Ivan Golovin ("Russian Châteaubriand", as he was
called by his contemporaries) was indignant at the fact that some
called Lermontov (whom Golovin once met at a dinner and whom he denies all
talent) "Russian Goethe". "Why not [Russian] Platen?" he wonders in his
Zapiski (Memoirs).
August Graf von Platen (1796-1835) was a minor
German poet and dramatist. Heine (whom I'm tempted to call "German Lermontov")
speaks of Platen in Die Baedern von Lucca ("The Baths of Lucca", 1829)
and of Platen's likes in his poem Plateniden (1851).
Platen = plante = planet (cf. Antiterra,
Earth's twin planet in
Ada)
Lukka = kulak = kukla
plante -
Fr., plant
Lukka - Russian spelling
of "Lucca", an ancient Roman spa
kulak - Russ., fist;
rich peasant; middleman; Tatar, ear; cf. uzun kulak (steppe
telegraph) mentioned in "The Golden Calf" and Uzun Ada (a port in
Turkmenistan, on the Caspian sea) mentioned in Jules Verne's Claudius
Bombarnac; Kulak ("The Middleman") is a long poem (1859) by Ivan
Nikitin; "Dobro dolzhno byt' s kulakami ..." ("Good should have
fists...") is the famous first line of a poem (1959) by the Kaluga-born
Soviet poet Stanislav Kunyaev
kukla - Russ.,
doll
Alexey Sklyarenko