Subject
Fw: Alphonse, Vale/veil, Poskrebyshev
From
Date
Body
EDNOTE. A noteworthy contribution on VN's birthday from Alexey Sklyarenko,
translator of ADA and one of its most indefatible researchers. In reply to one
of his observations--yes, it seems to me certain that VN knew of Stalin's
Poskrebyshev. If I, a farm lad from Indiana, knows who P was, it is safe to
assume N did.
---------------------------
----- Forwarded message from skylark05@mail.ru -----
Date: Sat, 23 Apr 2005 03:05:27 +0400
From: Alexey Sklyarenko <skylark05@mail.ru>
Reply-To: Alexey Sklyarenko <skylark05@mail.ru>
Subject: Re:
"The Bourbonian-chinned, dark, sleek-haired, ageless concierge, dubbed by
Van in his blazer days 'Alphonse Cinq,' believed he had just seen Mlle Veen
[Lucette] in the Recamier room where Vivian Vale's golden veils were on
show." (ADA, Part Three, chapter 3)
As I believe I told Brian when I saw him last time at the VN Museum a year and a
half ago, the nickname given by Van to the concierge of the Alphonse Four
hotel is a play on the name of a minor female character in "The Adolescent,"
Alfonsinka (a Russified diminutive form of the French feminine name
"Alphonsine"). In Dostoevsky's novel, she is the girlfriend of a
blackmailer, a certain Lambert, and "a spy" herself.
Note that Vivian Vale's golden veils are certainly connected to the "Golden
Veil"
that on Antiterra "conceals," so to speak, Tartary from the rest of the world.
Compare this to
the fact (not mentioned in my "Traditions in a Russian Family" essay) that
in the epilogue to "The Adolescent" Dostoevsky quotes the famous saying (its
authorship is ascribed to Napoleon): "Grattez le russe et vous verrez le
tartare" (Scratch a Russian and you will find a Tartar"). Now, I would like to
suggest that, on Antiterra, this saying (it also exists in Russian: "poskrebite
russkogo i vy naidiote tatarina") would read differently:
"Grattez le tartare et vous verrez le francais" ("Scratch a Tartar and you will
find a Frenchman"). What makes me think so? As you remember (or, if you
happen not to know it, I shall tell you), Stalin's secretary and
"aid-de-camp" was a certain Poskriobyshev. That name derives from the word
"poskriobysh" (which means "the youngest child of the family's many children").
But semantically it is kin to the verb "poskresti" ("to scratch") that we met in
the Russian version of the French dictum ("Grattez... etc.").
In Ada, Joseph Stalin (aka Sosso Djugashvili) is present in two copies, so to
speak. One is Khan Sosso, the ruler of the ruthless Sovietnamur Khanate (2.2),
and the other is Colonel St. Alin, a scoundrel, one of the seconds in the
Demon-d'Onsky duel (1.2). Why does Nabokov need him (Stalin) in two copies on
Antiterra? Is not one more than enough? I suspect that Nabokov is playing on
the name of Stalin's secretary, Poscriobyshev (just as he is playing on the
names of the two Soviet secret police heads, Yagoda and Beria, in ADA and on
the name of the third NKVD head, Ezhov, in his play "The Event"). , if you
would scratch Khan Sosso (who is a Tatar), you will probably find Colonel St.
Alin, a scoundrel (who is a Frenchman). "Grattez le tartare et vous verrez le
francais." I think that this reversal is a kind of personal revenge of Nabokov
upon Napoleon. It also makes a nice sequence. A Frenchman says: "scratch a
Russian and you find a Tartar." But a Russian gently hints: "scratch a Tartar
and you find a Frenchman." I guess I'm going to elaborate this note and publish
it in the next issue of The Nabokovian.
It is two things that I would like to know. Was the name Poskriobyshev familiar
to Nabokov (I think it is not impossible) and was not Poskriobyshev, by any
chance, a Colonel? Stalin was, as everybody knows, a generalissimo.
Another interesting detail is that, in modern Russian (but not in
Dostoevsky's time, I believe), "al'fons" is a slang term for "gigolo"
(mainly, in the sense "professional souteneur"). That term is pretty old
though and Nabokov certainly knew it. But "gigolo" also means in Russian (as
it also does in English) "a young male lover of a rich elderly lady." The
connection to Pedro the actor (who is Marina's gigolo)?
By the way, despite Lucette's words (3.3), "Alph" (Alphonse the Second of
Portugal) marries Lenore Colline after all. So, she becomes his Queen and he
becomes her "alphonse" (because she must be older than her husband).
best,
Alexey
----- Original Message -----
From: Donald B. Johnson
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Sent: Thursday, April 21, 2005 11:32 PM
Subject: Fw: Brits and Brazilians?
----- Forwarded message from jansy@aetern.us -----
Date: Thu, 21 Apr 2005 08:19:49 -0300
From: Jansy Berndt de Souza Mello <jansy@aetern.us>
Reply-To: Jansy Berndt de Souza Mello <jansy@aetern.us>
Subject: Fw: Brits and Brazilians?
To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum
Dear B.Boyd and List,
Brits and Brazilians?
1. Peter and Margaret/ Pedro and Inês/ Camões
2. Wellington/ A. M.Cabral da Gama &C./ Camões
and, of course, among them, Van/Mascodagama/Vasco da Gama in the epic of
Camões.
detailing:
The unhappy Portuguese lovers Pedro and Inês ( whose sufferings were
extensively described by Vasco da Gama - our Mascodagama link here - in the
epic of Camões ) have a connection with another Pedro who is not the actor
who
went to Rio in Ada.
It is the famous old British pair of lovers( I don´t mean Charles and
Camilla!),
Princess Margaret and the photographer Peter Townsend.
They are alluded to in connection to the poem Lucette was deceitfuly given to
learn by heart. The entire scenery that sorrrounded Peter and Margaret was
created by Nabokov as a parody of the Romantic and the"Arcady" theme with
milkmaids and cows and laureate Browns or century-old lithographs by a certain
Peter de Rast "an old swing that hung from the long and lofty limb of Baldy, a
partly leafless but still healthy old oak (which appeared - oh, I remember,
Van! - in a century-old lithograph of Ardis, by Peter de Rast, as a young
colossus protecting four cows and a lad in rags, one shoulder bare)";
The poem Peter and Margaret had been "composed in tears forty years ago by the
Poet Laureate Robert Brown, the old gentleman whom my father once pointed out
to me up in the air on a cliff under a cypress, looking down on the foaming
turquoise surf near Nice, an unforgettable sight for all concerned. It is
called "Peter and Margaret."
This poem "Van (...)was to recall it with a fatidic shiver seventeen years
later
when Lucette, in her last note to him, mailed from Paris to his Kingston(...)'
wrote: 'I kept for years - it must be in my Ardis nursery - the anthology you
once gave me ; and the little poem (...) Find it in Brown and praise me again
for my eight-year-old intelligence as you and happy Ada did that distant day,
that day somewhere tinkling on its shelf like an empty little bottle. Now read
on:
'Here, said the guide, was the field,/There, he said, was the wood./This is
where Peter kneeled,/That's where the Princess stood/ No, the visitor
said,/You
are the ghost, old guide.Oats and oaks may be dead,/But she is by my side.'
There is also another Peter, Count Peter de Prey who with King Victor ( in
disguise as Mr. Ritcov ) and Demon's father (...) and a certain "Mire de Mire"
( the "Mironton Mirontaine" observation and the poem given to Lucette? ) who
were the members of the first Venus Club Council ( a dream???);
The Duke of Wellington ( also mentioned in Ada as the name of a mountain the
Wellington Mountain and the second cane of vengeful Van ) commanded the
expedicionary forces against the Napoleonic invasions ( at the time when Dom
João VI moved the Portuguese court to Brazil )
His field-valet (?) António Maria Osório Cabral da Gama e Castro owned the
bucolic park and fields which Wellington visited in Portugal where the unhappy
lovers and cousins Inês and Pedro found refuge. Wellington planted two trees
known as " Wellington´s sequoias" during his stay. The Duke of Wellington
also
had a memorial inscribed with a sonnet by Camões ( canto III, verse 135)
telling
the story of the romantic pair Pedro and Inês.
(The son of Pedro and Inês was made into the First Duke of Valência, named
D.João and who was born in the fourteenth century).
When D. João VI in 1815 came to Brazil he established "The United Kingdom of
Portugal, Brasil and Algarves which comprised the: Reino de Portugal
(Europe),
Reino do Brasil ( America), Ilhas no Atlantico, Angola, Guiné, Moçambique,
(Africa), Goa and Macau, (Asia), and Timor ( Oceania). Acording to my google
source it had a "planetary extension" and served as a model for the "United
Kingdom of Britain", organized half a century later, in 1867.
----- End forwarded message -----
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dear B.Boyd and List,
Brits and Brazilians?
1. Peter and Margaret/ Pedro and Inês/ Camões
2. Wellington/ A. M.Cabral da Gama &C./ Camões
and, of course, among them, Van/Mascodagama/Vasco da Gama in the epic of
Camões.
detailing:
The unhappy Portuguese lovers Pedro and Inês ( whose sufferings were
extensively described by Vasco da Gama - our Mascodagama link here - in the
epic of Camões ) have a connection with another Pedro who is not the actor who
went to Rio in Ada.
It is the famous old British pair of lovers( I don´t mean Charles and
Camilla!), Princess Margaret and the photographer Peter Townsend.
They are alluded to in connection to the poem Lucette was deceitfuly given to
learn by heart. The entire scenery that sorrrounded Peter and Margaret was
created by Nabokov as a parody of the Romantic and the"Arcady" theme with
milkmaids and cows and laureate Browns or century-old lithographs by a certain
Peter de Rast "an old swing that hung from the long and lofty limb of Baldy, a
partly leafless but still healthy old oak (which appeared - oh, I remember,
Van! - in a century-old lithograph of Ardis, by Peter de Rast, as a young
colossus protecting four cows and a lad in rags, one shoulder bare)";
The poem Peter and Margaret had been "composed in tears forty years ago by the
Poet Laureate Robert Brown, the old gentleman whom my father once pointed out to
me up in the air on a cliff under a cypress, looking down on the foaming
turquoise surf near Nice, an unforgettable sight for all concerned. It is
called "Peter and Margaret."
This poem "Van (...)was to recall it with a fatidic shiver seventeen years
later when Lucette, in her last note to him, mailed from Paris to his
Kingston(...)' wrote: 'I kept for years - it must be in my Ardis nursery - the
anthology you once gave me ; and the little poem (...) Find it in Brown and
praise me again for my eight-year-old intelligence as you and happy Ada did
that distant day, that day somewhere tinkling on its shelf like an empty little
bottle. Now read on:
'Here, said the guide, was the field,/There, he said, was the wood./This is
where Peter kneeled,/That's where the Princess stood/ No, the visitor said,/You
are the ghost, old guide.Oats and oaks may be dead,/But she is by my side.'
There is also another Peter, Count Peter de Prey who with King Victor ( in
disguise as Mr. Ritcov ) and Demon's father (...) and a certain "Mire de Mire"
( the "Mironton Mirontaine" observation and the poem given to Lucette? ) who
were the members of the first Venus Club Council ( a dream???);
The Duke of Wellington ( also mentioned in Ada as the name of a mountain the
Wellington Mountain and the second cane of vengeful Van ) commanded the
expedicionary forces against the Napoleonic invasions ( at the time when Dom
João VI moved the Portuguese court to Brazil )
His field-valet (?) António Maria Osório Cabral da Gama e Castro owned the
bucolic park and fields which Wellington visited in Portugal where the unhappy
lovers and cousins Inês and Pedro found refuge. Wellington planted two trees
known as " Wellington´s sequoias" during his stay. The Duke of Wellington also
had a memorial inscribed with a sonnet by Camões ( canto III, verse 135) telling
the story of the romantic pair Pedro and Inês.
(The son of Pedro and Inês was made into the First Duke of Valência, named
D.João and who was born in the fourteenth century).
When D. João VI in 1815 came to Brazil he established "The United Kingdom of
Portugal, Brasil and Algarves which comprised the: Reino de Portugal (Europe),
Reino do Brasil ( America), Ilhas no Atlantico, Angola, Guiné, Moçambique,
(Africa), Goa and Macau, (Asia), and Timor ( Oceania). Acording to my google
source it had a "planetary extension" and served as a model for the "United
Kingdom of Britain", organized half a century later, in 1867.
----- End forwarded message -----
translator of ADA and one of its most indefatible researchers. In reply to one
of his observations--yes, it seems to me certain that VN knew of Stalin's
Poskrebyshev. If I, a farm lad from Indiana, knows who P was, it is safe to
assume N did.
---------------------------
----- Forwarded message from skylark05@mail.ru -----
Date: Sat, 23 Apr 2005 03:05:27 +0400
From: Alexey Sklyarenko <skylark05@mail.ru>
Reply-To: Alexey Sklyarenko <skylark05@mail.ru>
Subject: Re:
"The Bourbonian-chinned, dark, sleek-haired, ageless concierge, dubbed by
Van in his blazer days 'Alphonse Cinq,' believed he had just seen Mlle Veen
[Lucette] in the Recamier room where Vivian Vale's golden veils were on
show." (ADA, Part Three, chapter 3)
As I believe I told Brian when I saw him last time at the VN Museum a year and a
half ago, the nickname given by Van to the concierge of the Alphonse Four
hotel is a play on the name of a minor female character in "The Adolescent,"
Alfonsinka (a Russified diminutive form of the French feminine name
"Alphonsine"). In Dostoevsky's novel, she is the girlfriend of a
blackmailer, a certain Lambert, and "a spy" herself.
Note that Vivian Vale's golden veils are certainly connected to the "Golden
Veil"
that on Antiterra "conceals," so to speak, Tartary from the rest of the world.
Compare this to
the fact (not mentioned in my "Traditions in a Russian Family" essay) that
in the epilogue to "The Adolescent" Dostoevsky quotes the famous saying (its
authorship is ascribed to Napoleon): "Grattez le russe et vous verrez le
tartare" (Scratch a Russian and you will find a Tartar"). Now, I would like to
suggest that, on Antiterra, this saying (it also exists in Russian: "poskrebite
russkogo i vy naidiote tatarina") would read differently:
"Grattez le tartare et vous verrez le francais" ("Scratch a Tartar and you will
find a Frenchman"). What makes me think so? As you remember (or, if you
happen not to know it, I shall tell you), Stalin's secretary and
"aid-de-camp" was a certain Poskriobyshev. That name derives from the word
"poskriobysh" (which means "the youngest child of the family's many children").
But semantically it is kin to the verb "poskresti" ("to scratch") that we met in
the Russian version of the French dictum ("Grattez... etc.").
In Ada, Joseph Stalin (aka Sosso Djugashvili) is present in two copies, so to
speak. One is Khan Sosso, the ruler of the ruthless Sovietnamur Khanate (2.2),
and the other is Colonel St. Alin, a scoundrel, one of the seconds in the
Demon-d'Onsky duel (1.2). Why does Nabokov need him (Stalin) in two copies on
Antiterra? Is not one more than enough? I suspect that Nabokov is playing on
the name of Stalin's secretary, Poscriobyshev (just as he is playing on the
names of the two Soviet secret police heads, Yagoda and Beria, in ADA and on
the name of the third NKVD head, Ezhov, in his play "The Event"). , if you
would scratch Khan Sosso (who is a Tatar), you will probably find Colonel St.
Alin, a scoundrel (who is a Frenchman). "Grattez le tartare et vous verrez le
francais." I think that this reversal is a kind of personal revenge of Nabokov
upon Napoleon. It also makes a nice sequence. A Frenchman says: "scratch a
Russian and you find a Tartar." But a Russian gently hints: "scratch a Tartar
and you find a Frenchman." I guess I'm going to elaborate this note and publish
it in the next issue of The Nabokovian.
It is two things that I would like to know. Was the name Poskriobyshev familiar
to Nabokov (I think it is not impossible) and was not Poskriobyshev, by any
chance, a Colonel? Stalin was, as everybody knows, a generalissimo.
Another interesting detail is that, in modern Russian (but not in
Dostoevsky's time, I believe), "al'fons" is a slang term for "gigolo"
(mainly, in the sense "professional souteneur"). That term is pretty old
though and Nabokov certainly knew it. But "gigolo" also means in Russian (as
it also does in English) "a young male lover of a rich elderly lady." The
connection to Pedro the actor (who is Marina's gigolo)?
By the way, despite Lucette's words (3.3), "Alph" (Alphonse the Second of
Portugal) marries Lenore Colline after all. So, she becomes his Queen and he
becomes her "alphonse" (because she must be older than her husband).
best,
Alexey
----- Original Message -----
From: Donald B. Johnson
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Sent: Thursday, April 21, 2005 11:32 PM
Subject: Fw: Brits and Brazilians?
----- Forwarded message from jansy@aetern.us -----
Date: Thu, 21 Apr 2005 08:19:49 -0300
From: Jansy Berndt de Souza Mello <jansy@aetern.us>
Reply-To: Jansy Berndt de Souza Mello <jansy@aetern.us>
Subject: Fw: Brits and Brazilians?
To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum
Dear B.Boyd and List,
Brits and Brazilians?
1. Peter and Margaret/ Pedro and Inês/ Camões
2. Wellington/ A. M.Cabral da Gama &C./ Camões
and, of course, among them, Van/Mascodagama/Vasco da Gama in the epic of
Camões.
detailing:
The unhappy Portuguese lovers Pedro and Inês ( whose sufferings were
extensively described by Vasco da Gama - our Mascodagama link here - in the
epic of Camões ) have a connection with another Pedro who is not the actor
who
went to Rio in Ada.
It is the famous old British pair of lovers( I don´t mean Charles and
Camilla!),
Princess Margaret and the photographer Peter Townsend.
They are alluded to in connection to the poem Lucette was deceitfuly given to
learn by heart. The entire scenery that sorrrounded Peter and Margaret was
created by Nabokov as a parody of the Romantic and the"Arcady" theme with
milkmaids and cows and laureate Browns or century-old lithographs by a certain
Peter de Rast "an old swing that hung from the long and lofty limb of Baldy, a
partly leafless but still healthy old oak (which appeared - oh, I remember,
Van! - in a century-old lithograph of Ardis, by Peter de Rast, as a young
colossus protecting four cows and a lad in rags, one shoulder bare)";
The poem Peter and Margaret had been "composed in tears forty years ago by the
Poet Laureate Robert Brown, the old gentleman whom my father once pointed out
to me up in the air on a cliff under a cypress, looking down on the foaming
turquoise surf near Nice, an unforgettable sight for all concerned. It is
called "Peter and Margaret."
This poem "Van (...)was to recall it with a fatidic shiver seventeen years
later
when Lucette, in her last note to him, mailed from Paris to his Kingston(...)'
wrote: 'I kept for years - it must be in my Ardis nursery - the anthology you
once gave me ; and the little poem (...) Find it in Brown and praise me again
for my eight-year-old intelligence as you and happy Ada did that distant day,
that day somewhere tinkling on its shelf like an empty little bottle. Now read
on:
'Here, said the guide, was the field,/There, he said, was the wood./This is
where Peter kneeled,/That's where the Princess stood/ No, the visitor
said,/You
are the ghost, old guide.Oats and oaks may be dead,/But she is by my side.'
There is also another Peter, Count Peter de Prey who with King Victor ( in
disguise as Mr. Ritcov ) and Demon's father (...) and a certain "Mire de Mire"
( the "Mironton Mirontaine" observation and the poem given to Lucette? ) who
were the members of the first Venus Club Council ( a dream???);
The Duke of Wellington ( also mentioned in Ada as the name of a mountain the
Wellington Mountain and the second cane of vengeful Van ) commanded the
expedicionary forces against the Napoleonic invasions ( at the time when Dom
João VI moved the Portuguese court to Brazil )
His field-valet (?) António Maria Osório Cabral da Gama e Castro owned the
bucolic park and fields which Wellington visited in Portugal where the unhappy
lovers and cousins Inês and Pedro found refuge. Wellington planted two trees
known as " Wellington´s sequoias" during his stay. The Duke of Wellington
also
had a memorial inscribed with a sonnet by Camões ( canto III, verse 135)
telling
the story of the romantic pair Pedro and Inês.
(The son of Pedro and Inês was made into the First Duke of Valência, named
D.João and who was born in the fourteenth century).
When D. João VI in 1815 came to Brazil he established "The United Kingdom of
Portugal, Brasil and Algarves which comprised the: Reino de Portugal
(Europe),
Reino do Brasil ( America), Ilhas no Atlantico, Angola, Guiné, Moçambique,
(Africa), Goa and Macau, (Asia), and Timor ( Oceania). Acording to my google
source it had a "planetary extension" and served as a model for the "United
Kingdom of Britain", organized half a century later, in 1867.
----- End forwarded message -----
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dear B.Boyd and List,
Brits and Brazilians?
1. Peter and Margaret/ Pedro and Inês/ Camões
2. Wellington/ A. M.Cabral da Gama &C./ Camões
and, of course, among them, Van/Mascodagama/Vasco da Gama in the epic of
Camões.
detailing:
The unhappy Portuguese lovers Pedro and Inês ( whose sufferings were
extensively described by Vasco da Gama - our Mascodagama link here - in the
epic of Camões ) have a connection with another Pedro who is not the actor who
went to Rio in Ada.
It is the famous old British pair of lovers( I don´t mean Charles and
Camilla!), Princess Margaret and the photographer Peter Townsend.
They are alluded to in connection to the poem Lucette was deceitfuly given to
learn by heart. The entire scenery that sorrrounded Peter and Margaret was
created by Nabokov as a parody of the Romantic and the"Arcady" theme with
milkmaids and cows and laureate Browns or century-old lithographs by a certain
Peter de Rast "an old swing that hung from the long and lofty limb of Baldy, a
partly leafless but still healthy old oak (which appeared - oh, I remember,
Van! - in a century-old lithograph of Ardis, by Peter de Rast, as a young
colossus protecting four cows and a lad in rags, one shoulder bare)";
The poem Peter and Margaret had been "composed in tears forty years ago by the
Poet Laureate Robert Brown, the old gentleman whom my father once pointed out to
me up in the air on a cliff under a cypress, looking down on the foaming
turquoise surf near Nice, an unforgettable sight for all concerned. It is
called "Peter and Margaret."
This poem "Van (...)was to recall it with a fatidic shiver seventeen years
later when Lucette, in her last note to him, mailed from Paris to his
Kingston(...)' wrote: 'I kept for years - it must be in my Ardis nursery - the
anthology you once gave me ; and the little poem (...) Find it in Brown and
praise me again for my eight-year-old intelligence as you and happy Ada did
that distant day, that day somewhere tinkling on its shelf like an empty little
bottle. Now read on:
'Here, said the guide, was the field,/There, he said, was the wood./This is
where Peter kneeled,/That's where the Princess stood/ No, the visitor said,/You
are the ghost, old guide.Oats and oaks may be dead,/But she is by my side.'
There is also another Peter, Count Peter de Prey who with King Victor ( in
disguise as Mr. Ritcov ) and Demon's father (...) and a certain "Mire de Mire"
( the "Mironton Mirontaine" observation and the poem given to Lucette? ) who
were the members of the first Venus Club Council ( a dream???);
The Duke of Wellington ( also mentioned in Ada as the name of a mountain the
Wellington Mountain and the second cane of vengeful Van ) commanded the
expedicionary forces against the Napoleonic invasions ( at the time when Dom
João VI moved the Portuguese court to Brazil )
His field-valet (?) António Maria Osório Cabral da Gama e Castro owned the
bucolic park and fields which Wellington visited in Portugal where the unhappy
lovers and cousins Inês and Pedro found refuge. Wellington planted two trees
known as " Wellington´s sequoias" during his stay. The Duke of Wellington also
had a memorial inscribed with a sonnet by Camões ( canto III, verse 135) telling
the story of the romantic pair Pedro and Inês.
(The son of Pedro and Inês was made into the First Duke of Valência, named
D.João and who was born in the fourteenth century).
When D. João VI in 1815 came to Brazil he established "The United Kingdom of
Portugal, Brasil and Algarves which comprised the: Reino de Portugal (Europe),
Reino do Brasil ( America), Ilhas no Atlantico, Angola, Guiné, Moçambique,
(Africa), Goa and Macau, (Asia), and Timor ( Oceania). Acording to my google
source it had a "planetary extension" and served as a model for the "United
Kingdom of Britain", organized half a century later, in 1867.
----- End forwarded message -----