Subject
Chose University
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Date
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Having completed his prep-school education in America, Van Veen goes up to Chose University in England. (Ada, 1.27)
Chose is French for "thing" and quelque chose means "something". According to Pushkin (Eugene Onegin, One: V: 1-2),
Мы все учились понемногу
Чему-нибудь и как-нибудь
All of us had a bit of schooling
in something and somehow.
This is rendered by Turgenev and Viardot in their accurate prose translation of EO as "Nous avons tous, par petites bribes, appris fort peu de choses et fort mal."
The name of Aqua's talc powder, Quelques Fleurs (1.3), blends, as it were, the stock phrase quelque chose with Baudelaire's Fleurs du mal ("Flowers of Evil").
A learned fellow, Onegin never went to school and never was a student. It is Lenski who studied abroad and who brought from the Goettingen University the fruits of learning (uchyonosti plody): liberty-loving dreams, a spirit impetuous and rather strange, an always enthusiastic speech and shoulder-length black curls.
Lenski's "fruits of learning" bring to mind Plody prosveshcheniya ("The Fruits of Education", 1891), a comedy by Tolstoy. Incidentally, the phrase plody prosveshcheniya first appears in Karamzin's Melodor k Filaletu ("Melodor to Filalet") and is quoted by Herzen in S togo berega ("From the Other Shore").
Lenski is Kant's votary and a poet. (Two: VI: 8) Kant is mentioned in Ada (2.5) by Van: 'It [the closet in which Van and Ada locked up Lucette] had a keyless hole as big as Kant's eye. Kant was famous for his cucumicolor iris.'
Он пел разлуку и печаль,
и нечто, и туманну даль
He [Lenski] sang parting and sadness,
and something, and the misty distance. (Two: X: 7-8)
Turgenev and Viardot: Il chantait aussi l’absence et la tristesse, et le vague inconnu, et le lointain vaporeux.
Van's University is in England. Albion (England) is mentioned in the unfinished Canto Ten of EO. In the same chapter Pushkin uses the gallicism siloyu veshey (par la force des choses). In Ada (2.7) Van translates this stock phrase as "the fever of intercourse" (see also my article in Zembla "The Naked Truth or the Reader's Sentimental Education in Ada's Quelque Chose University").
Alexey Sklyarenko
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Chose is French for "thing" and quelque chose means "something". According to Pushkin (Eugene Onegin, One: V: 1-2),
Мы все учились понемногу
Чему-нибудь и как-нибудь
All of us had a bit of schooling
in something and somehow.
This is rendered by Turgenev and Viardot in their accurate prose translation of EO as "Nous avons tous, par petites bribes, appris fort peu de choses et fort mal."
The name of Aqua's talc powder, Quelques Fleurs (1.3), blends, as it were, the stock phrase quelque chose with Baudelaire's Fleurs du mal ("Flowers of Evil").
A learned fellow, Onegin never went to school and never was a student. It is Lenski who studied abroad and who brought from the Goettingen University the fruits of learning (uchyonosti plody): liberty-loving dreams, a spirit impetuous and rather strange, an always enthusiastic speech and shoulder-length black curls.
Lenski's "fruits of learning" bring to mind Plody prosveshcheniya ("The Fruits of Education", 1891), a comedy by Tolstoy. Incidentally, the phrase plody prosveshcheniya first appears in Karamzin's Melodor k Filaletu ("Melodor to Filalet") and is quoted by Herzen in S togo berega ("From the Other Shore").
Lenski is Kant's votary and a poet. (Two: VI: 8) Kant is mentioned in Ada (2.5) by Van: 'It [the closet in which Van and Ada locked up Lucette] had a keyless hole as big as Kant's eye. Kant was famous for his cucumicolor iris.'
Он пел разлуку и печаль,
и нечто, и туманну даль
He [Lenski] sang parting and sadness,
and something, and the misty distance. (Two: X: 7-8)
Turgenev and Viardot: Il chantait aussi l’absence et la tristesse, et le vague inconnu, et le lointain vaporeux.
Van's University is in England. Albion (England) is mentioned in the unfinished Canto Ten of EO. In the same chapter Pushkin uses the gallicism siloyu veshey (par la force des choses). In Ada (2.7) Van translates this stock phrase as "the fever of intercourse" (see also my article in Zembla "The Naked Truth or the Reader's Sentimental Education in Ada's Quelque Chose University").
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/