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Giulia Romeo & Julia Moore in TT
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His chance bedmate had flung the window wide open. Oh, who was she? She came from the past - a streetwalker he [Hugh Person] had picked up on his first trip abroad, some twenty years ago, a poor girl of mixed parentage, though actually American and very sweet, called Giulia Romeo, the surname means "pilgrim" in archaic Italian, but then we all are pilgrims, and all dreams are anagrams of diurnal reality. (chapter 20)
In his article on Turgenev's story Asya (1858), A Russian Man at a Rendezvous, Chernyshevski compares the anonymous narrator and Asya to Romeo and Juliet:
Мы видим Ромео, мы видим Джульетту, счастью которых ничто не мешает, и приближается минута, когда навеки решится их судьба, - для этого Ромео должен только сказать: "Я люблю тебя, любишь ли ты меня?" - и Джульетта прошепчет: "Да..." И что же делает наш Ромео (так мы будем называть героя повести, фамилия которого не сообщена нам автором рассказа), явившись на свидание с Джульеттой?
As she speaks to the narrator, Turgenev's Asya misquotes Tatiana's words in Pushkin's Eugene Onegin (Eight: XLVI: 12-14):
- Ну, рассказывайте же, - продолжала она, разглаживая полы своего платья и укладывая их себе на ноги, точно она усаживалась надолго, - рассказывайте или прочитайте что-нибудь, как, помните, вы нам читали из "Онегина"...
Она вдруг задумалась...
Где нынче крест и тень ветвей
Над бедной матерью моей! -
проговорила она вполголоса.
- У Пушкина не так, - заметил я.
- А я хотела бы быть Татьяной, - продолжала она всё так же задумчиво. (chapter IX)
"Where there's a cross and the shade of branches
over my poor mother!"
When the narrator points at her mistake, Asya says pensively: "And I wish I were Tatiana."
In EO (Two: XXXVII) Lenski mournfully utters at the grave of Dmitri Larin (Tatiana's and Olga's father): "Poor Yorick!" In a note to EO Pushkin says: Poor Yorick! - Hamlet's exclamation over the skull of the fool (see Shakespeare and Sterne).
Parson Yorick is a character in Sterne's The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (1759). According to Mr R., HP's name is pronounced Parson:
"Insomnia and her sister Nocturia harry me, of course, but otherwise I am as hale as a pane of stamps. I don't think you met Mr. Tamworth. Person, pronounced Parson; and Tamworth: like the English breed of black-blotched swine."
"No," said Hugh, "it does not come from Parson, but rather from Peterson." (chapter 10)
Armande's Russian mother "was the daughter of a wealthy cattle dealer who had emigrated with his family to England from Ryazan via Kharbin and Ceylon soon after the Bolshevist revolution." (chapter 12)
Going back a number of seasons (not as far, though, as Shakespeare's birth year when pencil lead was discovered) and then picking up the thing's story again in the "now" direction, we see graphite, ground very fine, being mixed with moist clay by young girls and old men. (chapter 3)
In his essay Hamlet and Don Quixote (1860) Turgenev points out that the first edition of Shakespeare's Hamlet and the first part of Cervantes' Don Quixote appeared in the same year, at the very beginning of the 17th century:
Первое издание трагедии Шекспира "Гамлет" и первая часть сервантесовского "Дон-Кихота" явились в один и тот же год, в самом начале XVII столетия.
Эта случайность нам показалась знаменательною; сближение двух названных нами произведений навело нас на целый ряд мыслей. Мы просим позволения
поделиться с вами этими мыслями и заранее рассчитываем на вашу снисходительность. "Кто хочет понять поэта, должен вступить в его область", - сказал Гёте; - прозаик лишён всяких прав на подобное требование; но он может надеяться, что его читатели - или слушатели - захотят сопутствовать ему в его странствованиях, в его изысканиях.
Turgenev quotes Goethe:
He who wants to understand a poet
must enter that poet's land.*
According to Turgenev, a prose writer can not demand this of his readers. He can nevertheless hope that readers will accompany him on his wanderings - will share his tour of exploration."
Goethe is the author of Faust. In A Russian Man at a Rendezvous Chernyshevski mentions Turgenev's Faust, a story in nine letters (1855), and compares it to Turgenev's novel Rudin (1855):
В "Фаусте" герой старается ободрить себя тем, что ни он, ни Вера не имеют друг к другу серьёзного чувства; сидеть с ней, мечтать о ней -- это его дело, но по части решительности, даже в словах, он держит себя так, что Вера сама должна сказать ему, что любит его; речь несколько минут шла уже так, что ему следовало непременно сказать это, но он, видите ли, не догадался и не посмел сказать ей этого; а когда женщина, которая должна принимать объяснение, вынуждена, наконец, сама сделать объяснение, он, видите ли, "замер", но почувствовал, что "блаженство волною пробегает по его сердцу", только, впрочем, "по временам", а собственно говоря, он "совершенно потерял голову" -- жаль только, что не упал в обморок, да и то было бы, если бы не попалось кстати дерево, к которому можно было прислониться... Это в "Фаусте"; почти то же и в "Рудине".
Faust in Moscow is the provisional title of a rudimentary novel by a Russian writer of the previous century who, on his way to Italy, had sojourned in a hotel room to which Giulia Romeo takes HP:
She took him to one of the better beds in a hideous old roominghouse - to the precise "number," in fact, where ninety-one, ninety-two, nearly ninety-three years ago a Russian novelist had sojourned on his way to Italy. The bed - a different one, with brass knobs - was made, unmade, covered with a frock coat, made again; upon it stood a half-open green-checkered grip, and the frock coat was thrown over the shoulders of the night-shirted, bare-necked, dark-tousled traveler whom we catch in the act of deciding what to take out of the valise (which he will send by mail coach ahead) and transfer to the knapsack (which he will carry himself across the mountains to the Italian frontier). He expects his friend Kandidatov, the painter, to join him here any moment for the outing, one of those lighthearted hikes that romantics would undertake even during a drizzly spell in August; it rained even more in those uncomfortable times; his boots are still wet from a ten-mile ramble to the nearest casino. They stand outside the door in the attitude of expulsion, and he has wrapped his feet in several layers of German-language newspaper, a language which incidentally he finds easier to read than French. The main problem now is whether to confide to his knapsack or mail in his grip his manuscripts: rough drafts of letters, an unfinished short story in a Russian copybook bound in black cloth, parts of a philosophical essay in a blue cahier acquired in Geneva, and the loose sheets of a rudimentary novel under the provisional title of Faust in Moscow. (chapter 6)
When HP meets in Witt Armande and Julia Moore (Mr R.'s step-daughter), the latter prepares for a trip to Moscow:
Armande informed Percy that Julia had come all the way from Geneva to consult her about the translation of a number of phrases with which she, Julia, who was going tomorrow to Moscow, desired to "impress" her Russian friends. Percy, here, worked for her stepfather.
"My former stepfather, thank Heavens," said Julia. "By the way, Percy, if that's your nom de voyage, perhaps you may help. As she explained, I want to dazzle some people in Moscow, who promised me the company of a famous young Russian poet. Armande has supplied me with a number of darling words, but we got stuck at - " (taking a slip of paper from her bag) - "I want to know how to say:
'What a cute little church, what a big snowdrift.' You see we do it first into French and she thinks 'snowdrift' is rafale de neige, but I'm sure it can't be rafale in French and rafalovich in Russian, or whatever they call a snowstorm."
"The word you want," said our Person, "is congere, feminine gender, I learned it from my mother."
"Then it's sugrob in Russian," said Armande and added dryly: "Only there won't be much snow there in August."
Julia laughed. Julia looked happy and healthy. Julia had grown even prettier than she had been two years ago. Shall I now see her in dreams with those new eyebrows, that new long hair? How fast do dreams catch up with new fashions? Will the next dream still stick to her Japanese-doll hairdo? (chapter 13)
HP's nom de voyage seems to hint at Percival, one of King Arthur's legendary Knights of the Round Table. The poor hidalgo Alonso Quixano decides to become a knight-errant and names himself Don Quixote after reading too many tales of medieval chivalry.
*In Turgenev's novel Nov' ("The Virgin Soil," 1875) Paklin quotes in the original the same lines from Goethe's Westostlicher Divan and adds: Wer die Feinde will verstehen, / Muss in Feindes Lande gehen (He who wants to understand his enemy must enter his enemy's land). In TT VN makes a sortie, as it were, in the hereafter.
Alexey Sklyarenko
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In his article on Turgenev's story Asya (1858), A Russian Man at a Rendezvous, Chernyshevski compares the anonymous narrator and Asya to Romeo and Juliet:
Мы видим Ромео, мы видим Джульетту, счастью которых ничто не мешает, и приближается минута, когда навеки решится их судьба, - для этого Ромео должен только сказать: "Я люблю тебя, любишь ли ты меня?" - и Джульетта прошепчет: "Да..." И что же делает наш Ромео (так мы будем называть героя повести, фамилия которого не сообщена нам автором рассказа), явившись на свидание с Джульеттой?
As she speaks to the narrator, Turgenev's Asya misquotes Tatiana's words in Pushkin's Eugene Onegin (Eight: XLVI: 12-14):
- Ну, рассказывайте же, - продолжала она, разглаживая полы своего платья и укладывая их себе на ноги, точно она усаживалась надолго, - рассказывайте или прочитайте что-нибудь, как, помните, вы нам читали из "Онегина"...
Она вдруг задумалась...
Где нынче крест и тень ветвей
Над бедной матерью моей! -
проговорила она вполголоса.
- У Пушкина не так, - заметил я.
- А я хотела бы быть Татьяной, - продолжала она всё так же задумчиво. (chapter IX)
"Where there's a cross and the shade of branches
over my poor mother!"
When the narrator points at her mistake, Asya says pensively: "And I wish I were Tatiana."
In EO (Two: XXXVII) Lenski mournfully utters at the grave of Dmitri Larin (Tatiana's and Olga's father): "Poor Yorick!" In a note to EO Pushkin says: Poor Yorick! - Hamlet's exclamation over the skull of the fool (see Shakespeare and Sterne).
Parson Yorick is a character in Sterne's The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (1759). According to Mr R., HP's name is pronounced Parson:
"Insomnia and her sister Nocturia harry me, of course, but otherwise I am as hale as a pane of stamps. I don't think you met Mr. Tamworth. Person, pronounced Parson; and Tamworth: like the English breed of black-blotched swine."
"No," said Hugh, "it does not come from Parson, but rather from Peterson." (chapter 10)
Armande's Russian mother "was the daughter of a wealthy cattle dealer who had emigrated with his family to England from Ryazan via Kharbin and Ceylon soon after the Bolshevist revolution." (chapter 12)
Going back a number of seasons (not as far, though, as Shakespeare's birth year when pencil lead was discovered) and then picking up the thing's story again in the "now" direction, we see graphite, ground very fine, being mixed with moist clay by young girls and old men. (chapter 3)
In his essay Hamlet and Don Quixote (1860) Turgenev points out that the first edition of Shakespeare's Hamlet and the first part of Cervantes' Don Quixote appeared in the same year, at the very beginning of the 17th century:
Первое издание трагедии Шекспира "Гамлет" и первая часть сервантесовского "Дон-Кихота" явились в один и тот же год, в самом начале XVII столетия.
Эта случайность нам показалась знаменательною; сближение двух названных нами произведений навело нас на целый ряд мыслей. Мы просим позволения
поделиться с вами этими мыслями и заранее рассчитываем на вашу снисходительность. "Кто хочет понять поэта, должен вступить в его область", - сказал Гёте; - прозаик лишён всяких прав на подобное требование; но он может надеяться, что его читатели - или слушатели - захотят сопутствовать ему в его странствованиях, в его изысканиях.
Turgenev quotes Goethe:
He who wants to understand a poet
must enter that poet's land.*
According to Turgenev, a prose writer can not demand this of his readers. He can nevertheless hope that readers will accompany him on his wanderings - will share his tour of exploration."
Goethe is the author of Faust. In A Russian Man at a Rendezvous Chernyshevski mentions Turgenev's Faust, a story in nine letters (1855), and compares it to Turgenev's novel Rudin (1855):
В "Фаусте" герой старается ободрить себя тем, что ни он, ни Вера не имеют друг к другу серьёзного чувства; сидеть с ней, мечтать о ней -- это его дело, но по части решительности, даже в словах, он держит себя так, что Вера сама должна сказать ему, что любит его; речь несколько минут шла уже так, что ему следовало непременно сказать это, но он, видите ли, не догадался и не посмел сказать ей этого; а когда женщина, которая должна принимать объяснение, вынуждена, наконец, сама сделать объяснение, он, видите ли, "замер", но почувствовал, что "блаженство волною пробегает по его сердцу", только, впрочем, "по временам", а собственно говоря, он "совершенно потерял голову" -- жаль только, что не упал в обморок, да и то было бы, если бы не попалось кстати дерево, к которому можно было прислониться... Это в "Фаусте"; почти то же и в "Рудине".
Faust in Moscow is the provisional title of a rudimentary novel by a Russian writer of the previous century who, on his way to Italy, had sojourned in a hotel room to which Giulia Romeo takes HP:
She took him to one of the better beds in a hideous old roominghouse - to the precise "number," in fact, where ninety-one, ninety-two, nearly ninety-three years ago a Russian novelist had sojourned on his way to Italy. The bed - a different one, with brass knobs - was made, unmade, covered with a frock coat, made again; upon it stood a half-open green-checkered grip, and the frock coat was thrown over the shoulders of the night-shirted, bare-necked, dark-tousled traveler whom we catch in the act of deciding what to take out of the valise (which he will send by mail coach ahead) and transfer to the knapsack (which he will carry himself across the mountains to the Italian frontier). He expects his friend Kandidatov, the painter, to join him here any moment for the outing, one of those lighthearted hikes that romantics would undertake even during a drizzly spell in August; it rained even more in those uncomfortable times; his boots are still wet from a ten-mile ramble to the nearest casino. They stand outside the door in the attitude of expulsion, and he has wrapped his feet in several layers of German-language newspaper, a language which incidentally he finds easier to read than French. The main problem now is whether to confide to his knapsack or mail in his grip his manuscripts: rough drafts of letters, an unfinished short story in a Russian copybook bound in black cloth, parts of a philosophical essay in a blue cahier acquired in Geneva, and the loose sheets of a rudimentary novel under the provisional title of Faust in Moscow. (chapter 6)
When HP meets in Witt Armande and Julia Moore (Mr R.'s step-daughter), the latter prepares for a trip to Moscow:
Armande informed Percy that Julia had come all the way from Geneva to consult her about the translation of a number of phrases with which she, Julia, who was going tomorrow to Moscow, desired to "impress" her Russian friends. Percy, here, worked for her stepfather.
"My former stepfather, thank Heavens," said Julia. "By the way, Percy, if that's your nom de voyage, perhaps you may help. As she explained, I want to dazzle some people in Moscow, who promised me the company of a famous young Russian poet. Armande has supplied me with a number of darling words, but we got stuck at - " (taking a slip of paper from her bag) - "I want to know how to say:
'What a cute little church, what a big snowdrift.' You see we do it first into French and she thinks 'snowdrift' is rafale de neige, but I'm sure it can't be rafale in French and rafalovich in Russian, or whatever they call a snowstorm."
"The word you want," said our Person, "is congere, feminine gender, I learned it from my mother."
"Then it's sugrob in Russian," said Armande and added dryly: "Only there won't be much snow there in August."
Julia laughed. Julia looked happy and healthy. Julia had grown even prettier than she had been two years ago. Shall I now see her in dreams with those new eyebrows, that new long hair? How fast do dreams catch up with new fashions? Will the next dream still stick to her Japanese-doll hairdo? (chapter 13)
HP's nom de voyage seems to hint at Percival, one of King Arthur's legendary Knights of the Round Table. The poor hidalgo Alonso Quixano decides to become a knight-errant and names himself Don Quixote after reading too many tales of medieval chivalry.
*In Turgenev's novel Nov' ("The Virgin Soil," 1875) Paklin quotes in the original the same lines from Goethe's Westostlicher Divan and adds: Wer die Feinde will verstehen, / Muss in Feindes Lande gehen (He who wants to understand his enemy must enter his enemy's land). In TT VN makes a sortie, as it were, in the hereafter.
Alexey Sklyarenko
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
AdaOnline: "http://www.ada.auckland.ac.nz/
The Nabokov Society of Japan's Annotations to Ada: http://vnjapan.org/main/ada/index.html
The VN Bibliography Blog: http://vnbiblio.com/
Search the archive with L-Soft: https://listserv.ucsb.edu/lsv-cgi-bin/wa?A0=NABOKV-L
Manage subscription options :http://listserv.ucsb.edu/lsv-cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=NABOKV-L