Subject
tushkan in The 12 Chairs and furs in ADA
From
Date
Body
From Ada (Part Two, ch. 8):
"'I may not be as bright as I used to be,' sadly said Ada, 'but I know somebody who is not simply a cat, but a polecat, and that's Cordula Tobacco alias Madame Perwitsky. I read in this morning's paper that in France ninety percent of cats die of cancer. I don't know what the situation is in Poland.'
After a while he adored [sic! Ed.] the pancakes. No Lucette, however, turned up, and when Ada, still wearing her diamonds (in sign of at least one more caro Van and a Camel before her morning bath) looked into the guest room, she found the white valise and blue furs gone. A note scrawled in Arlen Eyelid Green was pinned to the pillow."
As I pointed out earlier, Cordula Tobak's alias hints at Der Perwitsky, the fur of a European polecat.
On the other hand, Tobak, Cordula de Prey's name in her first marriage, reminds one of Fima Sobak, a friend of Ellochka Shchukin* in Ilf and Petrov's The Twelve Chairs. The strange name Sobak** obviously comes from sobaka, "dog". "The Veens speak only to Tobaks / But Tobaks speak only dogs"*** is the line Van quotes to Cordula when he meets her in Paris (3.2).
caro Van + tabak = caravan**** + Tobak
caro - meat, flesh (Lat.)
tabak - tobacco (Russ.)
Cordula's first husband is Ivan Tobak, a shipowner and descendant of the famous Russian admiral (Tobakoff). I never saw it, but there was a Soviet musical comedy Tabachnyi kapitan ("The Tobacco Captain", 1944), by N. A. Aduev (pen-name of N. A. Rozenberg, 1895-1950) who, like VN, had graduated from the Tenishev school. The action in it takes place in the times of the tsar Peter I.
*this may be irrelevant: the name Shchukin comes from shchuka, "pike"
**Sobak (skoba, basok) = Boska; cf. Matka Boska, Virgin Mary (Pol.)
***Вины говорят лишь с Тобаками,
А Тобаки говорят лишь с собаками (see also "The Sores of Eros in Nabokov's Ada", my article in The Nabokovian #50; this note has to be updated)
****cf. karavanchik [a little caravan] of cigarettes on Ada's bedtable (2.8)
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/
"'I may not be as bright as I used to be,' sadly said Ada, 'but I know somebody who is not simply a cat, but a polecat, and that's Cordula Tobacco alias Madame Perwitsky. I read in this morning's paper that in France ninety percent of cats die of cancer. I don't know what the situation is in Poland.'
After a while he adored [sic! Ed.] the pancakes. No Lucette, however, turned up, and when Ada, still wearing her diamonds (in sign of at least one more caro Van and a Camel before her morning bath) looked into the guest room, she found the white valise and blue furs gone. A note scrawled in Arlen Eyelid Green was pinned to the pillow."
As I pointed out earlier, Cordula Tobak's alias hints at Der Perwitsky, the fur of a European polecat.
On the other hand, Tobak, Cordula de Prey's name in her first marriage, reminds one of Fima Sobak, a friend of Ellochka Shchukin* in Ilf and Petrov's The Twelve Chairs. The strange name Sobak** obviously comes from sobaka, "dog". "The Veens speak only to Tobaks / But Tobaks speak only dogs"*** is the line Van quotes to Cordula when he meets her in Paris (3.2).
caro Van + tabak = caravan**** + Tobak
caro - meat, flesh (Lat.)
tabak - tobacco (Russ.)
Cordula's first husband is Ivan Tobak, a shipowner and descendant of the famous Russian admiral (Tobakoff). I never saw it, but there was a Soviet musical comedy Tabachnyi kapitan ("The Tobacco Captain", 1944), by N. A. Aduev (pen-name of N. A. Rozenberg, 1895-1950) who, like VN, had graduated from the Tenishev school. The action in it takes place in the times of the tsar Peter I.
*this may be irrelevant: the name Shchukin comes from shchuka, "pike"
**Sobak (skoba, basok) = Boska; cf. Matka Boska, Virgin Mary (Pol.)
***Вины говорят лишь с Тобаками,
А Тобаки говорят лишь с собаками (see also "The Sores of Eros in Nabokov's Ada", my article in The Nabokovian #50; this note has to be updated)
****cf. karavanchik [a little caravan] of cigarettes on Ada's bedtable (2.8)
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/