Subject
fleurs du plaisir
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Had not the list of authors mentioned in my "floral" article ("The Red Flower of Evil in Nabokov's Ada") been so inordinately long, I would have added two more names: Gogol and Marina Tsvetaev.
In Gogol's Inspector (Act Three) Khlestakov sums up his philosophy as follows: "After all, that's what life is for - to pluck the flowers of pleasure."
Marina Tsvetaev (wife of a double agent, and a poet of genius, whom VN met in Prague in 1923 and who, in the late thirties, returned to Russia and perished there) is a namesake of Marina Durmanov, Van's, Ada's and Lucette's mother who collected flowers when she was pregnant with her first child and lived in Switzerland (Ada: 1.1). The name Tsvetaev comes from tsvesti ("to bloom") and is related to tsvety ("flowers").
re Blok and burning peat bogs: "It can be proved, I think, by published records that Alexander Blok was even then noting in his diary the very peat smoke I saw, and the wrecked sky." (Speak, Memory, Chapter Twelve, 2)
Alexey Sklyarenko
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In Gogol's Inspector (Act Three) Khlestakov sums up his philosophy as follows: "After all, that's what life is for - to pluck the flowers of pleasure."
Marina Tsvetaev (wife of a double agent, and a poet of genius, whom VN met in Prague in 1923 and who, in the late thirties, returned to Russia and perished there) is a namesake of Marina Durmanov, Van's, Ada's and Lucette's mother who collected flowers when she was pregnant with her first child and lived in Switzerland (Ada: 1.1). The name Tsvetaev comes from tsvesti ("to bloom") and is related to tsvety ("flowers").
re Blok and burning peat bogs: "It can be proved, I think, by published records that Alexander Blok was even then noting in his diary the very peat smoke I saw, and the wrecked sky." (Speak, Memory, Chapter Twelve, 2)
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/