Subject
biryul'ki proshlago, minirechi, telegraph in Ada
From
Date
Body
She [Ada] could recollect, of course, when she and her sister played ‘note-comparing,’ much better than Lucette such things as itineraries, spectacular flora, fashions, the covered galleries with all sorts of shops, a handsome suntanned man with a black mustache who kept staring at her from his corner in the restaurant of Geneva’s Manhattan Palace; but Lucette, though so much younger, remembered heaps of bagatelles, little ‘turrets’ and little ‘barrels,’ biryul’ki proshlago. She was, cette Lucette, like the girl in Ah, cette Line (a popular novel), 'a macedoine of intuition, stupidity, naivete and cunning.' (1.24)
Darkbloom ('Notes to Ada'): biryul'ki proshlago: Russ., the Past's baubles.
In his satire on Freudians "Chto vsyakiy dolzhen znat'?" ("What Everyone Should Know?" 1931) VN mentions biryul'ka vospominaniya ("a bauble of recollection") that has to be extracted from a frightened patient (who met a tiger in the woods):
Или возьмём другой пример: человек, скажем, чувствует приступ непонятного страха, встретившись в лесу с тигром. Чем же этот страх объяснить? Изящный и простой ответ, господа, нам дается психоанализом: несомненно, что этого человека в раннем детстве напугала картинка или тигровая шкура под маминым роялем; этот ужас (horror tigris) продолжает в нём жить подсознательно, и потом, в зрелом возрасте, при встрече с настоящим зверем, как бы вырывается наружу. Будь с ним вместе в лесу толковый врач, он бы из пациента выудил бирюльку воспоминания, а тигру напомнил бы в простых словах, как он, тигр, в своё время вкусил человеческого мяса, отчего и стал людоедом. Результат беседы ясен.
Biryul'ki (baubles) was a word favored by M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin (1826-89). In his Pyostrye pis'ma ("The Mottley Letters," 1884) Saltykov mentions biryul'ki in connection with the Past:
Тогда как в той куче, которая именуется мудростью веков, за что ни возьмись — все пользительно. Трудность только в том разве состоит, как разобраться в куче, чтобы вытащить именно ту бирюльку, которая как раз впору. Но, во-первых, все бирюльки более или менее впору; а во-вторых, в данном случае из затруднения выручают очень простые приёмы, которые тоже освещены опытом, например: загад, навык, намётка, глазомер...
Итак, привычка — приготовила мягкое ложе; опыт — обставил его всевозможными подтверждениями прошлого. ( Letter One)
In Nedokonchennye besedy (Mezhdu delom) ("Unfinished Talks. At Odd Moments," 1860) Shchedrin compares life to a perpetual igra v biryul'ki (game of spillikins):
Скaжи, когдa в другое время литерaтурa, сколько-нибудь опрятнaя, позволилa бы себе остaновиться нa мысли, что жизнь есть непрерывнaя игрa в бирюльки, и кто больше бирюлек вытaщит, тот больше и зaслужит перед любезным отечеством! "Нaше время - не время широких зaдaч"! И это говорится в тaкую минуту, когдa ни широким, ни кaким зaдaчaм доступa в литерaтуру нет!
One of the greatest Russian satirists, Saltykov-Shchedrin is the author of Blagonamerennye rechi ("The Well-Meaning Talks," 1872-76). They bring to mind 'minirechi' ('talking minarets')* in Ada:
Van regretted that because Lettrocalamity (Vanvitelli’s old joke!) was banned all over the world, its very name having become a ‘dirty word’ among upper-upper-class families (in the British and Brazilian sense) to which the Veens and Durmanovs happened to belong, and had been replaced by elaborate surrogates only in those very important ‘utilities’ — telephones, motors — what else? — well a number of gadgets for which plain folks hanker with lolling tongues, breathing faster than gundogs (for it’s quite a long sentence), such trifles as tape recorders, the favorite toys of his and Ada’s grandsires (Prince Zemski had one for every bed of his harem of schoolgirls) were not manufactured any more, except in Tartary where they had evolved ‘minirechi’ (‘talking minarets’) of a secret make. (1.24)
and Blagonaemerennyi (The Well-Meaner), a monthly, then a weekly, magazine (1818-27) edited by Aleksandr Izmaylov (1779-1831), the poet and critic, target of Pushkin's epigram Ex Ungue Leonem (1825).
Pushkin's line from Eugene Onegin (Three: XXVII: 4), s Blagonamerennym v rukakh ("The Well-Meaner in their hands") was given an obscene twist (blagonamerennyi fallos) by its author and his friends in their private correspondence. As VN points out in his EO Commentary (II, p. 377), the joke was started by Vyazemski in a letter to Pushkin of July 26, 1828:
Но всего лучше то, qu'il entend malice a votre vers:
С благонамеренным в руках
и полагает, что ты суёшь в руки дамские то, что у нас между ног. Я сказал ему, что передам тебе этот комментарий и уверен, что ты полюбишь семейство Сонцевых за догадку двоюродного брата. А название благонамеренный великолепное. К стати, что делает благонамеренный у Junior? У этого Бекетова есть сестра Золотарёва, баба молодец, с рожи похожая на Сонцева, все главы Онегина знает наизусть и представляла мне в лицах, как Сонцева жаловалась ей на тебя за стихи Жил да был петух Индейский и заставляла Алину на распев их читать. Ты прыгал бы и катался от смеха.
Alina (Princess Aleksandra Petrovna Volkonski, m. Durnovo, 1804-59) who was asked to recite Baratynski's and Sobolevski's poem Once upon a Time a Turkey (ascribed by Vyazemski to Pushkin and published in 1831, in Voeykov's Russkiy invalid, no. 6, lit. suppl., under the title "A True Story," Byl', and over the signature "Stalinski")** is a namesake of Princess Alina, Praskovia Larin's maiden cousin in EO. The Russian form of the French Aline, Alina brings to mind the girl in Ah, cette Line (the title that seems to hint not only at acetylene, but also at a line in Blok's poem The Commander’s Footsteps, 1912: Chyornyi, tikhiy, kak sova, motor)***
Telephones, motors and minirechi bring to mind telegraph. In a letter of July 1, 1828, to M. P. Pogodin (1800-75, the historian mentioned by Saltykov in the Editorial Foreword to "The History of One City," 1870) Pushkin asks the editor of Moskovskiy vestnik (Moscow Herald) if he explained to Telegraph (Nikolay Polevoy who edited Moskovskiy telegraf) that he, Telegraph, was a fool (durak):
Растолковали ли Вы Телеграфу, что он дурак? Ксенофонт Телеграф, в бытность свою в С.-Петербурге, со мною в том было согласился (но сие да будет между нами; Телеграф добрый и честный человек, и с ним я ссориться не хочу).
Because electricity ("Lettrocalamity") is banned all over the Antiterra, "telegraph" is an indecent word there:
'Incidentally,' observed Marina, 'I hope dear Ida will not object to our making him not only a poet, but a ballet dancer. Pedro could do that beautifully, but he can't be made to recite French poetry.'
'If she protests,' said Vronsky, 'she can go and stick a telegraph pole - where it belongs.'
The indecent 'telegraph' caused Marina, who had a secret fondness for salty jokes, to collapse in Ada-like ripples of rolling laughter (pokativshis' so smehu vrode Adi): 'But let's be serious, I still don't see how and why his wife - I mean the second guy's wife - accepts the situation (polozhenie).'
Vronsky spread his fingers and toes.
'Prichyom tut polozhenie (situation-shituation)? She is blissfully ignorant of their affair and besides, she knows she is fubsy and frumpy, and simply cannot compete with dashing Helene.' (1.32)
The Kazakh word for "telegraph" is uzun-kulak ("long ear," see Ilf and Petrov's "The Golden Calf," 1931). Pushkin's epigram Ex Ungue Leonem ends in the lines:
Он по когтям узнал меня в минуту,
Я по ушам узнал его как раз.
He [the critic] recognized me in a moment by my claws,
I at once recognized him by his ears.
Kulak is Russian for "fist." But it also means "rich peasant" (kulak), "stingy person" (Chichikov mentally calls Sobakevich "kulak") and "middleman" (maklak). Koulak tasmanien is mentioned in Ada:
'Actually,' observed Lucette, wiping the long envelope which a drop of soda had stained, 'Bergson is only for very young people or very unhappy people, such as this available rousse.'
'Spotting Bergson,' said the assistant lecher, 'rates a B minus dans ton petit cas, hardly more. Or shall I reward you with a kiss on your krestik - whatever that is?'
Wincing and rearranging his legs, our young Vandemonian cursed under his breath the condition in which the image of the four embers of a vixen's cross had now solidly put him. One of the synonyms of 'condition' is 'state,' and the adjective 'human' may be construed as 'manly' (since L'Humanite means 'Mankind'!), and that's how, my dears, Lowden recently translated the title of the malheureux Pompier's cheap novel La Condition Humaine, wherein, incidentally, the term 'Vandemonian' is hilariously glossed as 'Koulak tasmanien d'origine hollandaise.' (2.5)
Krestik (not quite "little cross" as Van believes) is one of Ada's tender-turret words.
Georgiy Ivanov's well-known poem begins:
Emalevyi krestik v petlitse...
A tiny enamel cross in the tab [of Prince Alexey's uniform]...
In VN's story Lips to Lips (1931) Ivanov is satirized as Galatov, the editor of Arion. Galatov's friend is the corrupt jounalist Euphratski, who also uses the penname Tigrin (cf. horror tigris experienced by the patient in "What Everybody Should Know?"). The Tigris-Euphrates valley and Mesopotamia are mentioned in Ada:
The alcohol his vigorous system had already imbibed was instrumental, as usual, in reopening what he gallicistically called condemned doors, and now as he gaped involuntarily as all men do while spreading a napkin, he considered Marina's pretentious ciel-etoile hairdress and tried to realize (in the rare full sense of the word), tried to possess the reality of a fact by forcing it into the sensuous center, that here was a woman whom he had intolerably loved, who had loved him hysterically and skittishly, who insisted they make love on rugs and cushions laid on the floor ('as respectable people do in the Tigris-Euphrates valley'), who would woosh down fluffy slopes on a bobsleigh a fortnight after parturition, or arrive by the Orient Express with five trunks, Dack's grandsire, and a maid, to Dr Stella Ospenko's ospedale where he was recovering from a scratch received in a sword duel (and still visible as a white weal under his eighth rib after a lapse of nearly seventeen years). (1.38)
'When I was a little girl,' said Marina crossly, 'Mesopotamian history was taught practically in the nursery.'
'Not all little girls can learn what they are taught,' observed Ada.
'Are we Mesopotamians?' asked Lucette.
'We are Hippopotamians,' said Van. 'Come,' he added, 'we have not yet ploughed today.' (1.14)
Arion (1827) is a famous poem by Pushkin. On the other hand, in a letter of about/not later than October 11, 1835, to Pletnyov Pushkin proposes Arion as a name of a new monthly ("I love meaningless names; there is nothing jokes could aim at"):
Ты требуешь имени для альманака: назовём его Арион или Орион; я люблю имена, не имеющие смысла; шуточкам привязаться не к чему.
Pushkin's literary review was eventually named Sovremennik (The Contemporary). After Nekrasov's death (in 1877) Saltykov-Shchedrin was the sole editor-in-chief of Otechestvennye zapiski (Annals of the Fatherland). Many of Sirin's novels and stories initially appeared in the Paris literary review Sovremennye zapiski (The Contemporary Annals).
Marina became pregnant with her first child (Van) after Demon's sword duel with d'Onsky:
Marina arrived in Nice a few days after the duel, and tracked Demon down in his villa Armina, and in the ecstasy of reconciliation neither remembered to dupe procreation, whereupon started the extremely interesnoe polozhenie ('interesting condition') without which, in fact, these anguished notes could not have been strung. (1.2)
Polozhenie and, especially, interesnoe polozhenie means "pregnancy" (hence Vronsky's surprise when Marina mentions polozhenie).
*in George Orwell's 1984 "miniluv" (Newspeak) is the ministry of love
**according to Pushkin (1936), pp. 522-24, Letopisi gosudarstvennogo literaturnogo muzeya I (EO Commentary, III, p. 273, n.)
***A black car, silent as an owl (see Boyd's "Annotations to Ada" and my "Annotations to Ada's Scrabble Game" in an old issue of The Nabokovian)
Alexey Sklyarenko
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Darkbloom ('Notes to Ada'): biryul'ki proshlago: Russ., the Past's baubles.
In his satire on Freudians "Chto vsyakiy dolzhen znat'?" ("What Everyone Should Know?" 1931) VN mentions biryul'ka vospominaniya ("a bauble of recollection") that has to be extracted from a frightened patient (who met a tiger in the woods):
Или возьмём другой пример: человек, скажем, чувствует приступ непонятного страха, встретившись в лесу с тигром. Чем же этот страх объяснить? Изящный и простой ответ, господа, нам дается психоанализом: несомненно, что этого человека в раннем детстве напугала картинка или тигровая шкура под маминым роялем; этот ужас (horror tigris) продолжает в нём жить подсознательно, и потом, в зрелом возрасте, при встрече с настоящим зверем, как бы вырывается наружу. Будь с ним вместе в лесу толковый врач, он бы из пациента выудил бирюльку воспоминания, а тигру напомнил бы в простых словах, как он, тигр, в своё время вкусил человеческого мяса, отчего и стал людоедом. Результат беседы ясен.
Biryul'ki (baubles) was a word favored by M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin (1826-89). In his Pyostrye pis'ma ("The Mottley Letters," 1884) Saltykov mentions biryul'ki in connection with the Past:
Тогда как в той куче, которая именуется мудростью веков, за что ни возьмись — все пользительно. Трудность только в том разве состоит, как разобраться в куче, чтобы вытащить именно ту бирюльку, которая как раз впору. Но, во-первых, все бирюльки более или менее впору; а во-вторых, в данном случае из затруднения выручают очень простые приёмы, которые тоже освещены опытом, например: загад, навык, намётка, глазомер...
Итак, привычка — приготовила мягкое ложе; опыт — обставил его всевозможными подтверждениями прошлого. ( Letter One)
In Nedokonchennye besedy (Mezhdu delom) ("Unfinished Talks. At Odd Moments," 1860) Shchedrin compares life to a perpetual igra v biryul'ki (game of spillikins):
Скaжи, когдa в другое время литерaтурa, сколько-нибудь опрятнaя, позволилa бы себе остaновиться нa мысли, что жизнь есть непрерывнaя игрa в бирюльки, и кто больше бирюлек вытaщит, тот больше и зaслужит перед любезным отечеством! "Нaше время - не время широких зaдaч"! И это говорится в тaкую минуту, когдa ни широким, ни кaким зaдaчaм доступa в литерaтуру нет!
One of the greatest Russian satirists, Saltykov-Shchedrin is the author of Blagonamerennye rechi ("The Well-Meaning Talks," 1872-76). They bring to mind 'minirechi' ('talking minarets')* in Ada:
Van regretted that because Lettrocalamity (Vanvitelli’s old joke!) was banned all over the world, its very name having become a ‘dirty word’ among upper-upper-class families (in the British and Brazilian sense) to which the Veens and Durmanovs happened to belong, and had been replaced by elaborate surrogates only in those very important ‘utilities’ — telephones, motors — what else? — well a number of gadgets for which plain folks hanker with lolling tongues, breathing faster than gundogs (for it’s quite a long sentence), such trifles as tape recorders, the favorite toys of his and Ada’s grandsires (Prince Zemski had one for every bed of his harem of schoolgirls) were not manufactured any more, except in Tartary where they had evolved ‘minirechi’ (‘talking minarets’) of a secret make. (1.24)
and Blagonaemerennyi (The Well-Meaner), a monthly, then a weekly, magazine (1818-27) edited by Aleksandr Izmaylov (1779-1831), the poet and critic, target of Pushkin's epigram Ex Ungue Leonem (1825).
Pushkin's line from Eugene Onegin (Three: XXVII: 4), s Blagonamerennym v rukakh ("The Well-Meaner in their hands") was given an obscene twist (blagonamerennyi fallos) by its author and his friends in their private correspondence. As VN points out in his EO Commentary (II, p. 377), the joke was started by Vyazemski in a letter to Pushkin of July 26, 1828:
Но всего лучше то, qu'il entend malice a votre vers:
С благонамеренным в руках
и полагает, что ты суёшь в руки дамские то, что у нас между ног. Я сказал ему, что передам тебе этот комментарий и уверен, что ты полюбишь семейство Сонцевых за догадку двоюродного брата. А название благонамеренный великолепное. К стати, что делает благонамеренный у Junior? У этого Бекетова есть сестра Золотарёва, баба молодец, с рожи похожая на Сонцева, все главы Онегина знает наизусть и представляла мне в лицах, как Сонцева жаловалась ей на тебя за стихи Жил да был петух Индейский и заставляла Алину на распев их читать. Ты прыгал бы и катался от смеха.
Alina (Princess Aleksandra Petrovna Volkonski, m. Durnovo, 1804-59) who was asked to recite Baratynski's and Sobolevski's poem Once upon a Time a Turkey (ascribed by Vyazemski to Pushkin and published in 1831, in Voeykov's Russkiy invalid, no. 6, lit. suppl., under the title "A True Story," Byl', and over the signature "Stalinski")** is a namesake of Princess Alina, Praskovia Larin's maiden cousin in EO. The Russian form of the French Aline, Alina brings to mind the girl in Ah, cette Line (the title that seems to hint not only at acetylene, but also at a line in Blok's poem The Commander’s Footsteps, 1912: Chyornyi, tikhiy, kak sova, motor)***
Telephones, motors and minirechi bring to mind telegraph. In a letter of July 1, 1828, to M. P. Pogodin (1800-75, the historian mentioned by Saltykov in the Editorial Foreword to "The History of One City," 1870) Pushkin asks the editor of Moskovskiy vestnik (Moscow Herald) if he explained to Telegraph (Nikolay Polevoy who edited Moskovskiy telegraf) that he, Telegraph, was a fool (durak):
Растолковали ли Вы Телеграфу, что он дурак? Ксенофонт Телеграф, в бытность свою в С.-Петербурге, со мною в том было согласился (но сие да будет между нами; Телеграф добрый и честный человек, и с ним я ссориться не хочу).
Because electricity ("Lettrocalamity") is banned all over the Antiterra, "telegraph" is an indecent word there:
'Incidentally,' observed Marina, 'I hope dear Ida will not object to our making him not only a poet, but a ballet dancer. Pedro could do that beautifully, but he can't be made to recite French poetry.'
'If she protests,' said Vronsky, 'she can go and stick a telegraph pole - where it belongs.'
The indecent 'telegraph' caused Marina, who had a secret fondness for salty jokes, to collapse in Ada-like ripples of rolling laughter (pokativshis' so smehu vrode Adi): 'But let's be serious, I still don't see how and why his wife - I mean the second guy's wife - accepts the situation (polozhenie).'
Vronsky spread his fingers and toes.
'Prichyom tut polozhenie (situation-shituation)? She is blissfully ignorant of their affair and besides, she knows she is fubsy and frumpy, and simply cannot compete with dashing Helene.' (1.32)
The Kazakh word for "telegraph" is uzun-kulak ("long ear," see Ilf and Petrov's "The Golden Calf," 1931). Pushkin's epigram Ex Ungue Leonem ends in the lines:
Он по когтям узнал меня в минуту,
Я по ушам узнал его как раз.
He [the critic] recognized me in a moment by my claws,
I at once recognized him by his ears.
Kulak is Russian for "fist." But it also means "rich peasant" (kulak), "stingy person" (Chichikov mentally calls Sobakevich "kulak") and "middleman" (maklak). Koulak tasmanien is mentioned in Ada:
'Actually,' observed Lucette, wiping the long envelope which a drop of soda had stained, 'Bergson is only for very young people or very unhappy people, such as this available rousse.'
'Spotting Bergson,' said the assistant lecher, 'rates a B minus dans ton petit cas, hardly more. Or shall I reward you with a kiss on your krestik - whatever that is?'
Wincing and rearranging his legs, our young Vandemonian cursed under his breath the condition in which the image of the four embers of a vixen's cross had now solidly put him. One of the synonyms of 'condition' is 'state,' and the adjective 'human' may be construed as 'manly' (since L'Humanite means 'Mankind'!), and that's how, my dears, Lowden recently translated the title of the malheureux Pompier's cheap novel La Condition Humaine, wherein, incidentally, the term 'Vandemonian' is hilariously glossed as 'Koulak tasmanien d'origine hollandaise.' (2.5)
Krestik (not quite "little cross" as Van believes) is one of Ada's tender-turret words.
Georgiy Ivanov's well-known poem begins:
Emalevyi krestik v petlitse...
A tiny enamel cross in the tab [of Prince Alexey's uniform]...
In VN's story Lips to Lips (1931) Ivanov is satirized as Galatov, the editor of Arion. Galatov's friend is the corrupt jounalist Euphratski, who also uses the penname Tigrin (cf. horror tigris experienced by the patient in "What Everybody Should Know?"). The Tigris-Euphrates valley and Mesopotamia are mentioned in Ada:
The alcohol his vigorous system had already imbibed was instrumental, as usual, in reopening what he gallicistically called condemned doors, and now as he gaped involuntarily as all men do while spreading a napkin, he considered Marina's pretentious ciel-etoile hairdress and tried to realize (in the rare full sense of the word), tried to possess the reality of a fact by forcing it into the sensuous center, that here was a woman whom he had intolerably loved, who had loved him hysterically and skittishly, who insisted they make love on rugs and cushions laid on the floor ('as respectable people do in the Tigris-Euphrates valley'), who would woosh down fluffy slopes on a bobsleigh a fortnight after parturition, or arrive by the Orient Express with five trunks, Dack's grandsire, and a maid, to Dr Stella Ospenko's ospedale where he was recovering from a scratch received in a sword duel (and still visible as a white weal under his eighth rib after a lapse of nearly seventeen years). (1.38)
'When I was a little girl,' said Marina crossly, 'Mesopotamian history was taught practically in the nursery.'
'Not all little girls can learn what they are taught,' observed Ada.
'Are we Mesopotamians?' asked Lucette.
'We are Hippopotamians,' said Van. 'Come,' he added, 'we have not yet ploughed today.' (1.14)
Arion (1827) is a famous poem by Pushkin. On the other hand, in a letter of about/not later than October 11, 1835, to Pletnyov Pushkin proposes Arion as a name of a new monthly ("I love meaningless names; there is nothing jokes could aim at"):
Ты требуешь имени для альманака: назовём его Арион или Орион; я люблю имена, не имеющие смысла; шуточкам привязаться не к чему.
Pushkin's literary review was eventually named Sovremennik (The Contemporary). After Nekrasov's death (in 1877) Saltykov-Shchedrin was the sole editor-in-chief of Otechestvennye zapiski (Annals of the Fatherland). Many of Sirin's novels and stories initially appeared in the Paris literary review Sovremennye zapiski (The Contemporary Annals).
Marina became pregnant with her first child (Van) after Demon's sword duel with d'Onsky:
Marina arrived in Nice a few days after the duel, and tracked Demon down in his villa Armina, and in the ecstasy of reconciliation neither remembered to dupe procreation, whereupon started the extremely interesnoe polozhenie ('interesting condition') without which, in fact, these anguished notes could not have been strung. (1.2)
Polozhenie and, especially, interesnoe polozhenie means "pregnancy" (hence Vronsky's surprise when Marina mentions polozhenie).
*in George Orwell's 1984 "miniluv" (Newspeak) is the ministry of love
**according to Pushkin (1936), pp. 522-24, Letopisi gosudarstvennogo literaturnogo muzeya I (EO Commentary, III, p. 273, n.)
***A black car, silent as an owl (see Boyd's "Annotations to Ada" and my "Annotations to Ada's Scrabble Game" in an old issue of The Nabokovian)
Alexey Sklyarenko
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