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Milton, etc.
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Speaking of Ada's "Abraham" Milton and Newton (btw., note Neva in Lomonosov's "Невтон"), I forgot to mention in my previous post that Newton's first name was Isaac. In the Old Testament (Gen. XXI: 1-7), Isaac was Abraham's son (born when his father was hundred years young). One remembers Isaak Babel, a Soviet writer, but also Chekhov's friend Isaak Levitan (the famous landscape painter who served as a model of Ryabovski, a character in Chekhov's story "Попрыгунья", The Grasshopper). In a letter to his brother Chekhov says that a peasant from whom the painter, working en plein air, hired a barn, calls his tenant "Leviathan" (Jewish surname Levitan sounds odd to a Russian's ear). Leviathan is a sea monster mentioned in the Old Testament (Iov XL: 20) and in Milton's Paradise Lost. Besides, it is a philosophical work (1651) by Thomas Hobbes dealing with the political organization of society (one also remembers Orwell's essay The Writers and Leviathan).
MILTON + LEVIATHAN = HAMILTON + LEVITAN
Everybody knows Lady Emma Hamilton, Admiral Nelson's mistress, but few remember Mary Hamilton, the tsar Peter's Scottish mistress, who was beheaded in the 1710s and whose beautiful head, with its long red hair, could be seen in the Kunstkammer till 1917 (VN and Tamara must have seen it there!):
В кунсткамере хранится голова,
Как монстра, заспиртованного в банке,
Красавицы Марии Гамильтон...
(from Voloshin's poem "Russia", 1924; VN met Voloshin in the Crimea)
Unfortunately, I have no time for translation and must stop here. Milton (John) is also interestingly mentioned in Ilf and Petrov's The Golden Calf and in Chapter Five of The Gift...
Alexey Sklyarenko
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MILTON + LEVIATHAN = HAMILTON + LEVITAN
Everybody knows Lady Emma Hamilton, Admiral Nelson's mistress, but few remember Mary Hamilton, the tsar Peter's Scottish mistress, who was beheaded in the 1710s and whose beautiful head, with its long red hair, could be seen in the Kunstkammer till 1917 (VN and Tamara must have seen it there!):
В кунсткамере хранится голова,
Как монстра, заспиртованного в банке,
Красавицы Марии Гамильтон...
(from Voloshin's poem "Russia", 1924; VN met Voloshin in the Crimea)
Unfortunately, I have no time for translation and must stop here. Milton (John) is also interestingly mentioned in Ilf and Petrov's The Golden Calf and in Chapter Five of The Gift...
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/