Dear Carolyn,
Yes, there was a long article on Nabokov and Herzen by Ilia Kalinin in
"Novoe Literaturnoe obozrenie." Here is a link to Part I:
http://magazines.russ.ru/nlo/2002/58/kalin.html
The author noticed a resemblance of two titles, VN's "Drugie
berega" and Herzen's "S togo berega," and on this shaky
ground built up a clever philosophical comparison of Nabokov's and
Herzen's autobiographies, both written in exile. He seems to overlook,
though, that Nabokov was fully aware that his title echoed that of Herzen
but thought a connection irrelevant. In a letter to S.Grinberg he wrote
that he had finally chosen "Drugie berega" for a title of his
Russian autobiography because he believed that Herzen could be
disregarded and Sophia Pregel (a minor emigre poet who had a book with
the same title) ignored. What Nabokov didn't want to lose was a subtle
Pushkinian association as "Drugie berega" evokes a line
"Inye berega, inye volny" ("Other shores, other
waves") from Pushkin's meditative poem "...Vnov' ia
posetil" in which the poet, like VN, reminiscences about his youth.
As for your Botkin posting, "Nikto b," unforunately, is
meaningless by itself as it can be used only as a part of a phrase with
double negation. We can recombine the letters into "kto b ni"
("whoever") but again without a verb it doesn't make much
sense. Nabokov's anagrams are usually grammatically correct and
self-contained but it is not what we've got
here.
Alexander Dolinin
http://magazines.russ.ru/nlo/2002/58/kalin.html
e
At 06:53 AM 10/29/2006 -0800, you wrote:
>
[EDNOTE. Sandy Klein sends this link to Eric Ormsby review, in the
New
> York Sun, of a new volume of Ivan Bunin's fiction, in which
Ormsby
> compares Bunin to Chekhov and Nabokov. -- SES]
To the Russians & Russophiles on the List,
The above reminds me of a question - - has anyone speculated on the
original title of VN's autobiography, Drugie Berega? Could it have
anything to do with Herzen?
Carolyn
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