'Sladko!
(Sweet!)’ Pushkin used to exclaim in relation to a different species [of mosquitoes] in Yukon.
(1.17)
The characters of Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago (known
on Antiterra as Les Amours du Docteur Mertvago, "a mystical romance by
a pastor," and Mertvago Forever) include the lawyer Komarovski
(Lara Guichard's first lover). His name comes from komar (mosquito).
When Lara (cf. Eugene and Lara, a stage version of a famous Russian
romance in which Marina plays the heroine, 1.2) marries Pasha Antipov, the
guests at the wedding party cry out "Gor'ko! (Bitter!):"
Гости кричали "горько, не пьётся", — а с
другого конца согласным рёвом ответствовали: "надо подсластить", — и молодые,
конфузливо ухмыляясь, целовались. Людмила Капитоновна
пропела им величание "Виноград" с двойным припевом "Дай вам Бог любовь да совет"
и песню "Расплетайся трубчата коса, рассыпайтесь русы волоса." (Book One,
Part Four, chapter 3)
Soon after their wedding Pasha and Lara move to Yuryatin (as
Perm is renamed by the author).
In a letter of October 16, 1900, to A. M. Peshkov Chekhov
writes:
The action [of Chekhov's
play Three Sisters] is laid in a provincial town, as it
might be Perm, the surroundings military, artillery.
Discussing with Van her dramatic career, Ada, who played Irina
in a somewhat abridged version [of
Four Sisters, as Chekhov's play is known on
Antiterra] which... kept only the references to Sister Varvara, the
garrulous originalka (‘odd female’ —
as Marsha calls her) but eliminated her actual scenes, so that the title of the
play might have been The Three Sisters,
as indeed it appeared in the wittier of the local
notices, mentions Perm:
"You see ("the blush now replaced by a
matovaya pallor") I'm not hiding one stain of what rhymes with Perm."
(2.9)
Irina mockingly dubs the city 'Permanent:'
Much to the nun’s dismay, her three
sisters dream only of one thing — leaving cool, damp, mosquito-infested but
otherwise nice and peaceful ‘Permanent’ as Irina mockingly dubs it, for high
life in remote and sinful Moscow, Id., the former capital of Estotiland.
(ibid.)
A. M. Peshkov's penname, Maxim Gorky, comes from
gor'kiy (bitter).* The characters of
Chekhov's Three Sisters include Solyony ("Mr. Salty"),
the officer who imagines that he resembles Lermontov and who kills Tuzenbakh in
a duel. Before he goes to fight his duel, Tuzenbakh tells Irina:
Look, there's a tree which has withered,
but it still sways in the wind like the other trees. So, I think, if I should
die, I shall still participate in life some way or other.
(Act Four)
Some of Ada's characters (Marina's twin sister Aqua,
Van's and Ada's half-sister Lucette and Ada's husband Andrey Vinelander) seem to
participate in life even after their deaths. And no one can deny
that Pushkin, Lermontov, Chekhov and Nabokov participate in our
everyday life.
As to Viedma (Witch), see Ada, Part Two, chapter 2,
and my posts on Admiral Tobakoff.
*Gorky died in 1936, one year before the hundredth
anniversary of Pushkin's death. Some believe that he was
poisoned.
Alexey Sklyarenko