Alexey Sklyarenko:... "During the last week of July, there emerged, with
diabolical regularity, the female of Chateaubriand’s mosquito. Chateaubriand
(Charles), who had not been the first to be bitten by it… but the first to
bottle the offender, and with cries of vindictive exultation to carry it to
Professor Brown who wrote the rather slap-bang Original Description (‘small
black palpi… hyaline wings… yellowy in certain lights… which should be
extinguished if one keeps open the kasements [German printer!]…’ The Boston
Entomologist for August, quick work, 1840) was not related to the great poet and
memoirist born between Paris and Tagne (as he’d better, said Ada, who liked
crossing orchids). (1.17) Vivian
Darkbloom ('Notes to Ada'): Katya: the ingénue in Turgenev’s 'Fathers and
Children'." In a letter of February 24, 1893, to Suvorin Chekhov
says that Fathers and Children is a glorious thing and uses the phrase
komar nosa ne podtochit* (not a thing can be said against it; literally:
"mosquito would not give an edge to its nose") [ ]..." as the saying
is, you can't pick a hole in it."[ ] ...
Jansy Mello: Thanks, Alexey, for the
wonderful trail of associations and allusions related to mosquitoes in ADA and
in Russian Lit. An excellent contribution, from a dedicated
scholar, for our understanding the richness of ADA's ploughing fields...
Sometimes it's difficult to distinguish in a novel
those casual references to other authors from those that were
deliberately planted in it. A common source
or saying can be illuminating in this respect, as it's the case with the
proverb that mentions mosquitoes as indicative of flawless pieces of
writing. Different authors might evoke
their shared image or source quite naturally, without necessarily
realizing the implications which could (truly or falsely) bind them
together.