Describing his courtship of Annette Blagovo, Vadim Vadimovich (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Look at the Harlequins!, 1974) compares Annette’s dreadful parents who asked to see Vadim’s books to a suspicious physician who might ask for a sample of semen:
I am giving this summary to exemplify what even the poorest reader of my Dare must surely retain, unless electrolysis destroys some essential cells soon after he closes the book. Now part of Annette's frail charm lay in her forgetfulness which veiled everything toward the evening of everything, like the kind of pastel haze that obliterates mountains, clouds, and even its own self as the summer day swoons. I know I have seen her many times, a copy of Patria in her languid lap, follow the printed lines with the pendulum swing of eyes suggestive of reading, and actually reach the "To be continued" at the end of the current installment of The Dare. I also know that she had typed every word of it and most of its commas. Yet the fact remains that she retained nothing--perhaps in result of her having decided once for all that my prose was not merely "difficult" but hermetic ("nastily hermetic," to repeat the compliment Basilevski paid me the moment he realized--a moment which came in due time--that his manner and mind were being ridiculed in Chapter Three by my gloriously happy Victor). I must say I forgave her readily her attitude to my work. At public readings, I admired her public smile, the "archaic" smile of Greek statues. When her rather dreadful parents asked to see my books (as a suspicious physician might ask for a sample of semen), she gave them to read by mistake another man's novel because of a silly similarity of titles. The only real shock I experienced was when I overheard her informing some idiot woman friend that my Dare included biographies of "Chernolyubov and Dobroshevski"! She actually started to argue when I retorted that only a lunatic would have chosen a pair of third-rate publicists to write about--spoonerizing their names in addition! (2.5)
In his book Opavshie list’ya (“Fallen Leaves,” 1915) Rozanov says that his writings are fermented not with water and not even with human blood, but with human semen:
Говорят, дорого назначаю цену книгам ("Уед."), но ведь сочинения мои замешаны не на воде и даже не на крови человеческой, а на семени человеческом.
Mrs. Blagovo offers Vadim chaishko s molochishkom (teeny tea with weeny milk):
Dr. Blagovo (1867-1940) had married at the age of forty a provincial belle in the Volgan town of Kineshma, a few miles south from one of my most romanic country estates, famous for its wild ravines, now gravel pits or places of massacre, but then magnificent evocations of sunken gardens. She wore elaborate make-up and spoke in simpering accents, reducing nouns and adjectives to over-affectionate forms which even the Russian language, a recognized giant of diminutives, would only condone on the wet lips of an infant or tender nurse ("Here," said Mrs. Blagovo "is your chaishko s molochishkom [teeny tea with weeny milk]"). She struck me as an extraordinarily garrulous, affable, and banal lady, with a good taste in clothes (she worked in a salon de couture). A certain tenseness could be sensed in the atmosphere of the household. Annette was obviously a difficult daughter. In the brief course of my visit I could not help noticing that the voice of the parent addressing her developed little notes of obsequious panic (notki podobostrastnoy paniki). Annette would occasionally curb with an opaque, almost ophidian, look, her mother's volubility. As I was leaving, the old girl paid me what she thought was a compliment: "You speak Russian with a Parisian grasseyement and your manners are those of an Englishman." Annette, behind her, uttered a low warning growl. (2.8)
In her memoirs Zhivye litsa (“Live Faces,” 1925) Zinaida Hippius says that detishkam na molochishko ("my kids for milk") was a phrase favored by Rozanov (who hailed from the Volgan city of Kostroma):
Мы все держались в стороне от «Нового времени»; но Розанову его «суворинство» инстинктивно прощалось: очень уж было ясно, что он не «ихний» (ничей): просто «детишкам на молочишко», чего он сам, с удовольствием, не скрывал.
In Demian Bedny’s poem V monastyre (“At a Monastery,” 1919) the monk invites a woman to his cell and offers her chaishko s karamel’yu (“teeny tea with caramels”):
"Здесь, - богомолке так шептал монах смиренный, -
Вот здесь под стеклышком внутри сего ларца,
Хранится волосок нетленный, -
Не знаю в точности, с главы, или с лица,
Или ещё откуда -
Нетленный волосок святого Пуда.
Не всякому дано узреть сей волосок,
Но лишь тому, чья мысль чиста, чей дух высок,
Чьё сердце от страстей губительных свободно
И чьё моление к святителю доходно".
Умильно слушая румяного отца,
Мавруша пялила глаза на дно ларца.
"Ах, - вся зардевшись от смущенья,
Она взмолилась под конец, -
Нет от святителя грехам моим прощенья:
Не вижу волоска, святой отец!"
Отец молодушку к себе зазвавши в келью
И угостив её чаишком с карамелью
И кисло-сладеньким винцом,
Утешил ласковым словцом:
"Ужотко заходи ещё... я не обижу.
А что до волоска - по совести скажу:
В ларец я в этот сам уж двадцать лет гляжу
И ровно двадцать лет в нём ни черта не вижу!"
Netlennyi volosok svyatogo Puda (the imperishable little hair of Saint Pud) brings to mind “General Pudov’s vile and fatuous "historical" romance about the way the Zion Wisers usurped St. Rus:”
The reader must have noticed that I speak only in a very general way about my Russian fictions of the Nineteen-Twenties and Thirties, for I assume that he is familiar with them or can easily obtain them in their English versions. At this point, however, I must say a few words about The Dare (Podarok Otchizne was its original title, which can be translated as "a gift to the fatherland"). When in 1934 I started to dictate its beginning to Annette, I knew it would be my longest novel. I did not foresee however that it would be almost as long as General Pudov's vile and fatuous "historical" romance about the way the Zion Wisers usurped St. Rus. It took me about four years in all to write its four hundred pages, many of which Annette typed at least twice. Most of it had been serialized in émigré magazines by May, 1939, when she and I, still childless, left for America; but in book form, the Russian original appeared only in 1950 (Turgenev Publishing House, New York), followed another decade later by an English translation, whose title neatly refers not only to the well-known device used to bewilder noddies but also to the daredevil nature of Victor, the hero and part-time narrator.
The novel begins with a nostalgic account of a Russian childhood (much happier, though not less opulent than mine). After that comes adolescence in England (not unlike my own Cambridge years); then life in émigré Paris, the writing of a first novel (Memoirs of a Parrot Fancier) and the tying of amusing knots in various literary intrigues. Inset in the middle part is a complete version of the book my Victor wrote "on a dare": this is a concise biography and critical appraisal of Fyodor Dostoyevski, whose politics my author finds hateful and whose novels he condemns as absurd with their black-bearded killers presented as mere negatives of Jesus Christ's conventional image, and weepy whores borrowed from maudlin romances of an earlier age. The next chapter deals with the rage and bewilderment of émigré reviewers, all of them priests of the Dostoyevskian persuasion; and in the last pages my young hero accepts a flirt's challenge and accomplishes a final gratuitous feat by walking through a perilous forest into Soviet territory and as casually strolling back. (2.5)
Rozanov’s first wife was Apollinaria Suslov, Dostoevski’s former mistress. Like Dostoevski, Vadim marries his stenographer. Vadim’s second wife and mother of his daughter Isabel, Annette Blagovo is a namesake of Anyuta Blagovo, a character (Misail’s staunch friend) in Chekhov’s story Moya zhizn’ (“My Life,” 1896). In 1952 VN’s novel Dar (“The Gift”) was brought out by the Chekhov Publishing House in New York. In Chapter Three of “The Gift” VN twice mentions Rozanov:
В лавке хозяина не оказалось: он ушел к зубному врачу, и его заменяла довольно случайная барышня, читавшая в углу в неудобной позе "Туннель" Келлермана по-русски. Федор Константинович подошел к столику, где были разложены эмигрантские периодические издания. Он развернул литературный номер парижской "Газеты" и с холодком внезапного волнения увидел большой фельетон Христофора Мортуса, посвященный "Сообщению". "А вдруг бранит?" - с безумной надеждой успел подумать он, уже, впрочем, слыша в ушах, вместо мелодии хулы, мчащийся гул оглушительных похвал. Он жадно начал читать.
"Не помню кто - кажется, Розанов, говорит где-то", - начинал, крадучись, Мортус; и, приведя сперва, эту недостоверную цитату, потом какую-то мысль, кем-то высказанную в парижском кафе после чьей-то лекции, начинал суживать эти искусственные круги вокруг "Сообщения" Кончеева, причем до конца так и не касался центра, а только изредка направлял к нему месмерический жест с внутреннего круга - и опять кружился. Получалось нечто вроде тех черных спиралей на картонных кругах, которые, в безумном стремлении обратиться в мишень, бесконечно вращаются в витринах берлинских мороженников.
The owner of the shop was not there: he had gone to the dentist’s and his place was being taken by a rather accidental young lady reading a Russian translation of Kellerman’s The Tunnel in a fairly uncomfortable pose in the corner. Fyodor Konstantinovich approached the table where the émigré periodicals were displayed. He unfolded the literary number of the Paris Russian News and with a chill of sudden excitement he saw that the feuilleton by Christopher Mortus was devoted to Communication. “What if he demolishes it?” Fyodor managed to think with a mad hope, already, however, hearing in his ears not the melody of detraction but the sweeping roar of deafening praise. He greedily began to read.
“I do not remember who said—perhaps Rozanov said it somewhere,” began Mortus stealthily; and citing first this unauthentic quotation and then some thought expressed by somebody in a Paris café after someone’s lecture, he began to narrow these artificial circles around Koncheyev’s Communication; but even so, to the very end he never touched the center, but only directed now and then a mesmeric gesture toward it from the circumference—and again revolved. The result was something in the nature of those black spirals on cardboard circles which are everlastingly spinning in the windows of Berlin ice-cream parlors in a crazy effort to turn into bull’s-eyes.
Несколько утомленный, но радуясь тому, что трудовой день окончен, Федор Константинович сел в трамвай и раскрыл журнальчик (опять мелькнуло склоненное лицо Н. Г. Чернышевского - о котором он только и знал, что это был "шприц с серной кислотой", - как где-то говорит, кажется, Розанов, - и автор "Что делать?", путавшегося впрочем с "Кто виноват?"). Он углубился в рассмотрение задач и вскоре убедился, что, не будь среди них двух гениальных этюдов старого русского мастера да нескольких интересных перепечаток из иностранных изданий, журнальчика не стоило бы покупать. Добросовестные, ученические упражнения молодых советских композиторов были не столько "задачи", сколько "задания": в них громоздко трактовалась та или иная механическая тема (какое-нибудь "связывание" и "развязывание"), без всякой поэзии; это были шахматные лубки, не более, и подталкивающие друг друга фигуры делали свое неуклюжее дело с пролетарской серьезностью, мирясь с побочными решениями в вялых вариантах и нагромождением милицейских пешек.
Somewhat weary but glad of the fact that his working day was over, Fyodor Konstantinovich boarded a tram and opened his magazine (again that glimpse of Chernyshevski’s inclined face—all I know about him is that he was “a syringe of sulphuric acid,” as Rozanov, I think, says somewhere, and that he wrote the novel What to Do?, which blends in my mind with another social writer’s Whose Fault?). He became absorbed in an examination of the problems and soon satisfied himself that if it had not been for two end-games of genius by an old Russian master plus several interesting reprints from foreign publications, this 8 × 8 would not have been worth buying. The conscientious student exercises of the young Soviet composers were not so much “problems” as “tasks”: cumbrously they treated of this or that mechanical theme (some kind of “pinning” and “unpinning”) without a hint of poetry; these were chess comic strips, nothing more, and the shoving and jostling pieces did their clumsy work with proletarian seriousness, reconciling themselves to the presence of double solutions in the flat variants and to the agglomeration of police pawns.
Rozanov called Saltykov-Shchedrin, not Chernyshevski, "a syringe of sulphuric acid." The philosopher Vladimir Solov'yov compared Rozanov to Iudushka (little Judas) Golovlyov, the main character of Saltykov's novel Gospoda Golovlyovy ("The Golovlyovs," 1880).
In his book Uedinyonnoe (“Solitaria,” 1911) Rozanov says that he dislikes his surname:
Удивительно противна мне моя фамилия. Всегда с таким чужим чувством подписываю «В. Розанов» под статьями. Хоть бы «Руднев», «Бугаев», что-нибудь. Или обыкновенное русское «Иванов». Иду раз по улице. Поднял голову и прочитал:
«Немецкая булочная Розанова».
Ну, так есть: все булочники «Розановы», и, следовательно, все Розановы - булочники. Что таким дуракам (с такой глупой фамилией) и делать. Хуже моей фамилии только «Каблуков»: это уже совсем позорно. Или «Стечкин» (критик
«Русск. Вестн.», подписывавшийся «Стародумом»): это уж совсем срам. Но вообще ужасно неприятно носить самому себе неприятную фамилию. Я думаю, Брюсов постоянно радуется своей фамилии. Поэтому
СОЧИНЕНИЯ В. РОЗАНОВА
меня не манят. Даже смешно.
СТИХОТВОРЕНИЯ В. РОЗАНОВА
совершенно нельзя вообразить. Кто же будет читать такие стихи.
- Ты что делаешь, Розанов?
- Я пишу стихи.
- Дурак. Ты бы лучше пёк булки.
Dr. Blagovo asks Vadim why he does not use in print the title which goes with his thousand-year-old name:
He asked me--and that remained his only memorable question--why I did not use in print the title which went with my thousand-year-old name. I replied that I was the kind of snob who assumes that bad readers are by nature aware of an author's origins but who hopes that good readers will be more interested in his books than in his stemma. Dr. Blagovo was a stupid old bloke, and his detachable cuffs could have been cleaner; but today, in sorrowful retrospect, I treasure his memory: he was not only the father of my poor Annette, but also the grandfather of my adored and perhaps still more unfortunate daughter. (2.8)
Vadim Vadimovich’s title is knyaz’ (Prince), and his thousand-year-old surname (never mentioned in LATH) seems to be Yablonski. It comes from yablonya (apple tree), but one can well imagine Vadim’s foes (Demian Basilevski or Annette's friend Ninel Langley) call him “Prince Yeblonski (which is completely indecent).