EDNote: For a few more snippets of Aikhenvald, I immodestly draw
attention to chapter one of my Zina's Paradox, pp. 25-36. I
have some work in (very slow) progress following up on that section,
and some of Alexey's finds below expand nicely on what I have
previously discovered. I also gave a brief talk on this theme at the
Nabokov museum in 2012, but have not made it into a full article
yet. --SB
Good-by, my book! Like mortal
eyes, imagined ones must close some day. Onegin from his knees
will rise—but his creator strolls away. And yet the ear cannot
right now part with the music and allow the tale to fade; the
chords of fate itself continue to vibrate; and no obstruction
for the sage exists where I have put The End: the shadows of
my world extend beyond the skyline of the page, blue as
tomorrow's morning haze—nor does this terminate the phrase.
Read more at
http://quotes.dictionary.com/goodby_my_book_like_mortal_eyes_imagined_ones#6HkpZsPQdtjcbxj7.99Good-by, my book! Like mortal
eyes, imagined ones must close some day. Onegin from his knees
will rise—but his creator strolls away. And yet the ear cannot
right now part with the music and allow the tale to fade; the
chords of fate itself continue to vibrate; and no obstruction
for the sage exists where I have put The End: the shadows of
my world extend beyond the skyline of the page, blue as
tomorrow's morning haze—nor does this terminate the phrase.
Read more at
http://quotes.dictionary.com/goodby_my_book_like_mortal_eyes_imagined_ones#6HkpZsPQdtjcbxj7.99Good-by, my
book! Like mortal eyes, imagined ones must close some day.
Onegin from his knees will rise—but his creator strolls
away. And yet the ear cannot right now part with the music
and allow the tale to fade; the chords of fate itself
continue to vibrate; and no obstruction for the sage exists
where I have put The End: the shadows of my world extend
beyond the skyline of the page, blue as tomorrow's morning
haze—nor does this terminate the phrase
Read more at http://quotes.dictionary.com/goodby_my_book_like_mortal_eyes_imagined_ones#6HkpZsPQdtjcbxj7.99
Good-by, my
book! Like mortal eyes, imagined ones must close some day.
Onegin from his knees will rise—but his creator strolls
away. And yet the ear cannot right now part with the music
and allow the tale to fade; the chords of fate itself
continue to vibrate; and no obstruction for the sage exists
where I have put The End: the shadows of my world extend
beyond the skyline of the page, blue as tomorrow's morning
haze—nor does this terminate the phrase
Read more at http://quotes.dictionary.com/goodby_my_book_like_mortal_eyes_imagined_ones#6HkpZsPQdtjcbxj7.99
, imagined ones must close some day.
Onegin from his kneels will rise - but his creator strolls
away. And yet the ear can not right now part with the music
and allow the tale to fade; the cords of fate itself continue
to vibrate; and no obstruction for the sage exists where I
have put The End: the shadows of my world extend beyond the
skyline of the page, blue as tomorrow morning's haze - nor
does this terminate the phrase.
The Gift's "epilogic poem mimicks an
Onegin stanza" and brings to mind the "open ending" of Pushkin's
novel in verse. In his Foreword to The Gift VN wonders
"how far the imagination of the reader will follow the young
lovers after they have been dismissed."
In his Introduction to The Silhouettes of
Russian Writers (1923) the critic (and VN's personal
friend) Yuli Ayhenvald affirms that a
writer never finishes his works:
Писатель, в сущности, тоже
никогда не заканчивает своих произведений (вообще, творчество и
конец - понятия несовместимые).
...Он продолжает
дело бога, воплощает его первоосновную мысль. Творение ещё не
кончилось, и поэт, священник искусства, облечён великой
миссией вести его дальше, развивать предварительные наброски и
планы божества, контуры природы. Наместник бога на земле, так
сплетает он своё творчество с творчеством вселенной.
The artist continues God's work implementing his
initial main idea. The creation is not yet finished, and the
mission of a poet, a priest of art, is to lead it further, to
develop the preliminary drafts and plans of deity, the sketches
of nature.
Not only Pushkin's EO but also VN's Dar is thus
unfinished (some critics see in Solus Rex an attempt to
complete The Gift). Would it be too daring to regard Ada
or Ardor as a continuation of VN's last (and best)
Russian novel? Van and Ada die immediately after comleting their
Family Chronicle - but is their book finished? I
suspect, it is not and should be completed by us, readers.
Ada + ardor = Adora + dar =
da/ad + Avrora + dva + lion/loin - Vavilon
Ada + shar = sharada = dar + sharaban
- barn
da - yes; the initial title of
Dar (The Gift)
ad -
hell
Avrora - Aurora, the ancient
Roman goddess of the dawn; Russian protected cruiser, on 25
October 1917 a blank shot from Avrora's forecastle gun
signaled the start of the assault on the Winter Palace, which
was to be the beginning of the Revolution
dva -
2
Lion - Russian spelling of
Lyon (a city in France)
Vavilon - Babylon
shar - sphere; globe;
ball; balloon
sharada - charade
sharaban - charabanc
The girl named Adora is mentioned by Van in the epilogue of
Ada:
I had a schoolmate called Vanda. And I
knew a girl called Adora, little thing in my last
floramor. What makes me see that bit as the purest sanglot
in the book? What is the worst part of dying? (5.6)
He was thirsty, but the champagne he
had bought, with the softly rustling roses, remained sealed
and he had not the heart to remove the silky dear head from
his breast so as to begin working on the explosive bottle. He
had fondled and fouled her many times in the course of the
last ten days, but was not sure if her name was really Adora,
as everybody maintained - she, and the other girl, and a third
one (a maidservant, Princess Kachurin), who seemed to have
been born in the faded bathing suit she never changed and
would die in, no doubt, before reaching majority or the first
really cold winter on the beach mattress which she was moaning
on now in her drugged daze. And if the child really was called
Adora, then what was she? - not Rumanian, not Dalmatian, not
Sicilian, not Irish, though an echo of brogue could be
discerned in her broken but not too foreign English. Was she
eleven or fourteen, almost fifteen perhaps? Was it really her
birthday - this twenty-first of July, nineteen-four or eight
or even several years later, on a rocky Mediterranean
peninsula? (2.3)
Princess Kachurin brings to mind VN's poem "К кн. С. М.
Качурину" ("To Prince S. M. Kachurin," 1947; see in The
Nabokovian # 53 my "Ada as a Triple Dream"). On the
other hand, in Part Three of The Gift a corpulent new
romance by General Kachurin, "The Red Princess," is mentioned:
Фёдор Константинович добрался до
книжной лавки. В витрине виднелось, среди зигзагов, зубцов и
цифр советских обложек (это было время, когда в моде там были
заглавия "Любовь Третья", "Шестое чувство", "Семнадцатый
пункт"), несколько эмигрантских новинок: новый, дородный, роман
генерала Качурина "Красная Княжна", кончеевское "Сообщение",
белые, чистые книги двух маститых беллетристов,
"Чтец-Декламатор", изданный в Риге, крохотная, в ладонь, книжка
стихов молодой поэтессы, руководство "Что должен знать шофёр" и
последний труд доктора Утина "Основы счастливого брака". Было и
несколько старых петербургских гравюр, -- одна на зеркальный
выворот, с перестановкой ростральной колонны по отношению к
соседним зданиям.
Fyodor Konstantinovich reached the bookshop. In
the window he could see, among the zigzags, cogs and numerals of
Soviet cover designs (this was the time when the fashion there
was to have titles like Third Love, The Sixth Sense and
Point Seventeen), several new emigre publications: a
corpulent new romance by General Kachurin, The Red Princess,
Koncheyev's Communication, the pure white paperbacks of
two venerable novelists, an anthology of recitable poetry
published in Riga, the minute, palm-sized volume of a young
poetess, a handbook What a Driver Should Know, and the
last work of Dr. Utin, The Foundations of a Happy Marriage.
There were also several old St. Petersburg engravings-in one of
which a mirror-like transposition had put the rostral column on
the wrong side of the neighboring buildings.
In German Gift means "poison." The
list of books published by Busch's uncle (who accepts for
publication Fyodor's book on Chernyshevski) include Otravitel'nitsa
(The Poisoner) by Adelaida Svetozarov:
Список им уже изданных книг был
мал, но чрезвычайно разнообразен: переводы каких-то немецких
психо-аналитических романов, сделанные дядей Буша,
"Отравительница" Аделаиды Светозаровой, сборник анекдотов,
анонимная поэма "Аз", -- но среди этого хлама были две-три
настоящие книги, как, например, прекрасная "Лестница в Облаках"
Германа Лянде и его же "Метаморфозы Мысли".
His list of published books was small, but
remarkably eclectic: translations of some German psychoanalytic
novels done by an uncle of Busch's; The Poisoner by
Adelaida Svetozarov; a collection of funny stories; an anonymous
poem entitled "I"; but among this trash there were two or three
genuine books, such as, for example, the wonderful Stairway
to the Clouds by Hermann Lande and also his Metamorphoses
of Thought. (The Gift, Chapter Three)
Dolly had inherited her
mother's beauty and temper but also an older ancestral strain
of whimsical, and not seldom deplorable, taste, well
reflected, for instance, in the names she gave her daughters:
Aqua and Marina ('Why not Tofana?' wondered the good and
sur-royally antlered general with a controlled belly laugh,
followed by a small closing cough of feigned detachment - he
dreaded his wife's flares). (1.1)
Tofana is a famous Sicilian poisoner
(mentioned by VN in King, Queen, Knave).
Fyodor Godunov-Cherdyntsev is the author of "The
Life of Chernyshevski" (Chapter Four of The Gift).
Chernyshevski and his Chto delat'? (What to Do?)
are mentioned by Ayhenvald in the Introduction to The
Silhouettes of Russian Writers:
С романом Чернышевского "Что
делать?" русской литературе нечего делать... но историк русской
общественности, безусловно, примет его в поле своего зрения.
Russian
literature has nothing to do with Chernyshevski's novel "What
to Do?" but a historian of Russian social and public life will
certainly take it into account.
In his turn, Ayhenvald (Eichenwald) is mentioned
in Chapter Three of The Gift:
"Ваше сравнение абсолютно
неправильно, -- сказала Александра Яковлевна. -- Смешно! В
медицине Чехов не оставил ни малейшего следа, музыкальные
композиции Руссо -- только курьезы, а между тем никакая история
русской литературы не может обойти Чернышевского. Но я другого
не понимаю, -- быстро продолжала она, -- какой Федору
Константиновичу интерес писать о людях и временах, которых он по
всему своему складу бесконечно чужд? Я, конечно, не знаю, какой
будет у него подход. Но если ему, скажем просто, хочется вывести
на чистую воду прогрессивных критиков, то ему не стоит
стараться: Волынский и Айхенвальд уже давно это сделали".
"Your comparison is absolutely wrong," said
Alexandra Yakovlevna. "It's ridiculous! Chekhov didn't leave the
slightest trace in medicine, Rousseau's musical compositions are
mere curiosities, but in this case no history of Russian
literature can omit Chernyshevski. But there's something else I
don't understand," she continued swiftly. "What interest does
Fyodor Konstantinovich have in writing about people and times to
which his whole mentality is completely alien? Of course I don't
know what his approach will be. But if he, let's speak plainly,
wants to show up the progressive critics then it's not worth the
effort: Volynski and Eichenwald did this long ago."
Brother and sister, Van and Ada are life-long
lovers. According to Fyodor Godunov-Cherdyntsev, a novel about
incest [Leonhard Frank's Bruder und Schwester,
1929] is considered the crown of literature in Germany.
Alexey Sklyarenko