‘All happy families are more or less dissimilar;
all unhappy ones are more or less alike,’ says a great Russian writer in the
beginning of a famous novel (Anna Arkadievitch Karenina, transfigured
into English by R.G. Stonelower, Mount Tabor Ltd., 1880).
In the appended notes, Darkbloom explains: "p.9. All happy
families etc: mistranslations of Russian classics are ridiculed here. The
opening sentence of Tolstoy’s novel is turned inside out and Anna Arkadievna’s
patronymic given an absurd masculine ending, while an incorrect feminine one is
added to her surname*. ‘Mount Tabor’ and ‘Pontius’ allude to the
transfigurations (Mr G. Steiner’s term, I believe) and betrayals to which great
texts are subjected by pretentious and ignorant versionists.
Wikipedia offers Vladimir Nabokov's explanation about Karenin/Karenina:
"In Russian, a surname ending in a consonant acquires a
final 'a' (except for the cases of such names that cannot be declined) when
designating a woman; but only when the reference is to a female stage performer
should English feminise a Russian surname (following a French custom: la
Pavlova, 'the Pavlova'). Ivanov's and Karenin's wives are Mrs Ivanov and Mrs
Karenin in England and America—not 'Mrs Ivanova' or 'Mrs Karenina'."
Lectures on Russian Literature. 1980,New York: Harvest.
pp. 137
Nabokov usually refers to two or more episodes or denunciations of
literary misdemeanors and I wonder if there' anything else that can be
linked to Arkadiy?
In ADA there is an exchange between Van and Greg, with a
playful slip concerning Arkadievich: ‘I last saw you
thirteen years ago, riding a black pony — no, a black Silentium. Bozhe moy!’
[ ] ]I have an appointment in a few minutes, alas. Za tvoyo zdorovie,
Grigoriy Akimovich.’/ ‘Arkadievich,’ said Greg, who had let it pass once but now
mechanically corrected Van./ ‘Ach yes! Stupid slip of the slovenly tongue. How
is Arkadiy Grigorievich?’ (I couldn't get the point of this apparently
deliberate "slip")
In fact, Van and Greg had met a long time ago at Ardis (with the exchanges
about Mesopotamia and Biblical paradises) and - in the midst of the
multiple entertainments at Ada's birthday picnic - there might have
been a reference to Tolstoy's Anna Karenin (it's been brought up before,
but the berries are distinct**). "Ada and Grace danced a Russian fling to the accompaniment
of an ancient music box (which kept halting in mid-bar, as if recalling other
shores, other, radial, waves); Lucette, one fist on her hip, sang a St Malô
fisher-song; Greg put on his sister’s blue skirt, hat and glasses, all of which
transformed him into a very sick, mentally retarded Grace; and Van walked on his
hands."
Greg returns the next day to
return Marina's lighter. ‘I ask myself who can
that be,’ murmured Mlle Larivière from behind the samovar (which
expressed fragments of its surroundings in demented fantasies of a primitive
genre) as she slitted her eyes at a part of the drive visible between the
pilasters of an open-work gallery. Van, lying prone behind Ada, lifted his eyes from his book (Ada’s copy of
Atala).
Answering to Marina's greetings
Greg says "that both
Aunt Ruth and Grace were laid up with acute indigestion — ‘not because of your
wonderful sandwiches,’ he hastened to add, ‘but because of all those
burnberries they picked in the bushes.’ "
Another interesting feature in the dancing-berry pickings is a
samovar. It's suggested, at first, that the word sharovars
"got garbled in the agent's aerocable" and its ressurgence, reflecting Mlle
Larivière, returns to anamorphosis, with its garblings
and distortions Burnberries might equally have resulted from a
transformation of Tolstoy's original berries. However, Brian Boyd thinks
otherwise.***
...........................................................................................
* - The title of Tolstoy's novel, and the quote, are adulterated
Cf. Anna Arkadyevna and her brother, Stepan "Stiva"
Arkadyevich Oblonsky
** - "In a splendid orchard several merry young gardeners wearing for
some reason the garb of Georgian tribesmen were popping raspberries into
their mouths, while several equally implausible servant girls in sharovars
(somebody had goofed — the word ‘samovars’ may have got garbled in the agent’s
aerocable) were busy plucking marshmallows and peanuts from the branches of
fruit trees. At an invisible sign of Dionysian origin, they all plunged into
the violent dance called kurva or ‘ribbon boule’ in the hilarious
program whose howlers almost caused Veen (tingling, and light-loined, and with
Prince N.’s rose-red banknote in his pocket) to fall from his
seat."
*** - 90.04-07: Ruth and Grace . . . all those burnberries they picked in the
bushes: Appears to
echo Ophelia’s flower scene (cf. “‘Yes indeed,’ began Marina, ‘when
I was playing Ophelia, the fact that I had once collected flowers—’ ‘Helped, no
doubt,’ said Ada” [63]): “There’s rue for you, and here’s some for me; we may
call it herb of grace a’ Sundays” (Hamlet 4.5.180-82). As recorded in the Hamlet Variorum (ed. Horace Howard
Furness, 1877; rpt. New York: Dover, 1963), which Nabokov mined for chapter 7
of Bend Sinister, the
great eighteenth-century Shakespeare editor George Steevens notes: “there is a
quibble meant in this passage, ‘rue’ anciently signifying the same as ruth, i.e. sorrow.” Nabokov was fascinated by the
flowers Ophelia picks (see his “The Art of Translation,” The New Republic, 4 August
1941, 160, and Bend
Sinister 113-15,
118).
90.05-07: indigestion . . . those burnberries they picked in the
bushes: As if they are
heartburn-berries. See 85.03-04 for “an angry burnberry bush” by the picnic
site. Ardeur 76: “ces baies de Bengale qu’elles
ont ramassées dans les buissons” (“those Bengal berries they picked in the
bushes ”), punning on “Baie de Bengale” (“Bay of Bengal”) and “feu de Bengale”
(“ Bengal light, signal light, flare”).
90.06: burnberries: N1: “invented word.” Berries that grow by the
“burn” or brook first mentioned, generically, at 82.01, then as a rill at the
picnic site, 83.32, 266.14-15, 286.24 (“Burnberry Brook”). MOTIF: burn; burnberry.
btw: the burning bush must be an allusion to the biblical
scene where God addresses Moses; a "ribbon boule" could indicate a twisted
ribbon, like it happens in topology, with the Moebius band; Bengal lights appear
in Details of a Sunset: "The last streetcar
was disappearing in the mirrorlike murk of the street and, along the wire above
it, a spark of Bengal light, crackling and quivering, sped into the
distance like a blue star.".