Subject
yabloni
From
Date
Body
A dreadful building of gray stone and brown wood, it [the Ascot Hotel] sported cherry-red shutters (not all of them shut) which by some mnemoptical trick he [Hugh Person] remembered as apple green. (Transparent Things, 2)
Mme Chamar: "He [R.] lives somewhere in Switzerland, I think?"
HP: "Yes, at Diablonnet, near Versex."
Mme Chamar: "Diablonnet always reminds me of the Russian for 'apple trees': yabloni." (TT, 12)
Mme Chamar (nee Anastasia Petrovna Potapov) comes from Ryazan (a city in European Russia SE of Moscow). A famous 1921 poem by Sergey Esenin (who was born in a village in the province of Ryazan and committed suicide, at thirty, in the Angleterre Hotel in St. Petersburg, not far from the Nabokovs House in the Bolshaya Morskaya street) begins:
Не жалею, не зову, не плачу,
Всё пройдёт как с белых яблонь дым.
I feel no regret, I do not call you or shed tears.
All, like haze off apple-trees, must pass.
The poem's penultimate stanza goes:
Я теперь скупее стал в желаньях,
Жизнь моя, иль ты приснилась мне?
Словно я весенней гулкой ранью
Проскакал на розовом коне.
I'm austerer now in my desiring.
Life, were you real, or of fancy born?
It's as if in spring I've been out riding
On a pink horse in the vibrant dawn.
It is said that young VN served as a model for Kuz'ma Petrov-Vodkin's famous painting Bathing of a Red Horse (1912):
Petrov-Vodkin was a protege and close friend of the famous St. Petersburg architect Roman Melzer (foster-father of Petrov-Vodkin's first cousin I. I. Trofimov), the author of palazzoes and mansions in "hygienic" style. Madame Chamar's late husband was the architect Charles Chamar (Le Corbusier's namesake) who built above Witt the transparent Villa Nastia (TT, 9).
Alexey Sklyarenko
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Mme Chamar: "He [R.] lives somewhere in Switzerland, I think?"
HP: "Yes, at Diablonnet, near Versex."
Mme Chamar: "Diablonnet always reminds me of the Russian for 'apple trees': yabloni." (TT, 12)
Mme Chamar (nee Anastasia Petrovna Potapov) comes from Ryazan (a city in European Russia SE of Moscow). A famous 1921 poem by Sergey Esenin (who was born in a village in the province of Ryazan and committed suicide, at thirty, in the Angleterre Hotel in St. Petersburg, not far from the Nabokovs House in the Bolshaya Morskaya street) begins:
Не жалею, не зову, не плачу,
Всё пройдёт как с белых яблонь дым.
I feel no regret, I do not call you or shed tears.
All, like haze off apple-trees, must pass.
The poem's penultimate stanza goes:
Я теперь скупее стал в желаньях,
Жизнь моя, иль ты приснилась мне?
Словно я весенней гулкой ранью
Проскакал на розовом коне.
I'm austerer now in my desiring.
Life, were you real, or of fancy born?
It's as if in spring I've been out riding
On a pink horse in the vibrant dawn.
It is said that young VN served as a model for Kuz'ma Petrov-Vodkin's famous painting Bathing of a Red Horse (1912):
Petrov-Vodkin was a protege and close friend of the famous St. Petersburg architect Roman Melzer (foster-father of Petrov-Vodkin's first cousin I. I. Trofimov), the author of palazzoes and mansions in "hygienic" style. Madame Chamar's late husband was the architect Charles Chamar (Le Corbusier's namesake) who built above Witt the transparent Villa Nastia (TT, 9).
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
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/
