from Alexey Sklyarenko:
In one of my recent kot or posts
I mentioned that this Zemblan phrase meaning "what is the time" was
the anagram of otrok (Russian for "boy", "lad"). But otrok
is the word that occurs twice in the opening line
of Pushkin's "homoerotic" poem Podrazhanie arabskomu
("Imitation of the Arabic", 1835):
Otrok milyi, otrok nezhnyi...
Sweet lad, tender
lad,
Have no shame, you're mine for good;
We share a sole insurgent fire,
We live in boundless brotherhood.
I do not fear the gibes of men;
One being split in two we dwell,
The kernel of a double nut
Embedded in a single shell.
It seems to me that several years ago I have already quoted this poem in
Nabokv-l and asked the List if also Shade and Kinbote might
be dvoinoi oreshek pod edinoi skorlupoi ("the kernel of a double
nut under a single shell"), two parts of the split One? And, if they are, what
we should make of Gradus, whom Carolyn thinks to be the multiple
personality's third aspect?
Hazel is of course a nut-bearing shrub or tree. Like peanuts or almonds,
hazel nuts sometimes have a twin kernel.
Somewhat off theme, I remember the lines of T. Ardov (pen-name of
Vladimir Tardov, a minor poet and a major specialist in Persian culture
whom I mentioned in connection with ADA) are:
Na etom pire vsesozhzheniy
Ya zhertva, zhertvennik i zhrets.
(On
this feast of holocaust / I am the sacrifice, the sacrificial altar and the
priest). "Pir" (Russian for "feast") happens to be the Russian title of
Plato's Symposium. According to G. Wood (the
author of the above-mentioned article), the image of One being split in
two in Pushkin's poem goes back to Aristophanes' speech in
Plato's Symposium.
On
the other hand, pir occurs in the title of Pushkin's little tradedy
Pir vo vremya chumy (Pushkin's version of Wilson's City of the
Plague), and Piry ("The Feasts", 1821) is the title of
Baratynsky's first long poem.