Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0021004, Sun, 28 Nov 2010 21:59:31 +0300

Subject
Laborious old Chose
Date
Body
"Rosy aurora was shivering in green Serenity Court. Laborious old Chose." (Ada, 1.28)

Darkbloom: a touch of Baudelaire.

Boyd: From [Baudelaire's] "Le Crepuscle du Matin" ("Morning Twilight," 1852), ll. 24-28:

Les debauches rentraient, brises par leurs travaux.

L'aurore grelottante en robe rose et verte
S'avancait lentement sur la Seine deserte,
Et le sombre Paris, en se frottant les yeux,
Empoignait ses outils, vieillard laborieux.

Like Le Crepuscle du Soir that mentions whores and cardsharps, Le Crepuscle du Matin is included in Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du Mal. The title of Baudelaire's book reminds one of Aqua's and Marina's talc powder Quelques Fleurs (1.3) that brings to mind the French stock phrase quelque chose (something). So we are back at Chose.

Btw., "Dawn en robe rose et verte" (2.9) alludes not only to Baudelaire but also to Chekhov's play "The Three Sisters." As I pointed out before, a character in Chekhov's P'yesa bez nazvaniya (Play without a Title) says that his tenant's daughter is kelk shoz ("a pretty little thing," quelque chose in Russian spelling). He then calls Platonov's late father shtukar' (trickster). Shtukar' comes from shtuka, "thing" (French chose). Shtuka = shutka (joke).

Chose is Van's alma mater. Mater is Latin for "mother." Mat' ("Mother") is a tale by Maxim Gorky. The third part of Gorky's autobiographic trilogy is entitled Moi universitety ("My Universities"). The second part's title is V lyudyakh ("Away from Home"). Lyudyakh is prepositional case of lyudi, "people." Now, the letter L (cf. Ada's L disaster) was called lyudi in the old Russian alphabet. Roman L looks like Cyrillic Г (glagol', "gallows," of the old Russian alphabet; Gorky's initial) turned upside down.*

Btw., alma mater + u = mal + amateur; alma mater + inn = Tamara + Lenin + m = Lamartine + man = Maler + matin + Anton - ton (mal is French for "evil," German for "time, occasion;" Maler is German for "painter;" matin is French for "morning;" Anton is Chekhov's first name; ton is French "tone" and "your").

*In certain fonts the Cyrillic letter ? (that corresponds to Roman L) looks like Roman V (Van Veen's initial) turned upside down. Normally, the Cyrillic counterpart of L looks like this: Л

Alexey Sklyarenko

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