Alexey Sklyarenko
:"...there is a sea journey and mention of Alexey Tolstoy in VN's Speak, Memory
(Chapter Thirteen, 1): "On the way there [to England], being
challenged by my father and Korney Chukovski to rhyme on Afrika, the poet and
novelist Alexey Tolstoy (no relation to Count Lyov Nikolaevich) had supplied,
though seasick, the charming couplet: Vizhu pal'mu i Kafrika./Eto - Afrika.(I
see a palm and a little Kaffir. That's Africa.)."
JM: By coincidence, I'd
just mentioned the same Alexey Tolstoy in the next Nab-post, quoting from a
blog on cinema: " The
Garin Death Ray was one of his most famous books (Vladimir Nabokov
considered it his best)".
Nabokov's family connections to
the novelist, in the early days, may have influenced him
towards predominantly favorable comments. In "Strong Opinions" he
considers Alexey.Tolstoy a: "writer of some talent
with two or three science fiction stories or novels which are memorable."
Their political divergences, later, were also brought up: "Once, in 1921 or 1922, at a Berlin restaurant where I was
dining with two girls. I happened to be sitting back to back
with Andrey Bely who was dining with another writer, Aleksey
Tolstoy, at the table behind me. Both writers were at the time
frankly pro-Soviet (and on the point of returning to Russia), and a
White Russian, which I still am in that particular sense, would certainly
not wish to speak to a bolsbevizan
(fellow traveler).* I was acquainted with Aleksey Tolstoy but of course
ignored him. As to Joyce, I saw him a few times in Paris in the late
thirties.."(Nabokov's 1967 Wisconsin inverview)" www.kulichki.com/moshkow/.../Inter06.txt
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* - There's a touch (related
to speaking to a bolsbevizan) in the Tobak/Veen snobbery, but not
to Van's impromptu adage: "'If you
collect adages,' persisted Van, 'let me quote an Arabian one. Paradise is only
one assbaa south of a pretty girl's sash.' (3.2)" bringing a
typically ornate Veen connection between paradise and
ordinary sex.