Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0025708, Thu, 18 Sep 2014 15:28:52 +0300

Subject
Dorofey, Golos & Logos in Ada
Date
Body
After a long journey down corridors where pretty little things tripped by, shaking thermometers, and first an ascent and then a descent in two different lifts, the second of which was very capacious with a metal-handled black lid propped against its wall and bits of holly or laurel here and there on the soap-smelling floor, Dorofey, like Onegin's coachman, said priehali ('we have arrived') and gently propelled Van, past two screened beds, toward a third one near the window. There he left Van, while he seated himself at a small table in the door corner and leisurely unfolded the Russian-language newspaper Golos (Logos). (1.42)

In the drafts of Pushkin's Eugene Onegin (One: LII: 9a), Ivan (Onegin's coachman who is never mentioned in the final version) says: Priekhali! ("we have arrived!")

She [Ada] could not tell her husband while he was ill. Van would have to wait until Andrey was sufficiently well to bear the news and that might take some time. Of course, she would have to do everything to have him completely cured, there was a wondermaker in Arizona -
'Sort of patching up a bloke before hanging him,' said Van. (3.8)

In his poem Vo glubine sibirskikh rud... ("In the depth of Sibirean mines," 1826) addressed to the Decembrists (five of whom, including Pushkin's friend Ryleev and Pestel whom Pushkin had met in Kishinev, were hanged) Pushkin uses an archaic form of golos (voice), glas:

Любовь и дружество до вас
Дойдут сквозь мрачные затворы,
Как в ваши каторжные норы
Доходит мой свободный глас.
Love and friendship will o'errun you
through the sombre, shackled gates,
As my free voice now comes to you
through these craggy grates.
(transl. Alfia Wallace)

Pushkin's Stansy ("Stanzas," 1926) begin:

В надежде славы и добра
Гляжу вперед я без боязни:
Начало славных дней Петра
Мрачили мятежи и казни.
In the hope of glory and good
I look ahead without fear.
The beginning of Peter's glorious days
were clouded by revolts and executions.

In Russian slava means "glory" and "fame." In Pushkin's Razgovor knigoprodavtsa s poetom ("Conversation of Bookseller with Poet," 1824) Bookseller calls slava (fame) "a gaudy patch upon the songster threadbare rags" (see in EO Commentary, II, pp. 12-19 the full text of the poem translated by VN).

In his Stansy Pushkin's pairs slava with dobro (good). Opravdanie dobra ("Justification of Good," 1895) is the main work of Vladimir Solovyov (the author of Tri razgovora, "Three Conversation," and Tri svidaniya, "Three Meetings"). In his book Solovyov defines Logos as bogochelovek ('God-Man,' God incarnate) or sushchiy razum (absolute intellect):

Растения физиологически вбирают в себя окружающую среду (неорганические вещества и физические воздействия, благодаря которым они питаются и растут); животные сверх того, что питаются растениями, и психологически вбирают в себя (в своё сознание) уже более широкий круг соотносящихся с ними, через ощущения, явлений; человек, кроме того, разумом включает в себя и отдаленные, непосредственно не ощущаемые круги бытия, он может (на высокой степени развития) обнять всё в одном или понять смысл всего; наконец, богочеловек, или сущий разум (Логос), не отвлеченно только понимает, а в действительности осуществляет смысл всего, или совершенный нравственный порядок, обнимая и связывая всё живою личною силой любви. (Chapter Nine, IV)

On Antiterra they thank Log (curtailed Logos?) when we thank Bog (God). Zhivaya lichnaya sila lyubvi (the live personal power of love) mentioned by Solovyov brings to mind ruchyi lyubvi (the streams of love) in Pushkin's poem Noch' ("The Night," 1823) written in the Alexandrines and beginning:

Moy golos dlya tebya i laskovyi i tomnyi...
For you my voice both tender and languid...

Dorofey is a male nurse in the Kalugano Lakeview hospital where Van recovers from the wound he received in a pistol duel with Captain Tapper. Van fights his duel in the Kalugano forest near the Dorofey road (where Rack and his family used to rent a cottage):

'Where are we now, Johnny dear?' asked Van as they swung out of the lake's orbit and sped along a suburban avenue with clapboard cottages among laundry-lined pines.
'Dorofey Road,' cried the driver above the din of the motor. 'It abuts at the forest.' (1.42)

In Rodoslovnaya moego geroya (The Pedigree of my Hero, 1836), the poem written in the Onegin stanza, Pushkin mentions Dorofey Yezerski, the hero's ancestor who had twelve sons:

От них два сына рождены:
Якуб и Дорофей. В засаде
Убит Якуб, а Дорофей
Родил двенадцать сыновей.

The name Yezerski comes from yezero, an obsolete form of ozero (lake). Sofiyskiy Khronograph (the Novgorod "Sophian Chronicle") mentioned in Pushkin's poem brings to mind Princess Sofia Zemski, the daughter of Prince Ivan Temnosiniy, a former viceroy of Estoty and a direct descendant of the Yaroslav rulers of pre-Tartar times. (1.1)

One of the Yezerskis is compared to a mosquito squashed by the Tartars' heavy hind quarters and another participated in the battle of Kulikovo and with slava (glory), though with losses, got drunk on the blood of the Tartars:

При Калке
Один из них был схвачен в свалке,
А там раздавлен, как комар,
Задами тяжкими татар.
Зато со славой, хоть с уроном,
Другой Езерский, Елизар,
Упился кровию татар,
Между Непрядвою и Доном,
Ударя с тыла в табор их
С дружиной суздальцев своих.

Pushkin's Yezerski brings to mind Ozerov, the author of Dimitri Donskoy (1807), a tragedy in the Alexandrines. Ozerov (who went mad in September 1812, after hearing the news that Napoleon had entered Moscow) is mentioned by Pushkin in Chapter One of EO:

there Ozerov involuntary tributes
of public tears, of plaudits
shared with the young Semyonova (XVIII: 5-7)

Prince Dmitri Donskoy who defeated Mamai at the battle of Kulikovo (1380) brings to mind Baron d'Onsky, Demon's adversary in a sword duel (1.2). On Antiterra where Tartary spreads from Kurland to the Kurils the Russians must have lost the battle of Kulikovo and migrated, across "the ha-ha of a doubled ocean," to America. The last poem of Blok's cycle Na pole Kulikovom ("On the Field of Kulikovo," 1908) has the epigraph from Drakon ("The Dragon," 1900), one of Solovyov's last poems:

И мглою бед неотразимых
Грядущий день заволокло.
And the coming day is clouded
with the mist of irrisistable misfortunes.

The author of "The Twelve" (1918) and Solovyinyi sad ("The Nightingale Garden," 1915), in one of his poems Blok calls Russia "The New America." In his poem Ya vizhu blesk zabytyi mnoy ("I see the splendor I've forgotten," 1913) Blok mentions the low chest-voice (golos nizkiy i grudnoy) of his first love. In his article V zashchitu A. Bloka ("In Defence of A. Blok," Novvyi Put', No. 26, 1931) N. A. Berdyaev says that Logos is completely absent from Blok's lyrical poetry:

Он может быть был выше ума, но ума в нём не было никакого, ему чуждо было начало Логоса, он пребывал исключительно в Космосе, в душе мира.

In Krokodil: Neobyknovennoe sobytie ili passazh v Passazhe ("The Crocodile: An Extraordinary Event or What Came to Pass in the Passage," 1865), a sitire on Chernyshevski who wrote "What to Do?" imprisoned in the Peter-and-Paul Fortress, Dostoevski makes fun of the newspaper Golos ("The Voice") turning it into Volos ("A Hair"). There is a saying: ni golosu, ni volosu ne ver' ("trust neither the voice, nor hair"). volos = slovo (word). In Chapter Seven of EO Tatiana finds slovo (le mot) for Onegin: "a parody."

Alexey Sklyarenko

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