Subject
quelque chose in Chekhov
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Shcherbuk, a character in Chekhov's "Play without a Title" (aka Platonov), says to Triletskiy: И ездил шесть раз не потому, что я болен был, а потому, что у моего арендатора дочка кельк шоз ("And you visited me six times not because I was ill, but because my tenant's daughter is a pretty young thing").*
Speaking in his next cue of Platonov's late father, Shcherbuk calls him штукарь ("trickster"). "Штукарь" comes from штука ("stunt"), which can also mean "thing" (English for chose). Irrelevant it may be, but
ШТУКА = ШУТКА = Ш + УТКА = ТУШКАНЧИК - КИНЧ
штука - stunt, thing
шутка - joke
утка - duck (there are several ducks, as well as jokes, in Ada)
тушканчик - jerboa, the pathetic animal in VN's poem "В зверинце" ("In a Zoo", 1922).
Кинч - Kinch, Stephen Dedalus' nickname in Joyce's Ulysses.
In Ada, as she speaks to Van (2.5), Lucette uses the word "штучки", the plural of штучка (the diminutive of штука): "I imitated all her [Ada's] shtuchki (little stunts)". In Ilf and Petrov's The Golden Calf, Ostap Bender mentions a Charleston "У моей девочки есть одна маленькая штучка" ("My girl has one little thing") said to be popular in Rio de Janeiro, the city of Ostap's dream. I speak of that "little thing" in detail in my article on Chose, Van's University, in Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/sklyarenko7.doc.
Note also "the Chose young things" (шозские юные штучки) remembered by Van as he returns in the caleche, with Lucette in his lap, from the picnic in Ardis the Second (1.39).
*Act One, scene XIV.
Alexey Sklyarenko
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Speaking in his next cue of Platonov's late father, Shcherbuk calls him штукарь ("trickster"). "Штукарь" comes from штука ("stunt"), which can also mean "thing" (English for chose). Irrelevant it may be, but
ШТУКА = ШУТКА = Ш + УТКА = ТУШКАНЧИК - КИНЧ
штука - stunt, thing
шутка - joke
утка - duck (there are several ducks, as well as jokes, in Ada)
тушканчик - jerboa, the pathetic animal in VN's poem "В зверинце" ("In a Zoo", 1922).
Кинч - Kinch, Stephen Dedalus' nickname in Joyce's Ulysses.
In Ada, as she speaks to Van (2.5), Lucette uses the word "штучки", the plural of штучка (the diminutive of штука): "I imitated all her [Ada's] shtuchki (little stunts)". In Ilf and Petrov's The Golden Calf, Ostap Bender mentions a Charleston "У моей девочки есть одна маленькая штучка" ("My girl has one little thing") said to be popular in Rio de Janeiro, the city of Ostap's dream. I speak of that "little thing" in detail in my article on Chose, Van's University, in Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/sklyarenko7.doc.
Note also "the Chose young things" (шозские юные штучки) remembered by Van as he returns in the caleche, with Lucette in his lap, from the picnic in Ardis the Second (1.39).
*Act One, scene XIV.
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
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Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
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