At the end of
their dinner in Ursus (2.8) Ada says: 'Look, our cavalier is yawning "fit
to declansh his masher"' (vulgar Ladore cant).
'How (ascension of Mt Yawn)
true,' uttered Van, ceasing to palpate the velvet cheek of his Cupidon peach,
which he had bruised but not sampled.
It [the boring conversation during another dinner: 3.8] went
on and on like that for more than an hour and Van's clenched jaws began to
ache.
They [Van and Ada] followed southward the famous Fillietaz
Promenade which went along the Swiss side of the lake from Valvey to the Château
de Byron (or 'She Yawns Castle'). (3.8)
In Amfiteatrov's story "Чёрт" ("The Devil", 1897)*
I came across the following rhymes on yawning:
Во время оно
Проглотил кит Иону;
Не ты ль, Никита,
Проглотил кита?
In the old days
A whale swallowed Jonah.
Wasn't it you, Nikita,
Who swallowed a whale?
The (now rare) name Иона instantly reminds a
cultured Russian of Dr Dmitriy Ionych Startsev, the hero of Chekhov's
story "Ionych" (1898). As to Nikita, it is a rather common
name. One remembers, for instance, tsar Nikita, the hero of a
frivolous poem by Pushkin, and Nikita Khrushchyov, the Soviet leader (whom we
see visiting Zembla in Pale Fire). There is Nikita, the brutal
hospital watchman, in Chekhov's story "Ward Six" (1892).
According to Vivian Darkbloom, the conversation
during the dinner with Ada, her husband and her husband's sister that bores Van
so much (3.8) is a parody of Chekhovian dialogues. Chekhov is the author of
"Скука жизни" ("Tedium Vitae", 1886) and "Скучная история" ("A Dull Story",
1889), two wonderful stories about old people. The family name of Chekhov's
Ionych, Startsev, comes from старец (old man, elderly
monk). Старец was the nickname Chekhov gave Suvorin, the editor of the
Novoe Vremya newspaper. Interestingly, Amfiteatrov signed
his contributions to Novoe Vremya Old Gentleman (Alexander
Chekhov calls him "Old" in a letter to his younger brother).
*a character and part-time narrator in this story
is Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, Austrian novelist
Alexey Sklyarenko