Subject
ADA's "Quelques Fleurs" & quelque chose for the last time
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EDNOTE. Alexey Sklyarenko has done a new Rusian translation of ADA. NABOKV-L will shortly run comparative samples of the various translations.
----- Original Message -----
From: alex
Dear all of you, who might remember that topic or is interested in it,
Last year I suggested that Fleurs in the name of the talc powder Quelques Fleurs, which Aqua sees on her former bedside table when she breaks into Demon's country house at Kitezh after escaping from a madhouse (Ada, part One, chapter 3), hints at the title of Baudelaire's famous book Fleurs du Mal, while "quelques" is here from a common French phrase quelque chose (something). It was discovered that such a parfume (Quelques Fleurs) had really existed (and may still exist), and Carolyn Kunin provided even a picture of several items of that line of cosmetics advertised on the Internet.
But now it appears that I was probably right, after all:
both talc and the phrase "ce quelque chose" (spelled in French) occur very near from each other, practically on the same page, in Herzen's novel Kto vinovat? ("Who is to blame?"), 1847. An incidental character in it, the wife of NN's marshal of nobility, for twenty years conducts a little guerilla warfare inside her house, now and then making sallies for peasants' eggs and talc powders (Part Two, III). When her daughter Vava (a quaint diminutive of Varvara) reaches marriageable age, she begins to terrorize the girl scoring her for doing nothing to attract suitors. Vava isn't a beauty, but she has a rich substitution of pretty looks ("v ney byla bogataya zamena krasoty"), this something, ce quelque chose, that, like bouquet of a good wine, exists only for a connoisseur... One assumes, that, in spite of all the mother's efforts to improve the girl's looks (with the help of various extravagant cosmetics like the cucumber water with the addition of some powder, all of which is supposed to make her look paler), Vava will never marry and her rare something will go to waste.
I would like to add that one of the novel's characters is Dr Krupov. He is the protagonist and narrator of Herzen's short story Doktor Krupov, 1847. This short story comprises a study by Dr Krupov entitled "About the mental disease in general and its epidemic spreading in particular" (O dushevnykh boleznyakh voobshche i ob epidemicheskom razvitii onykh v osobennosti). The spreading of insanity on Antiterra after the L disaster also seems to have an epidemic character. Aqua Veen is just one of the many poor creatures who fall sick.
I noticed some other minor references in Ada to Herzen's novel.
cheers,
Alexey
----- Original Message -----
From: alex
Dear all of you, who might remember that topic or is interested in it,
Last year I suggested that Fleurs in the name of the talc powder Quelques Fleurs, which Aqua sees on her former bedside table when she breaks into Demon's country house at Kitezh after escaping from a madhouse (Ada, part One, chapter 3), hints at the title of Baudelaire's famous book Fleurs du Mal, while "quelques" is here from a common French phrase quelque chose (something). It was discovered that such a parfume (Quelques Fleurs) had really existed (and may still exist), and Carolyn Kunin provided even a picture of several items of that line of cosmetics advertised on the Internet.
But now it appears that I was probably right, after all:
both talc and the phrase "ce quelque chose" (spelled in French) occur very near from each other, practically on the same page, in Herzen's novel Kto vinovat? ("Who is to blame?"), 1847. An incidental character in it, the wife of NN's marshal of nobility, for twenty years conducts a little guerilla warfare inside her house, now and then making sallies for peasants' eggs and talc powders (Part Two, III). When her daughter Vava (a quaint diminutive of Varvara) reaches marriageable age, she begins to terrorize the girl scoring her for doing nothing to attract suitors. Vava isn't a beauty, but she has a rich substitution of pretty looks ("v ney byla bogataya zamena krasoty"), this something, ce quelque chose, that, like bouquet of a good wine, exists only for a connoisseur... One assumes, that, in spite of all the mother's efforts to improve the girl's looks (with the help of various extravagant cosmetics like the cucumber water with the addition of some powder, all of which is supposed to make her look paler), Vava will never marry and her rare something will go to waste.
I would like to add that one of the novel's characters is Dr Krupov. He is the protagonist and narrator of Herzen's short story Doktor Krupov, 1847. This short story comprises a study by Dr Krupov entitled "About the mental disease in general and its epidemic spreading in particular" (O dushevnykh boleznyakh voobshche i ob epidemicheskom razvitii onykh v osobennosti). The spreading of insanity on Antiterra after the L disaster also seems to have an epidemic character. Aqua Veen is just one of the many poor creatures who fall sick.
I noticed some other minor references in Ada to Herzen's novel.
cheers,
Alexey