Subject
Screepatch
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Date
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Speaking of Alexander Screepatch, perhaps I should have pointed out that skripach is Russian for "violinist, fiddler". It comes from skripka, "violin, fiddle." Because Shura Tobak seems to be Jewish, one also remembers (apart from the Jewish fiddler Sashka in Kuprin's "Gambrinus") Mandelshtam's poem "Zhil Aleksandr Gertsovich, evreyskiy musykant..." ("There lived Alexander Gertsovich, a Jewish musician..." 1931) and Chekhov's wonderful story "Skripka Rotshil'da" ("Rothschild's Violin", 1894). The title character has nothing to do with the famous family of bankers. As to the story's hero, the coffin-maker Yakov Ivanov, his nickname Bronza can indeed remind one of Van's words in Ada: "who cares about all those stale myths, what does it matter - Jove or Jehovah, spire or cupola, mosques in Moscow, or bronzes and bonzes, and clerics, and relics, and deserts with bleached camel ribs?" (1.14)
Alexey Sklyarenko
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Alexey Sklyarenko
Search archive with Google:
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Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
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Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/