Subject
Nadezhda
From
Date
Body
Антонина Павловна. Это моя дочь Вера. Любовь, вы, конечно, знаете, моего зятя тоже, а Надежды у меня нет.
Элеонора Шнап. Божмой! Неужели безнадежно?
Антонина Павловна. Да, ужасно безнадежная семья. (Смеётся.) А до чего мне хотелось иметь маленькую Надю с зелёными глазками.
...Элеонора Шнап. Друг спознаётся во время большого несчастья, а недруг во время маленьких. Так мой профессор Эссер всегда говорил.
(Antonina Pavlovna says that she has two daughters, Lyubov' and Vera, but, alas, no Nadezhda. Nadezhda being also Russian for "hope," the mid-wife Eleonora Schnap misunderstands her words as meaning "the situation is hopeless." A little later Schnap quotes her late husband, Professor Esser, who used to say that one can tell the friend from the Feind depending on the extent of the misfortune one is suffering.* "The Event," Act Two)
While Antonina Pavlovna Opayashin is a "namesake" of A. P. Chekhov, her son-in-law, Aleksei Maksimovich Troshcheykin, is a namesake of A. M. Peshkov (Maxim Gorky's real name). Nadezhda is a young likeable girl in Gorky's play "Враги" ("Enemies," 1906). On the other hand, "Враги" ("Enemies," 1887) is a story by Chekhov. It's two main characters are Abogin (whose wife pretended she was dangerously ill and, when Abogin went out to bring a doctor, fled with her lover) and Dr Kirilov (whose little son just died):
Abogin and the doctor stood face to face, and in their wrath continued flinging undeserved insults at each other. I believe that never in their lives, even in delirium, had they uttered so much that was unjust, cruel, and absurd. The egoism of the unhappy was conspicuous in both. The unhappy are egoistic, spiteful, unjust, cruel, and less capable of understanding each other than fools. Unhappiness does not bring people together but draws them apart, and even where one would fancy people should be united by the similarity of their sorrow, far more injustice and cruelty is generated than in comparatively placid surroundings.
Bog being Russian for "God," the name Abogin can be read as meaning "godless." As to the name Kirilov, it reminds one of Kirilin, the lover of Nadezhda Fyodorovna (Laevski's mistress who jilted her old husband) in Chekhov's story "The Duel" (1891), and Kirillov, a (godless) character in Dostoevski's novel "Бесы" ("The Possessed," 1872).
Schnap's "Professor Esser" seems to blend the Nazi-leader Hermann Esser (1900-81) with СССР (the USSR). Incidentally, Nadezhda was the name of both Lenin's and Stalin's wives.
The title of Chekhov's story and Gorky's play brings to mind the phrase враг народа ("an enemy of the people"), initially, the title of a play by Ibsen.
Although superfluous, the anagrams below may amuse those who read Khodasevich's memoir essay on Gorky (1937), in which nadezhda and some other proper names and words occur (apologies, I do not append a vocabulary):
Сатин + ил = Сталин + и = истина + л
Лука + кровавый + мать + дар = лукавый** + кровать + драма
Абогин + Кирилов + солнце + На дне + жажда + Клио = Набоков + Сирин + лицо + Олег + Надежда + кинжал
*Professor Esser, a German, misused the Russian version of the saying "the friend in need is the friend indeed"
**the devil
Alexey Sklyarenko
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Элеонора Шнап. Божмой! Неужели безнадежно?
Антонина Павловна. Да, ужасно безнадежная семья. (Смеётся.) А до чего мне хотелось иметь маленькую Надю с зелёными глазками.
...Элеонора Шнап. Друг спознаётся во время большого несчастья, а недруг во время маленьких. Так мой профессор Эссер всегда говорил.
(Antonina Pavlovna says that she has two daughters, Lyubov' and Vera, but, alas, no Nadezhda. Nadezhda being also Russian for "hope," the mid-wife Eleonora Schnap misunderstands her words as meaning "the situation is hopeless." A little later Schnap quotes her late husband, Professor Esser, who used to say that one can tell the friend from the Feind depending on the extent of the misfortune one is suffering.* "The Event," Act Two)
While Antonina Pavlovna Opayashin is a "namesake" of A. P. Chekhov, her son-in-law, Aleksei Maksimovich Troshcheykin, is a namesake of A. M. Peshkov (Maxim Gorky's real name). Nadezhda is a young likeable girl in Gorky's play "Враги" ("Enemies," 1906). On the other hand, "Враги" ("Enemies," 1887) is a story by Chekhov. It's two main characters are Abogin (whose wife pretended she was dangerously ill and, when Abogin went out to bring a doctor, fled with her lover) and Dr Kirilov (whose little son just died):
Abogin and the doctor stood face to face, and in their wrath continued flinging undeserved insults at each other. I believe that never in their lives, even in delirium, had they uttered so much that was unjust, cruel, and absurd. The egoism of the unhappy was conspicuous in both. The unhappy are egoistic, spiteful, unjust, cruel, and less capable of understanding each other than fools. Unhappiness does not bring people together but draws them apart, and even where one would fancy people should be united by the similarity of their sorrow, far more injustice and cruelty is generated than in comparatively placid surroundings.
Bog being Russian for "God," the name Abogin can be read as meaning "godless." As to the name Kirilov, it reminds one of Kirilin, the lover of Nadezhda Fyodorovna (Laevski's mistress who jilted her old husband) in Chekhov's story "The Duel" (1891), and Kirillov, a (godless) character in Dostoevski's novel "Бесы" ("The Possessed," 1872).
Schnap's "Professor Esser" seems to blend the Nazi-leader Hermann Esser (1900-81) with СССР (the USSR). Incidentally, Nadezhda was the name of both Lenin's and Stalin's wives.
The title of Chekhov's story and Gorky's play brings to mind the phrase враг народа ("an enemy of the people"), initially, the title of a play by Ibsen.
Although superfluous, the anagrams below may amuse those who read Khodasevich's memoir essay on Gorky (1937), in which nadezhda and some other proper names and words occur (apologies, I do not append a vocabulary):
Сатин + ил = Сталин + и = истина + л
Лука + кровавый + мать + дар = лукавый** + кровать + драма
Абогин + Кирилов + солнце + На дне + жажда + Клио = Набоков + Сирин + лицо + Олег + Надежда + кинжал
*Professor Esser, a German, misused the Russian version of the saying "the friend in need is the friend indeed"
**the devil
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/