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children's rhymes
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Date
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Dear Jansy and all,
I'm not refuting Jansy's arguments, I merely wish to change the perspective. I already mentioned Gorky's secretary and translator (and lover?) Maria Zakrevskaya-Benkendorf-Budberg (Nina Berberova has written a book about her, "The Iron Lady"). Here are Mandelstam's rhymes on her, from his "Anthology of the Wordly Stupidity:"
Eto est' Madam Maria -
Ugol' est' pochti chto torf,
No ne kazhdaya Maria
Mozhet zvat'sya Benkendorf.
This is Madam Maria.
Coal is almost what peat is.
But not every Maria
Has the surname Benkendorf.
Count Aleksandr Hristoforovich Benkendorf (Benckendorff, 1783-1844) is a Russian general, who participated in the war against Napoleon (the troops under his commandment freed Holland) and who, since 1826, was the chief of the Gendarmes Corps and the so-called "Third Department" (tsar's political police). He acted as a go-between in Pushkin's relationships with the tsar Nicolas I (who had proclaimed himself Pushkin's only censor). In a letter written on November 21, 1836, the poet informed Benkendorf of the challenge to a duel he had sent to d'Anthes but had withdrawn two weeks later, upon learning that d'Anthes, who had been making advances to Pushkin's wife Natal'ya Nikolaevna, had proposed to her sister Ekaterina. In this letter Pushkin named the Dutch ambassador Baron Heckereen (d'Anthes's foster-father and lover) as the author of the anonymous letters (in which the poet was welcomed as a new member and historiographerto of the Order of Cuckolds) that Pushkin's friends had received on November 4.
Maria Budberg (whose pet name was Mura,* and who is accused of bringing ailing Gorky poisonous sweets given her by Yagoda,** the head of the secret police) was in no way related to Count Benkendorf. Neither was she a descendant of Agrafena Zakrevskaya, a famous beauty of Pushkin's times, Baratynsky's and Pushkin's lover, whom Pushkin used to call mednaya Venera ("the bronze Venus") in his letters (and who could have served as a model for Nina Voronskaya, "that Cleopatra of the Neva," in "Eugene Onegin").
Veen (the family name of most of Ada's characters) means "peat bog" in Dutch. Russian for "peat" is torf (the rhyme-word of the name Benkendorf; cf. Torfyanka, a village near Ardis Hall and the adjective torfyanuyu, "peaty," composed by Ada in a Flavita game: 1.36). TORF = FTOR = FORT = ORT + F = ROT + F = TROFEY - EY (ftor is Russian for "fluorine;" it comes from the Greek word phtoros, decay, destruction; fort is a fortified place, fortress; cf. the once Russian Fort Ross in California and one of the songs that Van, Ada and Lucette listen to in Ursus: "There's a crag on the Ross;** overgrown with wild moss" 2.8; fort is also German for "away;" Ort is German for "place;" rot is Russian for "mouth" and German for "red;" trofey is Russian for "trophy;" ey is a form of the Russian pronoun ona, "she," in the dative, "to her"); there are other possibilities.
*Mura = Amur = Raum = arum; Mura, or Murka, accented on the first syllable, is a usual name of a she-cat. As a noun, mura is accented on the second syllable and means "nonsense." Cf. Mandelstam's poem Net, ne spryatat'sya mne ot velikoy mury ("No, I can't hide from the great nonsense," 1931) that mentions kurva-Moskva (Moscow the whore). Cf. in Ada (1.2): "At an invisible sign of Dionysian origin, they all [young gardeners wearing the garb of Georgian tribesmen, in the stage version of a famous Russain novel] plunged into the violent dance called kurva or 'ribbon boule'..." Dionysos is the Greek god of wine. Amur is Russian for Amor, the Roman God of love. It is also the name of the Far-Eastern river. Raum is German for "space;" cf. Lebensraum, a term of the Nazi propaganda. Arum is the plant arum lily or calla lily, its flowers imitate the smell of rotting flesh in order to attract flies. This word is mentioned in a Pasternak poem, I don't remember which (I'm not very fond of Pasternak's poetry).
**yagoda (accented on the first syllable) is Russian for "berry." (The Jewish family name Yagoda is stressed on the second syllable.)
***This song actually begins: "Est' na Volge utyos, dikim mokhom obros" ("There's a crag on the Volga, overgrown with wild moss"). It tells the story of Stepan Razin, the only man believed to have reached the crag's top (the song's words are by A. Navrotsky). Not only Nizhniy Novgorod (Gorky's home city), but also Astrakhan (famed for Razin's riots), Simbirsk (Vladimir Ul'yanov-Lenin's place of birth, now Ul'yanovsk) and Tsaritsyn (immodestly but aptly renamed by Stalin Stalingrad, now Volgograd) are situated on the banks of the "Mother-Volga."
Alexey Sklyarenko
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I'm not refuting Jansy's arguments, I merely wish to change the perspective. I already mentioned Gorky's secretary and translator (and lover?) Maria Zakrevskaya-Benkendorf-Budberg (Nina Berberova has written a book about her, "The Iron Lady"). Here are Mandelstam's rhymes on her, from his "Anthology of the Wordly Stupidity:"
Eto est' Madam Maria -
Ugol' est' pochti chto torf,
No ne kazhdaya Maria
Mozhet zvat'sya Benkendorf.
This is Madam Maria.
Coal is almost what peat is.
But not every Maria
Has the surname Benkendorf.
Count Aleksandr Hristoforovich Benkendorf (Benckendorff, 1783-1844) is a Russian general, who participated in the war against Napoleon (the troops under his commandment freed Holland) and who, since 1826, was the chief of the Gendarmes Corps and the so-called "Third Department" (tsar's political police). He acted as a go-between in Pushkin's relationships with the tsar Nicolas I (who had proclaimed himself Pushkin's only censor). In a letter written on November 21, 1836, the poet informed Benkendorf of the challenge to a duel he had sent to d'Anthes but had withdrawn two weeks later, upon learning that d'Anthes, who had been making advances to Pushkin's wife Natal'ya Nikolaevna, had proposed to her sister Ekaterina. In this letter Pushkin named the Dutch ambassador Baron Heckereen (d'Anthes's foster-father and lover) as the author of the anonymous letters (in which the poet was welcomed as a new member and historiographerto of the Order of Cuckolds) that Pushkin's friends had received on November 4.
Maria Budberg (whose pet name was Mura,* and who is accused of bringing ailing Gorky poisonous sweets given her by Yagoda,** the head of the secret police) was in no way related to Count Benkendorf. Neither was she a descendant of Agrafena Zakrevskaya, a famous beauty of Pushkin's times, Baratynsky's and Pushkin's lover, whom Pushkin used to call mednaya Venera ("the bronze Venus") in his letters (and who could have served as a model for Nina Voronskaya, "that Cleopatra of the Neva," in "Eugene Onegin").
Veen (the family name of most of Ada's characters) means "peat bog" in Dutch. Russian for "peat" is torf (the rhyme-word of the name Benkendorf; cf. Torfyanka, a village near Ardis Hall and the adjective torfyanuyu, "peaty," composed by Ada in a Flavita game: 1.36). TORF = FTOR = FORT = ORT + F = ROT + F = TROFEY - EY (ftor is Russian for "fluorine;" it comes from the Greek word phtoros, decay, destruction; fort is a fortified place, fortress; cf. the once Russian Fort Ross in California and one of the songs that Van, Ada and Lucette listen to in Ursus: "There's a crag on the Ross;** overgrown with wild moss" 2.8; fort is also German for "away;" Ort is German for "place;" rot is Russian for "mouth" and German for "red;" trofey is Russian for "trophy;" ey is a form of the Russian pronoun ona, "she," in the dative, "to her"); there are other possibilities.
*Mura = Amur = Raum = arum; Mura, or Murka, accented on the first syllable, is a usual name of a she-cat. As a noun, mura is accented on the second syllable and means "nonsense." Cf. Mandelstam's poem Net, ne spryatat'sya mne ot velikoy mury ("No, I can't hide from the great nonsense," 1931) that mentions kurva-Moskva (Moscow the whore). Cf. in Ada (1.2): "At an invisible sign of Dionysian origin, they all [young gardeners wearing the garb of Georgian tribesmen, in the stage version of a famous Russain novel] plunged into the violent dance called kurva or 'ribbon boule'..." Dionysos is the Greek god of wine. Amur is Russian for Amor, the Roman God of love. It is also the name of the Far-Eastern river. Raum is German for "space;" cf. Lebensraum, a term of the Nazi propaganda. Arum is the plant arum lily or calla lily, its flowers imitate the smell of rotting flesh in order to attract flies. This word is mentioned in a Pasternak poem, I don't remember which (I'm not very fond of Pasternak's poetry).
**yagoda (accented on the first syllable) is Russian for "berry." (The Jewish family name Yagoda is stressed on the second syllable.)
***This song actually begins: "Est' na Volge utyos, dikim mokhom obros" ("There's a crag on the Volga, overgrown with wild moss"). It tells the story of Stepan Razin, the only man believed to have reached the crag's top (the song's words are by A. Navrotsky). Not only Nizhniy Novgorod (Gorky's home city), but also Astrakhan (famed for Razin's riots), Simbirsk (Vladimir Ul'yanov-Lenin's place of birth, now Ul'yanovsk) and Tsaritsyn (immodestly but aptly renamed by Stalin Stalingrad, now Volgograd) are situated on the banks of the "Mother-Volga."
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/