Subject
ADA's Abraham Milton and Isaak Babel
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In Milton's Paradise Lost, Book Twelve, the Angel Michael relates to Adam what will happen after the Flood and mentions Abraham and his son: "This patriarch blessed, / Whom faithful Abraham due time shall call / A son, and of his son a grandchild, leaves" (151-153). He doesn't mention the name of Abraham's son, just as earlier he doesn't mention the name of the city, in which men, the future progeny of Adam and Eve, will try to build a huge tower: "Of brick, and of that stuff, they cast to build / A city and tower, whose top may reach to Heaven" (43-44). That city is, of course, Babel, and its name is homonymous with the penname of the Soviet writer Isaak Babel (1894-1940). Babel (whose real name was Bobel'; who came, like Ilf and Petrov, from Odessa; who was arrested in May, 1939, and executed in January, 1940) had the same first name as Abraham's son by Sarah, the father of Jacob ("a grandchild" in the quoted lines). Note that
BABEL = L'ABBE (Monsieur l'Abbe, Onegin's governor, a poor wretch of a Frenchman, who taught his pupil everything in play);
BABEL + I = BIBLE + A;
BABEL + ZOROASTER = ZOROBABEL + AREST (Zoroaster is Persian religious teacher, founder of the religion called Zoroatrianism, who lived in the 6th century B.C.; Zorobabel is a leader of the Jews on their return to Jerusalem after the Babylonian captivity; arest is Russian for "arrest").
Alexey Sklyarenko
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BABEL = L'ABBE (Monsieur l'Abbe, Onegin's governor, a poor wretch of a Frenchman, who taught his pupil everything in play);
BABEL + I = BIBLE + A;
BABEL + ZOROASTER = ZOROBABEL + AREST (Zoroaster is Persian religious teacher, founder of the religion called Zoroatrianism, who lived in the 6th century B.C.; Zorobabel is a leader of the Jews on their return to Jerusalem after the Babylonian captivity; arest is Russian for "arrest").
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/