One of the NW Hawaiian Islands, Lisianski Island was named after
Yuri Lisianski, the commanding officer of the sloop-of-war Neva, an
exploratory ship which participated in Admiral Krusenstern's voyage and
which ran aground on the island in 1805. In his Ostrov Sakhalin
(The Sakhalin Island, 1895) Chekhov mentions Krusenstern
(who believed, as first explorers did, that Sakhalin was a peninsula).
Before he went to Sakhalin, Chekhov, in a letter of February 19-21,
1890, had asked Suvorin to send him Krusenstern's atlas: Атлас Крузенштерна мне нужен теперь или по возвращении из
Сахалина. Лучше теперь. Вы пишете, что карта его плоха. Потому-то она мне и
нужна, что она плоха, а хорошую я уже купил у Ильина за 65 к.
In a letter of Febr. 23, 1890, Chekhov thanks Suvorin for Krusenstern
(who "writes good"): Спасибо за Крузенштерна. Хорошо
пишет.
The Russian Admiral's German name brings to mind Robinson Crusoe, the
eponymous hero of Daniel Defoe's novel (1719) who got shipwrecked off the NE
coast of Venezuela, near the Tobago Island. According to Van, the
island received its name after Tobak's ancestor (just as Witch, or Viedma, "was
founded by a Russian admiral," presumably Tobakoff, 2.2):
'His ancestor,' Van pattered on, 'was the famous or
fameux Russian admiral who had an épée duel with Jean Nicot
and after whom the Tobago Islands, or the Tobakoff Islands, are named, I forget
which, it was so long ago, half a millennium.' (2.5)
The passengers of Tobakoff include the Robinson couple: The list yielded the Robinson couple, Robert and Rachel, old
bores of the family (Bob had retired after directing for many years one of Uncle
Dan's offices). (3.5) Uncle Dan (the husband of
Aqua's twin sister Marina, Van's, Ada's and Lucette's mother) is a namseke
of the author of Robinson Crusoe.
Chekhov is the author of Ved'ma (The Witch,
1886), The Duel (1891) and two monologues On the Harm of
Tobacco (1886, 1903). In his book on Sakhalin (chapter X)
Chekhov mentions a former michman who was exiled to
the penal colony in Sakhalin: В Рыковском есть школа,
телеграф, больница и метеорологическая станция имени М. Н. Галкина-Враского,
которою неофициально заведует привилегированный ссыльный, бывший мичман, человек
замечательно трудолюбивый и добрый; он исправляет ещё также должность церковного
старосты. Antosha Chekhonte also wrote an
amusing parody The Flying Islands. After Jules Verne.
(1883).
There had been trouble with her [Ada's] luggage. There still was. Her two maids, who
were supposed to have flown over the day before on a Laputa (freight airplane)
with her trunks, had got stranded somewhere. (Part Four)
Laputa is the flying island in Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's
Travels (1726). Btw., in Tartar ada means "island" (Uzun Ada, a
port in Turkmenia on the Caspian Sea is mentioned in Jules Verne's novel
Claudius Bombarnac)
She [Lucette] drank a
'Cossack pony' of Klass vodka - hateful, vulgar, but potent stuff; had another;
and was hardly able to down a third because her head had started to swim like
hell. Swim like hell from sharks, Tobakovich!... (3.5)
"Tobakovich" reminds one of Sobakevich, a character in Gogol's Dead
Souls. In Chapter Five of Gogol's "poem" Chichikov mentally calls
Sobakevich kulak (a tight-fisted man). According to Chichikov, kto
uzh kulak, tomu ne razognut'sya v ladon' ("he who is tight-fisted can
not have his palm unbent").
The name Sobakevich comes from sobaka (dog). Chekhov is the author
of Dama s sobachkoy (The Lady with the Little Dog, 1899).
According to Van,
The Veens speak only to Tobaks
But Tobaks speak only to dogs.
[Viny govoryat lish' s Tobakami,
a Tobaki govoryat lish' s sobakami] (3.2)
The phrase k chertyam sobach'im (to the devils) occurs in
Ada thrice:
Upon first noticing this immediate, sustained, and in
her case rather eager and mocking but really quite harmless replay of this or
that recent discourse, she felt tickled at the thought that she, poor Aqua, had
accidentally hit upon such a simple method of recording and transmitting speech,
while technologists (the so-called Eggheads) all over the world were trying to
make publicly utile and commercially rewarding the extremely elaborate and still
very expensive, hydrodynamic telephones and other miserable gadgets that were to
replace those that had gone k chertyam sobach'im (Russian 'to the
devil') with the banning of an unmentionable 'lammer.' (1.3)
But, added Ada, just before being whisked away and
deprived of her crayon (tossed out by Marina k chertyam sobach'im, to
hell's hounds - and it did remind one of Rose's terrier that had kept trying to
hug Dan's leg) the charming glimpse was granted her of tiny Van, with another
sweet boy, and blond-bearded, white-bloused Aksakov, walking up to the house,
and, oh yes, she had forgotten her hoop - no, it was still in the taxi.
(1.24)
Especially so now - when everything had gone to the
hell curs, k chertyam sobach'im, of Jeroen Anthnizoon van Äken and the
molti aspetti affascinati of his enigmatica arte, as Dan
explained with a last sigh to Dr Nikulin and to nurse Bellabestia ('Bess') to
whom he bequeathed a trunkful of museum catalogues and his second-best catheter.
(2.10)
kulak + a = kukla + a = akula +
k (kulak - Russ., fist; Tartar, ear;
uzun-kulak, "long ear," is Tartar for "steppe telegraph;" in the
malheureux Pompier's cheap novel La Condition Humaine the
term 'Vandemonian' is glossed as 'koulak tasmanian d'origin
hollandaise,' kukla - doll;
puppet; Aqua's last note begins: Aujourd'hui
(heute-toity!) I, this eye-rolling toy, have earned the psykitsch
right to enjoy a landparty with Herr Doctor Sig, Nurse Joan the Terrible,
and several 'patients,' in the neighboring bor (piney wood)...
1.3; Dan proposed to Marina in the Up elevator of Manhattan's first
ten-floor building, was indignantly rejected at the seventh stop
(Toys), came down alone and, to air his feelings, set off in a
counter-Fogg direction on a triple trip round the globe, adopting, like an
animated parallel, the same itinerary every time...
1.1; akula - shark, a rhyme word of
Cordula)
Akula (shark) appears at the end of Chekhov's
story Gusev (1890), which is set in the Indian
Ocean:
After that another dark body appeared. It was a
shark. It swam under Gusev with dignity and no show of interest, as though it
did not notice him, and sank down upon its back, then it turned belly upwards,
basking in the warm, transparent water and languidly opened its jaws with two
rows of teeth. The harbour pilots are delighted, they stop to see what will come
next. After playing a little with the body the shark nonchalantly puts its jaws
under it, cautiously touches it with its teeth, and the sailcloth is rent its
full length from head to foot; one of the weights falls out and frightens the
harbour pilots, and striking the shark on the ribs goes rapidly to the
bottom.
Overhead at this time the clouds are massed together on the side
where the sun is setting; one cloud like a triumphal arch, another like a lion,
a third like a pair of scissors. . . . From behind the clouds a broad, green
shaft of light pierces through and stretches to the middle of the sky; a little
later another, violet-coloured, lies beside it; next that, one of gold, then one
rose-coloured. . . . The sky turns a soft lilac. Looking at this gorgeous,
enchanted sky, at first the ocean scowls, but soon it, too, takes tender,
joyous, passionate colours for which it is hard to find a name in human
speech.
Gusev (or "Gusinykh," or
"Gusiadi") was Chekhov's name for his brother Alexander (who was an
alcoholic and had an enlarged liver; the name Gusev comes from
gus', "goose"). See Chekhov's letters to his brother.
See also my notes Dobro s kulakami ("Good
should have Fists") and In Vino Veritas.
Alexey Sklyarenko (Alkogolik-Pianovsky who hates foie
gras)