[two posts follow below]
I MAY know something Alexey doesn’t
know. Lenin was one of the first to use the term “cherry-pick” in
relation to criticizing some distortions in Tsarist production
statistics.
Stan: No, I wasn't a diligint student
of Marxism-Leninism and do not know anything about Lenin's use of the
term "cherry-pick" (which I meet for the first time). I can't think of
the Russian counterpart of the term.
Speaking of Muni (in my previous
posting on Pale Fire), I forgot to mention that Muni was married to L.
Ya. Bryusov, the sister of the poet (on whom there is also a piece in
Khodasevich's Necropolis).
By the way, Bryusov had written a
poem on Lenin's death even before Lenin died (I quote from memory):
Gore, gore! Umer Lenin!
Vot lezhit on: khladen, tlenen. ("Woe to us! Lenin has died! Here he lies: cold,
liable to decay")
The irony is that Lenin's corpse was
embalmed, so that Lelin proved after all netlenen.
Also, I recently found out that one of
Bryusov's last loves was a young poetess Adalis (pen-name of Adelina
Efron). Someone has composed the verses:
Rasskazhite nam, Adalis,
Kak vy Bryusovu otdalis'. ("Tell us,
Adalis, how you gave yourself to Bryusov").
Alexey Sklyarenko
To be quite precise: Ivan Karamazov's
theory is best formulated by Rakitin, a minor character in Dostoevsky's
novel: "If there is no immortality of soul, then there is no virtue and
all is allowed" ("The Karamazov Brothers", Book Two "The Inappropriate
Meeting", ch. VII "The Career Seminarist").
Alexey Sklyarenko