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LATH and Mayakovsky: addendum
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>Mayakovsky (who used to refer to himself, in his poems, as Vladim Vladimych) is the author of the famous "Стихи о советском паспорте" (Verses about the Soviet Passport).
Re "colored":
It belatedly occurred to me that Mayakovsky was also the author of the anti-racist poem "Блек энд Уайт" (Black and White, 1925). It is about a negro dustman in Vedado (a district in Havana) whose dull spectrum of joys is small ("мал его радостей тусклый спектр"). One day he approaches with an improper question a fat sugar magnate, a white American, who, instead of replying, slaps the unfortunate fellow in the face.* The author suggests that, rather than asking Mr Breggs, Willie should have addressed his question to Komintern [Communist International], in Moscow.
Note the "black-and-white" name of one of LATH's characters: Ivor Black. The name of Ivor's sister (who was the first of Vadim's three or four successive wives), Iris, suggests a rainbow of colors. "V. Irisin" (Irisin means "belonging to Iris" in Russian), Vadim's pen-name, reminds one of Sirin, VN's own Russian nom de plume. Indeed, compared to Mayakovsky's black-and-white placard poetry,** Sirin's prose, like Fyodor's poems in The Gift, "iridesces with harlequin colors."
The setting of Mayakovsky's poem is Havana, Cuba. Note the two islands mentioned in LATH's last sentence: "I had been promised some rum with my tea - Ceylon and Jamaica, the sibling islands (mumbling comfortably, dropping off, mumble dying away) - " I shall presently evoke two more islands with warm climate.
Mayakovsky's best-known poem is Хорошо ("Good," 1927, written to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the October Revolution; it is parodied by VN in his Tyrants Destroyed). This may look far-fetched, but, pronounced with a Chinese or Japanese accent, the Russian word khorosho sounds rather like koroso (or, in a different spelling, coroso). COROSO*** + SIRIN = CORSO ORSINI**** (a street at Gandora, in the Tessin, that Vadim crosses a few moments before he gets paralized). As to Far Eastern allusions in LATH, remember the copy of a Formosan (!) paperback edition of Vadim's A Kingdom by the Sea that he picks up in the Paris Orly airport after his return from the USSR. Formosa is the old name of Taiwan.
*Cf. Vadim's violent reaction to Oleg Orlov's words of reproof in LATH: "The swing I dealt old Oleg with the back of my left fist was of quite presentable power... 'Ну дали в морду. Ну, так что ж?' he muttered."
**btw., in the 1920s Mayakovsky starred in a silent movie (black-and-white, of course), Baryshnya i khuligan ("A Girl and a Hooligan"), in which he played the part of a hooligan. Ivor Black in LATH is a fine actor who played female roles on stage and later becomes a film director in Hollywood.
***This imaginary word reminds one of corazon, Spanish for "heart," but also of Curacao, an island in the Antilles, after which a liqueur was called. Btw., the poor negro in Mayakovsky's Black and White mentions coffee (black) and sugar (white), but there are no liquors to lace it.
****Corso, a street in Rome, is mentioned in Kuzmin's "Крылья" (The Wings, 1908). Orsini, a musical critic, is a character in the same tale (its hero is a youngster named Vanya Smurov). Kuzmin (1875-1936), a poet, prose writer and composer (who was "sexually left-handed"), dedicated to Mayakovsky his ode The Hostile Sea (1917).
Alexey Sklyarenko
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Re "colored":
It belatedly occurred to me that Mayakovsky was also the author of the anti-racist poem "Блек энд Уайт" (Black and White, 1925). It is about a negro dustman in Vedado (a district in Havana) whose dull spectrum of joys is small ("мал его радостей тусклый спектр"). One day he approaches with an improper question a fat sugar magnate, a white American, who, instead of replying, slaps the unfortunate fellow in the face.* The author suggests that, rather than asking Mr Breggs, Willie should have addressed his question to Komintern [Communist International], in Moscow.
Note the "black-and-white" name of one of LATH's characters: Ivor Black. The name of Ivor's sister (who was the first of Vadim's three or four successive wives), Iris, suggests a rainbow of colors. "V. Irisin" (Irisin means "belonging to Iris" in Russian), Vadim's pen-name, reminds one of Sirin, VN's own Russian nom de plume. Indeed, compared to Mayakovsky's black-and-white placard poetry,** Sirin's prose, like Fyodor's poems in The Gift, "iridesces with harlequin colors."
The setting of Mayakovsky's poem is Havana, Cuba. Note the two islands mentioned in LATH's last sentence: "I had been promised some rum with my tea - Ceylon and Jamaica, the sibling islands (mumbling comfortably, dropping off, mumble dying away) - " I shall presently evoke two more islands with warm climate.
Mayakovsky's best-known poem is Хорошо ("Good," 1927, written to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the October Revolution; it is parodied by VN in his Tyrants Destroyed). This may look far-fetched, but, pronounced with a Chinese or Japanese accent, the Russian word khorosho sounds rather like koroso (or, in a different spelling, coroso). COROSO*** + SIRIN = CORSO ORSINI**** (a street at Gandora, in the Tessin, that Vadim crosses a few moments before he gets paralized). As to Far Eastern allusions in LATH, remember the copy of a Formosan (!) paperback edition of Vadim's A Kingdom by the Sea that he picks up in the Paris Orly airport after his return from the USSR. Formosa is the old name of Taiwan.
*Cf. Vadim's violent reaction to Oleg Orlov's words of reproof in LATH: "The swing I dealt old Oleg with the back of my left fist was of quite presentable power... 'Ну дали в морду. Ну, так что ж?' he muttered."
**btw., in the 1920s Mayakovsky starred in a silent movie (black-and-white, of course), Baryshnya i khuligan ("A Girl and a Hooligan"), in which he played the part of a hooligan. Ivor Black in LATH is a fine actor who played female roles on stage and later becomes a film director in Hollywood.
***This imaginary word reminds one of corazon, Spanish for "heart," but also of Curacao, an island in the Antilles, after which a liqueur was called. Btw., the poor negro in Mayakovsky's Black and White mentions coffee (black) and sugar (white), but there are no liquors to lace it.
****Corso, a street in Rome, is mentioned in Kuzmin's "Крылья" (The Wings, 1908). Orsini, a musical critic, is a character in the same tale (its hero is a youngster named Vanya Smurov). Kuzmin (1875-1936), a poet, prose writer and composer (who was "sexually left-handed"), dedicated to Mayakovsky his ode The Hostile Sea (1917).
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/