Murat . . . a French general’s bastard, shot by
Cora Day in his swimming pool: General Joachim Murat (1767-1815)
was a brilliant French cavalry leader, whom Napoleon rewarded by making him the
husband of his youngest sister, Caroline, in 1800, and King of Naples in 1808.
He was court-martialed and shot in 1815 for aiding Napoleon after his return to
France from Elba.
A minor point, but perhaps worth
noting: according to Magda Neyman, the author of Armyane ("The
Armenians", 1899), Joachim Murat was an Armenian from Nagornyi Karabakh,
Ovakim Muradyan, who emigrated to France at a young age.
Jean
Paul Marat (1743-1793), fiery and uncompromising radical journalist and
politician in the years following the French Revolution, was stabbed to death in
his bath by Charlotte Corday (1768-1793). After three tries, she was admitted
into his home, where he was taking his bath. “When she named persons connected
with the dissidence in Normandy, he noted them and assured her they would be
guillotined in a few days. She then drew a knife from under her dress and
stabbed him through the heart” (Encyclopedia Britannica,
14th ed.). Corday was herself guillotined for killing Marat.
The murder is the subject of a famous 1793
painting by Jacques-Louis David (1748-1825).
The murder is also the
subject of the famous "Ode à Marie-Anne-Charlotte Corday" (1793) by
André Chénier (1762-94), a French poet who was one of the last persons to
be executed by Robespierre. Chénier's last words were: "pourtant
j'avais quelque chose là!" "На месте казни
он ударил себя в голову и сказал: pourtant j'avais quelque chose
là"* (see Pushkin's note 7 to his
elegy Andrey Shenye,
1825).
VN mentions Chénier (and
Pushkin's "mediocre verses") in his 1956 Russian poem:
Как над стихами силы
средней
эпиграф из
Шенье,
как луч последний, как
последний
зефир... comme un
dernier
rayon, так над простором
голым
моих нелучших
лет
каким-то райским
ореолом
горит нерусский
свет!
Note that J.-L.
David is a "namesake" of the Biblical King David whom
I mentioned earlier in connection to Ada's Baron Klim Avidov. And I
have yet to read Dickens' David Copperfield.
What a soprano Cora had been!
Cf. "a stretch of chaotic
country between Ardez and Somethingsoprano" (Part Four). Cora = caro.
Cora's surname reminds one of "Faragod" (1.3), the Antiterran god (Lat.,
dei) of electricity (Darkbloom). Faragod + Cora Day = Faraday +
dog + caro
thunderous German musical
dramas with giants and magicians and a defecating white horse:
Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the
Nibelung)...
Siegfried, the dwarf
Mime, the sword Notung are all mentioned by Blok in the Prologue
to Retribution (1910-21). Like Ada, Retribution
is a Family Chronicle, and the hero's father is known as Demon. See my
"Ada as a Triple Dream".
Freia, the Goddess of Youth and Beauty
The epithet of Freia,
Vanadis, neatly combines Van with both Ada and Ardis. Van + Ardis =
Vanadis + r
defecating white
horse
Cf. "a ballet company
whose services Scotty had engaged, bringing the Russians all the way in two
sleeping cars from Belokonsk" (1.2). Belokonsk comes from belyi kon',
"white horse", and hints at Canadian Whitehorse (see Darkbloom's "Notes").
Andrey Andreevich: Van’s Russian tutor,
surnamed Aksakov
A namesake of Andrey Andreevich
Vinelander, Ada's future husband, who physically resembles Alexey Kosygin
but is a namesake of A. A. Gromyko, another Soviet politician of the
post-Stalin era. One also remembers Yuri Andreevich Zhivago, the
hero of Pasternak's novel, and his wife Tonya
Gromeko.
Do Aksakov's name and patronymic have
anything to do with Andrey Chénier or Andrey Bolkonski, a character in
Tolstoy's War and Peace, I wonder?
I don't know why in my previous post I called Dick C.
"Lord C[hose]" (instead of correct "Lord
C[heshir]").
*at the spot of his
execution he hit himself at his head and said: "yet, I did have something
here".
Alexey
Sklyarenko