Subject
Ada's magdalene hair
From
Date
Body
Ada, her keepsake profile inclined, her mournful magdalene hair hanging down (in sympathy with the weeping shadows) along her pale arm... (1.32)
Magdalina ("Magdalene") is a cycle of two poems from "The Poems of Yuri Zhivago" (1946-53) appended to Pasternak's novel (known on Antiterra as Les Amours du Docteur Mertvago, a mystical romance by a pastor, and Mertvago Forever). In the second of them Magdalene mentions her long hair:
Шарю и не нахожу сандалий.
Ничего не вижу из-за слёз.
На глаза мне пеленой упали
Пряди распустившихся волос.
Ноги я твои в подол упёрла,
Их слезами облила, Исус,
Ниткой бус их обмотала с горла,
В волосы зарыла, как в бурнус.
There, I grope and cannot find your sandals,
Tears have blurred my tired gaze.
Covering my eyes, as though a mantle,
Strands of hair have fallen on my face.
I have placed your feet upon my hem.
Jesus, with my tears, I washed your legs.
Buried them into my hair. On them,
I have tied the beads right off my neck.
Magdalina rhymes with mandolina (mandolin) and mandolina rhymes (in Ada, 1.30) with Argentina:
For the tango, which completed his number on his last tour, he [Van] was given a partner, a Crimean cabaret dancer in a very short scintillating frock cut very low on the back. She sang the tango tune in Russian:
Pod znoynim nebom Argentini,
Pod strastniy govor mandolini
'Neath sultry sky of Argentina,
To the hot hum of mandolina.
After the frolic under the weeping ("sealyham") cedar Van walks away on his hands:
Ada, her silky mane sweeping over his nipples and navel, seemed to enjoy doing everything to jolt my present pencil and make, in that ridiculously remote past, her innocent little sister notice and register what Van could not control. The crushed flower was now being merrily crammed under the rubber belt of his black trunks by twenty tickly fingers. As an ornament it had not much value; as a game it was inept and dangerous. He shook off his pretty tormentors, and walked away on his hands, a black mask over his carnival nose. (1.32)
If my guess is correct, "sealyham" also hints at the Pool of Siloam where the blind man washed: "So the man went and washed, and came home seeing." (John 9:7) In his famous poem "Любить иных - тяжелый крест..." ("To love some is a heavy cross...") Pasternak says: Легко проснуться и прозреть ("It's easy to wake up and recover one's sight").
The opening poem in Pasternak's Sestra moya zhizn' (My Sister Life, Summer of 1917) is entitled Pamyati Demona ("In Memory of Demon"). After Van's first summer in Ardis his father Demon tells him:
'Well, that excellent and influential lady who wishes to help a friend of mine' (clearing his throat) 'has, I'm told, a daughter of fifteen summers, called Cordula, who is sure to recompense you for playing Blindman's Buff all summer with the babes of Ardis Wood.' (1.27)
Cordula is a second cousin of Percy de Prey, Ada's lover who perishes in the Crimea, in a ravine near Chufut Kale (1.42). Van's partner who sang the tango tune as Van danced on his hands, fragile, red-haired 'Rita' (he never learned her real name), a pretty Karaite from Chufut Kale, where, she nostalgically said, the Crimean cornel, kizil', bloomed yellow among the arid rocks, bore an odd resemblance to Lucette as she was to look ten years later. (1.30)
After they made love in a cheap hotel in Lute (Paris), Van gives Cordula his Manhattan apartment as a wedding present: 'I no longer use our Alexis apartment. I've had some poor people live there these last seven or eight years - the family of a police officer who used to be a footman at Uncle Dan's place in the country. My policeman is dead now and his widow and three boys have gone back to Ladore. I want to relinquish that flat. Would you like to accept it as a belated wedding present from an admirer? (3.2) It is Jones, a footman s glazami ("with the eyes") at Ardis, who became a policeman in Ladore and who helped Van to blind Kim Beauharnais. (2.11)
In Ilf & Petrov's "The Little Golden Calf" the priests Moroshek and Kushakovski try to make a Roman Catholic of their compatriot, Adam Kozlevich (the driver of the Antelope Gnu car), pod sladkiy lepet mandoliny ("to a mandolin's sweet murmer," as Bender puts it). One is tempted to substitute woman for instrument: the author of Les Amours du Docteur Mertvago, a pastor, delivers his surmon pod sladkiy lepet Magdaliny. Btw., Mertvago also brings to mind Myortvoe more (the Dead Sea). Zhivaya (live) and myortvaya (dead) water is often mentioned in Russian fairy tales (including "Ruslan and Lyudmila").
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/
Magdalina ("Magdalene") is a cycle of two poems from "The Poems of Yuri Zhivago" (1946-53) appended to Pasternak's novel (known on Antiterra as Les Amours du Docteur Mertvago, a mystical romance by a pastor, and Mertvago Forever). In the second of them Magdalene mentions her long hair:
Шарю и не нахожу сандалий.
Ничего не вижу из-за слёз.
На глаза мне пеленой упали
Пряди распустившихся волос.
Ноги я твои в подол упёрла,
Их слезами облила, Исус,
Ниткой бус их обмотала с горла,
В волосы зарыла, как в бурнус.
There, I grope and cannot find your sandals,
Tears have blurred my tired gaze.
Covering my eyes, as though a mantle,
Strands of hair have fallen on my face.
I have placed your feet upon my hem.
Jesus, with my tears, I washed your legs.
Buried them into my hair. On them,
I have tied the beads right off my neck.
Magdalina rhymes with mandolina (mandolin) and mandolina rhymes (in Ada, 1.30) with Argentina:
For the tango, which completed his number on his last tour, he [Van] was given a partner, a Crimean cabaret dancer in a very short scintillating frock cut very low on the back. She sang the tango tune in Russian:
Pod znoynim nebom Argentini,
Pod strastniy govor mandolini
'Neath sultry sky of Argentina,
To the hot hum of mandolina.
After the frolic under the weeping ("sealyham") cedar Van walks away on his hands:
Ada, her silky mane sweeping over his nipples and navel, seemed to enjoy doing everything to jolt my present pencil and make, in that ridiculously remote past, her innocent little sister notice and register what Van could not control. The crushed flower was now being merrily crammed under the rubber belt of his black trunks by twenty tickly fingers. As an ornament it had not much value; as a game it was inept and dangerous. He shook off his pretty tormentors, and walked away on his hands, a black mask over his carnival nose. (1.32)
If my guess is correct, "sealyham" also hints at the Pool of Siloam where the blind man washed: "So the man went and washed, and came home seeing." (John 9:7) In his famous poem "Любить иных - тяжелый крест..." ("To love some is a heavy cross...") Pasternak says: Легко проснуться и прозреть ("It's easy to wake up and recover one's sight").
The opening poem in Pasternak's Sestra moya zhizn' (My Sister Life, Summer of 1917) is entitled Pamyati Demona ("In Memory of Demon"). After Van's first summer in Ardis his father Demon tells him:
'Well, that excellent and influential lady who wishes to help a friend of mine' (clearing his throat) 'has, I'm told, a daughter of fifteen summers, called Cordula, who is sure to recompense you for playing Blindman's Buff all summer with the babes of Ardis Wood.' (1.27)
Cordula is a second cousin of Percy de Prey, Ada's lover who perishes in the Crimea, in a ravine near Chufut Kale (1.42). Van's partner who sang the tango tune as Van danced on his hands, fragile, red-haired 'Rita' (he never learned her real name), a pretty Karaite from Chufut Kale, where, she nostalgically said, the Crimean cornel, kizil', bloomed yellow among the arid rocks, bore an odd resemblance to Lucette as she was to look ten years later. (1.30)
After they made love in a cheap hotel in Lute (Paris), Van gives Cordula his Manhattan apartment as a wedding present: 'I no longer use our Alexis apartment. I've had some poor people live there these last seven or eight years - the family of a police officer who used to be a footman at Uncle Dan's place in the country. My policeman is dead now and his widow and three boys have gone back to Ladore. I want to relinquish that flat. Would you like to accept it as a belated wedding present from an admirer? (3.2) It is Jones, a footman s glazami ("with the eyes") at Ardis, who became a policeman in Ladore and who helped Van to blind Kim Beauharnais. (2.11)
In Ilf & Petrov's "The Little Golden Calf" the priests Moroshek and Kushakovski try to make a Roman Catholic of their compatriot, Adam Kozlevich (the driver of the Antelope Gnu car), pod sladkiy lepet mandoliny ("to a mandolin's sweet murmer," as Bender puts it). One is tempted to substitute woman for instrument: the author of Les Amours du Docteur Mertvago, a pastor, delivers his surmon pod sladkiy lepet Magdaliny. Btw., Mertvago also brings to mind Myortvoe more (the Dead Sea). Zhivaya (live) and myortvaya (dead) water is often mentioned in Russian fairy tales (including "Ruslan and Lyudmila").
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/