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one-armed d'Onsky fils
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In my previous post I forgot to point out that d'Onsky fils probably lost his arm in the Crimean War with Tartars. One remembers Ignat Lebyadkin, a character in Dostoevsky's Besy ("The Possessed," 1872) who imagines that he lost his arm in the Crimean War (in which he did not actually participate and, in fact, has all his limbs intact):
Любви пылающей граната
Лопнула в груди Игната,
И вновь заплакал горькой мукой
По Севастополю безрукой.
The shell of burning love
burst in Ignat's breast,
and again one-armed started to cry
for Sebastopol in bitter* anguish.
One of the characters in Besy is the priest Tikhon (the omitted last chapter of the novel is entitled "At Tikhon's") who reminds one of the Orthodox priest Tikhon Zadonsky (1724-83), Bishop of Voronezh, the author of several books (highly rated by Leo Tolstoy). In the 1930s Voronezh was the place of Mandelshtam's exile. There is voron ("raven") in Voronezh, while the name Lebyadkin comes from lebed' ("swan"). Btw., Lebyadkin's lame sister Mar'ya in many respects resembles Marina's twin sister (Demon's mad wife) Aqua.
While d'Onsky fils and Percy de Prey (Van's rival in love) fight in the Crimea (the former loses his arm and the latter his life), Van has a duel in Kalugano with Captain Tapper. Lebyadkin is also a Captain (at least, he calls himself one).
Besy ("The Demons") is actually a poem by Pushkin (1830). Two stanzas from it are used by Dostoevsky as an epigraph to his novel.
*gor'kiy ("bitter") again; note that the poet (Lebyadkin) is a drunkard
p. s. I guess "a little bird" at the end of my previous post should be "the little bird" (on the whole, I agree with Victor Fet that articles are quite superfluous in English)
Alexey Sklyarenko
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Любви пылающей граната
Лопнула в груди Игната,
И вновь заплакал горькой мукой
По Севастополю безрукой.
The shell of burning love
burst in Ignat's breast,
and again one-armed started to cry
for Sebastopol in bitter* anguish.
One of the characters in Besy is the priest Tikhon (the omitted last chapter of the novel is entitled "At Tikhon's") who reminds one of the Orthodox priest Tikhon Zadonsky (1724-83), Bishop of Voronezh, the author of several books (highly rated by Leo Tolstoy). In the 1930s Voronezh was the place of Mandelshtam's exile. There is voron ("raven") in Voronezh, while the name Lebyadkin comes from lebed' ("swan"). Btw., Lebyadkin's lame sister Mar'ya in many respects resembles Marina's twin sister (Demon's mad wife) Aqua.
While d'Onsky fils and Percy de Prey (Van's rival in love) fight in the Crimea (the former loses his arm and the latter his life), Van has a duel in Kalugano with Captain Tapper. Lebyadkin is also a Captain (at least, he calls himself one).
Besy ("The Demons") is actually a poem by Pushkin (1830). Two stanzas from it are used by Dostoevsky as an epigraph to his novel.
*gor'kiy ("bitter") again; note that the poet (Lebyadkin) is a drunkard
p. s. I guess "a little bird" at the end of my previous post should be "the little bird" (on the whole, I agree with Victor Fet that articles are quite superfluous in English)
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/