Sklyarenko:
Guillaume de Monparnasse …iis the
penname of Mlle Larivière, Lucette's governess. Her real name comes from rivière, French for
"river". Below is Heine's poem Der
Apollogott (1851). Its setting is the Rhine River. Its
heroine is a young nun enamoured of a fop whom she believes to be the
Apollo god. The poem begins with the mention of a cloister. Mount Parnassus
("Mont-Parnass")
and Amsterdam are also mentioned in it…
Wohl tausend Jahr' aus
Graecia
Bin ich verbannt, vertrieben -
Doch ist mein Herz in Graecia,
In Graecia geblieben."
Tom Rymour: Actually,
Old McNab is having a go at Guy de Maupassant (Guillaume de Monparnasse)and his
'worst short story ever written', "La
Parure" (usually trans as "The Diamond Necklace") in which a
young functionary's wife borrows a
'riviere de diamants' to wear to the ministry ball -- then loses it.
JM: Why did Nabokov choose a
masculine pen-name for Mlle Larivière? He often mentions Larivière’s passion
for Marina and her manly ways, but is this sufficient to explain “Guillaume”?
Could he have included Apollinaire - and there’s an Apollo inset, too, and a
Vladimir in this name (google informs that his name had been Wilhelm Albert
Vladimir Apollinaris…) A fake one side by side to some true association?
A
diamond string of associations came from Sklyarenko. In Heine’s strangely mocking
lines, there is true pathos here and there when, like Vladimir, also Apollo
moans his exile from Graecia, as much as Heine must have lamented his …