We know the hero of VN's Look at the
Harlequins! only by his name-and-patronymic: Vadim Vadimovich. As he
himself points out (Part Seven, 3), in rapid Russian speech the long "Vladimir
Vladimirovich" becomes colloquially similar to "Vadim Vadimych."
In his Russian poem O pravitelyakh (On
the Rulers, 1945) Nabokov mentions his "late namesake," the poet
Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky (1893-1930). Speaking of himself in his
poems, Mayakovsky used to shorten his name-and-patronymic to "Vladim Vladimych."
In his Yubileynoe (The Anniversary Poem, 1924) there
are lines:
Вот и любви пришёл каюк,
Дорогой Владим Владимыч.
Нет, не старость этому имя!
Тушу вперёд стремя,
Я с удовольствием справлюсь с двоими,
А разозлить - и с тремя.
It's the end of love,
Dear Vladim Vladimych.
No, its name is not old age!
Pushing forth my bulky self,
I can cope with pleasure with two,
And if made angry, with three.
In this poem, Mayakovsky addresses
Pushkin and says that, after his, Mayakovsky's, death, they are
to stand almost beside each other. "Your name begins with a P and
my name with an M, who's between us?" (my paraphrase). Mayakovsky mentions
the intruder Nadson (who will be asked to move to the letter
Щ at the end of the alphabet) and Nekrasov, Kolya, son of the late
Alyosha (good poet, good gambler, a good company). Then he moves on
to living poets: Bezymensky ("Mr. Nameless"), Aseev, Esenin...
Old Vadim Vadimych forgets his family
name (that begins with an N and bears an odd resemblance to the name
of his maker, with whom V.V.'s compatriots constantly confuse him) during his
illness, then remembers it but doesn't tell us.
In his youth, Vadim had a sexual
adventure with two ladies.
Alexey Sklyarenko