Nikifor Starov (Vadim's benefactor who can be his real
father) is a namesake of Nikifor, blagorodneyshiy starik (a fine old man), in
Ignat Lebyadkin's fable Tarakan (The Cockroach). Accordig
to Lebyadkin, a character in Dostoevski's Besy (1872), Nikifor
izobrazhaet prirodu (represents nature) and Russia is only a play
of nature (Rossiya est' igra prirody, ne bolee). (The
Possessed, Part One, Chapter Five "The Wise
Serpent")
Dostoevski's Pushkinskaya rech' (the speech at the
unveiling of the Pushkin monument in Moscow, in June,
1880) was a great success with the
audience.
In Leningrad Vadim meets Dora (a friend of Vadim's daughter Bel) near
the monument of Pushkin:
Dora was to meet me Friday morning on the Square of the Arts in front
of the Russian Museum near the statue of Pushkin erected some ten years before
by a committee of weathermen. (5.2)
At the
beginning of Canto Five of Pushkin's Eugene Onegin, pogoda
(weather) rhymes with priroda (nature):
В тот год осенняя погода
Стояла долго на дворе,
Зимы ждала, ждала природа.
Снег выпал только в январе
На третье в ночь.
That year autumnal weather
was a long time abroad;
nature kept waiting and waiting for winter.
Snow fell only in January,
on the night of the second. (I: 1-5)
Btw., "Captain" Lebyadkin (who did not participate in the Crimean War of
1853-56 and who has both arms intact) imagines that he lost his arm in
Sebastopol. Lieutenant Starov (Nadezhda Starov's husband who murders Vadim's
first wife Iris Black) served under General Wrangel in the Crimea. A head wound received in the civil war had left him with a
terrifying tic that caused his face to change suddenly, at variable intervals,
as if a paper bag were being crumpled by an invisible hand. (1.11)
Alexey Sklyarenko