SIR: I am sorry that a poor memory led me to make a “friend” of that child; but Mr. Nash is quite wrong in assuming that by correcting my quotation he has baudelairized the Russian version: that little joy-ride goes on undisturbed.
* Vladimir Nabokov, “The Art of Translation,” New Republic, Sept. 22, 1941, 375, responding to E. W. Nash’s letter on the same page, which had commented on VN’s essay “The Art of Translation” in the Aug. 4 edition as containing “a beautiful example of the Art of Misquotation. He refers to a line from ‘L’Invitation au Voyage’ as ‘Mon amie, ma soeur, connais-tu la douceur….’ Poor Baudelaire! The Russian translator didn’t do so badly.”