Subject
Blok and Hodasevich in Ada
From
Date
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Her [Aqua's] poor little letters from the homes of madness to her husband were sometimes signed: Madame Shchemyashchikh-Zvukov ('Heart rending-Sounds)'. (Ada, 1.3)
As I pointed out before, the phrase shchemyashchie zvuki (heart-rending sounds) occurs in several poems by Blok (whose Incognita is mentioned in Ada: 3.3). In his essay on Blok (in "The Silhouettes of Russian Writers") Ayhenvald compares Blok's poems to water lilies and other aquatic plants: Как ненюфраы, как лилии, растущие на воде, - не все, но многие из его типичных стихотворений (есть у него и тяжёлые); здесь - очарование, но здесь и бесцветная неопределённость воды ("here is their charm, but also colorless vagueness of water") and quotes Rodenbach's aphorism: "the soul is a blue aquarium" (если прав Роденбах, что душа - голубой аквариум, то в хрустальные стенки его, в этот прозрачный плен, Блок не ввёл, не заключил расплывающихся струй своего художества).
VN's personal friend, Yuli Ayhenvald (1872-1928) was killed by a Berlin trolley-car on his way home from a party given by the Nabokovs. A blue aquarium and many-eyed trams are mentioned in Hodasevich's poem "Берлинское" (In Berlin, 1922) included in European Night:
Что ж? От озноба и простуды -
Горячий грог или коньяк.
Здесь музыка и звон посуды,
И лиловатый полумрак.
А там, за толстым и огромным
Отполированным стеклом,
Как бы в аквариуме тёмном,
В аквариуме голубом -
Многоочитые трамваи
Плывут между подводных лип,
Как электрические стаи
Светящихся ленивых рыб.
И там, скользя в ночную гнилость,
На толще чуждого стекла
В вагонных окнах отразилась
Поверхность моего стола, -
И, проникая в жизнь чужую,
Вдруг с отвращеньем узнаю,
Отрубленную, неживую,
Ночную голову мою.
Well? The cure for fever and a cold is
Hot grog or cognac.
Here, music is playing and dishes clatter,
In purplish semi-darkness.
And there, beyond the thick and giant
Polished windowpane,
As in a dark aquarium,
A blue aquarium-
Many-eyed trams
Swim among underwater lindens,
Like electric schools
Of shining lazy fish.
And there, sliding into nocturnal dankness,
My table top is reflected
On the thickness of the alien glass
In the tram windows-
And gazing into an alien life,
I recognize with sudden repulsion
My dead, disembodied,
Nocturnal head.
Golova being Russian for "head," Van Veen (the name of Ada's protagonist and narrator, the son of Aqua's twin sister Marina and Aqua's husband Demon Veen) looks like a "beheaded" version of Ivan Golovin (the name of the hero in Tolstoy's story The Death of Ivan Ilyich). Ivan Golovin + o = golova + in vino (in Blok's Incognita the rabbit-eyed* drunks cry out: "in vino veritas!"). Btw., Karenin (the opening sentence of Tolstoy's Anna Karenin is turned inside out in the beginning of Ada) comes from karenon (Gr., "head").
Many contemporary writers complained that Ayhenvald "sweetened" the authors whom he liked. Hodasevich entitled his review of Ayhenvald's essay on Pushkin "Сахарный Пушкин" (The Sugary Pushkin). Btw., the characters of Pushkin's poem Ruslan and Lyudmila (1820) include Golova (the still alive head of the knight who was decapitated by his evil brother). On the other hand, Pushkin's poem The Bronze Horseman (1833) is known on Antiterra (Earth's twin planet on which Ada is set) as Headless Horseman (1.28).
Also, shchemyashchie zvuki may remind one of Pushkin's exclamation O milyi brat, kakie zvuki! ("Oh my dear brother, what sounds!") in his poem To Kozlov (1825) addressed to the blind bard. In Kozlov's poem Princess Natalia Dolgoruki (1828) "the ghost of her [the heroine's] husband appears before her and, in order to show that he has been decapitated, takes off his head like a cap" (EO Commentary, vol. 3, p. 84).
The author of "Pesn' ada" (The Song of Hell, 1909), Blok in his Dances of Death mentions the closet with a sign Venena ("poison"). Ayhenvald: "Всякие песни ада, и пляски смерти, и смерть, наклонившаяся в аптеке перед шкапом с надписью "Venena", и дурной глаз тайного соглядатая - всё это дошло до слуха и духа Блока." Van Veen = Venena + v
*Russ., p'yanitsy a glazami krolikov (Dr Krolik is Ada's beloved lepidopterist). Btw., in his story "Zhenshchina s tochki zreniya p'yanitsy" (Woman as Seen by a Drunkard, 1885, signed "My brother's brother") Dr Chekhov compares girls under sixteen to distilled water (Humbert Humbert would have disagreed). Aqua's suicide note was signed "My sister's sister who teper' iz ada ('now is out of hell')" (1.3).
Alexey Sklyarenko
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As I pointed out before, the phrase shchemyashchie zvuki (heart-rending sounds) occurs in several poems by Blok (whose Incognita is mentioned in Ada: 3.3). In his essay on Blok (in "The Silhouettes of Russian Writers") Ayhenvald compares Blok's poems to water lilies and other aquatic plants: Как ненюфраы, как лилии, растущие на воде, - не все, но многие из его типичных стихотворений (есть у него и тяжёлые); здесь - очарование, но здесь и бесцветная неопределённость воды ("here is their charm, but also colorless vagueness of water") and quotes Rodenbach's aphorism: "the soul is a blue aquarium" (если прав Роденбах, что душа - голубой аквариум, то в хрустальные стенки его, в этот прозрачный плен, Блок не ввёл, не заключил расплывающихся струй своего художества).
VN's personal friend, Yuli Ayhenvald (1872-1928) was killed by a Berlin trolley-car on his way home from a party given by the Nabokovs. A blue aquarium and many-eyed trams are mentioned in Hodasevich's poem "Берлинское" (In Berlin, 1922) included in European Night:
Что ж? От озноба и простуды -
Горячий грог или коньяк.
Здесь музыка и звон посуды,
И лиловатый полумрак.
А там, за толстым и огромным
Отполированным стеклом,
Как бы в аквариуме тёмном,
В аквариуме голубом -
Многоочитые трамваи
Плывут между подводных лип,
Как электрические стаи
Светящихся ленивых рыб.
И там, скользя в ночную гнилость,
На толще чуждого стекла
В вагонных окнах отразилась
Поверхность моего стола, -
И, проникая в жизнь чужую,
Вдруг с отвращеньем узнаю,
Отрубленную, неживую,
Ночную голову мою.
Well? The cure for fever and a cold is
Hot grog or cognac.
Here, music is playing and dishes clatter,
In purplish semi-darkness.
And there, beyond the thick and giant
Polished windowpane,
As in a dark aquarium,
A blue aquarium-
Many-eyed trams
Swim among underwater lindens,
Like electric schools
Of shining lazy fish.
And there, sliding into nocturnal dankness,
My table top is reflected
On the thickness of the alien glass
In the tram windows-
And gazing into an alien life,
I recognize with sudden repulsion
My dead, disembodied,
Nocturnal head.
Golova being Russian for "head," Van Veen (the name of Ada's protagonist and narrator, the son of Aqua's twin sister Marina and Aqua's husband Demon Veen) looks like a "beheaded" version of Ivan Golovin (the name of the hero in Tolstoy's story The Death of Ivan Ilyich). Ivan Golovin + o = golova + in vino (in Blok's Incognita the rabbit-eyed* drunks cry out: "in vino veritas!"). Btw., Karenin (the opening sentence of Tolstoy's Anna Karenin is turned inside out in the beginning of Ada) comes from karenon (Gr., "head").
Many contemporary writers complained that Ayhenvald "sweetened" the authors whom he liked. Hodasevich entitled his review of Ayhenvald's essay on Pushkin "Сахарный Пушкин" (The Sugary Pushkin). Btw., the characters of Pushkin's poem Ruslan and Lyudmila (1820) include Golova (the still alive head of the knight who was decapitated by his evil brother). On the other hand, Pushkin's poem The Bronze Horseman (1833) is known on Antiterra (Earth's twin planet on which Ada is set) as Headless Horseman (1.28).
Also, shchemyashchie zvuki may remind one of Pushkin's exclamation O milyi brat, kakie zvuki! ("Oh my dear brother, what sounds!") in his poem To Kozlov (1825) addressed to the blind bard. In Kozlov's poem Princess Natalia Dolgoruki (1828) "the ghost of her [the heroine's] husband appears before her and, in order to show that he has been decapitated, takes off his head like a cap" (EO Commentary, vol. 3, p. 84).
The author of "Pesn' ada" (The Song of Hell, 1909), Blok in his Dances of Death mentions the closet with a sign Venena ("poison"). Ayhenvald: "Всякие песни ада, и пляски смерти, и смерть, наклонившаяся в аптеке перед шкапом с надписью "Venena", и дурной глаз тайного соглядатая - всё это дошло до слуха и духа Блока." Van Veen = Venena + v
*Russ., p'yanitsy a glazami krolikov (Dr Krolik is Ada's beloved lepidopterist). Btw., in his story "Zhenshchina s tochki zreniya p'yanitsy" (Woman as Seen by a Drunkard, 1885, signed "My brother's brother") Dr Chekhov compares girls under sixteen to distilled water (Humbert Humbert would have disagreed). Aqua's suicide note was signed "My sister's sister who teper' iz ada ('now is out of hell')" (1.3).
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/