...a certain amount of good blood... had
bespattered... the apron of a quite accidental milkmaid, and the shirtsleeves of both seconds, charming Monsieur de Pastrouil
and Colonel St. Alin, a scoundrel... (Ada, 1.2)
"St. Alin" hints at Stalin, but also brings to mind
knyazhna Alina (Princess Alina), the Moscow cousin of Praskovia Larin
(Tatiana's and Olga's mother) in Pushkin's Eugene Onegin, and Alina
Telepnyov, the cabaret diva in Gorky's "The Life of Klim Samgin"
(TLoKS). Alina needs but M to become malina
("raspberry"), the word that occurs in Mandelshtam's satire on
Stalin:
chto ni kazn' u nego, to
malina
(whatever the execution, it's a raspberry to him)
In Nabokov's colored alphabet, M (Mandelshtam's initial and
ultima) is one of the three letters (the two other are B and V) that belong
to the red group (Speak, Memory, p.
29 of the Penguin edition). In Ada (1.1), Red Veen is the nickname
of Daniel Veen, the husband of Marina Durmanov (Van's, Ada's and
Lucette's mother). On the other hand, one is reminded
of Vas'ka krasnyi (Red Vaska), the exceptionally cruel
vyshibala (bouncer, the position overlooked by Eric Veen in his Villa
Venus project: 2.3) in a Volgan brothel, eponymous hero of a
stroy by Maxim Gorky. Gorky's Klim Samgin is a namesake of Baron Klim
Avidov (anagram of "Vladimir Nabokov"), a former lover of Marina Durmanov who
gave her children a set of Flavita (Russian Scrabble; note that the little
trough of japanned wood each player has before him/her for sorting out his/her
letters is called spektrik, "little spectrum:" 1.36). Among some
hundred (or more) characters in TLoKS is Vladimir Lyutov (Alina Telepnyov's
lover). His name comes from lyutyi (fierce) and reminds one of Lute (as
Paris is sometimes called on Antiterra, Earth's twin planet on which
Ada is set) and lyutik (buttercup). It is Lyutov who
tells Samgin: Zhizn' dlya lzhizni nam dana ("Life is given us for lying
rather than living it").
Lzhizn' = L +
zhizn'
Kim + L = Klim [= milk]
Lzhizn' - Gorky's
neologism, "spurious life" (lzhi is gen. sing. of lozh'
or lzha, "lie")
zhizn' - Russ.,
life
Kim - Kim
Beauharnais, the kitchen boy and photographer at Ardis (Daniel Veen's country
estate, the setting of Ada's Part One)
While Kim's first name links him to the eponymous hero of
Kipling's novel, his family name reminds one of Josephine
Beauharnais, Napoleon's first wife who is known on Antiterra as "Queen"
Josephine (1.5):
'I used to love history,' said Marina, 'I loved
to identify myself with famous women... Especially with famous beauties -
Lincoln's second wife or Queen Josephine.'
In the same conversation with Van (who drinks his tea
with lots of cream and three lumps of sugar) Marina mentions raspberry:
'Ada and I share your extravagant
tastes. Dostoevsky liked it with raspberry
syrup.'
malina = animal
In George Orwell's Animal Farm (described by the
author as his "novel contre Stalin"), Napoleon is
the pig that usurps power at the Animal Farm (as Manor farm was
renamed by animals). Eric Blair (Orwell's real name) is a namesake of Eric Veen
(like his grandfather, the architect David van Veen, young Eric is not related
to other Veens in VN's Family Chronicle).
Manor = roman = norma = Maron
roman - Russ., novel;
romance
norma - Russ.,
norm (in an interesting letter to Pleshcheev Chekhov mentions
norma - a norm which no one knows - as he speaks of roman, the
novel he was writing - but never finished)
Maron - Russ.,
Publius Vergilius Maro, Vergil
Btw., Alin and Alov come from alyi,
"scarlet" (V. Alov was the penname of young Gogol). Alin = nail (cf. Ada's badly bitten
fingernails)
Alexey Sklyarenko