Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0021354, Fri, 18 Feb 2011 23:33:12 +0300

Subject
more Herzen in ADA
Date
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Speaking of Plateniden (Heine's word for Platen's successors in German poetry), in Byloe i dumy Herzen calls Marx and his followers marxidy ("Marxiden") and Schwefelbande ("rabble"). On Antiterra Marx is known as Marx pere, the popular author of 'historical' plays (2.5). Incidentally, Marx's daughter Eleanor (the author of the first English translation of Madame Bovary) committed a suicide after her husband had left her. She took poison, as Emma does in Flaubert's novel. One remembers Ada's Eleonore Bonvard whose clever trick was repeated by Aqua (1.3). Flaubert's Bouvard and Pecuchet study chemistry. Among the characters in Byloe i dumy is khimik ("chemist"), as Herzen calls his cousin Alexey Yakovlev.

In his letters to Natalya Zakharyin (with whom he later eloped) from Vyatka Herzen called her sestra (sister; NZ was Herzen's cousin). In Vyatka (the place of his exile) Herzen had an affair with Praskovia Medvedev (to whom H. refers P.* in Byloe i dumy; after the death of Praskovia's old husband, H. had to tell Witberg, the architect, about his romance). The name Medvedev comes from medved' (bear). On Antiterra, they have Floeberg's Ursula (the name comes from ursus, Latin for "bear") instead of Madame Bovary (1.20).

In the Appendix to Byloe i dumy Herzen included some old letters from people he had met in life (Hugo, Proudhon, Carlyle, etc.). Here is an interesting excerpt from Chaadaev's letter (written in 1851):

Хорошо бы было, если б вам удалось сродниться с каким-нибудь из народов европейских и с языком его, так чтобы вы могли высказать на нём всё, что у вас на сердце... Тяжело однако ж будет вам расстаться с родным словом, на котором вы так жизненно выражались.

A friend of young Pushkin, Pyotr Chaadaev was officially declared "mad" by the authorities after he had published in 1836 the first of his Philosophic Letters. In his letter to Herzen, he says that H. should abandon Russian (which would be difficult) for one of the European languages. Unlike Herzen, Nabokov has followed Chaadaev's advice and switched to English (Chaadaev recommended to Herzen French).

*Cyrillic P corresponds to Roman R

Alexey Sklyarenko

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