Subject
Liberty 's other Russian, VN connections
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Date
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On Jun 18, 2012, at 2:21 AM, Alexey Sklyarenko wrote: The land of
liberty and its great statue are mentioned in Pnin (Chapter Two, 5):
And at last, when the great statue arose from the morning haze where,
ready to be ignited by the sun, pale, spellbound buildings stood like
those mysterious rectangles of unequal height that you see in bar
graph representations of compared percentages (natural resources, the
frequency of mirages in different deserts), Dr Wind resolutely walked
up to the Pnins and identified himself--'because all three of us must
enter the land of liberty with pure hearts.'
By a stroke of coincidence I happen to be listening on the radio to a
really very interesting piece of music* commissioned by one of the
women said to have posed for Lady Liberty herself - though some claim
it was her mother who modelled for Bertholdi. Better known by her
married name, la princesse Edmond de Polignac, Winnaretta was the
eldest of 24 children born to Isaac Merritt Singer, the man who beside
founding the famous sewing machine mfg company, was also an inventor
and actor. His son Paris Singer was the father of one of Isadora
Duncan's children.
Isadora fell for some glamorous conception of the soviet revolution,
and after moving to Moscow in '17, married Sergei Esenin, a marriage
that ended only with his mysterious death at the age of 30. She
founded a school of dance there, that was finally suppressed in '39,
and the teachers exiled or worse. The dancer herself famously died
grotesquely, decapitated by a scarf caught in the wheels of her
Bugatti or Maseratti,** and the two children born out of wedlock to
Singer and the famous theater designer and personality Gordon Craig
were similarly the victims of a grotesque automobile accident. For a
lark, read Elsa Lanchester's account of being one of la Duncan's
students ... or, even better, I think you can find her tell it on
Youtube.
Another Russian connection regarding Singer Sewing Machines - the most
beautiful shops in Petersburg/Leningrad - were in the Singer Sewing
Machine Building - a paean to l'art nouveau. Still there when I was in
the old USSR in '67 where it housed a really extraordinarily good food
shop, all things considered. Is this building not perhaps referred to
in Speak, Memory?
Carolyn
*a Poulenc concerto for two pianos, also see posting to follow on
commissions of art, music and at least one novel.
**Actually the car was an interesting one (can't help wondering what
happened to it) [could this have any relation to the odd automobiles
in Pale Fire?]: On the night of September 14, 1927, Duncan was a
passenger in the Amilcar[28] automobile of a handsome French-Italian
mechanic Benoît Falchetto, whom she had nicknamed "Buggatti" (sic).
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liberty and its great statue are mentioned in Pnin (Chapter Two, 5):
And at last, when the great statue arose from the morning haze where,
ready to be ignited by the sun, pale, spellbound buildings stood like
those mysterious rectangles of unequal height that you see in bar
graph representations of compared percentages (natural resources, the
frequency of mirages in different deserts), Dr Wind resolutely walked
up to the Pnins and identified himself--'because all three of us must
enter the land of liberty with pure hearts.'
By a stroke of coincidence I happen to be listening on the radio to a
really very interesting piece of music* commissioned by one of the
women said to have posed for Lady Liberty herself - though some claim
it was her mother who modelled for Bertholdi. Better known by her
married name, la princesse Edmond de Polignac, Winnaretta was the
eldest of 24 children born to Isaac Merritt Singer, the man who beside
founding the famous sewing machine mfg company, was also an inventor
and actor. His son Paris Singer was the father of one of Isadora
Duncan's children.
Isadora fell for some glamorous conception of the soviet revolution,
and after moving to Moscow in '17, married Sergei Esenin, a marriage
that ended only with his mysterious death at the age of 30. She
founded a school of dance there, that was finally suppressed in '39,
and the teachers exiled or worse. The dancer herself famously died
grotesquely, decapitated by a scarf caught in the wheels of her
Bugatti or Maseratti,** and the two children born out of wedlock to
Singer and the famous theater designer and personality Gordon Craig
were similarly the victims of a grotesque automobile accident. For a
lark, read Elsa Lanchester's account of being one of la Duncan's
students ... or, even better, I think you can find her tell it on
Youtube.
Another Russian connection regarding Singer Sewing Machines - the most
beautiful shops in Petersburg/Leningrad - were in the Singer Sewing
Machine Building - a paean to l'art nouveau. Still there when I was in
the old USSR in '67 where it housed a really extraordinarily good food
shop, all things considered. Is this building not perhaps referred to
in Speak, Memory?
Carolyn
*a Poulenc concerto for two pianos, also see posting to follow on
commissions of art, music and at least one novel.
**Actually the car was an interesting one (can't help wondering what
happened to it) [could this have any relation to the odd automobiles
in Pale Fire?]: On the night of September 14, 1927, Duncan was a
passenger in the Amilcar[28] automobile of a handsome French-Italian
mechanic Benoît Falchetto, whom she had nicknamed "Buggatti" (sic).
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/
