Daniel Veen's mother was a Trumbell, and he was
prone to explain at great length - unless sidetracked by a bore-baiter - how in
the course of American history an English 'bull' had become a New England
'bell.' (Ada,
1.1)
In his memoir essay on Chekhov (Ob A. P.
Chekhove, 1904) M. M. Kovalevski quotes Turgenev's words about Maupassant
(with whom French readers often compared Chekhov):
Говоря однажды со мною об авторе "Одной жизни" и
стольких неподражаемых повестей и повестушек, Тургенев сказал мне: "Вот человек,
который обладает тем качеством, которое Гомер передал бы словами: взять быка за
рога". ("Here is the man who
has the quality that Homer would have described in the words: to take
the bull by the horns.")
It was Turgenev who gave Tolstoy Maupassant's
collection Maison Tellier (the title story was dedicated to
Turgenev) and recommended him the young French writer. Many years later
Tolstoy translated (as Fransuaza) Maupassant's stroy Le
Port, about the brother-and-sister incest, to Russian and wrote
the preface to Maupassant's oeuvre in Russian.
According to Kovalevski, Chekhov's affinity with Maupassant
hampers his popularity with the French readers who prefer to him Maxim
Gorky, the author of Na dne (At the Bottom):
сходство нашего писателя с автором "Одной жизни"
до некоторой степени даже мешает успеху его в среде французских читателей,
которые предпочитают ему яркого изобразителя жизни "На дне" - Максима
Горького.
Gorky is also the author of
Vas'ka krasnyi (Red Vaska), a story about the cruel bouncer
(vyshibala) in a Volgan brothel.
In society Daniel Veen (Walter D. Veen) is known as Durak
Walter or simply Red Veen (1.1). Like his father-in-law, the "sur-royally
antlered" general Ivan Durmanov,
Daniel Veen is a cuckold.
According to Horace (Ars Poetica), Homer does
not begin the Trojan war from the twin egg. VN follows Pushkin, the author
of Ezerski, in beginning Ada ab ovo (the family tree, etc.),
but he also takes the bull by the horns.
Alexey Sklyarenko