Subject
God's auqamarine tear
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According to VN, N. M. Karamzin is the author of one the best Russian epigrams: Что наша жизнь? - Роман. Кто автор? - Аноним. Читаем по складам, cмеёмся, плачем, cпим... ("Life? A romance. By whom? Anonymous. We spell it out; it makes us laugh and weep, and then puts us to sleep.") Its target is clearly the anonymous author of a romance that we all read only once (there will be no rereading).
Pushkin, too, read his life as a novel: И с отвращением читая жизнь мою, я трепещу и проклинаю, и горько жалуюсь, и горько слёзы лью, но строк печальных не смываю. ("Then, as with loathing I peruse the years, I tremble, and I curse my natal day, Wail bitterly, and bitterly shed tears, But cannot wash the woeful script away." Remembrance, 1828, transl. Maurice Baring; or, if you prefer an unrhymed translation: "And I, repulsed, review the story of my life, I shudder and I curse, Weep bitter tears and bitterly complain, But cannot wash the dismal lines away.") One also remembers EO's closing lines: "Blest who life's banquet early left, having not drained to the bottom the goblet full of wine; who did not read life's novel to the end and all at once could part with it as I with my Onegin."
In his bogaryr fairy tale Ilya Muromets (1794) Karamzin (the future author of History of the Russian State) exclaims: Ах, не всё нам реки слёзные лить о бедствиях существенных! На минуту позабудемся в чародействе красных вымыслов! (Ah, not all the time shall we shed floods of tears because of actual disasters! Let us forget ourselves for a moment in the magic of fair inventions!)
In my article "The Fair Invention in Nabokov's Ada and Gorky's The Life of Klim Samgin" (The Nabokovian #58) I quote Boris Sadovskoy who in a short poem written in 1935 said that Earth was a tear shining in God's eye (слеза в зенице Бога) and suggest that Antiterra (Earth's twin planet on which Ada is set) is but a tear Nabokov shed weeping for Russia, his home country.
Van's patients described Terra as "a green world* rotating in space and spiraling in time." (1.30) Lucette who sheds an aquamarine tear as Van and Ada fondle her in their bed (2.8) actually has green eyes.
Furnished Space, l’espace meuble (known to us only as furnished and full even if its contents be ‘absence of substance’ - which seats the mind, too), is mostly watery so far as this globe is concerned. In that form it destroyed Lucette. Another variety, more or less atmospheric, but no less gravitational and loathsome, destroyed Demon. (3.7)
The astronauts would confirm that our planet is blue rather than green.
According to Van and Ada, "nobody knew how far Terra, or other innumerable planets with cottages and cows, might be situated in outer or inner space: 'inner,' because why not assume their microcosmic presence in the golden globules ascending quick-quick in this flute of Moёt or in the corpuscles of my, Van Veen's - (or my, Ada Veen's) - bloodstream, or in the pus of a Mr Nekto's ripe boil newly lanced in Nektor or Neckton." (2.2)
Why not assume that Earth is Lucette's (or God's) aquamarine tear?
*Earth's twin planet reached by the hero of Dostoevski's story "Сон смешного человека" (The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, 1877) after he had committed suicide in his dream is also green.
Alexey Sklyarenko
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Pushkin, too, read his life as a novel: И с отвращением читая жизнь мою, я трепещу и проклинаю, и горько жалуюсь, и горько слёзы лью, но строк печальных не смываю. ("Then, as with loathing I peruse the years, I tremble, and I curse my natal day, Wail bitterly, and bitterly shed tears, But cannot wash the woeful script away." Remembrance, 1828, transl. Maurice Baring; or, if you prefer an unrhymed translation: "And I, repulsed, review the story of my life, I shudder and I curse, Weep bitter tears and bitterly complain, But cannot wash the dismal lines away.") One also remembers EO's closing lines: "Blest who life's banquet early left, having not drained to the bottom the goblet full of wine; who did not read life's novel to the end and all at once could part with it as I with my Onegin."
In his bogaryr fairy tale Ilya Muromets (1794) Karamzin (the future author of History of the Russian State) exclaims: Ах, не всё нам реки слёзные лить о бедствиях существенных! На минуту позабудемся в чародействе красных вымыслов! (Ah, not all the time shall we shed floods of tears because of actual disasters! Let us forget ourselves for a moment in the magic of fair inventions!)
In my article "The Fair Invention in Nabokov's Ada and Gorky's The Life of Klim Samgin" (The Nabokovian #58) I quote Boris Sadovskoy who in a short poem written in 1935 said that Earth was a tear shining in God's eye (слеза в зенице Бога) and suggest that Antiterra (Earth's twin planet on which Ada is set) is but a tear Nabokov shed weeping for Russia, his home country.
Van's patients described Terra as "a green world* rotating in space and spiraling in time." (1.30) Lucette who sheds an aquamarine tear as Van and Ada fondle her in their bed (2.8) actually has green eyes.
Furnished Space, l’espace meuble (known to us only as furnished and full even if its contents be ‘absence of substance’ - which seats the mind, too), is mostly watery so far as this globe is concerned. In that form it destroyed Lucette. Another variety, more or less atmospheric, but no less gravitational and loathsome, destroyed Demon. (3.7)
The astronauts would confirm that our planet is blue rather than green.
According to Van and Ada, "nobody knew how far Terra, or other innumerable planets with cottages and cows, might be situated in outer or inner space: 'inner,' because why not assume their microcosmic presence in the golden globules ascending quick-quick in this flute of Moёt or in the corpuscles of my, Van Veen's - (or my, Ada Veen's) - bloodstream, or in the pus of a Mr Nekto's ripe boil newly lanced in Nektor or Neckton." (2.2)
Why not assume that Earth is Lucette's (or God's) aquamarine tear?
*Earth's twin planet reached by the hero of Dostoevski's story "Сон смешного человека" (The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, 1877) after he had committed suicide in his dream is also green.
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/