JM: we learn more about VN's father's planned
duel against Alexis Suvórin (Tchekhov's editor friend and intricate links
with )
I would like to learn more about this duel that
hasn't been fought. Despite the fact that, in Drugie berega, VN mentions "Alexey
Suvorin," it seems to me that the challenge from VDN was sent not to Alexey
Suvorin pere (Chekhov's friend and publisher, who was seventy-seven in
1911), and not to his son Alexey Alexeyevich (Suvorin fils or, as Chekhov
called him, "dolphin"), but to another son of the founder of the
"Novoe Vremia" newspaper and publishing house, Mikhail Suvorin (1858-1936). This
is confirmed by the information gleaned from this article: http://www.pseudology.org/Nabokov/Bio_papa.htm. Or
is its
author mistaken?
Jansy, you can not call VN's (or any other
writer's) characters by their patronymics ("VN's own Petrovich")! True, one is
sometimes allowed to address close friends "Palych" or "Vadimych". But
both Timofey Pnin and Vadim Vadimovich of LATH who were spared a life in
the Soviet Union would be terribly insulted if addressed that
way.
Alexey