-----Mensagem Original-----
Enviada em: terça-feira, 17 de dezembro
de 2013 10:52
Assunto: [NABOKV-L] Pedro in Ada
In Part One of The Bronze Horseman (the poem
known on Antiterra as Headless Horseman, 1.28) Pushkin compares
Petropol' ("Petropolis," as the poet calls St.
Petersburg) flooded by the Neva to a triton:
И всплыл Петрополь как тритон
And Petropolis surfaced like a triton.
Triton rhymes with priton* (gambling-hell) and
Trianon (the name of two pavilions in Versailles, the Petit Trianon was
particularly beloved by Marie-Antoinette whom Pushkin calls "young Armida"**).
In his poem K velmozhe (To a Grandee, 1830) Pushkin mentions
Trianon:
Ты помнишь Трианон и шумные
забавы?
Do you remember Trianon and loud pastimes?
Под гильотиною Версаль и Трианон
Under the guillotine [you saw] Versailles and
Trianon.
In André Chénier (1825) Pushkin mentions
deva-evmenida (the maiden Eumenide, i. e. Charlotte Corday
who stabbed Marat in his bath) and, in a footnote to his poem, quotes
Chénier's last words: pourtant j'avais quelque chose là ("yet I did have something here [in my
head]"). Chose is Van's University (1.30). Cora Day is an opera singer who
shot dead Murat, the Navajo chieftain, a French general's bastard, in his
swimming pool. (1.28)
One of Pushkin's last articles is "On Milton and
Chateaubriand's Translation of Paradise Lost" (1836). Part One
and Part Two of Ada are set in the Amerussia of Abraham Milton
(1.3)
Abraham Lincoln (1809-65, the 16th president of the U.
S.) was assassinated by an actor. Marina (Van's, Ada's and Lucette's
mother) used to "identify herself with famous beauties - Lincoln's second
wife or Queen Josephine" (1.5). Marina's lover, Pedro is a young Latin
actor.
Falconet's equestrian statue of Peter I (the Bronze
Horseman) is also alluded to in Ilf and Petrov's The Golden Calf
(chapter XXXIV "Friendship with Youth"):
Дружба, подогреваемая шутками подобного рода,
развивалась очень быстро, и вскоре вся шайка-лейка под управлением Остапа уже
распевала частушку:
У Петра Великого
близких нету никого.
Только
лошадь и змея,
Вот и вся его семья.
Peter the Great
has no relatives.
A horse and a snake
are his whole family.
In The Golden Calf Rio de Janeiro is the city of
Ostap Bender's dreams. For the Chernomorsk film company Ostap writes a
shooting script Sheya ("The Neck").
Marina offers Van a beautiful,
practically new Peruvian scarf, which Pedro (who suddenly left for Rio)
left behind (1.37).
In Manhattan Ada informs Mrs. Arfour (a
friend of the family) that Marina is fine and that Demon is in
Mexico or Oxmice (2.10). In Ardis there was a century-old lithograph by
Peter de Rast depicting Baldy (an old oak tree) as a young
colossus protecting four cows and a lad in rags, one shoulder bare
(1.34). Calf is a young cow. Ox is an adult (castrated)
bull.
To his contemporaries Peter I with his
whiskers appeared like a tom-cat. "Mice Burying the Cat" was a lubok painting
tremendously popular after the tsar's death. Marina's Pedro has lynx nostrils.
Otherwise, he is associated with dogs: "Now go and fetch me a Coke, like
a good dog" (Ada's words to Pedro, 1.32). Dogs are the animals to whom
the Tobaks speak (according to Van, "the Veens speak only to Tobaks
but Tobaks speak only to dogs," 3.2). Cordula's first husband is Ivan G. Tobak, a shipowner and descendant
of Admiral Tobakoff. Peter I is a character in N.
Aduev's Tabachnyi kapitan (The Tobacco Captain,
1944). Aduev and his musical comedy are mentioned in The Collection
of Reminiscences about I. Ilf and E. Petrov (1964). One of
the memoirists in this book is V. Kataev, E. Petrov's elder brother
whose naughty penname, Starik Sobakin, comes from sobaka (dog). On
the other hand, in Ilf and Petrov's The Twelve Chairs Fima
Sobak is a friend of Ellochka the Cannibal (whose real name, Elena
Shchukin, comes from shchuka, "pike"). Fima Sobak is a
cultured girl whose vocabulary consists of about one hundred and eighty words
(Ellochka managed with only thirty words and short phrases). One of
the words in Fima Sobak's rich vocabulary is
homosexuality.
Last but not least: Monsieur Pierre is
the executioner in VN's Invitation to a Beheading.
priton + Trianon = triton + pir + anon =
rot + tapir/pirat + Ninon (pir - feast;
rot - mouth; Germ., red; pirat - pirate)
*In Despair (Chapter Eight) Perebrodov tells
Hermann that he met him in the gambling hells of Cairo (v pritonakh
Kaira).
**Armida is young enchantress in Tasso's Jerusalem
Delievered. Pushkin nicknamed Eliza Khitrivo (Kutuzov's daughter who was
in love with the poet) Erminia, after a character in Tasso's
poem. The name Erminin, of the twins Greg and Grace, seems to come from
Pushkin's Erminia. On the other hand, in Kafka's Verwandlung Gregor
Samsa has the sister Grete. Like Kafka, the Erminin twins are Jewish. In
Kafka's story Gregor is metamorphosed into a beetle. Ada's and Grace's Lesbian
schoolmate at Brownhill, Vanda Broom, has a somber beetle-browed unhappy face
(1.43). Poor Vanda is in love with Grace (who marries Wellington, a soldier
who participates in the Second Crimean War). She is shot dead by the
girlfriend of a girlfriend on a starry night, in Ragusa of all places (2.6).
Ragusa + m = grausam (Germ., gruesome; according to
Cordula, Vanda is "a gruesome girl"). As to Greg, he marries Maude Sween
whose mother was a Brougham ("I think I met a Broom somewhere," muses Van,
3.2). According to Van, angels, too, have brooms - to sweep one's soul
clear of horrible images (5.6). At the end of Kafka's story the maid
with a broom sweeps Gregor's corpse out of its corner.
Alexey Sklyarenko
All private editorial communications are
read by both co-editors.
