Subject
arshin in Eugene Onegin
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An idiomatic use of arshin can be found in Pushkin's Eugene Onegin:
Кого ж любить? Кому же верить?
Кто не изменит нам один?
Кто все дела, все речи мерит
услужливо на наш аршин?
Whom, then, to love? Whom to believe?
Who is the only one that won't betray us?
Who measures all deeds, all speeches
obligingly by our own foot rule? (Four: XXII: 1-4)
Interestingly, in the preceding stanza women are compared to fluff:
А милый пол как пух легок.
While the amiable sex is light as fluff (Four: XXI: 8).
The diminutive (as it were, singular) form of пух (down; fluff) is пушинка. This word was used by Mandelshtam in his poem "Жизнь упала как зарница..." ("Life fell down like a sheet-lightnig..." 1925) addresed to the poet's wife:
Хочешь, валенки сниму?
Как пушинку подниму?
Do you want me to help you take off your felt boots?
To lift you in my arms like a bit of fluff?
ПУШИНКА = ПУШКИНА = КНИПУША (Пушкина is Natalia Nikolaevna Pushkina, the poet's wife, 1812-63; Книпуша was Chekhov's affectionate name for his wife, O. L. Knipper, 1869-1958, an actress in the company of Stanislavsky's Moscow Theatre). Never in my life I was surprised as much as when I saw this anagram.
As Pushkin's and Chekhov's widows had done before, Nadezhda Mandelshtam (1899-1980) survived her husband, who had perished in a Stalin camp, for decades.
The line in Eugene Onegin immediately preceding the one in which fluff is mentioned* reads:
Но мненья светского поток...
But the stream of monde's opinion (Four: XXI: 7).
MONDE = DEMON
SHAR + BEN SIRINE = ARSHIN + SIR + BENE (Ben Sirine is an obscene ancient Arab, expounder of anagrammatic dreams, mentioned in Ada: 2.2; sir is the word that occurs in Van's anagrammatic dream: "Two formless fat transparent creatures were engaged in some discussion, one repeating 'I can't!' (meaning 'can't die' - a difficult procedure to carry out voluntarily, without the help of the dagger, the ball, or the bowl), and the other affirming 'You can, sir!':" 3.1; bene is Latin for "good;" cf. de mortuis nil nisi bene)
Can not pass over in silence that, in the Commentary to his translation of EO (Vol. 2, pp. 434-5, of the Bollingen edition), Nabokov calls the two above quoted stanzas of Pushkin's novel "uncommonly poor."
*There is another "fluffy" line in Eugene Onegin. In Chapter One of the novel Pushkin famously compares the ballerina Dunyasha Istomina to the fluff flying from Eol's lips (One: XX: 12).
Alexey Sklyarenko
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Кого ж любить? Кому же верить?
Кто не изменит нам один?
Кто все дела, все речи мерит
услужливо на наш аршин?
Whom, then, to love? Whom to believe?
Who is the only one that won't betray us?
Who measures all deeds, all speeches
obligingly by our own foot rule? (Four: XXII: 1-4)
Interestingly, in the preceding stanza women are compared to fluff:
А милый пол как пух легок.
While the amiable sex is light as fluff (Four: XXI: 8).
The diminutive (as it were, singular) form of пух (down; fluff) is пушинка. This word was used by Mandelshtam in his poem "Жизнь упала как зарница..." ("Life fell down like a sheet-lightnig..." 1925) addresed to the poet's wife:
Хочешь, валенки сниму?
Как пушинку подниму?
Do you want me to help you take off your felt boots?
To lift you in my arms like a bit of fluff?
ПУШИНКА = ПУШКИНА = КНИПУША (Пушкина is Natalia Nikolaevna Pushkina, the poet's wife, 1812-63; Книпуша was Chekhov's affectionate name for his wife, O. L. Knipper, 1869-1958, an actress in the company of Stanislavsky's Moscow Theatre). Never in my life I was surprised as much as when I saw this anagram.
As Pushkin's and Chekhov's widows had done before, Nadezhda Mandelshtam (1899-1980) survived her husband, who had perished in a Stalin camp, for decades.
The line in Eugene Onegin immediately preceding the one in which fluff is mentioned* reads:
Но мненья светского поток...
But the stream of monde's opinion (Four: XXI: 7).
MONDE = DEMON
SHAR + BEN SIRINE = ARSHIN + SIR + BENE (Ben Sirine is an obscene ancient Arab, expounder of anagrammatic dreams, mentioned in Ada: 2.2; sir is the word that occurs in Van's anagrammatic dream: "Two formless fat transparent creatures were engaged in some discussion, one repeating 'I can't!' (meaning 'can't die' - a difficult procedure to carry out voluntarily, without the help of the dagger, the ball, or the bowl), and the other affirming 'You can, sir!':" 3.1; bene is Latin for "good;" cf. de mortuis nil nisi bene)
Can not pass over in silence that, in the Commentary to his translation of EO (Vol. 2, pp. 434-5, of the Bollingen edition), Nabokov calls the two above quoted stanzas of Pushkin's novel "uncommonly poor."
*There is another "fluffy" line in Eugene Onegin. In Chapter One of the novel Pushkin famously compares the ballerina Dunyasha Istomina to the fluff flying from Eol's lips (One: XX: 12).
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/