From Ada's letter to Van: I salute the
good auditor. (2.1)
In a letter of November 29, 1824, to Vyazemski Pushkin uses the
same address:
Прощай, добрый слышатель; отвечай же мне на моё
полу-слово.
Goodbye, the good auditor (slyshatel'); please answer me to
my half-word (polu-slovo, "half-word," hints at the phrase ponimat'
s poluslova, "take the hint, be quick in the uptake").
Pushkin's letter begins:
Ольдекоп, мать его в рифму; надоел!
I'm sick to death of Oldekop!
Oldekop (a translator who in 1824 published a German translation of
Pushkin's Caucasian Captive together with the original) rhymes with
zhop (Gen. pl. of zhopa, "arse"), hence mat' ego v
rifmu (a play on our national "Oedipean oath").
In one of her letters to Van Ada mentions her "rhyme-name town:"
We are still at the candy-pink and pisang-green albergo
where you once stayed with your father. He is awfully nice to me, by the way. I
enjoy going places with him. He and I have gamed at Nevada, my rhyme-name town,
but you are also there, as well as the legendary river of Old Rus.
(2.1)
Like Demon (Van's and Ada's father), Pushkin was a gambler. In the same
letter to Vyazemski Pushkin mentions the manuscript of his poems that in 1820 he
lost to Nikita Vsevolozhski:
Я проиграл потом рукопись мою Никите Всеволожскому
(разумеется, с известным условием).
"The legendary river of Old Rus" is the Neva. Like Pushkin's Onegin, VN was
born upon the Neva's banks.
In the same letter Pushkin responds to Vyazemski's crticism
of Tatiana's letter to Onegin in Chapter Three of Eugene
Onegin:
Дивлюсь, как письмо Тани очутилось у тебя. NB. истолкуй
это мне. Отвечаю на твою критику: Нелюдим не есть мизантроп, т. е.
ненавидящий людей, а убегающий от людей. Онегин нелюдим для деревенских соседей;
Таня полагает причиной тому то, что в глуши, в деревне всё ему скучно, и
что блеск один может привлечь его... если впроччем смысл и не
совсем точен, то тем более истины в письме; письмо женщины, к тому же 17 летней,
к тому же влюблённой!
Pushkin points out that Tatiana, when she falls in love with Onegin
and writes him a love letter, is seventeen. In 1889 (when her letter to Van from
Los Angeles is written)Ada is also seventeen.
Pushkin appends to his letter Telega zhizni ("The Cart of
Life," 1823), a poem in which Time is compared to the coachman and which
contains russkiy titul (the Russian oath):
Хоть тяжело подчас в ней бремя,
Телега на ходу легка;
Ямщик лихой, седое время,
Везёт, не слезет с облучка.
С утра садимся мы в телегу;
Мы рады голову сломать
И, презирая страх и негу,
Кричим: валяй, <----- ---->!
Но в полдень нет уж той отваги.
Порастрясло нас; нам страшней
И косогоры, и овраги;
Кричим: полегче, дуралей!
Катит по прежнему телега;
Под вечер мы привыкли к ней
И дремля едем до ночлега —
А время гонит лошадей.
Tho’ it is hard – the earthly load,
The Cart is easy in its
move,
The reckless couch-time, on road,
Will not get of his bench
above.
In early morn we take our places;
We glad to break our empty
head,
And leaving leisure for the races,
We cry, “Go on, you idler,
damned!”
At noon, our bravery’s diminished;
We have been tossed and
more afraid
Of slopes, steep, and ravines, peevish,
And cry, “Be easier,
you, brat!”
The cart rolls in the former fashion,
By evening, we have
used to it,
Wait for night lodgings, doze, patient, –
And Time tends
horses to full speed.
(transl. Evg. Bonver)
In his essay Texture of Time Van mentions two
coachmen at Ardis:
The main difficulty, I hasten to explain,
consists in the experimenter not being able to use the same object at different
times (say, the Dutch stove with its little blue sailing boats in the nursery of
Ardis Manor in 1884 and 1888) because of the two or more impressions borrowing
from one another and forming a compound image in the mind; but if different
objects are to be chosen (say, the faces of two memorable coachmen: Ben Wright,
1884, and Trofim Fartukov, 1888), it is impossible, insofar as my own research
goes, to avoid the intrusion not only of different characteristics but of
different emotional circumstances, that do not allow the two objects to be
considered essentially equal before, so to speak, their being exposed to the
action of Time. (Part Four)
Alexey Sklyarenko