the gory messAnd find unchanged that patch of prickliness.

I have my doubts about the one-armed blokeWho in commercials with one gliding strokeClears a smooth path of flesh from ear to chin,910 Then wipes his face and fondly tries his skin.I'm in the class of fussy bimanists.As a discreet ephebe in tights assistsA female in an acrobatic dance,My left hand helps, and holds, and shifts its stance.

Now I shall speak… Better than any soapIs the sensation for which poets hopeWhen inspiration and its icy blaze,The sudden image, the immediate phraseOver the skin a triple ripple send920 Making the little hairs all stand on endAs in the enlarged animated schemeOf whiskers mowed when held up by Our Cream.

Now I shall speak of evil as none hasSpoken before. I loathe such things as jazz;The white-hosed moron torturing a blackBull, rayed with red; abstractist bric-a-brac;Primitivist folk-masks; progressive schools;Music in supermarkets; swimming pools;Brutes, bores, class-conscious Philistines, Freud, Marx,930 Fake thinkers, puffed-up poets, frauds and sharks.

And while the safety blade with scrape and screakTravels across the country of my cheek,Cars on the highway pass, and up the steepIncline big trucks around my jawbone creep,And now a silent liner docks, and nowSunglassers tour Beirut, and now I ploughOld Zembla's fields where my gray stubble grows,And slaves make hay between my mouth and nose.

Man's life as commentary to abstruse940 Unfinished poem. Note for further use.

Dressing in all the rooms, I rhyme and roamThroughout the house with, in my fist, a combOr a shoehorn, which turns into the spoonI eat my egg with. In the afternoonYou drive me to the library. We dineAt half past six. And that odd muse of mine,My versipel, is with me everywhere,In carrel and in car, and in my chair.

And all the time, and all the time, my love,950 You too are there, beneath the word, aboveThe syllable, to underscore and stressThe vital rhythm. One heard a woman's dressRustle in days of yore. I've often caughtThe sound and sense of your approaching thought.And all in you is youth, and you make new,By quoting them, old things I made for you.

Dim Gulf was my first book (free verse); Night RoteCame next; then Hebe's Cup, my final floatIn that damp carnival, for now I term960 Everything «Poems,» and no longer squirm.(But this transparent thingum does requireSome moondrop title. Help me, Will! Pale Fire.)

Gently the day has passed in a sustainedLow hum of harmony. The brain is drainedAnd a brown ament, and the noun I meantTo use but did not, dry on the cement.Maybe my sensual love for the consonneD'appui, Echo's fey child, is based uponA feeling of fantastically planned,970 Richly rhymed life.                     I feel I understandExistence, or at least a minute partOf my existence, only through my art,In terms of combinational delight;And if my private universe scans right,So does the verse of galaxies divineWhich I suspect is an iambic line.I'm reasonably sure that we surviveAnd that my darling somewhere is alive,As I am reasonably sure that I980 Shall wake at six tomorrow, on JulyThe twenty-second, nineteen fifty-nine,And that the day will probably be fine;So this alarm clock let me set myself,Yawn, and put back Shade's «Poems» on their shelf.

But it's not bedtime yet. The sun attainsOld Dr. Sutton's last two windowpanes.The man must be — what? Eighty? Eighty-two?Was twice my age the year I married you.Where are you? In the garden. I can see990 Part of your shadow near the shagbark tree.Somewhere horseshoes are being tossed. Click, Clunk.(Leaning against its lamppost like a drunk.)A dark Vanessa with crimson bandWheels in the low sun, settles on the sandAnd shows its ink-blue wingtips flecked with white.And through the flowing shade and ebbing lightA man, unheedful of the butterfly —Some neighbor's gardener, I guess — goes byTrundling an empty barrow up the lane.1000 […]

Примечания

1

Две бейсбольные команды.

2

Термин в бейсболе. Чэпмен — знаменитый переводчик Гомера.

3

Я кормлю бедных цикад (Крылов перевел «стрекоза» вместо «цикада»).

4

Чайка по-английски «sea-gull».

5

Взбираться.

6

Зловещее перо.

7

Хтонический.

8

Вековечный.

9

Frost по-английски «мороз». Фамилия знаменитого американского поэта.

10

По-английски «если», по-французски «тис».

11

Игра слов на французском «peut-être» и английском «potato» (картофель).

12

Macabre — зловещий.

13

Напоминаю, что «шейд» по-английски значит «тень».

14

Halitosis (дурное дыхание).

15

Алая восхитительная.

16

Трудишься.

17

Supremely Blest.

18

См. стихи Хаусмана в сборнике «Шропширский паренек».

19