Orache (short story)

"Orache" is a short story by Russian American author Vladimir Nabokov originally published in Russian in 1932.

Summary

The story uses third-person narration and concerns itself with a child named Peter. The syntax and diction is, in some ways, childish, making the story stylistically comparable to the early portion of Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. At school, another child (Dmitri Korff) shows Peter a magazine with a comic illustration announcing a duel between Peter's father and another member of the parliament whereat he works, asking "is it true?" [1] As Peter did not know about the duel, he becomes upset, dreading his father's potential death. It's unknown to Peter in what medium the duel will progress, but his father's daily fencing lessons in the library suggest (to the reader) that it will be by sword (a clever red herring planted by Nabokov).

The boy's dread is captured symbolically (although Nabokov hated talk of symbols) by his mis-remembering a poem in front of his class; he recalls the dramatic 'ache' instead of the innocuous 'orache', a weed [2] After much dread over his father's duel, which includes calling to mind Lenski falling like a "black sack"[3] in Pushkin's Eugene Onegin (one of Nabokov's Russian favorites), the same student reveals to Peter that the events of the duel are recounted in that day's paper. Peter rushes to the school's porter, Andrey, to look into his paper, where it's written that the duel was bloodless, the opponent firing first, and missing, to which Peter's father fired into the air.[4] In the end, Peter weeps with relief.

gollark: > Some may argue that the CDC originally claimed that masks were ineffective as a way to retain the already-small supply of masks for healthcare providers and medical officials. Others may argue that the CDC made this claim due to ever-developing research around the virus. I am arguing, however, that the CDC made the claim that masks are ineffective because the CDC’s sole purpose is to provide scientific legitimation of the U.S. as a eugenicist project through medical genocide. As outlined in this essay, the CDC has a history of releasing deadly information and later backtracking on it when the damage has already been done.
gollark: > Choosing to tell the public that supplies that could benefit everyone is ineffective, rather than calling for more supplies to be created—in the midst of a global pandemic, no less—is eugenics. Making the conscious decision to tell the general public that something is ineffective when you have not done all of the necessary research, especially when medical officials are using the very same equipment, is medical and scientific genocide.
gollark: It seems like they seem to claim they're genociding *everyone*, actually?
gollark: Are you familiar with relativistic magnetoapiodynamics?
gollark: And they disagree with people disagreeing.

References
  1. Nabokov, Vladimir (2008). The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov. Vintage Books. p. 326.
  2. Nabokov, Vladimir (2008). The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov. Vintage Books. p. 327.
  3. Nabokov, Vladimir (2008). The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov. Vintage Books. p. 330.
  4. Nabokov, Vladimir (2008). The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov. Vintage Books. p. 331.
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