MM: Kim also shows up in the words Akimovich as well as Yakim
Eskimossoff...
Much like a matryoshka doll, there is Kim in
Yakim, Yakim in Yakima and Yakima in Yakimanka (a street in Moscow
mentioned by Chekhov in several stories and letters). The Yakima Academy of Drama and its production of Chekhov's play Three
Sisters (known on Antiterra as Four Sisters)
is mentioned by Ada:
our wretched Yakima production could rely
on only two Russians, Stan's protégé Altshuler*
in the role of Baron Nikolay Lvovich Tuzenbach-Krone-Altschauer, and myself as
Irina, la pauvre et noble enfant... (2.9)
and the Yakima jailers are mentioned
by Van:
All three scientists had
vanished now: X had committed suicide; Y had been kidnapped by a laundryman and
transported to Tartary; and Z, a ruddy, white-whiskered old sport, was driving
his Yakima jailers crazy by means of incomprehensible crepitations, ceaseless
invention of invisible inks, chameleonizations, nerve signals, spirals of
out-going lights and feats of ventriloquism that imitated pistol shots and
sirens. (2.2)
"Irina, la pauvre et noble
enfant," played by Ada brings to mind Coppée's poem quoted by Demon
(1.38):
Irène de Grandfief, la pauvre et
noble enfant
Ferma son pi-ano... vendit son
éléphant'
The elephant is Demon's contribution.
In a letter of September 11, 1890, to Suvorin Chekhov, sailing on the Gulf of Tartary from the north of Sahalin to
the south, quotes the punch line of Krylov's fable "Ëþáîïûòíûé"
(The Inquisitive Person, its hero visited a zoo and failed to
see one animal in it: the elephant): "now that I have
done with the convict system, I have the feeling that I have seen everything but
have not noticed the elephant (ñëîíà-òî ÿ è íå
ïðèìåòèë)." Slon is Russian for "elephant." On the
other hand, SLON (Solovetskiy Lager' Osobogo
Naznacheniya) was a particularly cruel Soviet labor camp (called
by Solzhenitsyn "mother of the GULAG") on Solovki (the
Solovetsky Islands in the White Sea). In 1929 Chekhov's friend Gorky visited
SLON and wrote a very favorable essay, praising the camp’s administration and rules. Indeed, he
had not noticed the
elephant!
After the publication of The Sahalin Island (in which a
convict is mentioned whose name was Napoleon**) Chekhov wrote to Suvorin (a
letter of January 2, 1894) that he was
happy to have among his literary costumes a convict’s harsh robe (ÿ ðàä, ÷òî â ìî¸ì áåëëåòðèñòè÷åñêîì ãàðäåðîáå áóäåò
âèñåòü è ñåé æ¸ñòêèé àðåñòàíòñêèé õàëàò). After his visit to Solovki Maxim Gorky added to his writer’s
wardrobe the uniform of a
jailer.
*I. N. Altshuller (1870-1943) was a friend of
Chekhov and his doctor in Yalta (note that shuler is Russian for
"card-sharper" and alt means in German "old"). Stan [Slavsky]
hints at Stanislavsky (stage name of K. S. Alekseev, 1863-1938, director
and actor, a friend of Chekhov). Stan needs but a vowel to become
Satan, and Russian particle li ("whether, if; or") will
turn him
into Stalin.
**The real Napoleon ended his life
on the remote island in a different part of the world. I
speak of Napoleon (who seems not to have existed on Antiterra) and his
first wife, Josephine de Beauharnais (known on Antiterra as Queen
Josephine: 1.5), in my article "'Grattez le Tartar...' or Who were
the Parents of Ada's Kim Beauharnais?" (The Nabokovian ## 59,
60). And let's not forget that Comrade Napoleon is a hog in Orwell's Animal
Farm.
Alexey
Sklyarenko