Subject
Marevo, flowers & numbers in LATH
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Marevo is Vadim's favorite manor in the Volga region. In his poem Viola tricolor (1921) VN speaks of ugryumoe marevo (the morose mirage [or "dull heat haze"?]) of our deserts:
Анютины глазки, весёлые глазки,
в угрюмое марево наших пустынь
глядите вы редко из ласковой сказки,
из мира забытых святынь...
Anyuta's eyes, the merry eyes of pansies,
from an affectionate fairy tale,
from the world of forgotten sacred places
you seldom look into a morose mirage/heat haze of our deserts...
The Russian name of pansy (Viola tricolor), anyutiny glazki ("Anyuta's eyes"), brings to mind Anyuta Blagovo, a character in Chekhov's story My Life (1896). Anyuta Blagovo is a namesake of Vadim's second wife (Bel's mother) Annette Blagovo.
The German name of Viola tricolor, Stiefmutterchen ("step-mummy"), brings to mind Vadim's third wife (Bel's step-mother) Louise Adamson.
In VN's Mashen'ka (Mary) Alfyorov makes a pun on the Russian name of coltsfoot (Petasites spurium), mat'-i-machekha ("mother-and-stepmother"):
"А я на числах, как на качелях, всю жизнь прокачался. Бывало, говорил жене: раз я математик, ты мать-и-мачеха..."
Горноцветов и Колин залились тонким смехом. Госпожа Дорн вздрогнула, испуганно посмотрела на обоих.
-- Одним словом: цифра и цветок,-- холодно сказал Ганин.
("And I all my life have swung on numbers, as on a seesaw. I used to say to my wife: if I'm a mathematician, then you are my mat'-i-machekha..."
..."In a word: a figure and a flower," Ganin said coldly. Chapter II)
VN's Mary (1926) corresponds to Vadim's Tamara (1925). In VN's autobiography Speak, Memory (1965) Tamara is the name of the author's first love. In Drugie berega (Chapter Eleven, 1) VN gives her псевдоним, окрашенный в цветочные тона её настоящего имени (an alias colored in the flowery shades of her real name). Speak, Memory: When I first met Tamara - to give her a name concolorous her real one - she was fifteen, and I was a year older. (Chapter Twelve, 1)
Tamara rhymes with Dagmara, the young mistress of Mstislav Charnetski (Vadim's distant relation) who shows Vadim a fairy-tale path winding through a great forest and gives him the revolver with which he shoots dead the Red Army soldier:
I groped in my pockets, fished out what I needed, and shot him dead, as he lunged at me; then he fell on his face, as if sunstruck on the parade ground, at the feet of his king. None of the serried tree trunks looked his way, and I fled, still clutching Dagmara's lovely little revolver. (1.2)
Vadim had three or four wives. (1.1) Princess Dagmar Shakhovskoy (born Lilienfeld, 1893-1967) was Balmont's fourth (and last) wife. In his poem "Budem kak solntse..." ("Let's be like the sun..." 1902) Balmont (the author of Marevo dedicated to Marina Tsvetaev*) writes:
Дальше, нас манит число роковое
В Вечность, где новые вспыхнут цветы.
Further, the fatal number lures us
to Eternity where the new flowers will flash out.
One of the poems in Balmont's collection Budem kak solntse begins:
От полюса до полюса я землю обошёл.
From Pole to Pole I went around the world.
Polyus ("The Pole," 1924) is a drama by VN about Robert Scott's expedition to the South Pole. In LATH (6.1) Vadim says that the numeral "7" always reminded him of the flag an explorer sticks in the cranium of the North Pole.
*Tsvetaev is a floral name (tsvety means "flowers"). Thanks to VF (I knew about Balmont's Marevo but not about the dedication)! Btw., Marina Tsvetaev (whom Balmont calls "my sister") is the author of memoirs about Balmont Slovo o Bal'monte ("A Word about Balmont," 1936).
Alexey Sklyarenko,
August 9 (VN first spoke to Tamara on 9 August 1915, ninety-eight years ago)
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Анютины глазки, весёлые глазки,
в угрюмое марево наших пустынь
глядите вы редко из ласковой сказки,
из мира забытых святынь...
Anyuta's eyes, the merry eyes of pansies,
from an affectionate fairy tale,
from the world of forgotten sacred places
you seldom look into a morose mirage/heat haze of our deserts...
The Russian name of pansy (Viola tricolor), anyutiny glazki ("Anyuta's eyes"), brings to mind Anyuta Blagovo, a character in Chekhov's story My Life (1896). Anyuta Blagovo is a namesake of Vadim's second wife (Bel's mother) Annette Blagovo.
The German name of Viola tricolor, Stiefmutterchen ("step-mummy"), brings to mind Vadim's third wife (Bel's step-mother) Louise Adamson.
In VN's Mashen'ka (Mary) Alfyorov makes a pun on the Russian name of coltsfoot (Petasites spurium), mat'-i-machekha ("mother-and-stepmother"):
"А я на числах, как на качелях, всю жизнь прокачался. Бывало, говорил жене: раз я математик, ты мать-и-мачеха..."
Горноцветов и Колин залились тонким смехом. Госпожа Дорн вздрогнула, испуганно посмотрела на обоих.
-- Одним словом: цифра и цветок,-- холодно сказал Ганин.
("And I all my life have swung on numbers, as on a seesaw. I used to say to my wife: if I'm a mathematician, then you are my mat'-i-machekha..."
..."In a word: a figure and a flower," Ganin said coldly. Chapter II)
VN's Mary (1926) corresponds to Vadim's Tamara (1925). In VN's autobiography Speak, Memory (1965) Tamara is the name of the author's first love. In Drugie berega (Chapter Eleven, 1) VN gives her псевдоним, окрашенный в цветочные тона её настоящего имени (an alias colored in the flowery shades of her real name). Speak, Memory: When I first met Tamara - to give her a name concolorous her real one - she was fifteen, and I was a year older. (Chapter Twelve, 1)
Tamara rhymes with Dagmara, the young mistress of Mstislav Charnetski (Vadim's distant relation) who shows Vadim a fairy-tale path winding through a great forest and gives him the revolver with which he shoots dead the Red Army soldier:
I groped in my pockets, fished out what I needed, and shot him dead, as he lunged at me; then he fell on his face, as if sunstruck on the parade ground, at the feet of his king. None of the serried tree trunks looked his way, and I fled, still clutching Dagmara's lovely little revolver. (1.2)
Vadim had three or four wives. (1.1) Princess Dagmar Shakhovskoy (born Lilienfeld, 1893-1967) was Balmont's fourth (and last) wife. In his poem "Budem kak solntse..." ("Let's be like the sun..." 1902) Balmont (the author of Marevo dedicated to Marina Tsvetaev*) writes:
Дальше, нас манит число роковое
В Вечность, где новые вспыхнут цветы.
Further, the fatal number lures us
to Eternity where the new flowers will flash out.
One of the poems in Balmont's collection Budem kak solntse begins:
От полюса до полюса я землю обошёл.
From Pole to Pole I went around the world.
Polyus ("The Pole," 1924) is a drama by VN about Robert Scott's expedition to the South Pole. In LATH (6.1) Vadim says that the numeral "7" always reminded him of the flag an explorer sticks in the cranium of the North Pole.
*Tsvetaev is a floral name (tsvety means "flowers"). Thanks to VF (I knew about Balmont's Marevo but not about the dedication)! Btw., Marina Tsvetaev (whom Balmont calls "my sister") is the author of memoirs about Balmont Slovo o Bal'monte ("A Word about Balmont," 1936).
Alexey Sklyarenko,
August 9 (VN first spoke to Tamara on 9 August 1915, ninety-eight years ago)
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/