At the family dinner in ¡°Ardis the Second¡± Demon calls a globule of birdshot in the roast hazel-hen ¡°la f¨¨ve de Diane¡± (¡°the bean of Diana¡±):
The roast hazel-hen (or rather its New World representative, locally called ¡®mountain grouse¡¯) was accompanied by preserved lingonberries (locally called ¡®mountain cranberries¡¯). An especially succulent morsel of one of those brown little fowls yielded a globule of birdshot between Demon¡¯s red tongue and strong canine: ¡®La f¨¨ve de Diane,¡¯ he remarked, placing it carefully on the edge of his plate. ¡®How is the car situation, Van?¡¯ (1.38)
In Lermontov¡¯s drama in verse Maskarad (¡°The Masquerade,¡± 1835) Arbenin tells Prince Zvezdich that a tall beauty in the masquerade dressed up as a Turkish woman is perhaps a proud Countess or Princess, Diana v obshchestve¡ Venera v maskerade (Diana in society, Venus in masquerade), but she also can be a girl who will come to you tomorrow for half an hour:
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A little later at the dinner Ada (who meets one of her lovers, Percy de Prey, in the woods) mentions ¡°some romantic Turk or Albanian:¡±
Marina helped herself to an Albany from a crystal box of Turkish cigarettes tipped with red rose petal and passed the box on to Demon. Ada, somewhat self-consciously, lit up too.
¡®You know quite well,¡¯ said Marina, ¡®that your father disapproves of your smoking at table.¡¯
¡®Oh, it¡¯s all right,¡¯ murmured Demon.
¡®I had Dan in view,¡¯ explained Marina heavily. ¡®He¡¯s very prissy on that score.¡¯
¡®Well, and I¡¯m not,¡¯ answered Demon.
Ada and Van could not help laughing. All that was banter ¡ª not of a high order, but still banter.
A moment later, however, Van remarked: ¡®I think I¡¯ll take an Alibi ¡ª I mean an Albany ¡ª myself.¡¯
¡®Please note, everybody,¡¯ said Ada, ¡®how voulu that slip was! I like a smoke when I go mushrooming, but when I¡¯m back, this horrid tease insists I smell of some romantic Turk or Albanian met in the woods.¡¯
¡®Well,¡¯ said Demon, ¡®Van¡¯s quite right to look after your morals.¡¯ (1.38)
After the deaths of Percy de Prey and Philip Rack (Lucette¡¯s music teacher) and the suicide attempt of Johnny Starling (yet another lover of Ada), Van compares Ada to Diana (the Roman goddess of the moon and of hunting):
Driblets? Driblets? Now who pronounced it that way? Who? Who? A dripping ewes-dropper in a dream? Did the orphans live?¡¯ But we must listen to Lucette.
¡®After a year or so she found out that an old pederast kept him and she dismissed him, and he shot himself on a beach at high tide but surfers and surgeons saved him, and now his brain is damaged; he will never be able to speak.¡¯
¡®One can always fall back on mutes,¡¯ said Van gloomily. ¡®He could act the speechless eunuch in "Stambul, my bulbul" or the stable boy disguised as a kennel girl who brings a letter.¡¯
¡®Van, I¡¯m boring you?¡¯
¡®Oh, nonsense, it¡¯s a gripping and palpitating little case history.¡¯
Because that was really not bad: bringing down three in as many years ¡ª besides winging a fourth. Jolly good shot ¡ª Adiana! Wonder whom she¡¯ll bag next. (2.5)
Ada bags next Vanda Broom, her lesbian schoolmate at Brownhill. According to Ada, poor Vanda had been shot dead by the girlfriend of a girlfriend on a starry night, in Ragusa of all places (2.6). The name Zvezdich (of a character in ¡°The Masquerade¡±) comes from zvezda (star). Zvezdich is a Balkan name. Ragusa is the Italian name of Dubrovnik (a seaport in S Croatia, on the Adriatic).
At the family dinner Demon considers Marina¡¯s pretentious ciel-¨¦toil¨¦ (starry sky) hairdress:
The alcohol his vigorous system had already imbibed was instrumental, as usual, in reopening what he gallicistically called condemned doors, and now as he gaped involuntarily as all men do while spreading a napkin, he considered Marina¡¯s pretentious ciel-¨¦toil¨¦ hairdress and tried to realize (in the rare full sense of the word), tried to possess the reality of a fact by forcing it into the sensuous center, that here was a woman whom he had intolerably loved, who had loved him hysterically and skittishly, who insisted they make love on rugs and cushions laid on the floor (¡®as respectable people do in the Tigris-Euphrates valley¡¯), who would woosh down fluffy slopes on a bobsleigh a fortnight after parturition, or arrive by the Orient Express with five trunks, Dack¡¯s grandsire, and a maid, to Dr Stella Ospenko¡¯s ospedale where he was recovering from a scratch received in a sword duel (and still visible as a white weal under his eighth rib after a lapse of nearly seventeen years). (1.38)
When Marina bobsleighed in Switzerland after giving birth to Van, her twin sister Aqua (Demon¡¯s wife) suffered a miscarriage after skiing at full pulver into a larch stump:
At one time Aqua believed that a stillborn male infant half a year old, a surprised little fetus, a fish of rubber that she had produced in her bath, in a lieu de naissance plainly marked X in her dreams, after skiing at full pulver into a larch stump, had somehow been saved and brought to her at the Nusshaus, with her sister¡¯s compliments, wrapped up in blood-soaked cotton wool, but perfectly alive and healthy, to be registered as her son Ivan Veen. At other moments she felt convinced that the child was her sister¡¯s, born out of wedlock, during an exhausting, yet highly romantic blizzard, in a mountain refuge on Sex Rouge, where a Dr Alpiner, general practitioner and gentian-lover, sat providentially waiting near a rude red stove for his boots to dry. (1.3)
There is bob in ¡°bobsleigh.¡± In Russian, bob means what f¨¨ve does in French: ¡°bean.¡± Bob Bean is the hospital barber who shaved Aqua¡¯s dark curls:
Then the anguish increased to unendurable massivity and nightmare dimensions, making her scream and vomit. She wanted (and was allowed, bless the hospital barber, Bob Bean) to have her dark curls shaved to an aquamarine prickle, because they grew into her porous skull and curled inside. (ibid.)
In Lermontov¡¯s drama Arbenin poisons his innocent wife Nina. Poor mad Aqua committed suicide by taking poison.
In my previous post, ¡°bals masqu¨¦s, passing angel & Cendrillon in Ada¡± I forgot to mention Tyutchev¡¯s poem December 14, 1825 written in 1826, after the execution of five Decembrists:
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Tyranny itself seduced you.
Its sword has mown you like reeds.
The Law is incorruptibly impartial.
The Law¡¯s infallible in word and deed.
Disloyalty is shunned by our people.
They¡¯ll scorn your names. Abuse will heap.
Your sons will never know your exploit,
hidden in time, a rotten carcass buried deep!
...........
Victims of foolish notions!
Perhaps you had a youthful vision!
Perhaps you thought you saw
your thin blood trickling,
covering the ice-caps
as if alone it could thaw
that age-old polar face.
Why, it would scarce have time to sparkle
when up there¡¯d gust a breath of iron winter
to murder every tiny trace!
(transl. F. Jude)
Also, the name of Khodasevich¡¯s first wife was Marina Ryndin.
Alexey Sklyarenko