Eric Veen derived his Villa Venus project from reading too many erotic works found in a furnished house his
grandfather had bought near Vence from Count Tolstoy, a Russian or Pole
(Ada: 2.3). The author of "За что?" ("For What?"), Count
L. N. Tolstoy sympathized with the Poles, but I never heard
of his Polish ancestors.
All the hundred floramors opened
simultaneously on September 20, 1875. As I pointed out before, on this
very day I. S. Turgenev moved to a new-built chalet at his and Viardot's
villa Les Frênes in Bougival.
Turgenev is the author of "Яков Пасынков."* The hero's
surname comes from пасынок (stepson), the word used by Khodasevich in his
poem "Я родился в Москве. Я дыма / Над польской кровлей не
видал" (I was born in Moscow. I never saw / The smoke over a Polish
roof):
России - пасынок, а Польше -
Не знаю сам, кто Польше я.
Но: восемь томиков, не больше, -
И в них вся родина моя.
(Russia's stepson, and Poland's -
I do not know myself what I am to
Poland.
But eight small volumes,** hardly more
And my whole homeland is in them.)
The poet's mother was Polish.*** And his father Felitsian
Ivanovich (commemorated in "The Dactyls") was a photographer in Tula.
His photograph of the Tolstoy family was reproduced in Ilya L'vovich
Tolstoy's memoirs.
As I pointed out before, little Ilya's phrase архитектор
виноват (the architect is to blame) became proverbial in Tolstoy's family.
Eric Veen's grandfather David van Veen is an architect who built the hundred
floramors after Eric's death.
*see also my recent post (July 2) subjected "datura
stramonium"
**of Pushkin's works
***it was also the case of Nekrasov, a friend of Turgenev
and young Tolstoy, the author of "Убогая и нарядная" ("The Poverty-Stricken
and the Well-Dressed"), the often-quoted poem about a cheap prostitute and
an expensive courtesan, and the epic "Кому на Руси жить хорошо?" ("Who is
Living Happily in Russia?")
Alexey Sklyarenko