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sister Varvara & mosquitoes in Ada
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Chekhov's play The Three Sisters (1901) is known on Antiterra as Four Sisters. (2.1) The fourth sister's name, Varvara, seems to hint at Varvarka, a street in Moscow (see my recent post "Aleksey & Anna in Ada"). Varvarka brings to mind the Varvarinskaya street along which Kamarinskiy muzhik walks in a popular song.
In his memoirs Vokrug Chekhova ("Around Chekhov," 1933) Chekhov's brother Mikhail Pavlovich (1868-1936) mentions the poet Leonid Trefolev (1839-1905), the author of "Kamarinskiy muzhik" ("Kak po ulitse Varvarinskoy shyol Kas'yan, muzhik kamarinskiy..."):
Ярославский поэт Трефолев был скромным, незаметным человеком, который для хлеба насущного служил в местном Демидовском лицее делопроизводителем и, кроме того, писал стихи, много переводя польского поэта Сырокомлю; но самая его популярная вещь -- это "Камаринский мужик", сделавшийся народной песнью ("Как по улице Варваринской шёл Касьян, мужик Камаринский" и так далее). (chapter X)
"Kamarinskiy" comes from komar (mosquito), but also has Kama in it. Chekhov's three sisters (and VN's four sisters) live in Perm ("the mosquito-infested Permanent"), a city on the Kama River:
Varvara, the late General Sergey Prozorov's eldest daughter, comes in Act One from her remote nunnery, Tsitsikar Convent, to Perm (also called Permwail), in the backwoods of Akimsk Bay, North Canady, to have tea with Olga, Marsha, and Irina on the latter's name day. Much to the nun's dismay, her three sisters dream only of one thing - leaving cool, damp, mosquito-infested but otherwise nice and peaceful 'Permanent' as Irina mockingly dubs it, for high life in remote and sinful Moscow, Id., the former capital of Estotiland. (2.9)
In the last week of July Ardis is visited by the female of Chateaubriand's mosquito:
During the last week of July, there emerged, with diabolical regularity, the female of Chateaubriand's mosquito. (1.17)
All that was a little before the seasonal invasion of a certain interestingly primitive mosquito (whose virulence the not-too-kind Russian contingent of our region attributed to the diet of the French winegrowers and bogberry-eaters of Ladore); but even so the fascinating fireflies, and the still more eerie pale cosmos coming through the dark foliage, balanced with new discomforts the nocturnal ordeal, the harassments of sweat and sperm associated with his stuffy room. Night, of course, always remained an ordeal, throughout the near-century of his life, no matter how drowsy or drugged the poor man might be - for genius is not all gingerbread even for Billionaire Bill with his pointed beardlet and stylized bald dome, or crusty Proust who liked to decapitate rats when he did not feel like sleeping, or this brilliant or obscure V.V. (depending on the eyesight of readers, also poor people despite our jibes and their jobs); but at Ardis, the intense life of the star-haunted sky troubled the boy's night so much that, on the whole, he felt grateful when foul weather or the fouler gnat - the Kamargsky Komar of our muzhiks and the Moustique moscovite of their no less alliterative retaliators - drove him back to his bumpy bed. (1.12)
In the film version of Four Sisters Varvara is played by Marina (Van's, Ada's and Lucette's mother) and Irina (whom Ada plays in the Yakima stage version of Chekhov's play) is played by Lenore Colline.
Ada to Van: 'In fact, I'm sure I played it your psychological way, but what does it matter, what did it matter? - the performance was perfectly odious, my baron kept fluffing every other line - but Marina, Marina was marvelous in her world of shadows! "Ten years and one have gone by-abye since I left Moscow"' - (Ada, now playing Varvara, copied the nun's 'singsongy devotional tone' (pevuchiy ton bogomolki, as indicated by Chekhov and as rendered so irritatingly well by Marina). '"Nowadays, Old Basmannaya Street, where you (turning to Irina) were born a score of yearkins (godkov) ago, is Busman Road, lined on both sides with workshops and garages (Irina tries to control her tears). Why, then, should you want to go back, Arinushka? (Irina sobs in reply)." Naturally, as would-every fine player, mother improvised quite a bit, bless her soul. And moreover her voice - in young tuneful Russian! - is substituted for Lenore's corny brogue.'
Van had seen the picture and had liked it. An Irish girl, the infinitely graceful and melancholy Lenore Colline -
Oh! qui me rendra ma colline
Et le grand chene and my colleen!
- harrowingly resembled Ada Ardis as photographed with her mother in Belladonna, a movie magazine which Greg Erminin had sent him, thinking it would delight him to see aunt and cousin, together, on a California patio just before the film was released. (2.9)
Van paraphrases the verses he and Ada composed in "Ardis the First:"
My sister, do you still recall
The blue Ladore and Ardis Hall?
Don't you remember any more
That castle bathed by the Ladore?
Ma soeur, te souvient-il encore
Du chateau que baignait la Dore?
My sister, do you still recall
The Ladore-washed old castle wall?
Sestra moya, ti pomnish' goru,
I dub visokiy, i Ladoru?
My sister, you remember still
The spreading oak tree and my hill?
Oh! qui me rendra mon Aline
Et le grand chene et ma colline?
Oh, who will give me back my Jill
And the big oak tree and my hill?
Oh! qui me rendra, mon Adele,
Et ma montagne et l'hirondelle?
Oh! qui me rendra ma Lucile,
La Dore et l'hirandelle agile?
Oh, who will render in our tongue
The tender things he loved and sung? (1.22)
Vivian Darkbloom ('Notes to Ada'):
Ma soeur te souvient-il encore: first line of the third sextet of Chateaubriand's Romance a Helene ('Combien j'ai douce souvenance') composed to an Auvergne tune that he heard during a trip to Mont Dore in 1805 and later inserted in his novella Le Dernier Abencerage. The final (fifth) sextet begins with 'Oh! qui me rendra mon Helene. Et ma montagne et le grand chene' - one of the leitmotivs of the present novel.
Alexey Sklyarenko
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In his memoirs Vokrug Chekhova ("Around Chekhov," 1933) Chekhov's brother Mikhail Pavlovich (1868-1936) mentions the poet Leonid Trefolev (1839-1905), the author of "Kamarinskiy muzhik" ("Kak po ulitse Varvarinskoy shyol Kas'yan, muzhik kamarinskiy..."):
Ярославский поэт Трефолев был скромным, незаметным человеком, который для хлеба насущного служил в местном Демидовском лицее делопроизводителем и, кроме того, писал стихи, много переводя польского поэта Сырокомлю; но самая его популярная вещь -- это "Камаринский мужик", сделавшийся народной песнью ("Как по улице Варваринской шёл Касьян, мужик Камаринский" и так далее). (chapter X)
"Kamarinskiy" comes from komar (mosquito), but also has Kama in it. Chekhov's three sisters (and VN's four sisters) live in Perm ("the mosquito-infested Permanent"), a city on the Kama River:
Varvara, the late General Sergey Prozorov's eldest daughter, comes in Act One from her remote nunnery, Tsitsikar Convent, to Perm (also called Permwail), in the backwoods of Akimsk Bay, North Canady, to have tea with Olga, Marsha, and Irina on the latter's name day. Much to the nun's dismay, her three sisters dream only of one thing - leaving cool, damp, mosquito-infested but otherwise nice and peaceful 'Permanent' as Irina mockingly dubs it, for high life in remote and sinful Moscow, Id., the former capital of Estotiland. (2.9)
In the last week of July Ardis is visited by the female of Chateaubriand's mosquito:
During the last week of July, there emerged, with diabolical regularity, the female of Chateaubriand's mosquito. (1.17)
All that was a little before the seasonal invasion of a certain interestingly primitive mosquito (whose virulence the not-too-kind Russian contingent of our region attributed to the diet of the French winegrowers and bogberry-eaters of Ladore); but even so the fascinating fireflies, and the still more eerie pale cosmos coming through the dark foliage, balanced with new discomforts the nocturnal ordeal, the harassments of sweat and sperm associated with his stuffy room. Night, of course, always remained an ordeal, throughout the near-century of his life, no matter how drowsy or drugged the poor man might be - for genius is not all gingerbread even for Billionaire Bill with his pointed beardlet and stylized bald dome, or crusty Proust who liked to decapitate rats when he did not feel like sleeping, or this brilliant or obscure V.V. (depending on the eyesight of readers, also poor people despite our jibes and their jobs); but at Ardis, the intense life of the star-haunted sky troubled the boy's night so much that, on the whole, he felt grateful when foul weather or the fouler gnat - the Kamargsky Komar of our muzhiks and the Moustique moscovite of their no less alliterative retaliators - drove him back to his bumpy bed. (1.12)
In the film version of Four Sisters Varvara is played by Marina (Van's, Ada's and Lucette's mother) and Irina (whom Ada plays in the Yakima stage version of Chekhov's play) is played by Lenore Colline.
Ada to Van: 'In fact, I'm sure I played it your psychological way, but what does it matter, what did it matter? - the performance was perfectly odious, my baron kept fluffing every other line - but Marina, Marina was marvelous in her world of shadows! "Ten years and one have gone by-abye since I left Moscow"' - (Ada, now playing Varvara, copied the nun's 'singsongy devotional tone' (pevuchiy ton bogomolki, as indicated by Chekhov and as rendered so irritatingly well by Marina). '"Nowadays, Old Basmannaya Street, where you (turning to Irina) were born a score of yearkins (godkov) ago, is Busman Road, lined on both sides with workshops and garages (Irina tries to control her tears). Why, then, should you want to go back, Arinushka? (Irina sobs in reply)." Naturally, as would-every fine player, mother improvised quite a bit, bless her soul. And moreover her voice - in young tuneful Russian! - is substituted for Lenore's corny brogue.'
Van had seen the picture and had liked it. An Irish girl, the infinitely graceful and melancholy Lenore Colline -
Oh! qui me rendra ma colline
Et le grand chene and my colleen!
- harrowingly resembled Ada Ardis as photographed with her mother in Belladonna, a movie magazine which Greg Erminin had sent him, thinking it would delight him to see aunt and cousin, together, on a California patio just before the film was released. (2.9)
Van paraphrases the verses he and Ada composed in "Ardis the First:"
My sister, do you still recall
The blue Ladore and Ardis Hall?
Don't you remember any more
That castle bathed by the Ladore?
Ma soeur, te souvient-il encore
Du chateau que baignait la Dore?
My sister, do you still recall
The Ladore-washed old castle wall?
Sestra moya, ti pomnish' goru,
I dub visokiy, i Ladoru?
My sister, you remember still
The spreading oak tree and my hill?
Oh! qui me rendra mon Aline
Et le grand chene et ma colline?
Oh, who will give me back my Jill
And the big oak tree and my hill?
Oh! qui me rendra, mon Adele,
Et ma montagne et l'hirondelle?
Oh! qui me rendra ma Lucile,
La Dore et l'hirandelle agile?
Oh, who will render in our tongue
The tender things he loved and sung? (1.22)
Vivian Darkbloom ('Notes to Ada'):
Ma soeur te souvient-il encore: first line of the third sextet of Chateaubriand's Romance a Helene ('Combien j'ai douce souvenance') composed to an Auvergne tune that he heard during a trip to Mont Dore in 1805 and later inserted in his novella Le Dernier Abencerage. The final (fifth) sextet begins with 'Oh! qui me rendra mon Helene. Et ma montagne et le grand chene' - one of the leitmotivs of the present novel.
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/