It is well-known that the tsar Peter I was a
drunkard. And so was his namesake, Pyotr Abramovich Gannibal (son of Abram
Petrovich Gannibal, Peter's god-child; in fact, Pyotr Gannibal received his name
after Peter I). In Tynyanov's "Pushkin" (1936; Part
One: Childhood: 1.1.6) Pyotr Annibal says to his
sister-in-law (the poet's maternal grandmother):
- Я, сударыня сестрица, - сказал он Марье
Алексеевне, - настойки в простом виде не пью, я ее перегоняю. Я возвожу в
известный градус крепости. Чтоб вишня, горечь, чтоб сад был во
рту.*
VN must have read Tynyanov's novel. In his EO
Commentary (Vol. 2, p. 295) he writes: "Incidentally, Pyotr
Gannibal, our poet's granduncle and country neighbor, was, like the MS Larin, a
passionate distiller of gin, vodka."
*Apologies, I find this passage too
difficult to translate. Let me just say that [G]annibal mentions gradus
kreposti (alcohol percentage) of the liquor he distills. Normally,
gradus means "degree" and krepost', "fortress."
One is reminded of Petropavlovskaya krepost', the Peter-and-Paul
Fortress in St. Petersburg, and its commander Ivan Aleksandrovich Nabokov
(brother of VN's great-grandfather, 1787-1852).
According to Bulgarin, Pushkin's
great-grandfather, Ibrahim (Abram) Gannibal was acquired for a bottle of
rum. Bulgarin's coarse article in Northern Bee provoked Pushkin to
compose Moya rodoslovnaya ("My Pedigree," 1830). A hundred years later,
G. Ivanov in his Chisla review of Sirin's novels rudely called
VN kukharkin syn ("son of a [female] cook"). Vivian Calmbrood
responded with the poem Nochnoe
puteshestvie ("Night Journey," 1931), in which he attacked Ivanov as
"Johnson."
Alexey Sklyarenko
All private editorial communications, without
exception, are
read by both co-editors.