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Baron Klim Avidov and two other Klims
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As is stressed in the beginning of Gorky's "The Life of Klim Samgin," Klim is a rare name. Indeed, apart from Samgin and ADA's Baron Klim Avidov, I was able to remember only two Klims, one real and one fictional. The real one is Klim (short of Kliment) Voroshilov (1881-1969), Soviet general (who appears as a character in Babel's Konarmiya, 1926), president of the Soviet Union in 1953-60. The fictional one is Klim Chugunkin, a character in Bulgakov's story Sobach'ye serdtse ("Heart of a Dog," 1925, first published in 1987*), a drunkard killed in a tavern row, whose hypophysis was surgically transplanted into the body of the dog Sharik, which turned him into a man (who then accepts the family name Sharikov). Unlike the rare human name Klim, Sharik is a very common name of a male dog. It means "little round object" and comes from shar (sphere; globe**). SHAR + ADA = SHARADA (charade).
Interestingly, Bulgakov is the author of Batum (1940, first published by Ardis in 1977), the play whose hero is... young Stalin. I suspect that Nabokov has heard of this play and knew its title, even if he didn't read it. BATUM (a city in Georgia, on the Black Sea coast, twice visited by Chekhov and once by father Fyodor in Ilf and Petrov's "The Twelve Chairs") = TUMBA (curbstone; Morris pillar) = TABU (taboo) + M = MUTABOR - OR. Mutabor (from muto,*** Latin for "I change") is the magic word that helps the hero of Hauf's fairy tale "The Caliph Stork"(1826) to turn into any creature he wishes and become man again. (After he broke the taboo and laughed, the caliph, metamorphosed to a stork, forgets this word and can not become man again.)
Many of ADA's characters look (to me, at least) like birds or beasts in human disguise, while several animals in the novel, like the dackel Dack, have something human about them. But then we often see metamorphoses of this kind in life, as well as in art. One especially remembers the bestiary in Voloshin's poem Russia (1924): "Wolf Menshikov, carrion-crow Yaguzhinsky, / Fox Tolstoy, marten Osterman" with their fangs tearing apart the legacy of the deceased Peter I. Voloshin's lines are echoed by Georgiy Ivanov in his "Stanzas" (II: "And here lies on the magnificent pedestal..." 1953) written on the death of Stalin: "Here is Molotov. Here is Beria, who resembles / a werewolf expecting a picket."
Note that there is Ovid (the author of "Metamorphoses") in Avidov.***** OVID = VOID = DIVO (wonder) = GVIDON + U - GNU (Prince Gvidon is the hero of Pushkin's "The Tale of Tsar Saltan;" gnu is an African antelope; cf. Antelope Gnu, the name given by Ostap Bender to Adam Kozlevich's car).
*The author has read his bold satire on the Soviet regime before a large audience of fellow writers, some of whom, like Zamyatin, might have emigrated afterwards, so it is not unlikely that Nabokov knew the plot of Bulgakov's story and the names of some of its characters.
** In the Russian North the word shar also means "strait" (cf. the strait Matochkin Shar that separates the two islands of the Novaya Zemlya Archipelago).
***muto is also Latin for "penis."
****Actually, BARON KLIM AVIDOV = BARAN (ram) + KLIMOV (Grigory Klimov, the penname of Igor' Kalmykov, 1918-2007, an emigre writer, author of "The Machine of Terror," 1951, and seven more books written after 1969) + OVID.
Alexey Sklyarenko
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Interestingly, Bulgakov is the author of Batum (1940, first published by Ardis in 1977), the play whose hero is... young Stalin. I suspect that Nabokov has heard of this play and knew its title, even if he didn't read it. BATUM (a city in Georgia, on the Black Sea coast, twice visited by Chekhov and once by father Fyodor in Ilf and Petrov's "The Twelve Chairs") = TUMBA (curbstone; Morris pillar) = TABU (taboo) + M = MUTABOR - OR. Mutabor (from muto,*** Latin for "I change") is the magic word that helps the hero of Hauf's fairy tale "The Caliph Stork"(1826) to turn into any creature he wishes and become man again. (After he broke the taboo and laughed, the caliph, metamorphosed to a stork, forgets this word and can not become man again.)
Many of ADA's characters look (to me, at least) like birds or beasts in human disguise, while several animals in the novel, like the dackel Dack, have something human about them. But then we often see metamorphoses of this kind in life, as well as in art. One especially remembers the bestiary in Voloshin's poem Russia (1924): "Wolf Menshikov, carrion-crow Yaguzhinsky, / Fox Tolstoy, marten Osterman" with their fangs tearing apart the legacy of the deceased Peter I. Voloshin's lines are echoed by Georgiy Ivanov in his "Stanzas" (II: "And here lies on the magnificent pedestal..." 1953) written on the death of Stalin: "Here is Molotov. Here is Beria, who resembles / a werewolf expecting a picket."
Note that there is Ovid (the author of "Metamorphoses") in Avidov.***** OVID = VOID = DIVO (wonder) = GVIDON + U - GNU (Prince Gvidon is the hero of Pushkin's "The Tale of Tsar Saltan;" gnu is an African antelope; cf. Antelope Gnu, the name given by Ostap Bender to Adam Kozlevich's car).
*The author has read his bold satire on the Soviet regime before a large audience of fellow writers, some of whom, like Zamyatin, might have emigrated afterwards, so it is not unlikely that Nabokov knew the plot of Bulgakov's story and the names of some of its characters.
** In the Russian North the word shar also means "strait" (cf. the strait Matochkin Shar that separates the two islands of the Novaya Zemlya Archipelago).
***muto is also Latin for "penis."
****Actually, BARON KLIM AVIDOV = BARAN (ram) + KLIMOV (Grigory Klimov, the penname of Igor' Kalmykov, 1918-2007, an emigre writer, author of "The Machine of Terror," 1951, and seven more books written after 1969) + OVID.
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
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/