Speaking of Herzen, I forgot to mention that his
mother Luiza Ivanovna (née Louise Haag) and son Kolya (who was a deaf mute;
Kolya is a diminutive of Nikolay) died in a ship-wreck near the Îles d'Hyères in 1851. As
I pointed out earlier, Nikolay Tolstoy (Leo's older brother) died in Hyères on
September 20, 1860.
On the other hand, Herzen's daughter by
Natalya Tuchkov-Ogaryov, Liza Herzen, committed a suicide because of
unrequitted love. Dostoevsky cites (not quite accurately) her "cynical"
suicide note in the October, 1876, issue of his Writer's
Diary:
"Предпринимаю длинное путешествие.
Если самоубийство не удастся, то пусть соберутся все отпраздновать мое
Воскресение из мёртвых с бокалами Клико. А если удастся, то я прошу только,
чтобы схоронили меня, вполне убедясь, что я мёртвая, потому что совсем неприятно
проснуться в гробу под землёй. Очень даже не шикарно выйдет!"
Seventeen-year-old Liza killed herself with chloroform. In
her suicide note she says that she undertakes a long journey but is afraid of
awakening "in a coffin under the earth." In a sense, her destination is
Antiterra, rather than (far less chic) Terra.
Liza Herzen is a namesake of the heroine of Nikolay
Karamzin's "Poor Liza" (1792) who commits a suicide by drowning herself, as
Lucette does in Ada.
Клико = оклик = колик = кролик
- р = Клио + к (Клико - Veuve Clicquot,
champagne mentioned by Liza Herzen in her last note and by Pushkin in
Eugene Onegin; оклик - hail; колик - of colics; cf. смеяться до колик, make oneself ill
with laughing; кролик - rabbit; cf. Ada's Dr
Krolik; Клио - Clio, the Muse of history)
Alexey Sklyarenko