After a long journey
down corridors where pretty little things tripped by, shaking thermometers, and
first an ascent and then a descent in two different lifts, the second of which
was very capacious with a metal-handled black lid propped against its wall and
bits of holly or laurel here and there on the soap-smelling floor, Dorofey, like
Onegin's coachman, said priehali ('we have arrived') and gently
propelled Van, past two screened beds, toward a third one near the window. There
he left Van, while he seated himself at a small table in the door corner and
leisurely unfolded the Russian-language newspaper Golos (Logos).
(1.42)
In the drafts of Pushkin's Eugene Onegin (One: LII: 9a), Ivan
(Onegin's coachman who is never mentioned in the final version) says:
Priekhali! ("we have arrived!")
She
[Ada] could not tell her
husband while he was ill. Van would have to wait until Andrey was sufficiently
well to bear the news and that might take some time. Of course, she would have
to do everything to have him completely cured, there was a wondermaker in
Arizona -
'Sort of patching up a bloke before hanging him,' said
Van. (3.8)
In his poem Vo glubine sibirskikh rud... ("In the depth of
Sibirean mines," 1826) addressed to the Decembrists (five of whom, including
Pushkin's friend Ryleev and Pestel whom Pushkin had met in Kishinev, were
hanged) Pushkin uses an archaic form of golos (voice),
glas:
Любовь и дружество до
вас
Дойдут
сквозь мрачные затворы,
Как в ваши каторжные норы
Доходит мой свободный
глас.
Love and friendship will o'errun
you
through the sombre, shackled
gates,
As my free
voice now comes to you
through these craggy
grates.
(transl. Alfia
Wallace)
Pushkin's Stansy
("Stanzas," 1926) begin:
В надежде славы и добра
Гляжу вперед я без
боязни:
Начало славных дней Петра
Мрачили мятежи и
казни.
In the hope of glory and
good
I look ahead without
fear.
The beginning of Peter's glorious
days
were clouded by revolts and
executions.
In Russian slava means "glory" and
"fame." In Pushkin's Razgovor knigoprodavtsa s poetom ("Conversation of
Bookseller with Poet," 1824) Bookseller calls slava (fame) "a
gaudy patch upon the songster threadbare rags" (see in EO
Commentary, II, pp. 12-19 the full text of the poem translated by
VN).
In his Stansy Pushkin's
pairs slava with dobro (good). Opravdanie
dobra ("Justification of Good," 1895) is the main work of Vladimir Solovyov
(the author of Tri razgovora, "Three Conversation," and Tri
svidaniya, "Three Meetings"). In his book Solovyov
defines Logos as bogochelovek ('God-Man,' God incarnate) or
sushchiy razum (absolute
intellect):
Растения физиологически вбирают в себя окружающую среду
(неорганические вещества и физические воздействия, благодаря которым они
питаются и растут); животные сверх того, что питаются растениями, и
психологически вбирают в себя (в своё сознание) уже более широкий круг
соотносящихся с ними, через ощущения, явлений; человек, кроме того, разумом
включает в себя и отдаленные, непосредственно не ощущаемые круги бытия, он может
(на высокой степени развития) обнять всё в одном или понять смысл всего;
наконец, богочеловек, или сущий разум (Логос), не отвлеченно только понимает, а
в действительности осуществляет смысл всего, или совершенный нравственный
порядок, обнимая и связывая всё живою личною силой любви. (Chapter Nine,
IV)
On Antiterra they
thank Log (curtailed Logos?) when we thank Bog (God).
Zhivaya lichnaya sila lyubvi (the live personal power of love)
mentioned by Solovyov brings to mind ruchyi lyubvi (the streams of
love) in Pushkin's poem Noch' ("The Night," 1823) written in the
Alexandrines and beginning:
Moy golos dlya tebya i
laskovyi i tomnyi...
For you my voice both
tender and languid...
Dorofey is a male nurse in the
Kalugano Lakeview hospital where Van recovers from the wound he received in a
pistol duel with Captain Tapper. Van fights his duel in the Kalugano forest near
the Dorofey road (where Rack and his family used to rent a
cottage):
'Where are we now, Johnny
dear?' asked Van as they swung out of the lake's orbit and sped along a suburban
avenue with clapboard cottages among laundry-lined pines.
'Dorofey Road,' cried the driver above the din of the motor. 'It abuts at
the forest.' (1.42)
In Rodoslovnaya moego
geroya (The Pedigree of my Hero, 1836), the poem written in
the Onegin stanza, Pushkin mentions Dorofey Yezerski, the hero's
ancestor who had twelve sons:
От них два
сына рождены:
Якуб и
Дорофей. В засаде
Убит Якуб, а Дорофей
Родил двенадцать
сыновей.
The name Yezerski comes
from yezero, an obsolete form of ozero (lake).
Sofiyskiy Khronograph (the Novgorod "Sophian Chronicle") mentioned in
Pushkin's poem brings to mind Princess Sofia Zemski, the daughter of Prince Ivan
Temnosiniy, a former viceroy of Estoty and a direct descendant of the
Yaroslav rulers of pre-Tartar
times. (1.1)
One of the Yezerskis is
compared to a mosquito squashed by the Tartars' heavy hind quarters
and another participated in the battle of Kulikovo and with slava
(glory), though with losses, got drunk on the blood of the
Tartars:
При Калке
Один из них был схвачен в
свалке,
А там раздавлен, как комар,
Задами тяжкими
татар.
Зато со славой, хоть с уроном,
Другой Езерский,
Елизар,
Упился кровию татар,
Между Непрядвою и
Доном,
Ударя
с тыла в табор их
С дружиной суздальцев
своих.
Pushkin's Yezerski brings to
mind Ozerov, the author of Dimitri Donskoy (1807), a tragedy in
the Alexandrines. Ozerov (who went mad in September 1812, after hearing the news
that Napoleon had entered Moscow) is mentioned by Pushkin in Chapter One of
EO:
there Ozerov involuntary
tributes
of public tears, of
plaudits
shared
with the young Semyonova (XVIII:
5-7)
Prince Dmitri Donskoy who
defeated Mamai at the battle of Kulikovo (1380) brings to mind Baron
d'Onsky, Demon's adversary in a sword duel (1.2).
On Antiterra where Tartary
spreads from Kurland to the Kurils the Russians must have lost the
battle of Kulikovo and migrated, across "the ha-ha of a doubled
ocean," to America. The last poem of Blok's cycle Na pole
Kulikovom ("On the Field of Kulikovo," 1908) has the epigraph from
Drakon ("The Dragon," 1900), one of Solovyov's last
poems:
И мглою бед
неотразимых
Грядущий день
заволокло.
And the coming day is
clouded
with the mist of
irrisistable misfortunes.
The author of "The Twelve"
(1918) and Solovyinyi sad ("The Nightingale Garden,"
1915), in one of his poems Blok calls Russia "The New America." In his poem
Ya vizhu blesk zabytyi mnoy ("I see the splendor I've forgotten," 1913)
Blok mentions the low chest-voice (golos nizkiy i grudnoy) of his
first love. In his article V zashchitu A. Bloka ("In Defence of A.
Blok," Novvyi Put', No. 26, 1931) N. A. Berdyaev says
that Logos is completely absent from Blok's lyrical
poetry:
Он может быть был выше ума, но
ума в нём не было никакого, ему чуждо было начало Логоса, он пребывал
исключительно в Космосе, в душе
мира.
In Krokodil:
Neobyknovennoe sobytie ili passazh v Passazhe ("The Crocodile: An
Extraordinary Event or What Came to Pass in the Passage," 1865), a sitire
on Chernyshevski who wrote "What to Do?" imprisoned in the Peter-and-Paul
Fortress, Dostoevski makes fun of the newspaper Golos ("The Voice")
turning it into Volos ("A Hair"). There is a saying: ni golosu, ni
volosu ne ver' ("trust neither the voice, nor hair"). volos = slovo (word). In Chapter Seven of EO Tatiana finds
slovo (le mot) for Onegin: "a
parody."
Alexey
Sklyarenko