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Re: How "Strange" is VN's Strangelove? (fwd)
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From: Gavriel Shapiro <gs33@cornell.edu>
For the connection between the Strannoliubsky in _The Gift_ and A. N.
Strannoliubsky, see my article "Setting His Myriad Faces in His Text:
Nabokov's Authorial Presence Revisited," included in _Nabokov and His
Fiction: New Perspectives_, ed. Julian W. Connolly (Cambridge UP, 1999).
Gavriel Shapiro
At 10:46 AM 1/25/00 -0800, you wrote:
>From: Galya Diment <galya@u.washington.edu>
>
>We all know, of course, that Chernyshevsky's biographer in DAR (The Gift),
>Strannoliubsky (Strangelove), is a fictitious character. I came across a
>real Strannoliubsky recently while reading Sofya Kovalevskaya's
>autobiography ("Russian Childhood"). Kovalevskaya (1850-1891), for those
>who do not know, was the first Russian woman mathematician who, because
>she was not allowed to hold a regular faculty position in Russia, ended up
>teaching at the University of Stockholm. Her older sister, Anya, was
>courted by Dostoevsky in 1865. The writer proposed marriage to her but was
>rejected, in part, apparently, because Anna did not think she could be her
>own person while married to Dostoevsky. Because of the Anna
>Korvina-Krukovskaya -- Dostoevsky narrative, Kovalevskaya's considerable
>skills as a writer, and also due to her own fame and, in some
>quarters, notoriety, the autobiography, which first appeared in 1889, was
>widely read in Russia.
>
>While Nabokov was working on the Chernyshevsky chapter of Dar, he had
>plenty of reasons to read or re-read K.'s autobiography. Both Sofya and,
>especially, her sister Anna considered themselves "Nihilists," and they
>were friends with Chernyshevsky, who, much to Dostoevsky's disgust, was
>Anna's idol. Most remarkably, among Sofya Kovalevskaya's unfinished
>manuscripts found after her death there was even a novel which was solely
>about Chernyshevsky.
>
>"Dr. Strangelove" or a Strannoliubsky in Kovalevskaya's life was Professor
>A. N. Strannoliubsky, a Petersburg mathematician who gave Sofya private
>lessons in analytic geometry and differential and integral calculus. I
>would not be at all surprised if Nabokov got his idea for the name of the
>Chernyshevsky's fictitious biographer from looking through the
>autobiography of a woman who, among other things, had ambitions of writing
>her own fictional life of Chernyshevsky.
>
>Galya Diment
>
For the connection between the Strannoliubsky in _The Gift_ and A. N.
Strannoliubsky, see my article "Setting His Myriad Faces in His Text:
Nabokov's Authorial Presence Revisited," included in _Nabokov and His
Fiction: New Perspectives_, ed. Julian W. Connolly (Cambridge UP, 1999).
Gavriel Shapiro
At 10:46 AM 1/25/00 -0800, you wrote:
>From: Galya Diment <galya@u.washington.edu>
>
>We all know, of course, that Chernyshevsky's biographer in DAR (The Gift),
>Strannoliubsky (Strangelove), is a fictitious character. I came across a
>real Strannoliubsky recently while reading Sofya Kovalevskaya's
>autobiography ("Russian Childhood"). Kovalevskaya (1850-1891), for those
>who do not know, was the first Russian woman mathematician who, because
>she was not allowed to hold a regular faculty position in Russia, ended up
>teaching at the University of Stockholm. Her older sister, Anya, was
>courted by Dostoevsky in 1865. The writer proposed marriage to her but was
>rejected, in part, apparently, because Anna did not think she could be her
>own person while married to Dostoevsky. Because of the Anna
>Korvina-Krukovskaya -- Dostoevsky narrative, Kovalevskaya's considerable
>skills as a writer, and also due to her own fame and, in some
>quarters, notoriety, the autobiography, which first appeared in 1889, was
>widely read in Russia.
>
>While Nabokov was working on the Chernyshevsky chapter of Dar, he had
>plenty of reasons to read or re-read K.'s autobiography. Both Sofya and,
>especially, her sister Anna considered themselves "Nihilists," and they
>were friends with Chernyshevsky, who, much to Dostoevsky's disgust, was
>Anna's idol. Most remarkably, among Sofya Kovalevskaya's unfinished
>manuscripts found after her death there was even a novel which was solely
>about Chernyshevsky.
>
>"Dr. Strangelove" or a Strannoliubsky in Kovalevskaya's life was Professor
>A. N. Strannoliubsky, a Petersburg mathematician who gave Sofya private
>lessons in analytic geometry and differential and integral calculus. I
>would not be at all surprised if Nabokov got his idea for the name of the
>Chernyshevsky's fictitious biographer from looking through the
>autobiography of a woman who, among other things, had ambitions of writing
>her own fictional life of Chernyshevsky.
>
>Galya Diment
>