I read with interest "The River Kur in Bend Sinister," Gavriel Shapiro's note in the new issue of The Nabokovian, and would like to add the following. The Kur also makes me think of Maxim Gorki's novella Gorodok Okurov ("The Town of Okurov," 1909). It has an epigraph from Dostoevski:
«...уездная, звериная глушь». Ф. М. Достоевский
“... provincial, bestial wilderness.” F. M. Dostoevski
Part Two of Dostoevski's short novel Zapiski iz podpol'ya ("Notes from Underground," 1864) is entitled Po povodu mokrogo snega ("Apropos of the Wet Snow"). As pointed out by G. Shapiro, while standing on the bridge, Adam Krug (the main character in Bend Sinister) notices an unusual phenomenon: “very large, greyish, semitransparent, irregularly shaped snowflakes slowly and vertically descended; and when they touched the dark water of the Kur, they floated upon it instead of melting at once, and this was strange.”
Like some of his heroes, Dostoevski suffered from paduchaya (epilepsy), a disease that brings to mind Paduk and Padukgrad. The dictator Paduk is Krug's former classmate. In Dostoevski's "Notes from Underground" the narrator goes to a dinner party with his old schoolmates whom he hated when he was younger. After the dinner the narrator encounters Liza, a prostitute from Riga (Kurland).
In his epigram (1827) on P. I. Shalikov Baratynski calls the river Kura that flows in Gori (Stalin's home city) "the Kur:"
Грузинский князь, газетчик русской
Героя трусом называл.
Не эпиграммою французской
Ему наш воин отвечал —
На глас войны летит он к Куру,
Спасает родину князька,
А князь наш держит корректуру
Реляционного листка.
In his Eugene Onegin Commentary (vol. III, p. 273) VN mentions Stalinski, the penname under which Baratynski and Sobolevski piblished their poem Once upon a Time a Turkey (1831). A friend of Pushkin, Baratynski and Prosper Mérimée, Sergey Sobolevski brings to Dr. Sobol ("Mr. Sable-Marten"), a character in Chekhov's story Zhena ("The Wife," 1892).
The name Kura is related either to Mingrelian kur 'water, river' or to an ancient Caucasian Albanian language term for 'reservoir'.
Also, Kursk was named after the Kur, a rivulet that flows in the city. In Slovo o polku Igoreve Wild Bull Vsevolod (Igor's brother) famously mentions Kursk and his Kurskers:
И рече ему Буй Тур Всеволод: один брат, один свет светлый ты Игорю, оба есве Святъславличя; седлай, брате, свои бръзыи комони, а мои ти готови, оседлани у Курьска на переди; а мои ти Куряни сведоми к мети, под трубами повити, под шеломы възлелеяны, конець копия въскръмлени, пути имь ведоми, яругы им знаеми, луци у них напряжени, тули отворени, сабли изъострени, сами скачють акы серыи влъци в поле, ищучи себе чти, а Князю славе.
Btw., the name Adam Krug suggests krug ada (circle of Hell). Pesn' ada ("The Song of Hell," 1909) is a poem (written in the tercets, in imitation of Dante's Inferno) by Alexander Blok. In yabloko (apple), the Biblical fruit of knowledge that Eve offered Adam, there is Blok. Blok's poem Korshun ("The Kite," 1916) begins with the line Chertya za krugom plavnyi krug (Tracing one smooth circle after another):
Чертя за кругом плавный круг,
Над сонным лугом коршун кружит
И смотрит на пустынный луг. —
В избушке мать над сыном тужит:
«На́ хлеба, на́, на́ грудь, соси,
Расти, покорствуй, крест неси».
Идут века, шумит война,
Встаёт мятеж, горят деревни,
А ты всё та ж, моя страна,
В красе заплаканной и древней. —
Доколе матери тужить?
Доколе коршуну кружить?
Tracing one smooth circle after another,
A vulture circles above a sleepy meadow
And looks down upon the desolate meadow. —
In a tiny hut, a mother grieves over her son:
”Here, have some bread; here, take my breast, and nurse;
Grow, be humble, bear your cross.”
The centuries pass; war rumbles;
Revolution arises, villages burn;
Yet you remain ever the same, my country,
In your beauty, ancient and covered in tears. —
For how long will the mother grieve?
For how long will the vulture circle?
(transl. Mark Pettus)
Blok spent several summers in Bad Nauheim, a German spa (Kurort). In July 1904 Chekov died in Badenweiler, a spa in SW Germany. In a letter of Feb. 25, 1895, to Suvorin Chekhov (who was a doctor) mentions mertsayushchyaya skotoma (scintillating scotoma), a disease that he suffered:
У меня стали часто повторяться головные боли с мерцанием в глазах. Болезнь эта называется так: мерцающая скотома. Не скотина, а скотома. И теперь вот, то лежу, то брожу и не знаю, что делать со своей особой. Лечиться же нечем. По-прежнему всюду преследует меня звон и по-прежнему мне никто никогда не дарит ни подушек, ни брелок, ни галстуков. Вероятно, и не женат я до сих пор только по той причине, что жены имеют привычку дарить мужьям туфли. Но жениться я не прочь, хотя бы на рябой вдове. Становится скучно.
Ekwilism was invented by the philospher named Skotoma. The characters in Bend Sinister include Dr Azureus and a person called Crystalsen. At the beginning of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN's novel Pale Fire, 1962) mentions the false azure in the windowpane and that crystal land outdoors:
I was the shadow of the waxwing slain
By the false azure in the windowpane
I was the smudge of ashen fluff--and I
Lived on, flew on, in the reflected sky.
And from the inside, too, I'd duplicate
Myself, my lamp, an apple on a plate…
Uncurtaining the night, I'd let dark glass
Hang all the furniture above the grass,
And how delightful when a fall of snow
Covered my glimpse of lawn and reached up so
As to make chair and bed exactly stand
Upon that snow, out in that crystal land! (ll. 1-12)
In his Foreword Kinbote (Shade’s mad commentator who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla) mentions a snowflake that settles upon Shade's wrist watch and quotes the poet's words "crystal to crystal:"
Despite a wobbly heart (see line 735), a slight limp, and a certain curious contortion in his method of progress, Shade had an inordinate liking for long walks, but the snow bothered him, and he preferred, in winter, to have his wife call for him after classes with the car. A few days later, as I was about to leave Parthenocissus Hall – or Main Hall (or now Shade Hall, alas), I saw him waiting outside for Mrs. Shade to fetch him. I stood beside him for a minute, on the steps of the pillared porch, while pulling my gloves on, finger by finger, and looking away, as if waiting to review a regiment: "That was a thorough job," commented the poet. He consulted his wrist watch. A snowflake settled upon it. "Crystal to crystal," said Shade. I offered to take him home in my powerful Kramler. "Wives, Mr. Shade, are forgetful." He cocked his shaggy head to look at the library clock. Across the bleak expanse of snow-covered turf two radiant lads in colorful winter clothes passed, laughing and sliding. Shade glanced at his watch again and, with a shrug, accepted my offer. (Foreword)
Kinbote's powerful Kramler brings to mind Samuel Kramer (1897-1990), the author of a monograph on Sumerian mythology. I notice that there was a powerful Cramer Comet car (created by Tom Cramer in 1954).