NABOKV-L post 0008701, Fri, 3 Oct 2003 20:35:17 -0700

Stas Shvabrin, one of the trimumvirate (with Michael Green & Jerry Katsell) that translated and edited the translation of Kozma Prutkov's 1860 playlet "Fantasy: A Comedy in One Act," has called my attention to an improbable Nabokovian detail. "Kozma Prutkov," the comic creation of Count Aleksei K. Tolstoy and the brothers Zhemchuzhnikov, was an extremely well-known mid-XIXth century fictional author of absurd aphorisms known to every Russian. In their translation's Foreword the authors mention the oddity that circa 1930 Vladimir Nabokov wrote a feuilletton entitled "The Triumph of Virtue" (Torzhestvo dobrodeteli), mocking the simplemindedness of Soviet literature. Although Nabokov makes no mention of his antecedent, the title should have been immediately evoked for Russians the image of the amiable fictional idiot/bureaucrat Kozma Prutkov. Prutkov was the "author" of an 1864 dramatic sketch called "The Triumph of Virtue" (Torzhestvo dobrodeteli) from which VN apparently drew his title.

Further information in Russian at URLs:

http://tmn.fio.ru/works/28x/311/index.htm
http://www.bibl.ru/la/torzhestvo_dobr.htm