Speaking
of Ada's "Abraham" Milton and Newton (btw., note Neva in Lomonosov's
"Невтон"), I forgot to mention in
my previous post that Newton's first name was Isaac. In
the Old Testament (Gen. XXI: 1-7), Isaac was Abraham's son (born when his
father was hundred years young). One remembers Isaak Babel, a Soviet writer, but
also Chekhov's friend Isaak Levitan (the famous landscape painter who
served as a model of Ryabovski, a character in Chekhov's story
"Попрыгунья", The Grasshopper). In a letter to his brother Chekhov
says that a peasant from whom the painter, working
en plein air, hired a barn, calls his tenant "Leviathan"
(Jewish surname Levitan sounds odd to a Russian's ear). Leviathan is a sea
monster mentioned in the Old Testament (Iov XL: 20) and in Milton's
Paradise Lost. Besides, it is a philosophical work (1651) by
Thomas Hobbes dealing
with the political organization of society (one also remembers Orwell's
essay The Writers and Leviathan).
MILTON
+ LEVIATHAN
= HAMILTON
+ LEVITAN
Everybody knows Lady Emma Hamilton, Admiral Nelson's
mistress, but few remember Mary Hamilton, the tsar Peter's Scottish
mistress, who was beheaded in the 1710s and whose beautiful head, with its
long red hair, could be seen in the Kunstkammer till 1917 (VN and
Tamara must have seen it there!):
В кунсткамере хранится голова,
Как монстра, заспиртованного в
банке,
Красавицы Марии Гамильтон...
(from Voloshin's poem "Russia", 1924; VN met Voloshin in the
Crimea)
Unfortunately, I have no time for translation
and must stop here. Milton (John) is also interestingly mentioned in
Ilf and Petrov's The Golden Calf and in Chapter Five of The
Gift...
Alexey Sklyarenko