Subject
Cambridge as Chose (things & bridges)
From
Date
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Having completed his prep-school education in America, Van Veen goes up to Chose University in England. (Ada, 1.27)
In French chose means what veshch' means in Russian: "thing". As I pointed out before, Mayakovski's poem "The Brooklyn Bridge" (1925) ends in the exclamation:
Bruklinskiy most - eto veshch'!
The Brooklyn Bridge is a thing!
VN's alma mater, Cambridge, has "bridge" in it.
The Brooklyn Bridge in the poem of VN's "late namesake" is across the Hudson (instead of East River). "Goodson River" is mentioned by Lucette as she dines with Van and Ada at 'Ursus':
...please, don't let me swill (hlestat') champagne any more, not only because I will jump into Goodson River if I can't hope to have you, and not only because of the physical red thing - your heart was almost ripped out, my poor dushen'ka ('darling,' more than 'darling'), it looked to me at least eight inches long -'
'Seven and a half,' murmured modest Van, whose hearing the music impaired. (2.8)
Things and bridges are part of Ada's metaphysics:
An individual's life consisted of certain classified things: 'real things' which were unfrequent and priceless, simply 'things' which formed the routine stuff of life; and 'ghost things,' also called 'fogs,' such as fever, toothache, dreadful disappointments, and death. Three or more things occurring at the same time formed a 'tower,' or, if they came in immediate succession, they made a 'bridge.' 'Real towers' and 'real bridges' were the joys of life, and when the towers came in a series, one experienced supreme rapture; it almost never happened, though.
...Her plump, stickily glistening lips smiled.
(When I kiss you here, he said to her years later, I always remember that blue morning on the balcony when you were eating a tartine au miel; so much better in French.)
The classical beauty of clover honey, smooth, pale, translucent, freely flowing from the spoon and soaking my love's bread and butter in liquid brass. The crumb steeped in nectar.
'Real thing?' he asked.
'Tower,' she answered. (1.12)
After the dinner at 'Ursus' and the debauche a trois on the following morning:
She was soon ready, and they [Van and Ada] kissed tenderly in their hallway, between lift and stairs, before separating for a few minutes.
'Tower,' she murmured in reply to his questioning glance, just as she used to do on those honeyed mornings in the past, when checking up on happiness: 'And you?'
'A regular ziggurat.' (2.8)
Ursus is Latin for "bear". In his poem Pro eto ("About It," 1923) Mayakovski imagines that he is a Polar bear drifting on an ice floe through St. Petersburg.
In his letters to Louise Colet Gustave Flaubert (who famously said: "Madame Bovary, c'est moi") called himself a bear ("I'm a bear and I shall stay in my den"). On Antiterra, Flaubert's Madame Bovary is known as Floeberg's Ursula (1.20).
In his Parizhskaya poema (The Paris Poem, 1943) VN says:
A mosty... Eto schast'ye naveki, schast'ye chyornoy vody
"And the bridges. This is happinness forever, the happinness of black water".
In Chapter Four of The Gift VN mentiones the role that, according to Bouvard et Pecuchet (the eponymous characters of Flaubert's unfinished novel), the bridges played in the life of the Duke of Angouleme: "thus Bouvard and Pecuchet, when undertaking a description of the life of the Duke of Angouleme, were amazed by the role played in it... by bridges."
Aqua, in her turn, repeated exactly clever Eleonore Bonvard's trick, namely, opting for the making of beds and the cleaning of glass shelves. (1.3) The twin sister of Marina (Van's, Ada's and Lucette's mother), poor mad Aqua commits suicide by taking poison. Eleonore Bonvard reminds one of Flaubert's Bouvard, but also brings to mind Eleonora Marx (the first English translator of Madame Bovary), whose father is known on Antiterra as Marx pere, the popular author of 'historical' plays (2.5). Like Karl Marx's unfortunate daughter, V. V. Mayakovski committed suicide because of unrequited love. As to Lucette, she eventually jumps into the Atlantic Ocean, not Goodson River.
Alexey Sklyarenko
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In French chose means what veshch' means in Russian: "thing". As I pointed out before, Mayakovski's poem "The Brooklyn Bridge" (1925) ends in the exclamation:
Bruklinskiy most - eto veshch'!
The Brooklyn Bridge is a thing!
VN's alma mater, Cambridge, has "bridge" in it.
The Brooklyn Bridge in the poem of VN's "late namesake" is across the Hudson (instead of East River). "Goodson River" is mentioned by Lucette as she dines with Van and Ada at 'Ursus':
...please, don't let me swill (hlestat') champagne any more, not only because I will jump into Goodson River if I can't hope to have you, and not only because of the physical red thing - your heart was almost ripped out, my poor dushen'ka ('darling,' more than 'darling'), it looked to me at least eight inches long -'
'Seven and a half,' murmured modest Van, whose hearing the music impaired. (2.8)
Things and bridges are part of Ada's metaphysics:
An individual's life consisted of certain classified things: 'real things' which were unfrequent and priceless, simply 'things' which formed the routine stuff of life; and 'ghost things,' also called 'fogs,' such as fever, toothache, dreadful disappointments, and death. Three or more things occurring at the same time formed a 'tower,' or, if they came in immediate succession, they made a 'bridge.' 'Real towers' and 'real bridges' were the joys of life, and when the towers came in a series, one experienced supreme rapture; it almost never happened, though.
...Her plump, stickily glistening lips smiled.
(When I kiss you here, he said to her years later, I always remember that blue morning on the balcony when you were eating a tartine au miel; so much better in French.)
The classical beauty of clover honey, smooth, pale, translucent, freely flowing from the spoon and soaking my love's bread and butter in liquid brass. The crumb steeped in nectar.
'Real thing?' he asked.
'Tower,' she answered. (1.12)
After the dinner at 'Ursus' and the debauche a trois on the following morning:
She was soon ready, and they [Van and Ada] kissed tenderly in their hallway, between lift and stairs, before separating for a few minutes.
'Tower,' she murmured in reply to his questioning glance, just as she used to do on those honeyed mornings in the past, when checking up on happiness: 'And you?'
'A regular ziggurat.' (2.8)
Ursus is Latin for "bear". In his poem Pro eto ("About It," 1923) Mayakovski imagines that he is a Polar bear drifting on an ice floe through St. Petersburg.
In his letters to Louise Colet Gustave Flaubert (who famously said: "Madame Bovary, c'est moi") called himself a bear ("I'm a bear and I shall stay in my den"). On Antiterra, Flaubert's Madame Bovary is known as Floeberg's Ursula (1.20).
In his Parizhskaya poema (The Paris Poem, 1943) VN says:
A mosty... Eto schast'ye naveki, schast'ye chyornoy vody
"And the bridges. This is happinness forever, the happinness of black water".
In Chapter Four of The Gift VN mentiones the role that, according to Bouvard et Pecuchet (the eponymous characters of Flaubert's unfinished novel), the bridges played in the life of the Duke of Angouleme: "thus Bouvard and Pecuchet, when undertaking a description of the life of the Duke of Angouleme, were amazed by the role played in it... by bridges."
Aqua, in her turn, repeated exactly clever Eleonore Bonvard's trick, namely, opting for the making of beds and the cleaning of glass shelves. (1.3) The twin sister of Marina (Van's, Ada's and Lucette's mother), poor mad Aqua commits suicide by taking poison. Eleonore Bonvard reminds one of Flaubert's Bouvard, but also brings to mind Eleonora Marx (the first English translator of Madame Bovary), whose father is known on Antiterra as Marx pere, the popular author of 'historical' plays (2.5). Like Karl Marx's unfortunate daughter, V. V. Mayakovski committed suicide because of unrequited love. As to Lucette, she eventually jumps into the Atlantic Ocean, not Goodson River.
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/