Tuesday, February 24, 2009

News at Eleven: Here is a stanza from Aleksandr Blok's

famous steamy poem about wine drinkers in the version by [Vladimir] Nabokov, who calls it "The Strange Lady":

And her taut silks,
her hat with its tenebrous plumes,
her slender bejeweled hand
waft legendary magic.

And here is the same stanza from Schmidt, who titles his version, "The Lady Nobody Knows":

Her dress is silk, it whispers legends
and moves in waves against her skin;
her hat is a forest of black feathers,
her narrow fingers glow with rings.

from The New Republic: Vlad the Impaler

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