She [Lucette]
complained to her governess who, completely misconstuing the whole matter (which
could also be said of her new composition), summoned Van and from her screened
bed, through a reek of embrocation and sweat, told him to refrain from turning
Lucette's head by making of her a fairy-tale damsel in distress.
(1.23)
Mlle Larivière probably uses the phrase tourner la tête.*
As I pointed out before, this phrase was used by Pushkin
in a four-line French poem written in 1821:
J'ai possédé maîtresse honêtte,
Je la servais comme il <lui> <?>
faut,
Mais je n'ai point tourné de tête,
-
Je n'ai jamais visé si
haut.
Lucette + fire = Lucifer + tête
golova + in vino veritas + barn =
Ivan Golovin + satira + brevno
golova - Russ.,
head
Ivan Golovin - the hero of
Tolstoy's story "The Death of Ivan Ilyich;" the admiral Ivan Mikhailovich
Golovin (d. 1738), Pushkin's great-great-grandfather (whose daughter, the poet's great-grandmother, was murdered, when she was
pregnant, by her husband in a paroxism of madness); Van Vin
(Russian spelling of the name Van Veen) looks like a "decapitated"
version of Ivan Golovin
satira - Russ., satire
brevno - Russ., log
(brevno was used by young Pushkin in another frivolous
epigram)
Incidentally, the name Karenin was derived by Tolstoy from
karenon, Greek for "head" (see Sergey L'vovich Tolstoy's
memoirs).
*cf. vskruzhit' golovu (the
Russian equivalent of "to turn [one's] head")
Alexey Sklyarenko