Subject
St. Alin and colored hearing
From
Date
Body
...a certain amount of good blood... had bespattered... the apron of a quite accidental milkmaid, and the shirtsleeves of both seconds, charming Monsieur de Pastrouil and Colonel St. Alin, a scoundrel... (Ada, 1.2)
"St. Alin" hints at Stalin, but also brings to mind knyazhna Alina (Princess Alina), the Moscow cousin of Praskovia Larin (Tatiana's and Olga's mother) in Pushkin's Eugene Onegin, and Alina Telepnyov, the cabaret diva in Gorky's "The Life of Klim Samgin" (TLoKS). Alina needs but M to become malina ("raspberry"), the word that occurs in Mandelshtam's satire on Stalin:
chto ni kazn' u nego, to malina
(whatever the execution, it's a raspberry to him)
In Nabokov's colored alphabet, M (Mandelshtam's initial and ultima) is one of the three letters (the two other are B and V) that belong to the red group (Speak, Memory, p. 29 of the Penguin edition). In Ada (1.1), Red Veen is the nickname of Daniel Veen, the husband of Marina Durmanov (Van's, Ada's and Lucette's mother). On the other hand, one is reminded of Vas'ka krasnyi (Red Vaska), the exceptionally cruel vyshibala (bouncer, the position overlooked by Eric Veen in his Villa Venus project: 2.3) in a Volgan brothel, eponymous hero of a stroy by Maxim Gorky. Gorky's Klim Samgin is a namesake of Baron Klim Avidov (anagram of "Vladimir Nabokov"), a former lover of Marina Durmanov who gave her children a set of Flavita (Russian Scrabble; note that the little trough of japanned wood each player has before him/her for sorting out his/her letters is called spektrik, "little spectrum:" 1.36). Among some hundred (or more) characters in TLoKS is Vladimir Lyutov (Alina Telepnyov's lover). His name comes from lyutyi (fierce) and reminds one of Lute (as Paris is sometimes called on Antiterra, Earth's twin planet on which Ada is set) and lyutik (buttercup). It is Lyutov who tells Samgin: Zhizn' dlya lzhizni nam dana ("Life is given us for lying rather than living it").
Lzhizn' = L + zhizn'
Kim + L = Klim [= milk]
Lzhizn' - Gorky's neologism, "spurious life" (lzhi is gen. sing. of lozh' or lzha, "lie")
zhizn' - Russ., life
Kim - Kim Beauharnais, the kitchen boy and photographer at Ardis (Daniel Veen's country estate, the setting of Ada's Part One)
While Kim's first name links him to the eponymous hero of Kipling's novel, his family name reminds one of Josephine Beauharnais, Napoleon's first wife who is known on Antiterra as "Queen" Josephine (1.5):
'I used to love history,' said Marina, 'I loved to identify myself with famous women... Especially with famous beauties - Lincoln's second wife or Queen Josephine.'
In the same conversation with Van (who drinks his tea with lots of cream and three lumps of sugar) Marina mentions raspberry: 'Ada and I share your extravagant tastes. Dostoevsky liked it with raspberry syrup.'
malina = animal
In George Orwell's Animal Farm (described by the author as his "novel contre Stalin"), Napoleon is the pig that usurps power at the Animal Farm (as Manor farm was renamed by animals). Eric Blair (Orwell's real name) is a namesake of Eric Veen (like his grandfather, the architect David van Veen, young Eric is not related to other Veens in VN's Family Chronicle).
Manor = roman = norma = Maron
roman - Russ., novel; romance
norma - Russ., norm (in an interesting letter to Pleshcheev Chekhov mentions norma - a norm which no one knows - as he speaks of roman, the novel he was writing - but never finished)
Maron - Russ., Publius Vergilius Maro, Vergil
Btw., Alin and Alov come from alyi, "scarlet" (V. Alov was the penname of young Gogol). Alin = nail (cf. Ada's badly bitten fingernails)
Alexey Sklyarenko
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"St. Alin" hints at Stalin, but also brings to mind knyazhna Alina (Princess Alina), the Moscow cousin of Praskovia Larin (Tatiana's and Olga's mother) in Pushkin's Eugene Onegin, and Alina Telepnyov, the cabaret diva in Gorky's "The Life of Klim Samgin" (TLoKS). Alina needs but M to become malina ("raspberry"), the word that occurs in Mandelshtam's satire on Stalin:
chto ni kazn' u nego, to malina
(whatever the execution, it's a raspberry to him)
In Nabokov's colored alphabet, M (Mandelshtam's initial and ultima) is one of the three letters (the two other are B and V) that belong to the red group (Speak, Memory, p. 29 of the Penguin edition). In Ada (1.1), Red Veen is the nickname of Daniel Veen, the husband of Marina Durmanov (Van's, Ada's and Lucette's mother). On the other hand, one is reminded of Vas'ka krasnyi (Red Vaska), the exceptionally cruel vyshibala (bouncer, the position overlooked by Eric Veen in his Villa Venus project: 2.3) in a Volgan brothel, eponymous hero of a stroy by Maxim Gorky. Gorky's Klim Samgin is a namesake of Baron Klim Avidov (anagram of "Vladimir Nabokov"), a former lover of Marina Durmanov who gave her children a set of Flavita (Russian Scrabble; note that the little trough of japanned wood each player has before him/her for sorting out his/her letters is called spektrik, "little spectrum:" 1.36). Among some hundred (or more) characters in TLoKS is Vladimir Lyutov (Alina Telepnyov's lover). His name comes from lyutyi (fierce) and reminds one of Lute (as Paris is sometimes called on Antiterra, Earth's twin planet on which Ada is set) and lyutik (buttercup). It is Lyutov who tells Samgin: Zhizn' dlya lzhizni nam dana ("Life is given us for lying rather than living it").
Lzhizn' = L + zhizn'
Kim + L = Klim [= milk]
Lzhizn' - Gorky's neologism, "spurious life" (lzhi is gen. sing. of lozh' or lzha, "lie")
zhizn' - Russ., life
Kim - Kim Beauharnais, the kitchen boy and photographer at Ardis (Daniel Veen's country estate, the setting of Ada's Part One)
While Kim's first name links him to the eponymous hero of Kipling's novel, his family name reminds one of Josephine Beauharnais, Napoleon's first wife who is known on Antiterra as "Queen" Josephine (1.5):
'I used to love history,' said Marina, 'I loved to identify myself with famous women... Especially with famous beauties - Lincoln's second wife or Queen Josephine.'
In the same conversation with Van (who drinks his tea with lots of cream and three lumps of sugar) Marina mentions raspberry: 'Ada and I share your extravagant tastes. Dostoevsky liked it with raspberry syrup.'
malina = animal
In George Orwell's Animal Farm (described by the author as his "novel contre Stalin"), Napoleon is the pig that usurps power at the Animal Farm (as Manor farm was renamed by animals). Eric Blair (Orwell's real name) is a namesake of Eric Veen (like his grandfather, the architect David van Veen, young Eric is not related to other Veens in VN's Family Chronicle).
Manor = roman = norma = Maron
roman - Russ., novel; romance
norma - Russ., norm (in an interesting letter to Pleshcheev Chekhov mentions norma - a norm which no one knows - as he speaks of roman, the novel he was writing - but never finished)
Maron - Russ., Publius Vergilius Maro, Vergil
Btw., Alin and Alov come from alyi, "scarlet" (V. Alov was the penname of young Gogol). Alin = nail (cf. Ada's badly bitten fingernails)
Alexey Sklyarenko
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/