Alexey Sklyarenko:A form of both Aleksandr and Aleksandra,
Shura can be male or female first name...The sex of Shura Tobak's remains
ambiguous. Presumably, Shura is a man, like his namesake and colleague
Sashka skripatch (Sashka the fiddler), the Jewish hero of Kuprin's
story "Gambrinus". In Ada, Mr Alexander Screepatch is the new President
of the United Americas, a plethoric Russian (3.4)...Traveling in Soviet Central Asia with Aleksandr Ivanovich Koreyko (having
missed the plane, they have to ride camels), Ostap Bender (who just
squeezed from Koreyko one million rubles) suggests that they declare
Jihad to Denmark, because the Danes have murdered their Prince
Hamlet.True, the Kievan Prince Vladimir famously
said, rejecting Islam: "Veselie Rusi est' piti" (the mirth of Rus is
drinking). Btw., a feast of Vladimir the Fair Sun (Vladimir Krasnoe
Solnyshko, as he was dubbed by his contemporaries) is described in
Pushkin's "Ruslan and Lyudmila". In fact, Pushkin's Lyudmila is Vladimir's
daughter.
JM: Thanks for the addenda,
Alexey! Truly amazing to follow the connections with mermaids and
mermen, fiddlers and cabbages, butlers and kings ( which demand an
extensive knowledge of English and Russian) Perhaps "Ada" became a little
Swiss.
See, in his childhood Nabokov grew up as a
trilingual child in a trilingual environment (Russian, French, English) and
then, in England, he studies French and Russian. But, in Germany, he
is encapsulated by a Russian community until he can move to
France (when he starts to write in English). At last, in America, reversing the
overall trend, he leaves his coccoon to become a fully
fledged American, immersed in the landscape, culture,
language, people.
However next he settles in multiple (and
neutral) Switzerland, surrounded by French, German, Italian...
"Ada" must be a concoction resulting results from this new cultural
and linguistic melting pot?
Not only Elsinore & not simply Christian Andersen's
mermaid, there is also a transformed Danish city moving from Copen (
commerce?) onto God in this sentence:"They came in at the beginning of an
introductory picture, featuring a cruise to Greenland, with heavy seas in gaudy technicolor. It
was a rather irrelevant trip since their Tobakoff did not contemplate
calling at Godhavn; moreover, the cinema theater was swaying in
counterrhythm to the cobalt-and-emerald swell on the screen. No wonder the place
was emptovato, as Lucette observed..., and she went on to say that the
Robinsons had saved her life by giving her on the eve a tubeful of Quietus
Pills. ‘Want one? One a day keeps "no shah" away. Pun. You can chew it, it’s
sweet.’ "
The axis or the purpose of thousands of
allusions and puns (so cleverly woven, but drifting) eludes me. The
terrible reference to Toulouse Lautrec, for example..."Van
answered he was leaving next day for England, and then on
June 3 (this was May 31) would be taking the Admiral Tobakoff back to the
States. She would sail with him, she cried, it was a marvelous idea, she didn’t
mind whither to drift, really, West, East, Toulouse, Los
Teques..."