The supreme deity of the ancient Romans, Jupiter is mentioned
in a poem by Captain Lebyadkin, a character in Dostoevsky's novel "Бесы" ("The Possessed," Part One, Chapter Five,
IV):
Жил на свете таракан,
Таракан от
детства,
И потом попал в стакан,
Полный мухоедства…
Место занял
таракан,
Мухи возроптали.
«Полон очень наш стакан!» –
К Юпитеру
закричали.
Но пока у них шёл крик,
Подошёл
Никифор,
Бла-го-роднейший старик…
Lived a cockroach in the world
Such was his condition,
In a glass he chanced to fall
Full of fly-perdition.
But he squeezed against the flies,
They woke up and cursed him,
Raised to Jove their angry cries;
'The glass is full to bursting!'
In the middle of the din
Came along Nikifor,*
Fine old man, and looking in...
Maxim Gorky is the author of "О тараканах" ("On Cockroaches," 1925). On the other
hand, one of the characters in Gorky's play "На
дне" ("At the Bottom," 1902) is Baron and the hero of Gorky's novel
"The Life of Klim Samgin" (1925-36) is a namesake of Baron Klim Avidov (anagram
of "Vladimir Nabokov").
*a namesake of Nikifor Lapis-Trubetskoy
("Lapsus"), the rhymester (author of verses about Gavrila) in Ilf and
Petrov's "The Twelve Chairs" (1928).
Alexey Sklyarenko