The late Sumerechnikov, American precursor
of the Lumière brothers, had taken Ada's maternal uncle in profile with
upcheeked violin, a doomed youth, after his farewell concert.
(1.6)
Vivian Darkbloom ('Notes to Ada'): Sumerechnikov: his name comes from Russ., sumerki,
twilight...
From Vyazemski's "Допотопная, или
Допожарная Москва" (Moscow before the Flood, or before the
Fire, 1866):
В числе этих фотографий, отразившихся по
большей части в профиль и при сумерках времён
давно минувших, приведу мельком ещё несколько лиц, которых видал я на вечерах у
отца моего. ("Among these photographs reflected mostly in
profile and at twilight of the times long
past I shall cursorily evoke one or two more faces that I saw at the parties
given by my father.")
Herzen's first cousin Sergey Levitsky (1819-98) was a
Russian pioneer photographer (below is Herzen's photograph by
Levitsky). The author of Bygones and Meditations was born in
1812 in Moscow, a few months before it was occupied by Napoleon's army
and set on fire by the patriotic citizens (incited by the governor
Rostopchin*).
In the 1840s Herzen, his wife Natalie (who also
was his first cousin) and Levitsky shared
the appartments in the Bolshaya Morskaya Street in St.
Petersburg. To commemorate this fact, the Bolshaya Morskaya Street was
renamed Herzen Street by the Bolsheviks (see the photo of the Nabokov
house in the Morskaya Street and the caption in VN's Speak,
Memory).
*Cf. Who cried? Stopchin cried? Larivière
cried? Larivière? Answer! Crying that the barn flambait? (1.19)
As I pointed out before, the barn was set on fire by Kim Beauharnais, the
kitchen boy and photographer at Ardis. As they watch the old snapshots in Kim's
album (2.7), Van and Ada remember Sumerechnikov:
'And do you know who this bum in the frock
is?
'Looks to me like a poor print cut out of the
magazine. Who's he?'
'Sumerechnikov! He took sumerographs of Uncle
Vanya years ago.'
In my old article in The Nabokovian ("Grattez le
Tartar...") I argue that Kim Beauharnais (who seems to be not related
to Napoleon's first wife) is the son of Arkadiy Dolgorukiy, the hero and
narrator of Dostoevski's The Adolescent (1875). In Moscow before
the Flood, or before the Fire Vyazemski quotes the pun of
another Dolgorukiy, prince Sergey (nicknamed Le prince Calembour), on
Perlot, the name of the governess of Vyazemski's half-sister (who was married to
Karamzin): "ей нет опасения умереть от водяной (perd
l'eau)" (she is in no fear to die of dropsy, perd l'eau). In
Ada, Aqua is Marina's poor mad twin sister who believed that she
learnt the language of her namesake, water.
Alexey Sklyarenko
