When Van Veen meets Cordula Tobak (who is bending with baby
words of comfort over two unhappy poodlets) in Paris, he tells
her:
The Veens speak only to Tobaks
But Tobaks speak only to dogs.
In the dialogue that follows Cordula quotes another
"saying:"
'The Veens are much too gay as dogs
go.'
'If you collect adages,' persisted Van, 'let me
quote an Arabian one. Paradise is only one assbaa south of a pretty girl's
sash.' (3.2)
Adages (pogovorki) are also mentioned in V. F.
Odoevsky's fairy tale Gorodok v tabakerke ("The Snuff-Box Town,"
1834):
- Позвольте мне спросить
у вас: зачем вы к каждому слову всё говорите
"динь-динь-динь"?
- Уж у нас поговорка такая, - отвечал
мальчик-колокольчик.
- Поговорка? - заметил Миша. -
А вот папенька говорит, что очень нехорошо привыкать к
поговоркам...
...Вот видишь ли, Миша, это
тебе урок: вперед не смейся над теми, у которых поговорка дурная;
иной и с поговоркою, а больше другого
знает, и можно от него кое-чему научиться.
(Apologies, I leave these
fragments untranslated. The fairy tale's little hero finds himself
inside a piano. It all happens in his dream.)
Odoevsky is a millenium-old name. Odoev, a town in the
Province of Tula, was the seat of Princes Odoevsky (who belonged to the
House of Rurik). In Ilf and Petrov's "The Golden Calf," Odoev is renamed
Udoev (from udoy, "yield of milk, milking"). In the same novel (perhaps
even in the same chapter) the group of writers Stal'noe vymya
("udder of steel") is mentioned. No allusion to Stalin intended, although one is
tempted to read it in.
Alexey
Sklyarenko