Greg Erminin: 'And how is
the guvernantka belletristka?'
Van Veen: 'Her last novel is
called L'ami Luc. She just got the Lebon Academy Prize for her copious
rubbish.' (Ada, 3.2)
The title of Mlle Larivière's novel seems to blend
Maupassant's Bel ami (1885) with L'ami Fritz (1864) by
Erckmann-Chatrian.* The latter novel is mentioned by M. S. Sukhotin (Tolstoy's
son-in-law) in his diary (the entry of Nov. 12, 1901): Сидит он в кресле в халате, очень нарядном, подаренном
Таней, шёлковая скуфья на голове, очень напоминает грим какого-то актёра в роли
еврея, не то из "Уриэль Акосты", не то из "Ami Fritz".** (He
[Tolstoy] is sitting in an arm-chair in his very smart dressing-gown
given him by Tanya and a silk calotte on his head reminiscent of the make-up of
some actor in the part of a Jew in Uriel Acosta*** or L'ami
Fritz.) Greg Erminin is a Jew and Mlle Larivière, an
anti-Semite.
Incidentally, Tolstoy is the author of
Fransuaza (a free translation of Maupassant's story Le
Port, 1889, about the brother-and-sister incest)**** and of the preface to
Maupassant's Works in Russian.
In Maupassant's story Two Soldiers, Luc is the
name of the soldier who drowns himself.
Lebon = Nobel, Luc = cul (Fr.,
arse, buttocks)
*der gemeinsame Künstlername der Autoren Emile Erckmann
(1822-99) und Alexandre Chatrian (1826-90)
**Iz dnevnika M. S. Sukhotina (1910,
1961)
***a tragedy in blank verse (1847) by K. F.
Gutzkow
****Tolstoy added one sentence: "ona sestra tvoya"
(she is your sister). In a letter to Suvorin Chekhov remarked that this
addition did not spoil the story.
Alexey Sklyarenko