Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0019433, Wed, 17 Feb 2010 22:24:23 +0300

Subject
Pharisee, seraph
Date
Body
In my previous post I mentioned farisey (Pharisee) and serafim ("seraph"). The term "pharisaism" occurs in the closing lines of Gamlet ("Hamlet"), the first and most famous of Juri Zhivago's poems in Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago:

Я один, всё тонет в фарисействе.
Жизнь прожить - не поле перейти.

I'm alone. Everything drowns in the pharisaism.
Living life is not the same as crossing a field.

The hero of Pushkin's poem The Prophet meets at the cross-roads шестикрылый серафим (the six-winged seraph). "The misinformed, simple, noble-winged seraphs"* are mentioned by Humbert in the beginning of Lolita.
Besides, Serafim is a Russian male given name. Lev and Serafim are two brothers in VN's story Встреча ("The Reunion," 1932). There is also Serafima, the name's female version. Fima Sobak (rhymes with Tobak) is a friend of Ella the cannibal in Ilf and Petrov's "The 12 Chairs."

*In the Russian version, Эдгаровы серафимы (E. A. Poe's seraphs).

Alexey Sklyarenko

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