Subject
Antidulcinist
From
Date
Body
Барбошин. Узнаю в вас мою молодость. И я был таков - поэт, студент, мечтатель... Под каштанами Гейдельберга я любил амазонку... Но жизнь меня научила многому. Ладно. Не будем бередить прошлого. (Поёт.) "Начнём, пожалуй...". Пойду, значит, ходить под вашими окнами, пока над вами будут витать Амур, Морфей и маленький Бром. (Barboshin. I recognize in you my youth. I too was a poet, student, dreamer...Under the chestnut trees of Heidelberg I loved an amazon... Barboshin then sings Lenski's aria "Yes, if you like, let's start" and promises to walk under the windows of Troshcheykin's flat all night, while Amor, Morpheus and little Brom are hovering over Troshcheykin and his wife. But after a while he leaves his post, comes back to take a rest and is offered by Lyubov' a cup of tea. "The Event," Act Three)
Amors, devils* and serpents are mentioned in Eugene Onegin (One: XX: 1-2):
Ещё амуры, черти, змеи
На сцене скачут и шумят
Still amors, devils, serpents
on the stage caper and make noise.
After entering the full house, Onegin walks between the stalls and trains his double lorgnette upon the lodges of strange ladies (One: XIX: 1-4):
All clap as one. Onegin enters:
he walks - on people's toes - between the stalls;
askance, his double lorgnette trains
upon the lodges of strange ladies...
Antonina Pavlovna is described by the author as a trim, sweetly absent-minded woman with a lorgnette holding, as she enters, a ball in her hands:
Входит Антонина Павловна Опаяшина, мать Любови, с пёстрым мячом в руках. Это аккуратная, даже несколько чопорная женщина, с лорнетом, сладковато-рассеянная. ("The Event," Act One)
Among the guests of Princess N.'s (Eugene Onegin, Eight: XXV) is a gentleman cross with everything, including the too-sweet tea of the hostess:
Here was, to epigrams addicted
a gentleman cross with everything:
with the too-sweet tea of the hostess...
One of the guests at Antonina Pavlovna's birthday party, the famous writer is an antidulcinist (the person who does not like sweets). He, too, is cross with everything: with his hostess' cognac, the nonsense he read about himself in "Солнце" (newspaper "The Sun"):
Писатель (репортёру). У вас, между прочим, опять печатают всякую дешёвку обо мне. Никакой повести из цыганской жизни я не задумал и задумать не мог бы. Стыдно. (I never conceived nor could have conceived a tale from the Gypsian life. "The Event," Act Two)
The author of "Цыганы" ("The Gypsies," 1824), Pushkin ("the sun of our poetry") is the secret source of light in VN's play - just as in Troshcheykin's unfinished portrait of the jeweler's curly-headed son the source of light is the five (not yet painted) balls around the boy:
Трощейкин. Видишь ли, они [мячи] должны гореть, бросать на него отблеск, но сперва я хочу закрепить отблеск, а потом приняться за его источники. Надо помнить, что искусство движется всегда против солнца. Ноги, видишь, уже совсем перламутровые. Нет, мальчик мне нравится! Волосы хороши: чуть-чуть с чёрной курчавинкой. Есть какая-то связь между драгоценными камнями и негритянской кровью. Шекспир это почувствовал в своем "Отелло". (Although Troshcheykin mentions Shakespeare's Othello, not Pushkin, he does say that art always moves in the counter-sun direction.)
Re Morpheus: Pushkin is the author of a short poem "К Морфею" ("To Morpheus," 1817-19), in which мечты (the dreams; Barboshin says that he was once a dremer, мечтатель) are also mentioned. In Eugene Onegin (Six: XLIV: 5), and in his Lyceum poem "Пробуждение" ("Waking Up," 1816), Pushkin asks: Мечты, мечты! где ваша сладость? (Dreams, dreams! Where is your dulcitude?)
Gremin + L = mingrel = Kremlin + G - K (Gremin - in Chaykovski's opera, the name of Princess N.; mingrel - a person who belongs to the Mingrelian people in the South Caucasus; Stalin was a mingrel)
*Barboshin, who sings Lenski's aria, is the devil.
Alexey Sklyarenko
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Amors, devils* and serpents are mentioned in Eugene Onegin (One: XX: 1-2):
Ещё амуры, черти, змеи
На сцене скачут и шумят
Still amors, devils, serpents
on the stage caper and make noise.
After entering the full house, Onegin walks between the stalls and trains his double lorgnette upon the lodges of strange ladies (One: XIX: 1-4):
All clap as one. Onegin enters:
he walks - on people's toes - between the stalls;
askance, his double lorgnette trains
upon the lodges of strange ladies...
Antonina Pavlovna is described by the author as a trim, sweetly absent-minded woman with a lorgnette holding, as she enters, a ball in her hands:
Входит Антонина Павловна Опаяшина, мать Любови, с пёстрым мячом в руках. Это аккуратная, даже несколько чопорная женщина, с лорнетом, сладковато-рассеянная. ("The Event," Act One)
Among the guests of Princess N.'s (Eugene Onegin, Eight: XXV) is a gentleman cross with everything, including the too-sweet tea of the hostess:
Here was, to epigrams addicted
a gentleman cross with everything:
with the too-sweet tea of the hostess...
One of the guests at Antonina Pavlovna's birthday party, the famous writer is an antidulcinist (the person who does not like sweets). He, too, is cross with everything: with his hostess' cognac, the nonsense he read about himself in "Солнце" (newspaper "The Sun"):
Писатель (репортёру). У вас, между прочим, опять печатают всякую дешёвку обо мне. Никакой повести из цыганской жизни я не задумал и задумать не мог бы. Стыдно. (I never conceived nor could have conceived a tale from the Gypsian life. "The Event," Act Two)
The author of "Цыганы" ("The Gypsies," 1824), Pushkin ("the sun of our poetry") is the secret source of light in VN's play - just as in Troshcheykin's unfinished portrait of the jeweler's curly-headed son the source of light is the five (not yet painted) balls around the boy:
Трощейкин. Видишь ли, они [мячи] должны гореть, бросать на него отблеск, но сперва я хочу закрепить отблеск, а потом приняться за его источники. Надо помнить, что искусство движется всегда против солнца. Ноги, видишь, уже совсем перламутровые. Нет, мальчик мне нравится! Волосы хороши: чуть-чуть с чёрной курчавинкой. Есть какая-то связь между драгоценными камнями и негритянской кровью. Шекспир это почувствовал в своем "Отелло". (Although Troshcheykin mentions Shakespeare's Othello, not Pushkin, he does say that art always moves in the counter-sun direction.)
Re Morpheus: Pushkin is the author of a short poem "К Морфею" ("To Morpheus," 1817-19), in which мечты (the dreams; Barboshin says that he was once a dremer, мечтатель) are also mentioned. In Eugene Onegin (Six: XLIV: 5), and in his Lyceum poem "Пробуждение" ("Waking Up," 1816), Pushkin asks: Мечты, мечты! где ваша сладость? (Dreams, dreams! Where is your dulcitude?)
Gremin + L = mingrel = Kremlin + G - K (Gremin - in Chaykovski's opera, the name of Princess N.; mingrel - a person who belongs to the Mingrelian people in the South Caucasus; Stalin was a mingrel)
*Barboshin, who sings Lenski's aria, is 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/