Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0023278, Wed, 22 Aug 2012 14:08:46 +0300

Subject
fountain of tears
Date
Body
D'Onsky's son, a person with only one arm, threw his remaining one around Demon and both wept comme des fontaines. (3.8)

His [Demon's] tear glands were facile in action when no real sorrow made him control himself. (1.38) Demon is not terribly upset by Marina's death.

Btw., one-armed d'Onsky is the son of the Bohemian lady (who married Skonky after his duel with Demon: 1.2). Bogemskiy ("Bohemian") was M. P. Chekhov's pen name in the magazine Children's Repose ("Detsko-Bogemskiy otdykh," as A. P. Chekhov jokingly called it). In the last years of his life Chekhov, suffering from tuberculosis, had to live in Yalta (not too far from Bakhchisaray) or in Nice (where Marina died of cancer: 3.1).

Demon died in a mysterious airplane disaster (3.7). During his visit to Ardis in 1888 he tells Van: "I offered myself en effet a trip to Akapulkovo." (1.38) Pulkovo is the site of the famous observatory and the airport near St. Petersburg. It is mentioned in The Gift (Chapter Three): "and yon star sheds on Pulkovo its beam."

Demon recalls orange-juice-stained Povesa (playboy) magazines he saw in Mexico. (1.38) In EO (One: II: 1-3) Pushkin describes Onegin as young povesa (scapegrace) flying with posters to his dying uncle.

Alexey Sklyarenko

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