Subject
canis, lupus, ursus
From
Date
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One of the Russian songs that Van, Ada and Lucette listen in Ursus, the restaurant in Manhattan Major (Ada, Part Two, 8), is the romance Сияла ночь ("A radiant night, a moon-filled garden. Beams / lay at our feet"). The words are by Afanasiy Fet who wrote this poem on August 2, 1877, after listening to T. A. Kuzminski (nee Baehrs) who had a beautiful contralto. Tatiana Kuzminski was the youngest of the three Baehrs sisters (her sister Sophia was married to Leo Tolstoy, who, as a boy, was a playmate of the mother of the Baehrs sisters; incidentally, as a young girl Tanya Baehrs had an affair with Leo's brother Sergei). Fet mentions them in his memoirs:
Воспользовавшись предложением графа представить меня семейству Б-а, я нашёл любезного и светски обходительного старика доктора и красивую, величавую брюнетку жену его, которая, очевидно, главенствовала в доме. Воздерживаюсь от описания трёх молодых девушек, из которых младшая обладала прекрасным контральто. Все они, невзирая на бдительный надзор матери и безукоризненную скромность, обладали тем привлекательным оттенком, который французы обозначают словом du chien.
Chien (French for "dog;" cf. "a lawnside circular sign, rimmed with red, saying: Chiens interdits and depicting an impossible black mongrel with a white ribbon around its neck: Why, she [Ada] wondered, should the Swiss magistrates forbid one to cross highland terriers with poodles?" and, in the same chapter, "Lucien, something of a wit, soon learned to recognize Dorothy's contralto: 'La voix cuivree a telephone':" 3.8) reminds one of Shenshin (i. e. Fet, the illegitimate son of Afanasiy Neofitovich Shenshin) but also brings to mind Бродячая собака ("Stray Dog"), the famous art cabaret in St. Petersburg/Petrograd. Introducing his wife to Paul Fort, Pronin (the cabaret's owner) said: "Voila la maitresse du Chien."* One wonders if VN ever visited Бродячая собака, as he did Медведь ("The Bear"), the fashionable St. Petersburg restaurant in the Bolshaya Konyushennaya** street. Note that the name Baehrs*** echoes (if not comes from) Baer (German for "bear"), reminding one of Germany's capital.
Since Ursus ("bear") is a character in Hugo's L'homme qui rit, one is reminded of Homo ("man"), the tame wolf (lupus) in the same novel. Its characters also include Dea (Ursus' adopted daughter, a blind girl). Dea ("goddess") is an anagram of eda (Russian for "food").
Like Andrey Baehrs (the father of the Baehrs sisters), A. P. Chekhov, the author of "The Three Sisters"**** (1901) and the comic sketch Медведь ("The Bear," 1888), was a doctor. The favorite word of Belikov, the hero of Chekhov's story "Человек в футляре" ("The Man in a Case," 1898), is anthropos (Greek for "man"). Kashtanka, the eponymous fox-like dog in Chekhov's story (1887), is a cross between a dachshund and a mongrel. Chekhov is the author of Belolobyi ("Whitebrow," 1895), a story about the wolf-cub. Finally, the zoologist von Koren, a character in Chekhov's novella "The Duel" (1891), says of Laevsky: "as soon as you speak of male and female - for instance, of the fact that the female spider, after fertilisation, devours the male***** - his eyes glow with curiosity, his face brightens and the man revives, in fact. All his thoughts, however noble, lofty or neutral they may be, they all have one point of resemblance. You walk along the street with him and meet a donkey, for instance... 'Tell me, please,' he asks, 'what would happen if you mated a donkey with a camel?'"
The conversation Van has with the Vinelanders at dinner in the restaurant of the Bellevue hotel (3.8) parodies Chekhov's mannerisms. Like Andrey Vinelander (Ada's husband), Chekhov was married to an actress. In his letters to his wife (who was German), Chekhov sometimes affectionately addresses her "собака моя" ("my dog").
*see G. Ivanov, "The St. Petersburg Winters"
**the street's name comes from конюшня, "stable"
*** Берс (Baehrs) = серб (Serbian) = ребус (rebus) - у; Берс + or ("gold") = сребро (obs., "silver")
****the play known on Antiterra as "The Four Sisters"
*****similar phenomena are also discussed in Ada (1.21)
Alexey Sklyarenko
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Воспользовавшись предложением графа представить меня семейству Б-а, я нашёл любезного и светски обходительного старика доктора и красивую, величавую брюнетку жену его, которая, очевидно, главенствовала в доме. Воздерживаюсь от описания трёх молодых девушек, из которых младшая обладала прекрасным контральто. Все они, невзирая на бдительный надзор матери и безукоризненную скромность, обладали тем привлекательным оттенком, который французы обозначают словом du chien.
Chien (French for "dog;" cf. "a lawnside circular sign, rimmed with red, saying: Chiens interdits and depicting an impossible black mongrel with a white ribbon around its neck: Why, she [Ada] wondered, should the Swiss magistrates forbid one to cross highland terriers with poodles?" and, in the same chapter, "Lucien, something of a wit, soon learned to recognize Dorothy's contralto: 'La voix cuivree a telephone':" 3.8) reminds one of Shenshin (i. e. Fet, the illegitimate son of Afanasiy Neofitovich Shenshin) but also brings to mind Бродячая собака ("Stray Dog"), the famous art cabaret in St. Petersburg/Petrograd. Introducing his wife to Paul Fort, Pronin (the cabaret's owner) said: "Voila la maitresse du Chien."* One wonders if VN ever visited Бродячая собака, as he did Медведь ("The Bear"), the fashionable St. Petersburg restaurant in the Bolshaya Konyushennaya** street. Note that the name Baehrs*** echoes (if not comes from) Baer (German for "bear"), reminding one of Germany's capital.
Since Ursus ("bear") is a character in Hugo's L'homme qui rit, one is reminded of Homo ("man"), the tame wolf (lupus) in the same novel. Its characters also include Dea (Ursus' adopted daughter, a blind girl). Dea ("goddess") is an anagram of eda (Russian for "food").
Like Andrey Baehrs (the father of the Baehrs sisters), A. P. Chekhov, the author of "The Three Sisters"**** (1901) and the comic sketch Медведь ("The Bear," 1888), was a doctor. The favorite word of Belikov, the hero of Chekhov's story "Человек в футляре" ("The Man in a Case," 1898), is anthropos (Greek for "man"). Kashtanka, the eponymous fox-like dog in Chekhov's story (1887), is a cross between a dachshund and a mongrel. Chekhov is the author of Belolobyi ("Whitebrow," 1895), a story about the wolf-cub. Finally, the zoologist von Koren, a character in Chekhov's novella "The Duel" (1891), says of Laevsky: "as soon as you speak of male and female - for instance, of the fact that the female spider, after fertilisation, devours the male***** - his eyes glow with curiosity, his face brightens and the man revives, in fact. All his thoughts, however noble, lofty or neutral they may be, they all have one point of resemblance. You walk along the street with him and meet a donkey, for instance... 'Tell me, please,' he asks, 'what would happen if you mated a donkey with a camel?'"
The conversation Van has with the Vinelanders at dinner in the restaurant of the Bellevue hotel (3.8) parodies Chekhov's mannerisms. Like Andrey Vinelander (Ada's husband), Chekhov was married to an actress. In his letters to his wife (who was German), Chekhov sometimes affectionately addresses her "собака моя" ("my dog").
*see G. Ivanov, "The St. Petersburg Winters"
**the street's name comes from конюшня, "stable"
*** Берс (Baehrs) = серб (Serbian) = ребус (rebus) - у; Берс + or ("gold") = сребро (obs., "silver")
****the play known on Antiterra as "The Four Sisters"
*****similar phenomena are also discussed in Ada (1.21)
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/