Just
an afterthought concerning my recently posted note "Good should have
fists..." Since the word dobro
("good") has sexual connotations (see note 7 to my
piece), the first line of Kunyaev's poem, Dobro dolzhno byt’ s kulakami, has a
third meaning yet (for the second meaning see note 3): "One's genitalia
should be [in the contact] with one's fists." This reminds me of Van
masturbating in his bath in the fatal night of Lucette’s suicide (3.5) and, on
the other hand, of masturbators in Gorky's "The Life of Klim Samgin"
(1825-36).* Cf., for instance, Tagilsky's confession to Samgin: "At twelve I
began to masturbate, one of the girls caught me during this occupation and
taught me to prefer normal sexual life" (LKS, Part Four).
By
the way, SAMGIN = SMAGIN (A. I. Smagin was Chekhov's friend, a landowner in the
province of Poltava, whom Chekhov for some reason has dubbed "the Persian Shah")
= GIMNAST (gymnast) – T.
*In
Ilf and Petrov's "The Twelve Chairs" (1927), in the Iznurenkov
chapter, there is a mention of Gorky writing a big
novel.
Alexey
Sklyarenko