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Floeberg and Osberg in ADA
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Nina Kressova: "I think that Brian Boyd is very right when he links "Osberg" to
"iceberg". Some acquaintances and critics of the borgesian work have defined it
as "cold". Also, I could point out the possible Jewish origin of the surname "Osberg"..."
I belatedly realize that the names Osberg and Floeberg, of the Antiterran writers, possibly refer to Mitrich's words in Ilf and Petrov's "The Golden Calf" (1931): "Aisbergs! We can understand this. For ten years now they've been making one's life intolerable. Aisbergs, Weisbergs, Aisenbergs, all those Rabinovichs" (chapter XIII: "Vasisualiy Lokhankin and his Part in the Russian Revolution"). The former chamberlain of the Imperial Court (and apparently a member of the ultra-nationalist "Union of the Russian People"), Aleksandr Dmitrievich Sukhoveiko (Mitrich, as he is called by his neighbors, is a short colloquial form of "Dmitrievich," his patronymic), is one of the shrewish inhabitants of the so-called Voron'ya Slobodka ("Raven's Nest"). His anti-Semitic rhetoric is caused by the newspaper article "Among the Ice-Hummocks and Icebergs" (Sredi torosov i aisbergov), about the brave aviator Sevryugov, another inhabitant of the Raven's Nest, whom his neighbors believe dead having perished in the Arctic (where he had been looking for the lost Polar expedition), but who turns out to be alive, having got stuck, because of a chassis problem, on the eighty fourth parallel. (Btw., I notice that norte, Spanish for "North", is an anagram of notre, French for "our", and of tenor. Cf. Hugo's Notre Dame de Paris and Akhmatova's famous words about Blok, the author of "The Twelve": "A tragic tenor of the epoch". I mention Blok's poem, because its title echoes that of Ilf and Petrov's first novel, "The Twelve Chairs". Note that chair is French for "flesh".)
About the connection between the fire that, in "The Golden Calf", destroys the Raven's Nest and the Burning Barn in ADA see my Russian essay "Will the Grandma Get the Xmas Card, or Why does Ada's Baronial Barn Burn?" in Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/sklyarenko6.doc.
Alexey Sklyarenko
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"iceberg". Some acquaintances and critics of the borgesian work have defined it
as "cold". Also, I could point out the possible Jewish origin of the surname "Osberg"..."
I belatedly realize that the names Osberg and Floeberg, of the Antiterran writers, possibly refer to Mitrich's words in Ilf and Petrov's "The Golden Calf" (1931): "Aisbergs! We can understand this. For ten years now they've been making one's life intolerable. Aisbergs, Weisbergs, Aisenbergs, all those Rabinovichs" (chapter XIII: "Vasisualiy Lokhankin and his Part in the Russian Revolution"). The former chamberlain of the Imperial Court (and apparently a member of the ultra-nationalist "Union of the Russian People"), Aleksandr Dmitrievich Sukhoveiko (Mitrich, as he is called by his neighbors, is a short colloquial form of "Dmitrievich," his patronymic), is one of the shrewish inhabitants of the so-called Voron'ya Slobodka ("Raven's Nest"). His anti-Semitic rhetoric is caused by the newspaper article "Among the Ice-Hummocks and Icebergs" (Sredi torosov i aisbergov), about the brave aviator Sevryugov, another inhabitant of the Raven's Nest, whom his neighbors believe dead having perished in the Arctic (where he had been looking for the lost Polar expedition), but who turns out to be alive, having got stuck, because of a chassis problem, on the eighty fourth parallel. (Btw., I notice that norte, Spanish for "North", is an anagram of notre, French for "our", and of tenor. Cf. Hugo's Notre Dame de Paris and Akhmatova's famous words about Blok, the author of "The Twelve": "A tragic tenor of the epoch". I mention Blok's poem, because its title echoes that of Ilf and Petrov's first novel, "The Twelve Chairs". Note that chair is French for "flesh".)
About the connection between the fire that, in "The Golden Calf", destroys the Raven's Nest and the Burning Barn in ADA see my Russian essay "Will the Grandma Get the Xmas Card, or Why does Ada's Baronial Barn Burn?" in Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/sklyarenko6.doc.
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/