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Vaska
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In my previous post I mentioned Vas'ka krasnyi (Red Vaska), the eponymous hero of a story by Gorky. Vas'ka is a common name of tomcats. In Krylov's fable Kot i povar ("The Tomcat and the Cook") the tomcat is called Vas'ka. The phrase "a Vas'ka slushaet da est" ("Vaska listens to the cook and eats") from this fable became proverbial. There is kot Vas'ka in Pushkin's poem Domik v Kolomne ("The Small House in Kolomna," 1830) written in the octaves: Ob ney zhaleli v dome, vsekh zhe bole / Kot Vas'ka ("In the house they felt sorry for her [the deceased cook], particularly the tomcat Vaska").
One of the characters in Garshin's story "Nadezhda Nikolaevna" (1885) is a hunchbacked painter Gelfreich who draws nothing but cats. The story's hero and narrator, Andrey Lopatin, is also a painter who works on a portrait of Charlotte Corday (known on Antiterra as Cora Day, an opera singer who shot dead Murat, the Navajo chieftain, in his swimming pool: 1.28). Nadezhda Nikolaevna is a prostitute who poses for this portrait (at the end of the story Bessonov, NN's former lover and a friend of Lopatin, shoots her dead and is stabbed by Lopatin).
The author of Krasnyi tsvetok ("The Red Flower," 1883) and Chetyre dnya ("Four Days," 1877), Garshin committed suicide by jumping from the fifth floor of an appartment building. In Ada (2.6), M-r Arshin (Garshin - G) is a patient in the Kingston Clinic (where Van Veen works as a psychiatrist and researcher) who suffers from acrophobia (pathological fear of heights).
Chekhov dedicated to the memory of Garshin his story Pripadok (A Nervous Breakdown, 1889). Its hero is a law student who suffers mental anguish after he was dragged by his friends on a tour of brothels. His surname, Vasilyev, comes from the male given name Vasiliy (Basil). Vas'ka is a pejorative form of Vasiliy.
Garshin's "The Red Flower" is dedicated to the memory of Turgenev. In Ada (2.3), all the hundred floramors (palatial brothels, also known as "Villa Venus") opened simultaneously on September 20, 1875. On this very day Turgenev moved to the new-built chalet at his and Viardot's villa Les Frenes ("The Ash Trees") in Bougival.
Btw., kot (tomcat) is Russian slang for "souteneur."
There are cats and polecats in Ada.
I never heard that story about Catherine's favorite stallion (not that it does not exist).
Alexey Sklyarenko
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One of the characters in Garshin's story "Nadezhda Nikolaevna" (1885) is a hunchbacked painter Gelfreich who draws nothing but cats. The story's hero and narrator, Andrey Lopatin, is also a painter who works on a portrait of Charlotte Corday (known on Antiterra as Cora Day, an opera singer who shot dead Murat, the Navajo chieftain, in his swimming pool: 1.28). Nadezhda Nikolaevna is a prostitute who poses for this portrait (at the end of the story Bessonov, NN's former lover and a friend of Lopatin, shoots her dead and is stabbed by Lopatin).
The author of Krasnyi tsvetok ("The Red Flower," 1883) and Chetyre dnya ("Four Days," 1877), Garshin committed suicide by jumping from the fifth floor of an appartment building. In Ada (2.6), M-r Arshin (Garshin - G) is a patient in the Kingston Clinic (where Van Veen works as a psychiatrist and researcher) who suffers from acrophobia (pathological fear of heights).
Chekhov dedicated to the memory of Garshin his story Pripadok (A Nervous Breakdown, 1889). Its hero is a law student who suffers mental anguish after he was dragged by his friends on a tour of brothels. His surname, Vasilyev, comes from the male given name Vasiliy (Basil). Vas'ka is a pejorative form of Vasiliy.
Garshin's "The Red Flower" is dedicated to the memory of Turgenev. In Ada (2.3), all the hundred floramors (palatial brothels, also known as "Villa Venus") opened simultaneously on September 20, 1875. On this very day Turgenev moved to the new-built chalet at his and Viardot's villa Les Frenes ("The Ash Trees") in Bougival.
Btw., kot (tomcat) is Russian slang for "souteneur."
There are cats and polecats in Ada.
I never heard that story about Catherine's favorite stallion (not that it does not exist).
Alexey Sklyarenko
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/