Subject
fires and fingernails
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When Van first meets Ada in Ardis, her fingernails are badly bitten. She stops biting them on her twelfth birthday (July 21, 1884). When her fingernails became strong enough, Ada tries to assuage with them the itch caused by the bites of a local mosquito (Culex chateaubriandi Brown): "Five minutes after the attack in the crepuscle... a fiery irritation would set in, which the strong and the cold ignored (confident it would last a mere hour) but which the weak, the adorable, the voluptuous took advantage of to scratch and scratch and scratch scrumptiously (canteen cant). 'Sladko! (Sweet!)' Pushkin used to exclaim in relation to a different species in Yukon.*" (1.17)
The antonym of sladkiy (sweet) is gor'kiy (bitter). Maksim Gork'iy (or "Maxim Gorky") is a pen-name of Aleksey Maksimovich Peshkov (1868-1936).** In Gorky's story "Pozhary" ("The Fires") there is a character who doesn't throw out his pared fingernails but keeps them waiting for a fire somewhere and then casts them in the flames. At nineteen he wanted to commit a suicide, but met a fortuneteller, who inspected his palm, said that he was condemned to live and gave him this advice about fingernails. He followed it and soon inherited unexpected property, became popular with women, won in a lottery, etc. Having tired of his good luck, he consulted a German psychiatrist (who failed to help him). At fifty-three he still continued to throw his pared fingernails in the flames, while doing everything to ruin his health, and dies of an apoplectic stroke several years later.
I don't think that Ada is so superstitious that she asks Kim or Blanche to throw her pared fingernails in the flames of the Burning Barn; yet, Gorky's story seems to me another indirect evidence that the "Baronial" Barn was set on fire on purpose and that Ada was involved in the arson. Interestingly, Baron is a character in Gorky's play "Na dne" ("At the Bottom", 1902). On the other hand, palm-reading and fortune-telling are mentioned in the "mosquito" chapter of Ada (1.17):
"As he looks, the palm of a gipsy asking for alms fades into that of the almsgiver asking for a long life. (When will filmmakers reach the stage we have reached?) Blinking in the green sunshine under a birch tree, Ada explained to her passionate fortuneteller..."
Incidentally, Herostratus set fire to the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus on fire on July 21, 356 BC. The name Herostratus (that Vyazemsky spells Erostrat in his Memoirs, comparing Count Rostopchin to Herostratus) has both Hero and Eros in it. "Mlle Stopchin" is mentioned in the Burning Barn chapter of Ada (1.19).
Finally, sladostrastie (sladost', sweetness, + strast', passion) is Russian for "voluptuousness".
*actually, P. exclaimed "sladko!" in Priyutino, the Olenins' estate near St. Petersburg, where he courted Annette Olenin (whose name P. wrote backwards in the drafts of Poltava: ettenna eninelo); Olenin + Anna Snegin*** + a = Onegin + Lenin + ananas
**Karl Radek, Gorky's contemporary, used to say that he lived in the maksimal'no gor'kuyu (maximally bitter) epoch.
***a poem by Esenin (1925)
Alexey Sklyarenko
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The antonym of sladkiy (sweet) is gor'kiy (bitter). Maksim Gork'iy (or "Maxim Gorky") is a pen-name of Aleksey Maksimovich Peshkov (1868-1936).** In Gorky's story "Pozhary" ("The Fires") there is a character who doesn't throw out his pared fingernails but keeps them waiting for a fire somewhere and then casts them in the flames. At nineteen he wanted to commit a suicide, but met a fortuneteller, who inspected his palm, said that he was condemned to live and gave him this advice about fingernails. He followed it and soon inherited unexpected property, became popular with women, won in a lottery, etc. Having tired of his good luck, he consulted a German psychiatrist (who failed to help him). At fifty-three he still continued to throw his pared fingernails in the flames, while doing everything to ruin his health, and dies of an apoplectic stroke several years later.
I don't think that Ada is so superstitious that she asks Kim or Blanche to throw her pared fingernails in the flames of the Burning Barn; yet, Gorky's story seems to me another indirect evidence that the "Baronial" Barn was set on fire on purpose and that Ada was involved in the arson. Interestingly, Baron is a character in Gorky's play "Na dne" ("At the Bottom", 1902). On the other hand, palm-reading and fortune-telling are mentioned in the "mosquito" chapter of Ada (1.17):
"As he looks, the palm of a gipsy asking for alms fades into that of the almsgiver asking for a long life. (When will filmmakers reach the stage we have reached?) Blinking in the green sunshine under a birch tree, Ada explained to her passionate fortuneteller..."
Incidentally, Herostratus set fire to the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus on fire on July 21, 356 BC. The name Herostratus (that Vyazemsky spells Erostrat in his Memoirs, comparing Count Rostopchin to Herostratus) has both Hero and Eros in it. "Mlle Stopchin" is mentioned in the Burning Barn chapter of Ada (1.19).
Finally, sladostrastie (sladost', sweetness, + strast', passion) is Russian for "voluptuousness".
*actually, P. exclaimed "sladko!" in Priyutino, the Olenins' estate near St. Petersburg, where he courted Annette Olenin (whose name P. wrote backwards in the drafts of Poltava: ettenna eninelo); Olenin + Anna Snegin*** + a = Onegin + Lenin + ananas
**Karl Radek, Gorky's contemporary, used to say that he lived in the maksimal'no gor'kuyu (maximally bitter) epoch.
***a poem by Esenin (1925)
Alexey Sklyarenko
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/