Alexey
Sklyarenko: In my previous post
I mentioned Gorky's play Deti solntsa ("Children of the Sun...One of the songs that Van, Ada and Lucette
listen in Ursus (where they get drunk on champagne: 2.8) is "There's a
crag on the Ross, overgrown with wild moss..." The original song
about Sten'ka Razin begins: Est' na Volge utyos ("There's a crag on the
Volga...")...Onboard the Tobakoff, Lucette drinks three
Cossack ponies of Klass vodka - hateful, vulgar, but potent stuff -before
she jumps in the Atlantic (3.5).
JM: I don't know if, among your
effervescent translinguistic associations, a reminder about the German link
by "Ross" (Pferd, Horse) would be of any help to you?
AS: Danke schoen. Btw., [Kostomarov's] Razin is the
favorite hero of Konovalov, the eponymous character in a story by
Gorky. Konoval means in Russian Rossarzt,
"horse-doctor."