Barbashin + chort + Kuprikov + Sirin =
Barboshin + Chartkov + Kuprin + iris
Barbashin, Barboshin
- characters in "The Event," two incarnations of the
devil
chort - Russ., the devil (old
spelling)
Kuprikov - a
character in "The Event" (colleague of the
portrait-painter Troshcheykin)
Chartkov - the young artist in
Gogol's story "The Portrait"
Kuprin - the writer A. I. Kuprin
(1870-1938; see Speak, Memory, pp. 220-221, where Sirin is also mentioned)
Alexey Sklyarenko