Benjamin Constant's Adolphe
(apologies for misspelling the title in my previous post) is
not mentioned in Ada, but Chateaubriand’s Réne
(a story by Chateaubriand about a pair of romantic
siblings, 1.21; admirable short novel, whose art
and charme velouté only Senancour's Oberman, 1804, can
approach*) is very important in VN's Family Chronicle. Suffice is to say
that Ada sometimes calls Van "cher, trop cher Réne".
(1.21)
The Foreword to the Soviet edition of Chateaubriand’s
Réne and Constant’s Adolphe (1932) was written by
Maxim Gorky, the author of, among other plays, Vragi ("Enemies",
1906). Gorky ends his prefave with
a dictum: Äëÿ òîãî, ÷òîáû ñìåðòåëüíî áèòü âðàãà,
íåîáõîäèìî õîðîøî çíàòü âðàãà ("In order to mortally beat one’s enemy, one has
to know one’s enemy well").
At the beginning of his obituary essay on
Lenin's death, "V. I. Lenin" (the first unabridged version, 1924), Gorky
quotes the Latin saying "the corpse of one's enemy always smells good". By
1969 (when Ada appeared) Adolf Hitler (a namesake of Constant's
hero) and Joseph Stalin (whose name brings to mind Constant's
friend Mme de Sta¸l) were long dead. Yet, the characters like "Colonel St
Alin, a scoundrel" (1.2), Khan Sosso, the ruler of the "ruthless
Sovietnamur Khanate" (2.2), "Athaulf the Future, a fair-haired giant in a
natty uniform" (2.2), who becomes "Athaulf Hindler (also known as Mittler - from
'to mittle,' mutilate)" in Victor Vitry's film based on Van's novel Letters
from Terra (5.5) - all of them unmistakably hint at Stalin and Hitler,
whose corpses smell good to Nabokov.
that pale Poland** is at
least pale, and the artist [Benjamin
Constant] has managed to outwit history. (EO Commentary, vol.
III, p. 100)
*EO Commentary, vol. III, p.
98
**Ellénore ("a niece of Rousseau's
Wolmar") is a more or less Polish lady whom the hero
[Adolphe] courts, adores, and
torments
Alexey
Sklyarenko