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THOUGHTS: Kim Beauharnais in ADA
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If you had read my article "Grattez le Tartar, or Who were the Parents of Ada's Kim Beauharnais" in the last two issues of The Nabokovian, you wouldn't have asked so many questions about Kim.
I'm not sure any more, if I included Kim in my charadoid. It seems to me I did, and in that case I would also have noticed that Kim = Mik. Note that the little heroes of both Kipling's Indian novel and Gumilyov's African poem are mostly barefooted. Now, Russian for "barefooted person" is bosyak. But this word also means "destitute person," "pauper." The heroes of Gorky's early stories ("Makar Chudra" and so on; Makar = karma...) that made him famous are bosyaki, paupers. Bosyak is almost an anagram of sobak ("of the dogs").
I didn't know that the name Kim meant "gold." Many thanks to Victor Fet. If we move still farther East, Kim = kimono - ono (Russian for "it;" Japanese for "axe," "hatchet"). Marina wears a kimono in the morning of Van's final departure from Ardis (1.41).
Alexey Sklyarenko
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I'm not sure any more, if I included Kim in my charadoid. It seems to me I did, and in that case I would also have noticed that Kim = Mik. Note that the little heroes of both Kipling's Indian novel and Gumilyov's African poem are mostly barefooted. Now, Russian for "barefooted person" is bosyak. But this word also means "destitute person," "pauper." The heroes of Gorky's early stories ("Makar Chudra" and so on; Makar = karma...) that made him famous are bosyaki, paupers. Bosyak is almost an anagram of sobak ("of the dogs").
I didn't know that the name Kim meant "gold." Many thanks to Victor Fet. If we move still farther East, Kim = kimono - ono (Russian for "it;" Japanese for "axe," "hatchet"). Marina wears a kimono in the morning of Van's final departure from Ardis (1.41).
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/