Subject
Nuremberg Old Maid in Ada; Sologub-plus-zero,
Nedotykomka-into-Neznakomka anagrams
Nedotykomka-into-Neznakomka anagrams
From
Date
Body
Demon to Van: 'However, before I advise you of those two facts, I would like to know how long this - how long this has been...' ('going on,' one presumes, or something equally banal, but then all ends are banal - hangings, the Nuremberg Old Maid's iron sting, shooting oneself, last words in the brand-new Ladore hospital, mistaking a drop of thirty thousand feet for the airplane's washroom, being poisoned by one's wife, expecting a bit of Crimean hospitality, congratulating Mr and Mrs Vinelander -) (2.11)
The Nuremberg Old Maid's iron sting brings to mind Sologub's poem Nyurenbergskiy palach ("The Executioner of Nuremberg," 1908).
Sologub + Dorofey + zero = golos/Logos + dub + Orfey + ozero
Nedotykomka + Khan + zad = Neznakomka + otdykh + ad/da
Sologub - Fyodor Sologub (penname of F. K. Teternikov, 1863-1927), poet and novelist, the author of Melkiy Bes ("The Petty Demon," 1905), Paul Verlaine's translator, teacher of mathematics; Sologub's wife Anastasiya Chebotarevski drowned herself in the Neva (in Finnish, Neva means what Veen does in Dutch: "peat bog")
Dorofey - male nurse in the Kalugano hospital: 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)
zero - 0; According to Bess (which is 'fiend' in Russian), Dan's buxom but otherwise disgusting nurse, whom he preferred to all others and had taken to Ardis because she managed to extract orally a few last drops of 'play-zero' (as the old whore called it) out of his poor body, he had been complaining for some time, even before Ada's sudden departure, that a devil combining the characteristics of a frog and a rodent desired to straddle him and ride him to the torture house of eternity. (2.10)
golos - Russ., voice: Much to Van's amusement (the tasteless display of which his mistress neither condoned nor condemned), Andrey was laid up with a cold for most of the week. Dorothy, a born nurser, considerably surpassed Ada (who, never being ill herself, could not stand the sight of an ailing stranger) in readiness of sickbed attendance, such as reading to the sweating and suffocating patient old issues of the Golos Feniksa; but on Friday the hotel doctor bundled him off to the nearby American Hospital, where even his sister was not allowed to Visit him 'because of the constant necessity of routine tests' - or rather because the poor fellow wished to confront disaster in manly solitude. (3.8) Darkbloom ('Notes to Ada'): Golos etc.: Russ., The Phoenix Voice, Russian language newspaper in Arizona.
dub - Russ., oak tree: She [Lucette] would advance up to the center of the weedy playground in front of the forbidden pavilion, and there, with an air of dreamy innocence, start to jiggle the board of an old swing that hung from the long and lofty limb of Baldy, a partly leafless but still healthy old oak (which appeared - oh, I remember, Van! - in a century-old lithograph of Ardis, by Peter de Rast, as a young colossus protecting four cows and a lad in rags, one shoulder bare). (1.34)
Then came several preparatory views of the immediate grounds: the colutea circle, an avenue, the grotto's black O, and the hill, and the big chain around the trunk of the rare oak, Quercus ruslan Chat., and a number of other spots meant to be picturesque by the compiler of the illustrated pamphlet but looking a little shabby owing to inexperienced photography. (2.7)
"Baldy" brings to mind Lysevich, a character in Chekhov's story Bab'ye tsarstvo ("Women's Realm," 1894) whose name comes from lysyi (bald); Lysevich's favorite author whom he recommends to Anna Akimovna is Maupassant; on Terra Mlle Lariviere's story La riviere de diamants is known as La Parure (1884) by Guy de Maupassant (see Darkbloom's 'Notes to Ada'); Quercus ruslan hints at Pushkin's Ruslan and Lyudmila (1820); Lyudmila is a young beauty in Sologub's Petty Demon
Orfey - Russian name of Orpheus, a poet and musician who followed his dead wife, Eurydice, to the underworld; one of Sologub's poems begins: Kamni plyasali pod pesni Orfeya... ("The Stones Danced to the songs of Orpheus..." 1925)
ozero - Russ., lake; '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)
Van recovers from the wound received in a pistol duel with Captain Tapper in the Kalugano Lakeview Hospital: For half a minute Van was sure that he still lay in the car, whereas actually he was in the general ward of Lakeview (Lakeview!) Hospital, between two series of variously bandaged, snoring, raving and moaning men. (ibid.)
cf. Lake Luga, Lake Kitezh and Lake Leman
Nedotykomka - in Sologub's novel, the Petty Demon's name
Khan - supreme ruler of the Tartars; cf. Khan Sosso who rules on Antiterra the ruthless Sovietnamur Khanate (2.2); But then 'everyone has his own taste,' as the British writer Richard Leonard Churchill mistranslates a trite French phrase (chacun a son gout) twice in the course of his novel about a certain Crimean Khan once popular with reporters and politicians, 'A Great Good Man' - according, of course, to the cattish and prejudiced Guillaume Monparnasse about whose new celebrity Ada, while dipping the reversed corolla of one hand in a bowl, was now telling Demon, who was performing the same rite in the same graceful fashion. (1.38)
zad - Russ., back; hind quarters; buttocks
Neznakomka - Russ., Incognita (a poem and a play by Blok); He [Van] headed for the bar, and as he was in the act of wiping the lenses of his black-framed spectacles, made out, through the optical mist (Space's recent revenge!), the girl whose silhouette he recalled having seen now and then (much more distinctly!) ever since his pubescence, passing alone, drinking alone, always alone, like Blok's Incognita. (3.3)
otdykh - Russ., rest; relaxation
ad - Russ., hell; Marina's sister Aqua signed her suicide note: My sister's sister who teper' iz ada ('now is out of hell') (1.3); one of Ada's letters to Van begins: This is a second howl iz ada (out of Hades). (2.1); 'I know there's a Van in Nirvana. I'll be with him in the depths moego ada, of my Hades,' said Ada. (5.6); Orfey v adu ("Orpheus in the Underworld," 1858) is an opera bouffon by Jacques Offenbach; Offenbach is the author of La belle Helene. In EO Pushkin says that his Tatiana is superior to Homer's nasty Helen. Van compares Ada to Helen of Troy: 'Castle True, Castle Bright!' he now cried, 'Helen of Troy, Ada of Ardis! You have betrayed the Tree and the Moth!' 'Perestagne (stop, cesse)!' 'Ardis the First, Ardis the Second, Tanned Man in a Hat, and now Mount Russet -' 'Perestagne!' repeated Ada (like a fool dealing with an epileptic). 'Oh! Qui me rendra mon Helene -' 'Ach, perestagne!' '- et le phalene.' 'Je t'emplie ("prie" and "supplie"), stop, Van. Tu sais que j'en vais mourir.' 'But, but, but' - (slapping every time his forehead) - 'to be on the very brink of, of, of - and then have that idiot turn Keats!' (3.8) Tatiana is a remarkably pretty and proud young nurse in the Lakeview Hospital whom Van begs to massage his legs and who delegates the task to Dorofey (1.42).
da - Russ., yes; from Ada's letters to Van: He [Demon] and I have gamed at Nevada, my rhyme-name town, but you are also there, as well as the legendary river of Old Rus. Da. (2.1) Send me an aerogram with one Russian word - the end of my name and wit. (ibid.); Germ., there; Marina to Van: 'Azov, a Russian humorist, derives erunda [nonsense] from the German hier und da, which is neither here nor there.' (1.37) V. Azov (penname of Vladimir Ashkinazi, 1873-1941) reviewed Sologub's tragedy Pobeda smerti ("The Victory of Death," 1907) dedicated to the author's sister who died of tuberculosis; in his letters to his wife Sologub several times mentions Azov
Alexey Sklyarenko
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The Nuremberg Old Maid's iron sting brings to mind Sologub's poem Nyurenbergskiy palach ("The Executioner of Nuremberg," 1908).
Sologub + Dorofey + zero = golos/Logos + dub + Orfey + ozero
Nedotykomka + Khan + zad = Neznakomka + otdykh + ad/da
Sologub - Fyodor Sologub (penname of F. K. Teternikov, 1863-1927), poet and novelist, the author of Melkiy Bes ("The Petty Demon," 1905), Paul Verlaine's translator, teacher of mathematics; Sologub's wife Anastasiya Chebotarevski drowned herself in the Neva (in Finnish, Neva means what Veen does in Dutch: "peat bog")
Dorofey - male nurse in the Kalugano hospital: 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)
zero - 0; According to Bess (which is 'fiend' in Russian), Dan's buxom but otherwise disgusting nurse, whom he preferred to all others and had taken to Ardis because she managed to extract orally a few last drops of 'play-zero' (as the old whore called it) out of his poor body, he had been complaining for some time, even before Ada's sudden departure, that a devil combining the characteristics of a frog and a rodent desired to straddle him and ride him to the torture house of eternity. (2.10)
golos - Russ., voice: Much to Van's amusement (the tasteless display of which his mistress neither condoned nor condemned), Andrey was laid up with a cold for most of the week. Dorothy, a born nurser, considerably surpassed Ada (who, never being ill herself, could not stand the sight of an ailing stranger) in readiness of sickbed attendance, such as reading to the sweating and suffocating patient old issues of the Golos Feniksa; but on Friday the hotel doctor bundled him off to the nearby American Hospital, where even his sister was not allowed to Visit him 'because of the constant necessity of routine tests' - or rather because the poor fellow wished to confront disaster in manly solitude. (3.8) Darkbloom ('Notes to Ada'): Golos etc.: Russ., The Phoenix Voice, Russian language newspaper in Arizona.
dub - Russ., oak tree: She [Lucette] would advance up to the center of the weedy playground in front of the forbidden pavilion, and there, with an air of dreamy innocence, start to jiggle the board of an old swing that hung from the long and lofty limb of Baldy, a partly leafless but still healthy old oak (which appeared - oh, I remember, Van! - in a century-old lithograph of Ardis, by Peter de Rast, as a young colossus protecting four cows and a lad in rags, one shoulder bare). (1.34)
Then came several preparatory views of the immediate grounds: the colutea circle, an avenue, the grotto's black O, and the hill, and the big chain around the trunk of the rare oak, Quercus ruslan Chat., and a number of other spots meant to be picturesque by the compiler of the illustrated pamphlet but looking a little shabby owing to inexperienced photography. (2.7)
"Baldy" brings to mind Lysevich, a character in Chekhov's story Bab'ye tsarstvo ("Women's Realm," 1894) whose name comes from lysyi (bald); Lysevich's favorite author whom he recommends to Anna Akimovna is Maupassant; on Terra Mlle Lariviere's story La riviere de diamants is known as La Parure (1884) by Guy de Maupassant (see Darkbloom's 'Notes to Ada'); Quercus ruslan hints at Pushkin's Ruslan and Lyudmila (1820); Lyudmila is a young beauty in Sologub's Petty Demon
Orfey - Russian name of Orpheus, a poet and musician who followed his dead wife, Eurydice, to the underworld; one of Sologub's poems begins: Kamni plyasali pod pesni Orfeya... ("The Stones Danced to the songs of Orpheus..." 1925)
ozero - Russ., lake; '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)
Van recovers from the wound received in a pistol duel with Captain Tapper in the Kalugano Lakeview Hospital: For half a minute Van was sure that he still lay in the car, whereas actually he was in the general ward of Lakeview (Lakeview!) Hospital, between two series of variously bandaged, snoring, raving and moaning men. (ibid.)
cf. Lake Luga, Lake Kitezh and Lake Leman
Nedotykomka - in Sologub's novel, the Petty Demon's name
Khan - supreme ruler of the Tartars; cf. Khan Sosso who rules on Antiterra the ruthless Sovietnamur Khanate (2.2); But then 'everyone has his own taste,' as the British writer Richard Leonard Churchill mistranslates a trite French phrase (chacun a son gout) twice in the course of his novel about a certain Crimean Khan once popular with reporters and politicians, 'A Great Good Man' - according, of course, to the cattish and prejudiced Guillaume Monparnasse about whose new celebrity Ada, while dipping the reversed corolla of one hand in a bowl, was now telling Demon, who was performing the same rite in the same graceful fashion. (1.38)
zad - Russ., back; hind quarters; buttocks
Neznakomka - Russ., Incognita (a poem and a play by Blok); He [Van] headed for the bar, and as he was in the act of wiping the lenses of his black-framed spectacles, made out, through the optical mist (Space's recent revenge!), the girl whose silhouette he recalled having seen now and then (much more distinctly!) ever since his pubescence, passing alone, drinking alone, always alone, like Blok's Incognita. (3.3)
otdykh - Russ., rest; relaxation
ad - Russ., hell; Marina's sister Aqua signed her suicide note: My sister's sister who teper' iz ada ('now is out of hell') (1.3); one of Ada's letters to Van begins: This is a second howl iz ada (out of Hades). (2.1); 'I know there's a Van in Nirvana. I'll be with him in the depths moego ada, of my Hades,' said Ada. (5.6); Orfey v adu ("Orpheus in the Underworld," 1858) is an opera bouffon by Jacques Offenbach; Offenbach is the author of La belle Helene. In EO Pushkin says that his Tatiana is superior to Homer's nasty Helen. Van compares Ada to Helen of Troy: 'Castle True, Castle Bright!' he now cried, 'Helen of Troy, Ada of Ardis! You have betrayed the Tree and the Moth!' 'Perestagne (stop, cesse)!' 'Ardis the First, Ardis the Second, Tanned Man in a Hat, and now Mount Russet -' 'Perestagne!' repeated Ada (like a fool dealing with an epileptic). 'Oh! Qui me rendra mon Helene -' 'Ach, perestagne!' '- et le phalene.' 'Je t'emplie ("prie" and "supplie"), stop, Van. Tu sais que j'en vais mourir.' 'But, but, but' - (slapping every time his forehead) - 'to be on the very brink of, of, of - and then have that idiot turn Keats!' (3.8) Tatiana is a remarkably pretty and proud young nurse in the Lakeview Hospital whom Van begs to massage his legs and who delegates the task to Dorofey (1.42).
da - Russ., yes; from Ada's letters to Van: He [Demon] and I have gamed at Nevada, my rhyme-name town, but you are also there, as well as the legendary river of Old Rus. Da. (2.1) Send me an aerogram with one Russian word - the end of my name and wit. (ibid.); Germ., there; Marina to Van: 'Azov, a Russian humorist, derives erunda [nonsense] from the German hier und da, which is neither here nor there.' (1.37) V. Azov (penname of Vladimir Ashkinazi, 1873-1941) reviewed Sologub's tragedy Pobeda smerti ("The Victory of Death," 1907) dedicated to the author's sister who died of tuberculosis; in his letters to his wife Sologub several times mentions Azov
Alexey Sklyarenko
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
AdaOnline: "http://www.ada.auckland.ac.nz/
The Nabokov Society of Japan's Annotations to Ada: http://vnjapan.org/main/ada/index.html
The VN Bibliography Blog: http://vnbiblio.com/
Search the archive with L-Soft: https://listserv.ucsb.edu/lsv-cgi-bin/wa?A0=NABOKV-L
Manage subscription options :http://listserv.ucsb.edu/lsv-cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=NABOKV-L