Pushkin took as an epigraph to Andrey
Shen'e (1825) a line from Chénier's La Jeune Captive (written
in the prison de Saint-Lazar, a few weeks before the poet's execution in July,
1794):
Ainsi, triste et captif, ma lyre toutefois
S'éveillait...
In his elegy (ll. 101-102) Pushkin mentions
Chénier's poem as Узница:
...может быть, и Узница моя,
Уныла и бледна, стихам любви внимая...
...may be, also my fair Captive,
cheerless and pale, hearkening to verses of
love...
Now, узница (female prisoner) needs but one letter
to become its rhyme-word, кузница (forge, smithy). Кузница и
усадьба ("Forge and Country Estate") is the (invented) literary circle
mentioned by Ostap Bender in Ilf and Petrov's The Golden Calf
(chapter VIII: "Crisis of the Genre"):
Я ошибся, – заметил Остап. – Ему, должно быть,
приснился не митрополит Двулогий, а широкий пленум литературной группы "Кузница
и усадьба".
"I was mistaken," remarked Ostap. "He must
have been dreaming not of the Metropolitan Dilogius, but of a large plenum
of the "Forge and Country Estate" literary circle."
пленум (plenum) = плен (captivity) + ум (intellect, wits)
плен + никогда (never) - года (years) = пленник (male
captive)
"Кавказский пленник" (The Caucasian Captive)
is Pushkin's narrative poem (1821) and a story by Tolstoy
(1876).
Жилин + костыль + ё = Костылин + жильё
Жилин & Костылин - characters in
Tolstoy's "The Caucasian Captive"
костыль - crutch
жильё - habitation, lodging
ё - character of
the Cyrrilic alphabet (that has no match in the Roman
one)
I don't mind, if some listers find my
anagrams irrelevant and I receive "no marks" for
them.
Alexey Sklyarenko
All private editorial communications, without
exception, are
read by both co-editors.