Speaking of Plateniden (Heine's word
for Platen's successors in German poetry), in Byloe i dumy
Herzen calls Marx and his followers marxidy ("Marxiden") and
Schwefelbande ("rabble"). On Antiterra Marx is known as Marx père, the popular author of 'historical' plays (2.5).
Incidentally, Marx's daughter Eleanor (the author of the first English
translation of Madame Bovary) committed a suicide after her
husband had left her. She took poison, as Emma does in Flaubert's
novel. One remembers Ada's Eleonore Bonvard whose clever trick was
repeated by Aqua (1.3). Flaubert's Bouvard and Pécuchet study
chemistry. Among the characters in Byloe i dumy is khimik
("chemist"), as Herzen calls his cousin Alexey Yakovlev.
In his letters to Natalya Zakharyin (with whom he
later eloped) from Vyatka Herzen called her sestra (sister;
NZ was Herzen's cousin). In Vyatka (the place of his exile) Herzen
had an affair with Praskovia Medvedev (to whom H. refers P.* in
Byloe i dumy; after the death of Praskovia's old husband, H. had
to tell Witberg, the architect, about his romance). The name
Medvedev comes from medved' (bear). On Antiterra, they have
Floeberg's Ursula (the name comes from ursus, Latin for
"bear") instead of Madame Bovary (1.20).
In the Appendix to Byloe i dumy Herzen
included some old letters from people he had met in life (Hugo, Proudhon,
Carlyle, etc.). Here is an interesting excerpt from Chaadaev's letter (written
in 1851):
Хорошо бы было, если б вам удалось
сродниться с каким-нибудь из народов европейских и с языком его, так чтобы вы
могли высказать на нём всё, что у вас на сердце... Тяжело однако ж будет вам
расстаться с родным словом, на котором вы так жизненно выражались.
A friend of young Pushkin, Pyotr Chaadaev was
officially declared "mad" by the authorities after he had published in 1836 the
first of his Philosophic Letters. In his letter to Herzen, he says
that H. should abandon Russian (which would be difficult) for one of the
European languages. Unlike Herzen, Nabokov has followed Chaadaev's advice
and switched to English (Chaadaev recommended to Herzen
French).
*Cyrillic P corresponds to Roman
R
Alexey Sklyarenko