Subject
more spirits in ADA: an addendum
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Dear all,
When writing about 'Gory Mary,' I forgot to mention Pushkin's poem "From Barry Cornwall" (1830) that begins "P'yu za zdravie Meri..." ("I'm drinking to the health of Mary...") and has the English poet's line "Here's a health to thee, Mary" for an epigraph. On the day of his fatal duel, Jan. 27, 1837, Pushkin sent a volume of Barry Cornwall's plays to the children's writer A. O. Ishimova asking her to translate several pieces from it (it was Pushkin's last letter, written a few hours before he went to Chyornaya Rechka). Interestingly, Ishimova's address in St. Petersburg was the Furshtadtskaya Street (many years later, Vera Slonim was born in a house on that street), the house of a certain Эльтиков (Eltikov, a rare and amusing surname), 53. Эльтиков = эль + виток; виток = китов = Виктор - p (эль is Russian for "ale" and the modern name of the letter L; vitok means "spire," "coil;" kitov means "of the whales;" Виктор is the male given name Victor; cf. King Victor, aka Mr Ritkov and Vrotic, in Ada; I hope the Cyrrilc characters will come through and be visible to everybody)
Perhaps, I should have also mentioned Mary, a character in Pushkin's play "Pir vo vremya chumy" ("Feast at the Time of the Plague," 1830), the Scottish girl, who sings a melancholy song. And of course I should have spoken in more detail about certain "autobiographic" passages in "Gavriliada" and, on the other hand, about the mention of persty ("fingers") in Pushkin's poem Vinograd ("Grapes") and in Ada. But I'm lazy!
And, yes, Lermontov's "Princess Mary" (a novella in Lermontov's novel "A Hero of our Time," 1840) is also worth mentioning, in view of the fact that Lermontov (who, in "Princess Mary," has Pechorin kill Grushnitsky in a duel), too, was killed in a duel.
Alexey Sklyarenko (who was born in a maternity home on the Furshtadtskaya Street and who lives on the bank of Chyornaya Rechka, the Black River, in a five-minute walk from the spot of Pushkin's duel)
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When writing about 'Gory Mary,' I forgot to mention Pushkin's poem "From Barry Cornwall" (1830) that begins "P'yu za zdravie Meri..." ("I'm drinking to the health of Mary...") and has the English poet's line "Here's a health to thee, Mary" for an epigraph. On the day of his fatal duel, Jan. 27, 1837, Pushkin sent a volume of Barry Cornwall's plays to the children's writer A. O. Ishimova asking her to translate several pieces from it (it was Pushkin's last letter, written a few hours before he went to Chyornaya Rechka). Interestingly, Ishimova's address in St. Petersburg was the Furshtadtskaya Street (many years later, Vera Slonim was born in a house on that street), the house of a certain Эльтиков (Eltikov, a rare and amusing surname), 53. Эльтиков = эль + виток; виток = китов = Виктор - p (эль is Russian for "ale" and the modern name of the letter L; vitok means "spire," "coil;" kitov means "of the whales;" Виктор is the male given name Victor; cf. King Victor, aka Mr Ritkov and Vrotic, in Ada; I hope the Cyrrilc characters will come through and be visible to everybody)
Perhaps, I should have also mentioned Mary, a character in Pushkin's play "Pir vo vremya chumy" ("Feast at the Time of the Plague," 1830), the Scottish girl, who sings a melancholy song. And of course I should have spoken in more detail about certain "autobiographic" passages in "Gavriliada" and, on the other hand, about the mention of persty ("fingers") in Pushkin's poem Vinograd ("Grapes") and in Ada. But I'm lazy!
And, yes, Lermontov's "Princess Mary" (a novella in Lermontov's novel "A Hero of our Time," 1840) is also worth mentioning, in view of the fact that Lermontov (who, in "Princess Mary," has Pechorin kill Grushnitsky in a duel), too, was killed in a duel.
Alexey Sklyarenko (who was born in a maternity home on the Furshtadtskaya Street and who lives on the bank of Chyornaya Rechka, the Black River, in a five-minute walk from the spot of Pushkin's duel)
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/