Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0019409, Sun, 14 Feb 2010 14:00:26 +0300

Subject
Torfyanuyu
Date
Body
Speaking of torf, "peat," Mikhail Prishvin (an agronomist who became a writer, mainly of children's books, 1873-1954) is the author of a series of essays, entitled "Torf," about peat-digging. Besides, one of Prishvin's best-known books is Kladovaya solntsa ("The Sun's Pantry," 1945), about Russian peat bogs.

In his essay on Gorky, Ivan Bunin mentions Gorky's habit easily go into raptures over the work of his colleagues and express his feelings in bombastic phrases, as, for example, this one: "I'm happy, Prishvin, to live on the same planet with you!" Nabokov (who considered Prishvin "a regional mediocrity") would hardly have shared Gorky's exaltation. Can this be one of the reasons that Ada's setting is not Earth, but its twin planet, the much more colorful (even if also depraved and cruel) Antiterra?

Like Golovin, the name Prishvin ends in -vin.

torf = fort (cf. Californian Fort Ross, mentioned in Ada: 2.8) = ftor ("fluorine;" the Russian word comes from Greek phtoros, "decay") = Trofim - im (im is a Russian personal pronoun that means "by him" and "[to] them")

Alexey Sklyarenko

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