As the person, Hugh
Person (corrupted "Peterson" and pronounced "Parson" by some) extricated his
angular bulk from the taxi... (Transparent Things,
2).
Peterson being a Swedish name, one is reminded of Martyn
Harlov, the hero of Turgenev's novella Stepnoy Korol' Lir (A
Lear of the Steppes, 1870):
-- Наш род от вшеда (он так выговаривал слово
швед); от вшеда Харлуса ведётся.
"Our family's descended from the Swede Harlus," he used to
maintain. (chapter I)
From The Worker's Leisure-Hour, Harlov's favorite
book (published in 1785 by Novikov, a famous Russian educator and
freemason):
"Смерть есть важная и великая работа натуры. Она
не что иное, как то, что дух, понеже есть легче, тоньше и гораздо проницательнее
тех стихий, коим отдан был под власть, но и самой электрической силы, то он
химическим образом чистится и стремится до тех пор, пока не ощутит равно
духовного себе места..." и т. д. {См. "Покоящийся трудолюбец", 1785, III ч.
Москва.}
"Death is a grand and solemn work of nature. It is nothing
else than that the spirit, inasmuch as it is lighter, finer, and infinitely more
penetrating than those elements under whose sway it has been subject, nay, even
than the force of electricity itself, so is chemically purified and striveth
upward till what time it attaineth an equally spiritual abiding-place for itself
. . ." and so on. (chapter XV)
Harlov's brother-in-law (our Lear's fool) has a very strange
first name: Souvenir. "He was the brother of Harlov's
deceased wife, had been nicknamed Souvenir as a little boy, and Souvenir he had
remained for every one, even the servants, who addressed him, it is true, as
Souvenir Timofeich. His real name he seemed hardly to know himself." (chapter
IV).
Probably irrelevant: the name of
Turgenev's hero brings to mind Clarissa Harlowe, the heroine of
Richardson's novel with whom Pushkin's Tatiana likes to identify
herself (Eugene Onegin, Chapter Three, X), and Panfil Harlikov who
on Tatiana's nameday comes with his family to the
Larins (EO, Chapter Five).
Btw., the author of A Lear of the
Steppes was a descendant of Yakov Turgenev, the court
jester of Peter I.
This Henry Emery Person, our Person's
father... (TT, 6)
The name of Hugh's father seems to hint at the American
transcendentalists Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-82) and Henry David
Thoreau (1817-62).
Alexey Sklyarenko