The characters of VN’s play Izobretenie Val’sa (“The Waltz Invention,” 1938) include the reporter Son (in the English version, Trance) whom a woman can play. Son (who appears from a wardrobe in the office of the Minister of War) offers to Waltz his assistance and asks Waltz not to confuse him with the feuilletonist Zon, "eto sovsem drugoy kolenkor (that's quite another matter):"
Из шкафа выходит Сон, журналист. Его может играть женщина.
Сон. Не могу больше слушать эту канитель. Да-да, господин министр, сознаю, что моё появление не совсем прилично, но не буду вам напоминать, сколько я исполнил ваших секретных поручений в газетной области и как крепко умею держать красный язык за белыми зубами. Коллега Вальс, моя фамилия Сон, -- не путайте меня с фельетонистом Зоном, это совсем другой коленкор. Руку! (Act One)
Kolenkor means “calico.” As I pointed out before, in the closing lines of his poem Ty i ya ("You and I," 1817-20) beginning Ty bogat, ya ochen’ beden (“You are rich, I’m very poor…”) Pushkin uses the word kolenkor in its literal sense:
Окружён рабов толпой,
С грозным деспотизма взором,
Афедрон ты жирный свой
Подтираешь коленкором;
Я же грешную дыру
Не балую детской модой
И Хвостова жёсткой одой,
Хоть и морщуся, да тру.
Surrounded by a crowd of serfs,
with a formidable look of despotism,
you wipe up with calico
your fat Afedron.
And I do not pamper my sinful hole
with the children's fashion
and, wincing, wipe it
with Khvostov's hard ode.
Ty (“you”) in Pushkin’s poem is the tsar Alexander I. In a letter of April 20-22, 1834, to his wife Natalia Nikolaevna Pushkin says that he saw three tsars (Paul I, Alexander I and Nicholas I):
К наследнику являться с поздравлениями и приветствиями не намерен; царствие его впереди; и мне, вероятно, его не видать. Видел я трех царей: первый велел снять с меня картуз и пожурил за меня мою няньку; второй меня не жаловал; третий хоть и упёк меня в камер-пажи под старость лет, но променять его на четвертого не желаю; от добра добра не ищут. Посмотрим, как-то наш Сашка будет ладить с порфирородным своим тёзкой; с моим тёзкой я не ладил. Не дай бог ему идти по моим следам, писать стихи да ссориться с царями! В стихах он отца не перещеголяет, а плетью обуха не перешибёт.
The poet wonders if his little son Sashka (a diminutive of Alexander) would get on with his royal namesake (the future Alexander II whose reign Pushkin does not hope to live to see) and says that he did not get on with his namesake (Alexander I).
While son means in Russian “sleep” and “dream,” the name Zon (of the feuilletonist mentioned by Son) is pronounced like Sohn, German for “son.” At the beginning of VN’s play Sobytie (“The Event,” 1938) we learn that the portrait painter Troshcheykin and his wife Lyubov three years ago lost their two-year-old son. According to Eleonora Shnap (Lyubov’s former mid-wife), the real father of Lyubov’s son was Barbashin (the killer of whom Troshcheykin is mortally afraid and who does not appear in “The Event”). Salvator Waltz’s real name seems to be Leonid Barbashin, and the action of “The Waltz Invention” seems to take place in Lyubov’s dream that she dreams in the “sleep of death” after stabbing herself with a bare bodkin. At Antonina Pavlovna’s birthday party the famous writer “quotes” Hamlet's words from his famous monologue, making the English word that to sound like zad (Russian for “hind quarters, buttocks”):
Писатель. "Зад, -- как сказал бы Шекспир, -- зад из зык вещан". (Репортёру.) А что вы имеете сказать, солнце моё?
The Writer. "Zad, - as Shakespeare would have said, - zad iz zyk veshchan." (To the Reporter.) And what do you have to say, my sun? (“The Event,” Act Two)
At her birthday party Antonina Pavlovna tells Eleonora Schnap that she has two daughters, Lyubov and Vera, but, alas, no Nadezhda. Nadezhda being also Russian for "hope," Shnap misunderstands Antonina Pavlovna’s words as meaning “the situation is hopeless:”
Антонина Павловна. Это моя дочь Вера. Любовь, вы, конечно, знаете, моего зятя тоже, а Надежды у меня нет.
Элеонора Шнап. Божмой! Неужели безнадежно?
Антонина Павловна. Да, ужасно безнадежная семья. (Смеётся.) А до чего мне хотелось иметь маленькую Надю с зелёными глазками. (ibid.)
At the beginning of his poem K Chaadaevu ("To Chaadaev," 1818) Pushkin mentions lyubov’ (love), nadezhda (hope), tikhaya slava (quiet fame) and son (dream):
Любви, надежды, тихой славы
Недолго нежил нас обман,
Исчезли юные забавы,
Как сон, как утренний туман.
The lies of fame and love’s resolve
Have vanished now without a trace,
Our youthful passions have dissolved
As though a dream or morning haze.
(transl. A. Kneller)
Pushkin’s poem ends as follows:
Товарищ, верь: взойдёт она,
Звезда пленительного счастья,
Россия вспрянет ото сна,
И на обломках самовластья
Напишут наши имена!
My friend, believe me: it will rise,
the star of fascinating bliss,
Russia will arise from her sleep,
and on the remnants of despotism
our names will be incised!
In the closing lines the word sna (Gen. of son) is used in the sense “sleep” and rhymes with ona (“she”). In “The Waltz Invention” a woman can play Son (Trance). At the end of “The Event” Lyubov tells Meshaev the Second (the occultist who reads Lyubov’s palm) that she expected him to predict to her udivitel’noe, strashnoe, volshebnoe schastye (the wonderful, terrible, magical bliss):
ЛЮБОВЬ. Ну, вы не много мне сказали. Я думала, что вы предскажете мне что-нибудь необыкновенное, потрясающее… например, что в жизни у меня сейчас обрыв, что меня ждёт удивительное, страшное, волшебное счастье… (Act Three)
Obryv (the precipice) mentioned by Lyubov brings to mind a novel by Goncharov, the author of Obyknovennaya istoriya ("A Common Story," 1847), Oblomov (1859) and Obryv (1869). In the penultimate line of his poem “To Chaadaev” Pushkin mentions oblomki samovlast’ya (the remnants of despotism). In his poem Moya rodoslovnaya (“My Pedigree,” 1830) Pushkin calls himself rodov dryakhleyushchikh oblomok (a fragment of ancient families):
Родов дряхлеющих обломок
(И по несчастью, не один),
Бояр старинных я потомок;
Я, братцы, мелкий мещанин.
A fragment of ancient families,
(and, unfortunately, not the only one),
Of old boyars am I a scion;
My friends, I am a humble citizen.
In Russian Izobretenie Val’sa means also “the invention of waltz.” In Chapter Five of Eugene Onegin Pushkin compares life to a waltz’s odnoobraznyi i bezumnyi (monotonous and mad) whirl:
Однообразный и безумный,
Как вихорь жизни молодой,
Кружится вальса вихорь шумный;
Чета мелькает за четой.
Monotonous and mad
like young life's whirl,
the waltz's noisy whirl revolves,
pair after pair flicks by. (XLI: 1-4)
In Canto Ten of EO (burnt by the author on Oct. 19, 1830)* Pushkin calls Zakon (Law) Aleksandrovskiy holop (“the slave of Alexander”). In his EO Commentary (vol. III, p. 333) VN suggests that holop (slave) rhymed with galop (galope) in the [destroyed] stanza’s second line:
Molchi, Zakon! Nash Tsar’ tantsuet
Kadril’, mazurku i galop,
A pro tebya i v us ne duet,
Ty – Aleksandrovskiy holop.
Kinzhal Luvelya, ten’ Bertona
V viden’yakh ne trevozhat trona…
Be silent, Law! Our Tsar is dancing
quadrille, mazurka, and galope,
and does not care a straw about you,
You are the slave of Alexander.
The dagger of Louvel, the shadow of Berton
do not in dreams disturb the throne… (XI: 1-6)
Tron (throne) rhymes with Son, Zon and on (“he”). In 1881 Alexander II (the tsar who abolished serfdom in Russia and whose reign Pushkin did not live to see) was assassinated by the terrorists. In his novel Dar (“The Gift,” 1937) VN mentions the fact that the critic Nadezhdin (whose name comes from nadezhda, “hope”) compared Pushkin to a tailor, izobretatel' zhiletnykh uzorov (inventor of waistcoat patterns):
«Для гения недостаточно смастерить Евгения Онегина», – писал Надеждин, сравнивая Пушкина с портным, изобретателем жилетных узоров, и заключая умственный союз с Уваровым, министром народного просвещения, сказавшим по случаю смерти Пушкина: «Писать стишки не значит ещё проходить великое поприще».
“To be a genius it is not enough to have manufactured Eugene Onegin” wrote the progressive Nadezhdin, comparing Pushkin to a tailor, an inventor of waistcoat patterns, and thus concluding an intellectual pact with the reactionary Count Uvarov, Minister of Education, who remarked on the occasion of Pushkin’s death: “To write jingles does not mean yet to achieve a great career.” (Chapter Four)
In “The Waltz Invention” (1938) VN (another fragment of ancient Russian families) is inventing a new waltz. In 1938 VN’s son Dmitri was four, the age of Prince Dmitri (the youngest son of Ivan the Terrible) when he was assassinated in Uglich. According to Karamzin and Pushkin, Boris Godunov is responsible for little Dmitri’s death. Boris Godunov (1825) is a tragedy by Pushkin. Godunov-Cherdyntsev is the main character and narrator in “The Gift.” The novel’s characters include Boris Shchyogolev (Zina Mertz’s step-father). The name Shchyogolev comes from shchyogol’ (fop). In Chapter Ten of EO Pushkin calls Alexander I pleshivyi shchyogol’ (“a baldish fop”) and mentions slava (Fame):
Властитель слабый и лукавый,
Плешивый щёголь, враг труда,
Нечаянно пригретый славой,
Над нами царствовал тогда.
A ruler weak and wily,
a baldish fop, a foe of toil,
fortuitously by Fame befriended,
over us reigned then. (I: 1-4)
Slava (“Fame,” 1942) is a poem by VN. In Pushkin’s Conversation of Bookseller with Poet (1824) Bookseller compares slava to “a bright patch upon a shabby singer's rags.”
*in VN’s novel Pale Fire (1962) Kinbote completes his work on Shade’s poem and commits suicide on Oct. 19, 1959.
Alexey Sklyarenko