Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0020726, Mon, 13 Sep 2010 22:59:30 +0400

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Re: Uranograd and Einstein
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FA: The smaller person in the drawing couldn't possibly be Albert Einstein. No resemblance whatever.

Nevertheless, the inscription says that he is [Professor] Einstein. "Do not believe your eyes", as Koz'ma Prutkov would have said.

Btw., in my previous post I wrongly rendered Tyutchev's line "Schastliv v nash vek, komu pobeda" as "In our days happy's he who [gained] victory..." It should be "in our age" of course. Note that in one of his discarded variants Shade writes:

All artists have been born in what they call
A sorry age; mine is the worst of all:
An age that thinks spacebombs and spaceships take
A genius with a foreign name to make,
When any jackass can ring up the stuff

Einstein is a foreign name - for a Russian ear, at least. It is true, though, that Einstein was a theorist who didn't make spacebombs and spaceships.

JM: There are many Einsteins, Zweisteins, Eysteins and Eisensteins

I believe, in one of his interviews VN turns the name Eisenstein, of the famous Soviet film director, into Eisenstadt. Stadt being German for "city", it reminds me of Ehrenburg, another "urban" name.

Alexey Sklyarenko

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