What makes Stephen's terrific observation even more interesting is the fact that in the draft of the "editor's" foreword to Belkin's Tales November 16 is the day of Belkin's untimely death:
П. И. Бел<кин>, осенью прошлого года занемог простудною лихорадкою, обратившуюся в горячку и умер, не смотря на неусыпные старания уездного нашего лекаря, человека весьма искусного особенно в лечении закоренелых болезней как то: мозолей и т. п. Он умер на моих руках, исполня христианские обязанности в пр.<ошлом> 1829 году ноября 16 дня на 29 году от рожд.<ения> и погребен в церкве села Гор<юхина> близ покойных его родителей (VIII, 590). The volume of Pushkin's complete works in which the draft was printed is dated by 1940.
Alexander Dolinin
On 12/17/14, Stephen Blackwell wrote:
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> Alexey Sklyarenko kindly pointed out my error: not Ivan Karamzin but Nikolay (Mikhailovich) Karamzin.
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> --Stephen Blackwell
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> Dating Anomalies in Nabokov and Pushkin
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> Ever since Brian Boyd’s “Even Homais Nods: Nabokov’s Fallibility, or, How to Revise Lolita,” there has been good reason to disregard the dating anomaly in the creation Nabokov had the “most affection” for. But despite their force and eloquence, Brian’s arguments have never persuaded me, on various levels (unlike most of his other arguments). Despite Nabokov’s ability to make errors of various sorts, this error (that the fifty-six days Humbert claims he has been writing his confession is the wrong number, or that the September dates in the text are scribal errors) does not make sense, at least not as Nabokov’s error. The placement of the key components of the puzzle is too highly marked: in the preface, and almost exactly one page before the end. Just as the beginning of Humbert’s text creates a riddle surrounding Dolly’s birth year, the beginning and ending of Nabokov’s novel clasp at this strangely pr!
ovocative date. The only remaining question, for me, is—why?
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> In a discussion with Deborah Martinsen beginning at the recent ASEEES convention, I realized that her forthcoming article in Nabokov Studies 13, "Lolita as a Petersburg Text," to be released in January 2015, approaches the same problem from a complementary point of view, and I decided I should make my partial information public before the entire project is complete, so that our related efforts might mutually benefit.
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> A year and a half ago, I stumbled onto a partial explanation of the anomaly while teaching a freshman seminar on humor in Russian literature. We were reading some of Pushkin’s Belkin Tales (Tales of the Late Ivan Petrovich Belkin) including the preface, called “From the Publisher,” and in that preface I came upon these passages at the beginning and ending of the letter from a “friend” of the late “Belkin” to the publisher (who is “A. P.”):
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> > My dear Sir, ****!
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> > I had had the honor or receiving your most honorable letter of the 15th of this month on the 23rd of this same month, and in it you pronounce to me your desire for a detailed accounting about the dates of birth and death, service, and domestic arrangements, as well as about the occupations and character of the late Ivan Petrovich Belkin, who was my sincere friend and neighboring estate owner.
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> > There, my Dear Sir, you have all that I could recall concerning the way of life, occupations, character, and appearance of my late neighbor and friend. If it so happens that you are pleased to make some sort of use of my letter, I most respectfully request that you not mention my name in any capacity whatsoever; for although I fully respect and admire writers, I consider it superfluous and, at my age, even indecent to embark on such a calling. With my true respect etc.,
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> > November 16, 1830
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> > Nenaradovo Village
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> (Translation mine, SB)
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Susan Elizabeth Sweeney
Co-Editor, NABOKV-L