Vladimir Nabokov

Karl Ivanovich Vetrov in LATH

By Alexey Sklyarenko, 25 May, 2019

In VN’s novel Look at the Harlequins! (1974) Vadim’s daughter Bel (whose name brings to mind Lermontov’s Bela) marries Charlie Everett who changes his name to Karl Ivanovich Vetrov and takes his wife to the Soviet Russia:

 

In the summer of 1960, Christine Dupraz, who ran the summer camp for disabled children between cliff and highway, just east of Larive, informed me that Charlie Everett, one of her assistants, had eloped with my Bel after burning--in a grotesque ceremony that she visualized more clearly than I--his  passport and a little American flag (bought at a souvenir stall especially for that purpose) "right in the middle of the Soviet Consul's back garden";  whereupon the new "Karl Ivanovich Vetrov" and the eighteen-year-old Isabella, a ci-devant's daughter, had gone through some form of mock marriage in Berne and incontinently headed for Russia. (5.1)

 

In the first sonnet of his cycle “Lermontov” (1921) Balmont calls Lermontov vetrov i bur’ bezdomnykh strannyi brat (a strange brother of homeless winds and storms):

 

Опальный ангел, с небом разлучённый,
Узывный демон, разлюбивший ад,
Ветров и бурь бездомных странный брат,
Душой внимавший песне звёзд всезвонной, —

На празднике как призрак похоронный,
В затишьи дней тревожащий набат,
Нет, не случайно он среди громад
Кавказских — миг узнал смертельно-сонный.

Где мог он так красиво умереть,
Как не в горах, где небо в час заката —
Расплавленное золото и медь, —

Где ключ, пробившись, должен звонко петь,
Но также должен в плаче пасть со ската,
Чтоб гневно в узкой пропасти греметь.

 

Bel’s husband has the same name and patronymic as Karl Ivanovich, in Tolstoy’s Detstvo (“Childhood,” 1852) and Otrochestvo (“Boyhood,” 1854) the young hero’s old German tutor. At the beginning of VN’s novel Ada (1969) Van Veen (the narrator and main character) mentions Tolstoy’s Detstvo i Otrochestvo:

 

‘All happy families are more or less dissimilar; all unhappy ones are more or less alike,’ says a great Russian writer in the beginning of a famous novel (Anna Arkadievitch Karenina, transfigured into English by R.G. Stonelower, Mount Tabor Ltd., 1880). That pronouncement has little if any relation to the story to be unfolded now, a family chronicle, the first part of which is, perhaps, closer to another Tolstoy work, Detstvo i Otrochestvo (Childhood and Fatherland, Pontius Press, 1858). (1.1)

 

The characters in Tolstoy’s Anna Karenin (1877) include Stiva Oblonski, Anna Arkadievna’s brother whose surname resembles Vadim’s family name (Prince Yablonski, as it transpires). The surname Yablonski comes from yablonya (apple tree). At the end of Pushkin’s drama Boris Godunov (1825) the second person quotes the saying yabloko ot yabloni nedaleko padaet (“like parents, like children;” literally: “an apple falls not far from the apple-tree”):

 

Один из народа
Брат да сестра! бедные дети, что пташки в клетке.

Другой
Есть о ком жалеть? Проклятое племя!
Первый
Отец был злодей, а детки невинны.
Другой
Яблоко от яблони недалеко падает.

 

One of the people
Brother and sister! Poor children, like birds in a cage.
Second person
Are you going to pity them? Goddamned family!
First person
Their father was a villain,
But the children are innocent.
Second person
Like parents, like children.

 

A character in “Boris Godunov,” yurodivyi (God’s fool) Nikolka says that Bogoroditsa (Virgin Mary) forbids to pray for King Herod (a king of Judea who ordered the execution of children):

 

Юродивый

Борис, Борис! Николку дети обижают.

Царь

Подать ему милостыню. О чём он плачет?

Юродивый

Николку маленькие дети обижают... Вели их зарезать, как зарезал ты маленького царевича.

Бояре

Поди прочь, дурак! схватите дурака!

Царь

Оставьте его. Молись за меня, бедный Николка.

(Уходит.)

Юродивый

(ему вслед)

Нет, нет! нельзя молиться за царя Ирода — богородица не велит.

 

God’s Fool

Boris, Boris! The boys are hurting Nikolka.

Tsar

Give him alms! What is he crying for?

God's Fool

The little children are offending Nick. Let your butcher slay them, like you slayed the little Tsarevich.

Boyars

Get out of here, you fool! Seize the fool!

Tsar

Leave him alone. Pray for me, poor Nikolka.

(Departs)

God's Fool (calling after him)

No, no! I cannot pray for tsar Herod; the Blessed Virgin forbids it.

 

In his Russian version of Maupassant’s story Le Port (1889), Fransuaza (1891), Tolstoy renders the name of the ship, Notre-Dame des Vents, as Bogoroditsa-Vetrov:

 

3 мая 1882 года из Гавра отплыл в китайские моря трехмачтовый корабль «Богородица-Ветров». Он сдал свой груз в Китае, взял там новый груз, отвез его в Буэнос-Айрес и оттуда повез товары в Бразилию.

 

In a letter of Feb. 6, 1891, to Suvorin Chekhov praises “Fransuaza” and says that the sentence (“she is your sister!”) added by Tolstoy does not spoil the story:

 

Ваша статья о Толстом сплошная прелесть. Очень, очень хорошо. И сильно, и деликатно. Вообще какой-то особенно удачный номер: и Ваша статья, и «Франсуаза». Прекрасный рассказ. Прибавка о сестре («она твоя сестра!»), сделанная Толстым, не так портит, как Вы боялись. Только от неё рассказ утерял как будто свою свежесть. Впрочем, всё равно.

 

Vadim’s second wife, Annette Blagovo (Bel’s mother) is a namesake of Anyuta Blagovo, a character in Chekhov’s story Moya zhizn’ (“My Life,” 1894). Like Iris Black (Vadim’s first wife) and Louise Adamson (Vadim’s third wife), Annette Blagovo seems to be Vadim’s half-sister. The surname Vetrov comes from veter (wind). In May 1953 Annette and her friend Ninel Langley die in a hurricane:

 

The mad scholar in Esmeralda and her Parandrus wreathes Botticelli and Shakespeare together by having Primavera end as Ophelia with all her flowers. The loquacious lady in Dr. Olga Repnin remarks that tornadoes and floods are really sensational only in North America. On May 17, 1953, several papers printed a photograph of a family, complete with birdcage, phonograph, and other valuable possessions, riding it out on the roof of their shack in the middle of Rosedale Lake. Other papers carried the picture of a small Ford caught in the upper branches of an intrepid tree with a man, a Mr. Byrd, whom Horace Peppermill said he knew, still in the driver’s seat, stunned, bruised, but alive. A prominent personality in the Weather Bureau was accused of criminally delayed forecasts. A group of fifteen schoolchildren who had been taken to see a collection of stuffed animals donated by Mrs. Rosenthal, the benefactor’s widow, to the Rosedale Museum, were safe in the sudden darkness of that sturdy building when the twister struck. But the prettiest lakeside cottage got swept away, and the drowned bodies of its two occupants were never retrieved. (Part Four, 2)

 

1953 is the year of Stalin’s death. Ninel is Lenin in reverse. In his prophetical poem Predskazanie (“Prediction,” 1830) Lermontov predicts the 1917 Revolution and the appearance of moshchnyi chelovek (a powerful man):

 

Настанет год, России чёрный год,
Когда царей корона упадёт;
Забудет чернь к ним прежнюю любовь,
И пища многих будет смерть и кровь;
Когда детей, когда невинных жен
Низвергнутый не защитит закон;
Когда чума от смрадных, мёртвых тел
Начнет бродить среди печальных сел,
Чтобы платком из хижин вызывать,
И станет глад сей бедный край терзать;
И зарево окрасит волны рек:
В тот день явится мощный человек,
И ты его узнаешь - и поймёшь,
Зачем в руке его булатный нож:
И горе для тебя! - твой плач, твой стон
Ему тогда покажется смешон;
И будет всё ужасно, мрачно в нём,

Как плащ его с возвышенным челом.

 

There will come a year, Russia’s black year.
The tsar's crown will fall to the ground and,
the people will forget that they once loved him.
Many will be left with only the dead and blood for food;
Law will provide no shelter for innocent children and women.
When the plague of stinking, dead bodies
begins to rot amidst the grieving villages
and death stalking the living in its covered cowl.
When peace and quiet falls over those tormented regions
and the dawn reddens the river's waves:
On that very day there will appear a man of power
and you will recognize and know him,
by the sword in his hand:
and woe unto you! To your wailing, your groans;
he will just smile;
and everything about him will be horrible, gloomy,
concealed beneath his cloak-covered brow.

 

Let me draw your attention to the updated version of my previous post, “Strelitzia, Stein, iceberg, long-coated Chihuahua & Caracal in LATH” (https://thenabokovian.org/node/35700).