Писатель. Полагаю, что в молодости вы
лепетали между поцелуями, как все лживые
женщины.
Антонина Павловна. Я давно-давно это забыла, Пётр
Николаевич.
(A guest at Antonina Pavlovna's birthday party, the famous
writer supposes that, when his hostess was young, she would
lisp between kisses, as all deceitful women do. "The Event," Act Two)
The mother of Lyubov' and Vera, Antonina Pavlovna regrets having
no Nadezhda. Nadezhda (hope) lying with its childish lisp to
those who divine at Yuletide is mentioned by Pushkin in Eugene
Onegin (Five: VII):
Настали святки. То-то радость!
Гадает ветреная
младость,
Которой ничего не жаль,
Перед которой жизни даль
Лежит
светла, необозрима;
Гадает старость сквозь очки
У гробовой своей доски,
Все потеряв невозвратимо;
И всё равно: надежда им
Лжёт детским лепетом своим.
Yuletide is here. Now that gladness!
Frivolous youth divines -
who nought has to regret,
in front of whom the faraway of life
lies luminous, unlimited;
old age divines, through spectacles,
at its sepulchral slab,
all having irrecoverably lost;
nor does it matter; hope to them
lies with its childish lisp.
Svyatki (Yuletide) brings to mind Vyazemsky's poem
Svyatochnaya shutka ("The Yuletide Joke," 1830) and Chekhov's
story Na svyatkakh ("At Yuletide," 1900). Btw., today is the first
day of Svyatki ("Yuletide is here").
"The Event" ends in Meshaev the Second, who toyed with chiromancy
during the long winter evenings in the country, reading Lyubov's palm
and then pausing over that of Barboshin.
Alexey Sklyarenko