Subject
Kerenski, Aleksandra Fyodorovna, Ilyich
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Date
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In "Khorosho" ("Good") Mayakovski gives Kerenski's name and patronymic the feminine ending:
Byt' Kerenskomu bitu i obodranu!
Uzh my podymem s tsaryovoi krovati
etu samuyu Aleksandru Fyodorovnu.
Kerenski will be beaten and stripped of his belongings!
We shall raise from the tsar's bed
this notorious Aleksandra Fyodorovna.
VN's "late namesake"* plays on the fact that Aleksandr Fyodorovich Kerenski (1881-1970), the premier in the autumn of 1917, until the October coup d'etat, when Lenin and the Bolsheviks seized power, was a "namesake" of the last Russian Empress, Aleksandra Fyodorovna Romanov, the wife of Nicolas II. On Mayakovski's part, it was not only in bad taste but preposterous to make Kerenski sleep in the tsar's bed (the tsar's entire family was arrested by the Provisional Government and executed in 1918 by the Bolsheviks).
A little later, Mayakovsky lovingly refers to Lenin by patronymic:
A v Smol'nom, v dumakh o bitve i voyske,
Ilyich grimirovannyi mechet shazhki
And in the Smol'ny,** in meditations about battle and army,
Ilyich, in his make-up, paces the corridor with his little steps.
Ilyich (a propos, il is French for "he") is the patronymic of Ivan Golovin, the hero of Tolstoy's "The Death of Ivan Ilyich". You can meet the two Ilyichs, Nikifor Lapis-Trubetskoy, Ostap Bender (the hero of Ilf and Petrov's "The 12 Chairs" and "The Golden Calf") and a lot of other more or less amusing people in my "All's Well that Ends Well": http://topos.ru/articles/0907/03_05.shtml (article in Russian).
*see VN's poem "On the Rulers" (1945)
**the former Smol'nyi Institute of Noble Maidens in St. Petersburg; the naive (or depraved) reader of Mayakovski can be fooled into thinking that Lenin was made up as a headmistress
Alexey Sklyarenko
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Byt' Kerenskomu bitu i obodranu!
Uzh my podymem s tsaryovoi krovati
etu samuyu Aleksandru Fyodorovnu.
Kerenski will be beaten and stripped of his belongings!
We shall raise from the tsar's bed
this notorious Aleksandra Fyodorovna.
VN's "late namesake"* plays on the fact that Aleksandr Fyodorovich Kerenski (1881-1970), the premier in the autumn of 1917, until the October coup d'etat, when Lenin and the Bolsheviks seized power, was a "namesake" of the last Russian Empress, Aleksandra Fyodorovna Romanov, the wife of Nicolas II. On Mayakovski's part, it was not only in bad taste but preposterous to make Kerenski sleep in the tsar's bed (the tsar's entire family was arrested by the Provisional Government and executed in 1918 by the Bolsheviks).
A little later, Mayakovsky lovingly refers to Lenin by patronymic:
A v Smol'nom, v dumakh o bitve i voyske,
Ilyich grimirovannyi mechet shazhki
And in the Smol'ny,** in meditations about battle and army,
Ilyich, in his make-up, paces the corridor with his little steps.
Ilyich (a propos, il is French for "he") is the patronymic of Ivan Golovin, the hero of Tolstoy's "The Death of Ivan Ilyich". You can meet the two Ilyichs, Nikifor Lapis-Trubetskoy, Ostap Bender (the hero of Ilf and Petrov's "The 12 Chairs" and "The Golden Calf") and a lot of other more or less amusing people in my "All's Well that Ends Well": http://topos.ru/articles/0907/03_05.shtml (article in Russian).
*see VN's poem "On the Rulers" (1945)
**the former Smol'nyi Institute of Noble Maidens in St. Petersburg; the naive (or depraved) reader of Mayakovski can be fooled into thinking that Lenin was made up as a headmistress
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/