Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0021765, Tue, 28 Jun 2011 01:30:31 +0300

Subject
castration
Date
Body
In a letter to Marina, his unfaithful mistress, Demon wrote: "you spoke, I suppose, to the man with whom you had spent the night (and whom I would have dispatched, had I not been overeager to castrate him)" (1.2). Demon had a sword duel with Marina's lover, Baron d'Onsky (according to Marina, a physical wreck and spiritual Samurai, who had gone to Japan forever). "From a more reliable source Demon learned the Samurai's real destination was smart little Vatican, a Riman spa..."

In A. K. Tolstoy's poem "Bunt v Vatikane" ("A Riot in Vatican," 1864) the Pope Pius IX is nearly castrated by his castrated singers.

Correction of an earlier mistake: in my post of June 6 ("Children of the Sun Horse") I wrote that Chernyshevsky died in Astrakhan. Of course, he died in Saratov, his home city. He moved there from Astrakhan in 1889, a few months before his death.

Alexey Sklyarenko

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