According to Ada, her husband called Demon Veen (in VN’s novel Ada, 1969, Van’s and Ada’s father, the son of Dedalus Veen) Dementiy Labirintovich:
‘My upper-lip space feels indecently naked.’ (He had shaved his mustache off with howls of pain in her presence). ‘And I cannot keep sucking in my belly all the time.’
‘Oh, I like you better with that nice overweight — there’s more of you. It’s the maternal gene, I suppose, because Demon grew leaner and leaner. He looked positively Quixotic when I saw him at Mother’s funeral. It was all very strange. He wore blue mourning. D’Onsky’s son, a person with only one arm, threw his remaining one around Demon and both wept comme des fontaines. Then a robed person who looked like an extra in a technicolor incarnation of Vishnu made an incomprehensible sermon. Then she went up in smoke. He said to me, sobbing: "I will not cheat the poor grubs!" Practically a couple of hours after he broke that promise we had sudden visitors at the ranch — an incredibly graceful moppet of eight, black-veiled, and a kind of duenna, also in black, with two bodyguards. The hag demanded certain fantastic sums — which Demon, she said, had not had time to pay, for "popping the hymen" — whereupon I had one of our strongest boys throw out vsyu (the entire) kompaniyu.’
‘Extraordinary,’ said Van, ‘they had been growing younger and younger — I mean the girls, not the strong silent boys. His old Rosalind had a ten-year-old niece, a primed chickabiddy. Soon he would have been poaching them from the hatching chamber.’
‘You never loved your father,’ said Ada sadly.
‘Oh, I did and do — tenderly, reverently, understandingly, because, after all, that minor poetry of the flesh is something not unfamiliar to me. But as far as we are concerned, I mean you and I, he was buried on the same day as our uncle Dan.’
‘I know, I know. It’s pitiful! And what use was it? Perhaps I oughtn’t to tell you, but his visits to Agavia kept getting rarer and shorter every year. Yes, it was pitiful to hear him and Andrey talking. I mean, Andrey n’a pas le verbe facile, though he greatly appreciated — without quite understanding it — Demon’s wild flow of fancy and fantastic fact, and would often exclaim, with his Russian "tssk-tssk" and a shake of the head — complimentary and all that — "what a balagur (wag) you are!" — And then, one day, Demon warned me that he would not come any more if he heard again poor Andrey’s poor joke (Nu i balagur-zhe vï, Dementiy Labirintovich) or what Dorothy, l’impayable ("priceless for impudence and absurdity") Dorothy, thought of my camping out in the mountains with only Mayo, a cowhand, to protect me from lions.’
‘Could one hear more about that?’ asked Van.
‘Well, nobody did. All this happened at a time when I was not on speaking terms with my husband and sister-in-law, and so could not control the situation. Anyhow, Demon did not come even when he was only two hundred miles away and simply mailed instead, from some gaming house, your lovely, lovely letter about Lucette and my picture.’
‘One would also like to know some details of the actual coverture — frequence of intercourse, pet names for secret warts, favorite smells —’
‘Platok momental’no (handkerchief quick)! Your right nostril is full of damp jade,’ said Ada, and then pointed to a lawnside circular sign, rimmed with red, saying: Chiens interdits and depicting an impossible black mongrel with a white ribbon around its neck: Why, she wondered, should the Swiss magistrates forbid one to cross highland terriers with poodles? (3.8)
Darkbloom (‘Notes to Ada’): comme etc.: shedding floods of tears.
N’a pas le verbe etc.: lacks the gift of the gab.
chiens etc.: dogs not allowed.
Ada’s husband, Andrey Andreevich Vinelander is a namesake of Andrey Andreich, Nadya Shumin’s fiancé in Chekhov’s story Nevesta (“The Betrothed,” 1903). Chekhov is the author of Ariadna (1895), a story about a depraved woman. In his poem Sashka (1835-36) Lermontov (the author of “The Demon,” 1829-40) compares the serf girl Mavrushka (whom Ivan Ilyich, Sashka’s impotent father, fails to possess) to angry Ariadne (a Cretan Princess who helped Theseus to cope with Minotaur and escape from the labyrinth but was abandoned by him on Naxos):
93
Вдруг слышит он направо, за кустом
Сирени, шорох платья и дыханье
Волнующейся груди, и потом
Чуть внятный звук, похожий на лобзанье.
Как Саше быть? Забилось сердце в нем,
Запрыгало... Без дальних опасений
Он сквозь кусты пустился легче тени.
Трещат и гнутся ветви под рукой.
И вдруг пред ним, с Маврушкой молодой
Обнявшися в тени цветущей вишни,
Иван Ильич... (Прости ему всевышний!)
94
Увы! покоясь на траве густой,
Проказник старый обнимал бесстыдно
Упругий стан под юбкою простой
И не жалел ни ножки миловидной,
Ни круглых персей, дышащих весной!
И долго, долго бился, но напрасно!
Огня и сил лишен уж был несчастный.
Он встал, вздохнул (нельзя же не вздохнуть),
Поправил брюхо и пустился в путь,
Оставив тут обманутую деву,
Как Ариадну, преданную гневу.
In Knyazhna Meri (“Princess Mary”), the fourth novella in Lermontov’s novel Geroy nashego vremeni (“A Hero of Our Time,” 1840), a stout lady at the ball is not pleased with Princess Mary and exclaims c’est impayable! (“it’s delicious”):
Я стоял сзади одной толстой дамы, осенённой розовыми перьями; пышность её платья напоминала времена фижм, а пестрота её негладкой кожи – счастливую эпоху мушек из чёрной тафты. Самая большая бородавка на её шее прикрыта была фермуаром. Она говорила своему кавалеру, драгунскому капитану:
– Эта княжна Лиговская пренесносная девчонка! Вообразите, толкнула меня и не извинилась, да ещё обернулась и посмотрела на меня в лорнет… C’est impayable!.. И чем она гордится? Уж её надо бы проучить…
I was standing behind a certain stout lady who was overshadowed by rose-colored feathers. The magnificence of her dress reminded me of the times of the farthingale, and the motley hue of her by no means smooth skin, of the happy epoch of the black taffeta patch. An immense wart on her neck was covered by a clasp. She was saying to her cavalier, a captain of dragoons:
“That young Princess Ligovskoy is a most intolerable creature! Just fancy, she jostled against me and did not apologize, but even turned round and stared at me through her lorgnette! . . . C’est impayable! . . . And what has she to be proud of? It is time somebody gave her a lesson” . . . (Pechorin’s Diary, the entry of May 22)
Mayo seems to hint at Mayoshka (Lermontov’s nickname in the military school, after Mayeux, a popular cartoon character of the 1830s). In his narrative poem Mongo (1836) Lermontov depicts himself as Mayoshka and his friend and relative Alexey Stolypin as Mongo. The poem’s title brings to mind Mongolian tumblers and the scroll-painting by Mong Mong mentioned by Lucette (Van’s and Ada’s half-sister) when she visits Van at Kingston (Van’s American University):
‘She taught me practices I had never imagined,’ confessed Lucette in rerun wonder. ‘We interweaved like serpents and sobbed like pumas. We were Mongolian tumblers, monograms, anagrams, adalucindas. She kissed my krestik while I kissed hers, our heads clamped in such odd combinations that Brigitte, a little chambermaid who blundered in with her candle, thought for a moment, though naughty herself, that we were giving birth simultaneously to baby girls, your Ada bringing out une rousse and no one’s Lucette, une brune. Fancy that.’
‘Side-splitting,’ said Van.
‘Oh, it went on practically every night at Marina Ranch, and often during siestas; otherwise, in between those vanouissements (her expression), or when she and I had the flow, which, believe it or not —’
‘I can believe anything,’ said Van.
‘— took place at coincident dates, we were just ordinary sisters, exchanging routine nothings, having little in common, she collecting cactuses or running through her lines for the next audition in Sterva, and I reading a lot, or copying beautiful erotic pictures from an album of Forbidden Masterpieces that we found, apropos, in a box of korsetov i khrestomatiy (corsets and chrestomathies) which Belle had left behind, and I can assure you, they were far more realistic than the scroll-painting by Mong Mong, very active in 888, a millennium before Ada said it illustrated Oriental calisthenics when I found it by chance in the corner of one of my ambuscades. So the day passed, and then the star rose, and tremendous moths walked on all sixes up the window panes, and we tangled until we fell asleep. And that’s when I learnt —’ concluded Lucette, closing her eyes and making Van squirm by reproducing with diabolical accuracy Ada’s demure little whimper of ultimate bliss. (2.5)
Darkbloom (‘Notes to Ada’): krestik: Anglo-Russian, little crest.
vanouissements: ‘Swooning in Van’s arms’.
In his apologetic note to Lucette written after the dinner in ‘Ursus’ and debauch à trois in Van’s Manhattan flat Van mentions pilots of tremendous airships:
Van walked over to a monastic lectern that he had acquired for writing in the vertical position of vertebrate thought and wrote what follows:
Poor L.
We are sorry you left so soon. We are even sorrier to have inveigled our Esmeralda and mermaid in a naughty prank. That sort of game will never be played again with you, darling firebird. We apollo [apologize]. Remembrance, embers and membranes of beauty make artists and morons lose all self-control. Pilots of tremendous airships and even coarse, smelly coachmen are known to have been driven insane by a pair of green eyes and a copper curl. We wished to admire and amuse you, BOP (bird of paradise). We went too far. I, Van, went too far. We regret that shameful, though basically innocent scene. These are times of emotional stress and reconditioning. Destroy and forget.
Tenderly yours A & V.
(in alphabetic order).
‘I call this pompous, puritanical rot,’ said Ada upon scanning Van’s letter. ‘Why should we apollo for her having experienced a delicious spazmochka? I love her and would never allow you to harm her. It’s curious — you know, something in the tone of your note makes me really jealous for the first time in my fire [thus in the manuscript, for "life." Ed.] Van, Van, somewhere, some day, after a sunbath or dance, you will sleep with her, Van!’
‘Unless you run out of love potions. Do you allow me to send her these lines?’
‘I do, but want to add a few words.’
Her P.S. read:
The above declaration is Van’s composition which I sign reluctantly. It is pompous and puritanical. I adore you, mon petit, and would never allow him to hurt you, no matter how gently or madly. When you’re sick of Queen, why not fly over to Holland or Italy?
A. (2.8)
In March, 1905 (half a year later, in October, 1905, Van and Ada meet in Mont Roux after the thirteen-year-long separation), Demon Veen perishes in a mysterious airplane disaster above the Pacific (3.7). Van does not realize that his father died, because Ada (who could not pardon Demon his forcing Van to give her up) managed to persuade the pilot to destroy his machine in midair. In Alexandre Dumas's “The Three Musketeers” Milady de Winter persuades John Felton, a Puritan, to kill Duke of Buckingham. Describing Demon's sword duel with Baron d'Onsky, Van mentions an amusing Douglas d'Artagnan arrangement:
Upon being questioned in Demon’s dungeon, Marina, laughing trillingly, wove a picturesque tissue of lies; then broke down, and confessed. She swore that all was over; that the Baron, a physical wreck and a spiritual Samurai, had gone to Japan forever. From a more reliable source Demon learned that the Samurai’s real destination was smart little Vatican, a Roman spa, whence he was to return to Aardvark, Massa, in a week or so. Since prudent Veen preferred killing his man in Europe (decrepit but indestructible Gamaliel was said to be doing his best to forbid duels in the Western Hemisphere — a canard or an idealistic President’s instant-coffee caprice, for nothing was to come of it after all), Demon rented the fastest petroloplane available, overtook the Baron (looking very fit) in Nice, saw him enter Gunter’s Bookshop, went in after him, and in the presence of the imperturbable and rather bored English shopkeeper, back-slapped the astonished Baron across the face with a lavender glove. The challenge was accepted; two native seconds were chosen; the Baron plumped for swords; and after a certain amount of good blood (Polish and Irish — a kind of American ‘Gory Mary’ in barroom parlance) had bespattered two hairy torsoes, the whitewashed terrace, the flight of steps leading backward to the walled garden in an amusing Douglas d’Artagnan arrangement, the apron of a quite accidental milkmaid, and the shirtsleeves of both seconds, charming Monsieur de Pastrouil and Colonel St Alin, a scoundrel, the latter gentlemen separated the panting combatants, and Skonky died, not ‘of his wounds’ (as it was viciously rumored) but of a gangrenous afterthought on the part of the least of them, possibly self-inflicted, a sting in the groin, which caused circulatory trouble, notwithstanding quite a few surgical interventions during two or three years of protracted stays at the Aardvark Hospital in Boston — a city where, incidentally, he married in 1869 our friend the Bohemian lady, now keeper of Glass Biota at the local museum. (1.2)
In a letter of Sept. 21, 1886, to Mme Kiselyov Chekhov mentions Bogemski ("Bohemian," the penname of Chekhov's younger brother Mikhail) and molochnaya (the dairy; cf. "the apron of a quite accidental milkmaid"), as Chekhov calls the Moscow gymnasium of Mme Rzhevsky (whose relatives owned a milk farm and milk shops):
Теперь о наших общих знакомых... Мать и батька живы и здравы. Александр живет в Москве. Кокоша там же, где был и до поездки в Бабкино. Иван благоденствует у себя в школе. Ма-Па видается с длинноносой Эфрос, дает в молочной уроки по 7 коп. за урок и берет у Богемского уроки по географии, которую дерзает преподавать. Боже, отчего я не преподаю китайского языка? Тетка сватает ее за какого-то Перешивкина, получающего 125 р. Дурочка, не соглашается... Богемский, он же финик, рисует виньетки по 3 руб. за штуку, ухаживает слегка за Яденькой, бывает у Людмилочки, надоедает всему миру философией и спешит съерундить другой рассказ в «Детский отдых». A propos: какое у Вас дурное общество! Политковская, Богемский... Я бы застрелился. Левитан закружился в вихре, Ольга жалеет, что не вышла за Матвея, и т. д. Нелли приехала и голодает. У баронессы родилось дитё. Я рад за отца... Про m-me Сахарову слышно, что она бесконечно счастлива... О, несчастная!
In a letter of Dec. 18, 1893, to Suvorin Chekhov says that he has abridged Dumas’s novel "The Count of Monte Cristo:"
Вы как-то спрашивали в письме насчет «Графа Монте-Кристо» Дюма. Он давно уже сокращен, так сокращен, бедняга, что покойный Свободин, увидев, ужаснулся и нарисовал карикатуру. Вам привезти сей роман или прислать через магазин?
Chekhov mentions a cartoon drawn by the late Svobodin. The stage name of the actor Pavel Svobodin (1850-92) comes from svoboda (freedom). In his poem Iz Pindemonti ("From Pindemonte," 1836) Pushkin mentions svoboda and balagur (scribbling scamp, joker):
Не дорого ценю я громкие права,
От коих не одна кружится голова.
Я не ропщу о том, что отказали боги
Мне в сладкой участи оспоривать налоги
Или мешать царям друг с другом воевать;
И мало горя мне, свободно ли печать
Морочит олухов, иль чуткая цензура
В журнальных замыслах стесняет балагура.
Все это, видите ль, слова, слова, слова.*
Иные, лучшие, мне дороги права;
Иная, лучшая, потребна мне свобода:
Зависеть от царя, зависеть от народа —
Не всё ли нам равно? Бог с ними. Никому
Отчёта не давать, себе лишь самому
Служить и угождать; для власти, для ливреи
Не гнуть ни совести, ни помыслов, ни шеи;
По прихоти своей скитаться здесь и там,
Дивясь божественным природы красотам,
И пред созданьями искусств и вдохновенья
Трепеща радостно в восторгах умиленья.
Вот счастье! вот права...
*Hamlet.
I value little those much vaunted rights
that have for some the lure of dizzy heights;
I do not fret because the gods refuse
to let me wrangle over revenues,
or thwart the wars of kings; and 'tis to me
of no concern whether the press be free
to dupe poor oafs or whether censors cramp
the current fancies of some scribbling scamp.
These things are words, words, words. My spirit fights
for deeper Liberty, for better rights.
Whom shall we serve—the people or the State?
The poet does not care—so let them wait.
To give account to none, to be one's own
vassal and lord, to please oneself alone,
to bend neither one's neck, nor inner schemes,
nor conscience to obtain some thing that seems
power but is a flunkey's coat; to stroll
in one's own wake, admiring the divine
beauties of Nature and to feel one's soul
melt in the glow of man's inspired design
—that is the blessing, those are the rights!
(VN's translation)
In a poem written in September, 1835, after the meter and rhyme scheme of the Eugene Onegin stanza Pushkin mentions a labyrinth:
В мои осенние досуги,
В те дни, как любо мне писать,
Вы мне советуете, други,
Рассказ забытый продолжать.
Вы говорите справедливо,
Что странно, даже неучтиво
Роман не конча перервать,
Отдав уже его в печать,
Что должно своего героя
Как бы то ни было женить,
По крайней мере уморить,
И лица прочие пристроя,
Отдав им дружеский поклон,
Из лабиринта вывесть вон.
Вы говорите: "Слава богу,
Покамест твой Онегин жив,
Роман не кончен - понемногу
Иди вперёд; не будь ленив.
Со славы, вняв её призванью,
Сбирай оброк хвалой и бранью -
Рисуй и франтов городских
И милых барышень своих,
Войну и бал, дворец и хату,
И келью. . . . и харем
И с нашей публики меж тем
Бери умеренную плату,
За книжку по пяти рублей -
Налог не тягостный, ей-ей."
During my days of autumn leisure -
those days when I so love to write -
you, friends, advise me to go on
with my forgotten tale.
You say - and you are right -
that it is odd, and even impolite,
to interrupt an uncompleted novel
and have it published as it is;
that one must marry off one's hero in any case,
or kill him off at least, and, after having
disposed of the remaining characters
and made to them a friendly bow,
expel them from a labyrinth.
You say: thank God,
while your Onegin is still alive,
the novel is not finished; forward go
little by little, don’t be lazy.
While heeding her appeal, from Fame
Collect a tax in praise and blame.
<Depict the dandies of the town,
your amiable misses,
warfare and ball, palace and hut,
cell…………… and harem, meantime>,
take from our public
a reasonable payment –
five rubles for each published part;
really, ’tis not a heavy tax.
In his unfinished epistle to Plentyov (1835) Pushkin mentions diorama:
Ты мне советуешь, Плетнёв любезный,
Оставленный роман наш продолжать
И строгой век, расчёта век железный,
Рассказами пустыми угощать.
Ты думаешь, что с целию полезной
Тревогу славы можно сочетать,
И что нашему собрату
Брать с публики умеренную плату.
Ты говоришь: пока Онегин жив,
Дотоль роман не кончен — нет причины
Его прервать… к тому же план счастлив…
Вы за «Онегина» советуете, други,
Приняться мне опять в осенние досуги.
Вы говорите мне: он жив и не женат.
Итак, ещё роман не кончен — это клад:
Вставляй в просторную, вместительную раму
Картины новые — открой нам диораму:
Привалит публика, платя тебе за вход —
(Что даст ещё тебе и славу и доход).
.Пожалуй, я бы рад — Так некогда поэт…
...while he's alive, unmarried,
the novel is unfinished. 'Tis treasure.
Into its free and ample frame insert
a set of pictures, start a diorama:
people will flock to it, and you will pocket
the entrance fee, thus gaining fame and profit.
diorama: Webster's says: "A mode of scenic representation invented by Daguerre and Bouton, in which a painting (partly translucent) is seen from a distance through an opening. By a combination of translucent and opaque painting, and of transmitted and reflected light, and by contrivances such as screens and shutters, much diversity of scenic effect is produced" (and this applies to EO, too).
Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre (1789-1851) gave his first show in 1822, in Paris. A diorama was shown in St. Petersburg in November, 1829, hence the topicality of the verse. The spectator sat in a loge that slowly revolved, with a slight rumble, not drowned by soft music, and took him to Rome, Egypt, or Mt. Chimborazo, "the highest mountain in the world" (it is only 20, 577 ft. high). (EO Commentary, vol. III, p. 377-378)
Mt. Chimborazo is a mountain in Ecuador. Demon Veen is associatated with Mt. Kazbek (that shines, like a diamond's facet, in Lermontov's Demon):
He greeted the dawn of a placid and prosperous century (more than half of which Ada and I have now seen) with the beginning of his second philosophic fable, a ‘denunciation of space’ (never to be completed, but forming in rear vision, a preface to his Texture of Time). Part of that treatise, a rather mannered affair, but nasty and sound, appeared in the first issue (January, 1904) of a now famous American monthly, The Artisan, and a comment on the excerpt is preserved in one of the tragically formal letters (all destroyed save this one) that his sister sent him by public post now and then. Somehow, after the interchange occasioned by Lucette’s death such nonclandestine correspondence had been established with the tacit sanction of Demon:
And o’er the summits of the Tacit
He, banned from Paradise, flew on:
Beneath him, like a brilliant’s facet,
Mount Peck with snows eternal shone. (3.7)
Darkbloom (‘Notes to Ada’): And o’er the summits of the Tacit etc.: parody of four lines in Lermontov’s The Demon.
Monastyr' na Kazbeke ("The Monastery on Mt. Kazbek," 1829) is a poem by Pushkin:
Высоко над семьёю гор,
Казбек, твой царственный шатёр
Сияет вечными лучами.
Твой монастырь за облаками,
Как в небе реющий ковчег,
Парит, чуть видный, над горами.
Далекий, вожделенный брег!
Туда б, сказав прости ущелью,
Подняться к вольной вышине!
Туда б, в заоблачную келью,
В соседство бога скрыться мне!..