Van remembered that his tutor's great friend, the learned but
prudish Semyon Afanasievich Vengerov, then a young associate professor but
already a celebrated Pushkinist (1855-1954), used to say that the only vulgar
passage in his author's work was the cannibal joy of young gourmets tearing
'plump and live' oysters out of their 'cloisters' in an unfinished canto of
Eugene Onegin. (1.38)
On Antiterra S. A. Vengerov (1855-1920) is granted a much longer life
than the one he lived in our world. In a letter of June 14, 1889, to
Vengerov the philosopher and poet Vladimir Solovyov (1853-1900) wishes to
Vengerov to reach if not Methuselah's then at least Galakhov's age in order to
complete his enormous bibliographic work ("monumentum aere
perennius"):
От души желаю Вам сравняться в долготе
дней если не с Мафусаилом, то по крайней мере с Алексеем Дмитриевичем Галаховым,
чтобы довести до конца monumentum aere perennius. (В. С Соловьёв — С. А.
Венгерову, 14. VI. 1889; Письма, СПб., 1909. т. 2, с. 315).
Vengerov is a friend of Van's Russian tutor Andrey Andreevich Aksakov
(AAA). In his Literaturnaya ispoved' ("The Literary Confession,"
1854) Vyazemski mentions A. D. Galakhov (1807-92), a historian of
literature, compiler of textbooks and anthologies (the
so-called khrestomatii), and S. T. Aksakov (1791-1859), the
author of The Family Chronicle, The Childhood Years of Bagrov
Grandson, and Notes of a Gun Hunter in the Province of
Orenburg:
Сознаться должен я, что наши
хрестоматы
Насчет моих стихов не очень
тoроваты.
Бывал и я в чести; но ныне век
другой:
Наш
век был детский век, а этот — деловой.
Но что ни говори, а Плаксин и
Галахов,
Браковщики живых и судьи славных
прахов,
С
оглядкою меня выводят напоказ,
Не расточая мне своих хвалебных
фраз.
...Почтенной публикой не очень я
забочусь,
Когда с пером в руке за рифмами
охочусь.
В
самой охоте есть и жизнь, и цель своя
(В Аксакове прочти поэтику
ружья).
The hunting [for
rhymes] has its own life and goal
(Read in
Aksakov the poetics of gun).
Ada's husband Andrey
Andreevich Vinelander (a namesake of Van's tutor) is a great sportsman who
knows the Western game remarkably well (3.8).
Speaking of Stalin ("a
certain Crimean Khan" whom Churchill in his memoirs calls "a great good
man"), Solovyov is the author of Povest' ob Antikhriste ("The Tale
about Antichrist," 1900) included in Tri Razgovora o voine, progresse i
kontse vsemirnoy istorii ("Three Conversations about the War, Progress
and the End of the World History"). The authorship of "The Tale about
Antichrist" is ascribed to a monk named Pansofiy
(Pansophius).
Alexey
Sklyarenko