In my previous post I forgot to point out that d'Onsky
fils probably lost his arm in the Crimean War with Tartars. One
remembers Ignat Lebyadkin, a character in Dostoevsky's Besy ("The
Possessed," 1872) who imagines that he lost his arm in the Crimean War (in which
he did not actually participate and, in fact, has all his limbs
intact):
Любви пылающей граната
Лопнула в груди Игната,
И вновь заплакал горькой мукой
По Севастополю безрукой.
The shell of burning love
burst in Ignat's breast,
and again one-armed started to cry
for Sebastopol in bitter*
anguish.
One of the characters in Besy is the priest
Tikhon (the omitted last chapter of the novel is entitled "At Tikhon's")
who reminds one of the Orthodox priest Tikhon Zadonsky (1724-83),
Bishop of Voronezh, the author of several books (highly rated by Leo
Tolstoy). In the 1930s Voronezh was the place of Mandelshtam's exile. There is
voron ("raven") in Voronezh, while the name Lebyadkin comes from
lebed' ("swan"). Btw., Lebyadkin's lame sister Mar'ya in many respects
resembles Marina's twin sister (Demon's mad wife) Aqua.
While d'Onsky fils and Percy de Prey (Van's rival in
love) fight in the Crimea (the former loses his arm and the latter his
life), Van has a duel in Kalugano with Captain Tapper. Lebyadkin is also a
Captain (at least, he calls himself one).
Besy ("The Demons") is actually a poem by Pushkin
(1830). Two stanzas from it are used by Dostoevsky as an epigraph to his
novel.
*gor'kiy ("bitter") again; note that the poet
(Lebyadkin) is a drunkard
p. s. I guess "a little
bird" at the end of my previous post should be "the little bird" (on
the whole, I agree with Victor Fet that articles are quite superfluous in
English)