Subject
passati/pass water in ADA
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Date
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"'Okh, nado (I must) passati!' exclaimed Percy in the Slavic slang he affected, blowing out his cheeks and fumbling frantically at his fly." (Part One, ch. 39)
In his 'Notes to Ada', Vivian Darkbloom comments on passati: "pseudo-Russian pun on 'pass water'."
Vulgar Russian for "urinate, make water" is [po]ssat'. As to passati, it reminds one of the Italian phrase tempi passati ("antique"). This phrase is used by A. I. Herzen in his book of memoirs Byloe i dumy * and by P. D. Boborykin** in his memoir From Herzen to Tolstoy (1917): "All this is already tempi passati and now Bakunin,*** in the estimation of our extremists [Lenin & Co.], would probably have been a backward old chap unfit for any serious propaganda".
Boborykin (1836-1921), whose complete works would make more than hundred volumes, is the most prolific Russian writer of all times. Among his novels is "The Great Ruin: a Family Chronicle" (1908). Boborykin spent the last years of his long life in Switzerland (the above-mentioned memoir was written in Ragaz, in the Swiss canton St. Gallen)**** and died in Lugano.
Boborykin is mentioned in The Gift and, if I'm not mistaken, fleetingly appears, as a fellow traveller on the train, in VN's earlier Russian novel, Glory. Ada was written in the late nineteen sixties. Mnogo vody uteklo**** ("much water has flowed under the bridges") since 1930, when Podvig appeared, and even more since 1899, when VN was born in the Bolshaya Morskaya street in St. Petersburg, renamed Herzen street by the Bolsheviks.
TEMPI PASSATI + NADO + OKH = ESTIMATION + PAPA + SKHOD (skhod is Russian for "descent" and "assembly, gathering;" skhod = sdokh, vulg., "[he] died")
BAKUNIN + GERALD = BAKU + LENINGRAD (Gerald is Morris Gerald, the hero of Captain Mayne Reid's Headless Horseman, Baku is the city on the Caspian sea, capital of Azerbaijan, Leningrad is the Soviet name of St. Petersburg)
*"Bygones and Meditations", one of the favorite books of VN's father.
**PDB was known in the society as Pierre Bobo (a oneway nickname). I wonder if the harmless psoriatics' bobo's that, according to Dr Krolik, protect them from bubas and buboes (1.21) may hint at Boborykin? Bobo means "it hurts" in the Russian children's cant.
***M. A. Bakunin (1814-76), Russian anarchist and writer.
****Lenin also lived in Switzerland till 1917.
*****I notice that this phrase occurs in Boborykin's novel Vasiliy Tyorkin (1892). Half a century later the Soviet poet Alexander Tvardovski chose the same name for the hero of his famous epic that sings of the deeds of a Russian soldier in the WWII.
Alexey Sklyarenko
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In his 'Notes to Ada', Vivian Darkbloom comments on passati: "pseudo-Russian pun on 'pass water'."
Vulgar Russian for "urinate, make water" is [po]ssat'. As to passati, it reminds one of the Italian phrase tempi passati ("antique"). This phrase is used by A. I. Herzen in his book of memoirs Byloe i dumy * and by P. D. Boborykin** in his memoir From Herzen to Tolstoy (1917): "All this is already tempi passati and now Bakunin,*** in the estimation of our extremists [Lenin & Co.], would probably have been a backward old chap unfit for any serious propaganda".
Boborykin (1836-1921), whose complete works would make more than hundred volumes, is the most prolific Russian writer of all times. Among his novels is "The Great Ruin: a Family Chronicle" (1908). Boborykin spent the last years of his long life in Switzerland (the above-mentioned memoir was written in Ragaz, in the Swiss canton St. Gallen)**** and died in Lugano.
Boborykin is mentioned in The Gift and, if I'm not mistaken, fleetingly appears, as a fellow traveller on the train, in VN's earlier Russian novel, Glory. Ada was written in the late nineteen sixties. Mnogo vody uteklo**** ("much water has flowed under the bridges") since 1930, when Podvig appeared, and even more since 1899, when VN was born in the Bolshaya Morskaya street in St. Petersburg, renamed Herzen street by the Bolsheviks.
TEMPI PASSATI + NADO + OKH = ESTIMATION + PAPA + SKHOD (skhod is Russian for "descent" and "assembly, gathering;" skhod = sdokh, vulg., "[he] died")
BAKUNIN + GERALD = BAKU + LENINGRAD (Gerald is Morris Gerald, the hero of Captain Mayne Reid's Headless Horseman, Baku is the city on the Caspian sea, capital of Azerbaijan, Leningrad is the Soviet name of St. Petersburg)
*"Bygones and Meditations", one of the favorite books of VN's father.
**PDB was known in the society as Pierre Bobo (a oneway nickname). I wonder if the harmless psoriatics' bobo's that, according to Dr Krolik, protect them from bubas and buboes (1.21) may hint at Boborykin? Bobo means "it hurts" in the Russian children's cant.
***M. A. Bakunin (1814-76), Russian anarchist and writer.
****Lenin also lived in Switzerland till 1917.
*****I notice that this phrase occurs in Boborykin's novel Vasiliy Tyorkin (1892). Half a century later the Soviet poet Alexander Tvardovski chose the same name for the hero of his famous epic that sings of the deeds of a Russian soldier in the WWII.
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/