Exhibit Tet

399xi

AD 1564: Around this day, William Shakspere (Shaxpere, Shaksper, Shakespear, Shake-speare, Shakespeare, etc.), the Bard himself, is born in Stratford-upon-Avon. “Around this day,” because it must be extrapolated from his baptism, which took place on April 26, and these usually took place a few days after birth (to clear the little nippers of that nasty original sin before they died in infancy). Shakspere’s birthday is usually fixed to the 23rd, but this is mainly in order to create a memorable, eerie, and artificial symmetry with his deathday, April 23, 1616. (Those of you who frequent Below Dunster know what we think of artificial symmetry and contrived coincidences.) Thus we have decided to stray deliberately from the 23rd-tradition and to exhibit on the—quite possibly more likely—24th.

Vladimir Nabokov—the Other Bard, in Below Dunster’s reliable opinion—speaks of Shakspere’s birthday as were it undisputedly on April 22, but this is only because his own birthday was April 22, 1899. For this bit of arrogant calendrical tomfoolery VN has been duly punished by having his birthday reference omitted from Below Dunster’s April 22 posts. For a rather better bit of sleight of hand, Exhibit Tet honors him nonetheless by duplicating here, in full, his ode to Shakspere. Written in Russian in 1924, it was translated into English by Dmitri when Yours Truly was in the first grade. We have elected to display the English version here, which makes no clearer than the Russian what was Nabokov’s stance on the true origin of Shakspere’s opera:


Shakespeare

Amid grandees of times Elizabethan
you shimmered too, you followed sumptuous custom;
the circle of ruff, the silv'ry satin that
encased your thigh, the wedgelike beard - in all of this
you were like other men. Thus was enfolded
your godlike thunder in a succinct cape.

Haughty, aloof from theatre's alarums,
you easily, regretlessly relinquished
the laurels twinning into a dry wreath,
concealing for all time your monstrous genius
beneath a mask; and yet, your phantasm's echoes
still vibrate for us; your Venetian Moor,
his anguish; Falstaff's visage, like an udder
with pasted-on mustache; the raging Lear.
You are among us, you're alive; your name, though,
your image, too - deceiving, thus, the world
you have submerged in your beloved Lethe.
It's true, of course, a usurer had grown
accustomed, for a sum, to sign your work
(that Shakespeare - Will - who played the Ghost in Hamlet,
who lives in pubs, and died before he could
digest in full his portion of a boar's head)...

The frigate breathed, your country you were leaving.
To Italy you went. A female voice
called singsong through the iron's pattern
called to her balcony the tall inglesse,
grown languid from the lemon-tinted moon
and Verona's streets. My inclination is
to imagine, possibly, the droll
and kind creator of Don Quixote
exchanging with you a few casual words
while waiting for fresh horses - and the evening
was surely blue. The well behind the tavern
contained a pail's pure tinkling sound... Reply
whom did you love? Reveal yourself - whose memoirs
refer to you in passing? Look what numbers
of lowly, worthless souls have left their trace,
what countless names Brantome has for the asking!
Reveal yourself, god of iambic thunder,
you hundred-mouthed, unthinkably great bard!

No! At the destined hour, when you felt banished
by God from your existence, you recalled
those secret manuscripts, fully aware
that your supremacy would rest unblemished
by public rumor's unashamed brand,
that ever, midst the shifting dust of ages,
faceless you'd stay, like immortality
itself - then vanished in the distance, smiling.


Copyright 1979 Vladimir Nabokov Estate
English version copyright 1988 Dmitri Nabokov