Ещё амуры, черти, змеи
На сцене скачут и
шумят;
Ещё усталые
лакеи
На шубах у подъезда спят
Still amors, devils, serpents
on the stage caper and make noise;
still the tired footmen
sleep on the pelisses at the carriage porch (XXVI:
1-4)
Prince A. A. Shahovskoy (1777-1846) is a target of
several epigrams by Pushkin and Vyazemsky ("the scourge of all princely
rhymesters whose names begin with Sh."), both of whom call him
Shutovskoy and, shutovskoy kolpak meaning "fool's cap," crown
him. The comedy name (and adjective) Shutovskoy comes from
shut (clown). But shut is also an old euphemism of
chert ("the devil"). One of the devil's two incarnations in VN's
play, Barboshin who pretends that he can not remember Barbashin's name
("you've told me: it begins with Sh.") is a shut. Btw.,
as she sees Barboshin's photo on his visiting
card, Lyubov' (Troshcheykin's wife who thinks that Barboshin is mad)
exclaims: "Why is he in a medieval costume? What's that: King
Lear?" When, in Shakespeare's tragedy, King Lear goes mad, his clown
(Russ., shut) remains his faithful companion.
Любовь. Ты
всегда был трусом. Когда мой ребёнок умер, ты боялся его бедной маленькой тени и
принимал на ночь валерьянку.
(Lyubov' accuses her husband of cowardice: "When my child
died, you were afraid of his poor little shade and took a valerian tincture
before going to bed." Act Three)
In Pushkin's fragment ("In the Corner of a Small
Square"), Valerian is the name Zinaida's lover.
Coming to her husband's rescue, Zinaida says she wants to divorce him and moves
to Kolomna (at the time, outskirts of St. Petersburg). "Домик в Коломне"
(The Small House in Kolomna, 1830) is Pushkin's mock epic in
octaves. One of its characters is the cook Mavra who turns out to be a
man in a woman's disguise. For the affinities of this character with the
devil in Tit Kosmokratov's story "Уединённый домик на Васильевском" ("The
Solitary Small House in the Vasilievski Island," 1829) see Khodasevich's article
"Pushkin's St. Petersburg Tales" (1914).
The grandparents of Box II were Chekhov's Quina and
Brom: This final dachshund [Box II] followed us into exile, and as late as 1930, in a
suburb of Prague (where my widowed mother spent her last years, on a small
pension provided by the Czech government), he could be still seen going for
reluctant walks with his mistress... (Speak, Memory, p.
40)
Troshcheykin complains that he must live under one roof with
his mother-in-law and mentions "такая такса" ("such a
dachshund"):
Трощейкин. Да... Ты знаешь, как я твою мать люблю и как я рад, что
она живёт у нас, а не в какой-нибудь уютной комнатке с тикающими часами и
такой таксой, хотя бы за два квартала отсюда... (Act
Two)