In "Khorosho" ("Good") Mayakovski gives Kerenski's name and patronymic the feminine ending:
 
Uzh my podymem s tsaryovoi krovati
etu samuyu Aleksandru Fyodorovnu!
 
Oh, 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. With his usual lack of tact/contempt for good manners, Mayakovski makes Kerenski sleep in the tsar's former bed (the tsar's entire family was arrested by the Provisionary Government and executed in 1918 by the Bolsheviks).
 
On the other hand, Mayakovsky 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 think that Lenin was made up as a headmistress
 
Alexey Sklyarenko
Search the archive Contact the Editors Visit "Nabokov Online Journal"
Visit Zembla View Nabokv-L Policies Manage subscription options

All private editorial communications, without exception, are read by both co-editors.