Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0019566, Thu, 4 Mar 2010 19:37:59 +0300

Subject
Turgenev and Viardot in ADA
Date
Body
In a conversation with Boborykin, Alexandre Dumas fils said: "Pauline [Viardot] always had a reputation of a lover of the female, rather than male, sex, d'une..."
"And he used a cynical word of the Parisian slang (циническое слово парижского арго)."*

One wonders what that word was? Not tribadka, anyway. Any ideas?

Turgenev, who had been living with Mme Viardot-Garcia's family ever since 1850s, moved to a new-built chalet at their villa Les Frenes ("The Ash-Trees") in Bougival on September 20, 1875.** All the hundred floramors (Villa Venus) built by Eric Veen's grandfather all over Antiterra (Earth's twin planet), except Tartary, opened on this very day (Ada, Part Two, 3).

Moreover, "the old Russian word for September, ryuen'... might have spelled 'ruin'..." Boborykin's Family Chronicle (1908) is entitled "Великая разруха" ("The Great Ruin").

Not that it matters much, the name of Turgenev's only daughter (whose mother was a Russian serf girl) was also Pauline. I guess, she sued her famous namesake after her father's death in 1883 but lost her case.

*P. D. Boborykin, "Za polveka. Moi vospominaniya" (In the Half-a-Century Time-Span: My Reminiscences), Chapter IX, p. 45 of the 1965 edition.
**see Turgenev's letter of September 19, 1875, to N. V. Khanykov.

Alexey Sklyarenko

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