Subject
architects Witberg and Ton
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To return to Herzen (the author of "Who is to Blame?") and the architects (according to little Ilya Tolstoy, the architect is to blame): in Byloe i dumy ("Bygones and Meditations," Part Two, chapter 14), Herzen speaks of Alexander Witberg (1787-1855), a gifted Russian architect of Swedish stock who was Herzen's fellow-exile in Vyatka.* Witberg (like Alexander I, a mystic whom Herzen compares to Swedenborg; Witberg = wit + Berg**) was the author of the neoclassical Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, a monument to the Russian resistance in the 1812 War. Its construction was commenced in 1826 on Vorob'yovy gory ("the Sparrow Hills" famous for the oath young Herzen and Ogaryov swore on them; one also remembers Vorobyaninov, a character in Ilf and Petrov's "The 12 chairs") in Moscow, but later the tsar Nicolas I abandoned Witberg's "Masonic" plan for the neo-Byzantine project of Konstantin Ton (or "Thon," 1794-1881), the "official" Imperial architect during the reign of Nicolas I. The Cathedral was completed only after Ton's death and, like almost all of his churches, destroyed by the Bolsheviks (but built again in the post-Soviet years). Among Ton's major works are also the Grand Kremlin Palace and Kremlin Armoury in Moscow. There is Ton in ston ("moan, groan"), ston in stone, and stone in Elphinstone. Cf. Russian Lolita (Part Two, 22):
Двухкомнатный коттедж, задержанный нами, под знаком Серебряной Шпоры, в Эльфинстоне (не дай Бог никому услышать их стон)...
and Ada (Part Two, 3): The boy's grandfather [the architect David van Veen] set at once to render in brick and stone, concrete and marble, flesh and fun, Eric's fantasy.
One also remembers Pushkin's small tragedy The Stone Guest known on Antiterra as "The Marmoreal Guest" (1.18).
Several interesting facts about Iskander (Herzen's nickname). An illegitimate child of a rich Russian landowner, Ivan Yakovlev, Herzen (1812-70) was born in Moscow shortly before Napoleon's invasion of Russia and brief occupation of the city. His father, after a personal interview with Napoleon, was allowed to leave Moscow after agreeing to bear a letter from the French to the Russian emperor in St. Petersburg. In 1837 Herzen eloped with his first cousin, Natalya Zakharyin. They left Russia in 1847. In emigration Natalie fell in love with the poet Georg Herwegh (if I remember it correctly, they had a romantic tryst in a mountain chalet near Montreux; the monogram Natalie devised for herself and Herwegh looks like Ada's special monogram turned upside down***). After she died in 1852, Herzen began an affair with Natalya Tuchkov, the common-law wife of his best friend Nikolay Ogaryov. In Chapter Four of The Gift, Chernyshevsky visits them in London.
Speaking of Napoleon, it is a boar's name in George Orwell's Animal Farm (1945; for the French translation Orwell suggested URSA, Union des republiques socialistes animales, as a title). Eric Veen (the author of the Villa Venus project) is a namesake of Eric Blair (Orwell's real name). Animal is an anagram of malina (raspberry). Mandelshtam said of Stalin (who is also the target of Orwell's satire): Chto ni kazn' u nego, to malina ("Whatever the execution, it is raspberry to him"). Raspberries and raspberry syrup are mentioned in Ada (1.2, 1.5). And so is Napoleon's first wife (to whom Marina, Van's, Ada's and Lucette's mother, refers as "Queen Josephine:" 1.5). Btw., Marina + Stalin + Logos + SS = malina + starling + Sosso (SS - Schutzstaffeln, Hitler's secret police; Sosso - on Antiterra, the ruler of the ruthless Sovietnamur Khanate: 2.2, a play on Soso Dzhugashvili, Stalin's real name; there is also a John Starling in Ada)
*present-day Kirov (old day Khlynov); Vyatka + z = vzyatka (bribe; cards. trick)
**Germ., mountain; one also remembers Osberg, the author (on Antiterra) of The Gitanilla (Osberg = Borges)
***see Ada (Part One, 7) and E. A. Carr, The Romantic Exiles
Alexey Sklyarenko
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Двухкомнатный коттедж, задержанный нами, под знаком Серебряной Шпоры, в Эльфинстоне (не дай Бог никому услышать их стон)...
and Ada (Part Two, 3): The boy's grandfather [the architect David van Veen] set at once to render in brick and stone, concrete and marble, flesh and fun, Eric's fantasy.
One also remembers Pushkin's small tragedy The Stone Guest known on Antiterra as "The Marmoreal Guest" (1.18).
Several interesting facts about Iskander (Herzen's nickname). An illegitimate child of a rich Russian landowner, Ivan Yakovlev, Herzen (1812-70) was born in Moscow shortly before Napoleon's invasion of Russia and brief occupation of the city. His father, after a personal interview with Napoleon, was allowed to leave Moscow after agreeing to bear a letter from the French to the Russian emperor in St. Petersburg. In 1837 Herzen eloped with his first cousin, Natalya Zakharyin. They left Russia in 1847. In emigration Natalie fell in love with the poet Georg Herwegh (if I remember it correctly, they had a romantic tryst in a mountain chalet near Montreux; the monogram Natalie devised for herself and Herwegh looks like Ada's special monogram turned upside down***). After she died in 1852, Herzen began an affair with Natalya Tuchkov, the common-law wife of his best friend Nikolay Ogaryov. In Chapter Four of The Gift, Chernyshevsky visits them in London.
Speaking of Napoleon, it is a boar's name in George Orwell's Animal Farm (1945; for the French translation Orwell suggested URSA, Union des republiques socialistes animales, as a title). Eric Veen (the author of the Villa Venus project) is a namesake of Eric Blair (Orwell's real name). Animal is an anagram of malina (raspberry). Mandelshtam said of Stalin (who is also the target of Orwell's satire): Chto ni kazn' u nego, to malina ("Whatever the execution, it is raspberry to him"). Raspberries and raspberry syrup are mentioned in Ada (1.2, 1.5). And so is Napoleon's first wife (to whom Marina, Van's, Ada's and Lucette's mother, refers as "Queen Josephine:" 1.5). Btw., Marina + Stalin + Logos + SS = malina + starling + Sosso (SS - Schutzstaffeln, Hitler's secret police; Sosso - on Antiterra, the ruler of the ruthless Sovietnamur Khanate: 2.2, a play on Soso Dzhugashvili, Stalin's real name; there is also a John Starling in Ada)
*present-day Kirov (old day Khlynov); Vyatka + z = vzyatka (bribe; cards. trick)
**Germ., mountain; one also remembers Osberg, the author (on Antiterra) of The Gitanilla (Osberg = Borges)
***see Ada (Part One, 7) and E. A. Carr, The Romantic Exiles
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/