Subject
genealogy: Pushkin and Golovin
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Date
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A. S. Pushkin's great-grandfather, Aleksandr Petrovich Pushkin (b. after 1686), the owner, among other lands, of the Boldino estate, was married to Evdokia* Golovin (daughter of Ivan Golovin, the batman of Peter I, subsequently an admiral). In 1725, in a paroxism of madness, he murdered (zarezal, "knifed") his wife as she was giving birth to a child, was under trial but didn't appear before court, having died earlier. The poor murderer had an only son, the poet's grandfather, Lev Pushkin** (1723-90), and a brother, Fyodor Petrovich, who was the poet's maternal great-great-grandfather. Fyodor's granddaughter, Maria, married Osip Abramovich Hannibal, son of Abram Hannibal (1697?-1781, see * below). Their daughter, Nadezhda Hannibal, married Sergey Pushkin, the grandson of Aleksander Petrovich (brother of Nadezhda Osipovna's great-grandfather Fyodor Pushkin). Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin's parents were relatives.
The inter-marriages within a family were not as strictly banned in Russia*** as they are on Antiterra after the L disaster, which happened on that planet "in the beau mileau of last century" (1.3). The Latin letter L (the mysterious disaster's initial) looks like the mirrored Cyrillic counterpart of Latin G.**** In Russian, we spell the name Hannibal "Gannibal." Gannibal + a = balagan (low farce, booth show) + in; Gannibal rhymes/is almost homonymous with "cannibal". Cannibal = Caliban + n
*A namesake of Evdokia Dioper, Abram Petrovich Hannibal's first wife, who was banished to the Old Ladoga monastery in 1754 after her husband divorced her. The Abyssinia-born Abram (Ibrahim) Hannibal, Pushkin's maternal great-grandfather, was a god son of Peter I, after whom he received his patronymic. He spent the last years of his long life in Suida, his estate not too far from Vyra-Rozhdestveno of the Nabokovs. Btw., Dioper = period.
**He is mentioned in Pushkin's poem Moya rodoslovnaya ("My Genealogy," 1830). He shouldn't be confused with A. S. Pushkin's brother Lev ("Lyovushka").
***However, in Khodasevich's stroty The Life of Vasiliy Travnikov (1936), set in Russia of the late 18th century, when two brothers marry two sisters, the second marriage is canceled by the Orthodox Church authorities and the spouses and the bride's father are sentenced to penitence.
****Just as the Cyrillic counterpart of Latin L looks like mirrored (turned upside-down) Latin V.
Alexey Sklyarenko
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The inter-marriages within a family were not as strictly banned in Russia*** as they are on Antiterra after the L disaster, which happened on that planet "in the beau mileau of last century" (1.3). The Latin letter L (the mysterious disaster's initial) looks like the mirrored Cyrillic counterpart of Latin G.**** In Russian, we spell the name Hannibal "Gannibal." Gannibal + a = balagan (low farce, booth show) + in; Gannibal rhymes/is almost homonymous with "cannibal". Cannibal = Caliban + n
*A namesake of Evdokia Dioper, Abram Petrovich Hannibal's first wife, who was banished to the Old Ladoga monastery in 1754 after her husband divorced her. The Abyssinia-born Abram (Ibrahim) Hannibal, Pushkin's maternal great-grandfather, was a god son of Peter I, after whom he received his patronymic. He spent the last years of his long life in Suida, his estate not too far from Vyra-Rozhdestveno of the Nabokovs. Btw., Dioper = period.
**He is mentioned in Pushkin's poem Moya rodoslovnaya ("My Genealogy," 1830). He shouldn't be confused with A. S. Pushkin's brother Lev ("Lyovushka").
***However, in Khodasevich's stroty The Life of Vasiliy Travnikov (1936), set in Russia of the late 18th century, when two brothers marry two sisters, the second marriage is canceled by the Orthodox Church authorities and the spouses and the bride's father are sentenced to penitence.
****Just as the Cyrillic counterpart of Latin L looks like mirrored (turned upside-down) Latin V.
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/