Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0023525, Sat, 22 Dec 2012 00:55:19 -0300

Subject
Re: more footprints in Ada
Date
Body
I would like to add a line from Brian Boyd’s Annotations to Ada, exploring the theme of footprints (Cf. “Lolita”):

Cf. 171.13-16: “He struggled to keep back his tears, while AAA blew his fat red nose, when shown the peasant-bare footprint of Tolstoy preserved in the clay of a motor court in Utah.” MOTIF: footprints.



From: Alexey Sklyarenko
Sent: Thursday, December 20, 2012 3:43 PM
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Subject: [NABOKV-L] more footprints in Ada

They parted again, Demon sailing back to America, and Van with his tutor going first to Gardone on Lake Garda, where Aksakov reverently pointed out Goethe's and d'Annunzio's marble footprints, and then staying for a while in autumn at a hotel on a mountain slope above Leman Lake (where Karamzin and Count Tolstoy had roamed). (1.24)

After Karamzin but before Tolstoy, Zhukovski (the tutor of Alexander II) and, in the wake of Zhukovski, Gogol had roamed there. In a letter (quoted by VN in The Gift and in his book on Gogol and reproduced, unfaithfully, by Veresaev in Gogol in Life) of November 12, 1836, to Zhukovski Gogol describes his stay in Vevey[...]
Van's tutor, Andrey Andreevich Aksakov ("AAA") is a namesake of Gogol's classmate Andrey Andreevich Bozhko. Bozhko = bozhok (idol; minor deity).

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