Describing his dinner in ‘Ursus’ with Ada and Lucette, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) mentions Flora, a slender, hardly nubile, half-naked music-hall dancer of uncertain origin:
And there was Flora, a slender, hardly nubile, half-naked music-hall dancer of uncertain origin (Rumanian? Romany? Ramseyan?) whose ravishing services Van had availed himself of several times in the fall of that year. As a 'man of the world,' Van glanced with bland (perhaps too bland) unconcern at her talented charms, but they certainly added a secret bonus to the state of erotic excitement tingling in him from the moment that his two beauties had been unfurred and placed in the colored blaze of the feast before him; and that thrill was somehow augmented by his awareness (carefully profiled, diaphanely blinkered) of the furtive, jealous, intuitive suspicion with which Ada and Lucette watched, unsmilingly, his facial reactions to the demure look of professional recognition on the part of the passing and repassing blyadushka (cute whorelet), as our young misses referred to (very expensive and altogether delightful) Flora with ill-feigned indifference. (2.8)
At the beginning of his story Byvshie lyudi (“Creatures that Once Were Men,” 1897) Gorki mentions zhalkaya flora gorodskikh okrain (the miserable flora of city outskirts):
Въезжая улица — это два ряда одноэтажных лачужек, тесно прижавшихся друг к другу, ветхих, с кривыми стенами и перекошенными окнами; дырявые крыши изувеченных временем человеческих жилищ испещрены заплатами из лубков, поросли мхом; над ними кое-где торчат высокие шесты со скворешницами, их осеняет пыльная зелень бузины и корявых вётел — жалкая флора городских окраин, населённых беднотою.
Blyadushka is a diminutive of blyad’ (whore). According to Mayakovski, vse lyudi – blyadi (all people are whores):
Все люди бляди,
Весь мир бардак!
Один мой дядя
И тот мудак.
All people are whores,
The whole world is a brothel!
My uncle alone…
But even he is a cretin.
In VN’s novel Lolita (1955) Humbert Humbert finds out Clare Quilty's address from his uncle Ivor (the Ramsdale dentist).
Many years later jealous Ada mentions the black, broken teeth of local blyadushki:
In vain he told himself that those vile hankerings did not differ, in their intrinsic insignificance, from the anal pruritis which one tries to relieve by a sudden fit of scratching. Yet he knew that by daring to satisfy the corresponding desire for a young wench he risked wrecking his life with Ada. How horribly and gratuitously it might hurt her, he foreglimpsed one day in 1926 or ‘27 when he caught the look of proud despair she cast on nothing in particular before walking away to the car that was to take her on a trip in which, at the last moment, he had declined to join her. He had declined — and had simulated the grimace and the limp of podagra — because he had just realized, what she, too, had realized — that the beautiful native girl smoking on the back porch would offer her mangoes to Master as soon as Master’s housekeeper had left for the Film Festival in Sindbad. The chauffeur had already opened the car door, when, with a great bellow, Van overtook Ada and they rode off together, tearful, voluble, joking about his foolishness.
'It's funny,' said Ada, 'what black, broken teeth they have hereabouts, those blyadushki.'
('Ursus,' Lucette in glistening green, 'Subside, agitation of passion,' Flora's bracelets and breasts, the whelk of Time). (5.3)
In Moyo otkrytie Ameriki (“My Discovery of America,” 1926) Mayakovski mentions frukt mango (the mango fruit), a caricature of banana:
К ужину давали незнакомые мне еды — зелёный кокосовый орех с намазывающейся маслом сердцевиной и фрукт манго — шарж на банан, с большой волосатой косточкой.
At the beginning of his poem Zemlya nasha obil'na ("Our Land is Abundant," 1928) Mayakovski mentions the Crimean fauna, flora and climate:
Я езжу по южному берегу Крыма, —
не Крым, а копия древнего рая!
Какая фауна, флора и климат!
Пою, восторгаясь и озирая.
Mayakovski’s style is parodied by VN in his poem O pravitelyakh ("On Rulers," 1944). According to Van, Flora is a frightful tease and admirable mimic:
‘I say, Veen,’ whinnied a voice near him (there were lots of lechers around), ‘you don’t rally need two, d’you?’
Van veered, ready to cuff the gross speaker — but it was only Flora, a frightful tease and admirable mimic. He tried to give her a banknote, but she fled, bracelets and breast stars flashing a fond farewell. (2.8)
After the dinner in ‘Ursus’ and the debauch à trois in Van’s Manhattan flat Ada mentions Paul Whinnier, Demon’s London pal whose name comes from “to whinny:”
‘Now let’s go out for a breath of crisp air,’ suggested Van. ‘I’ll order Pardus and Peg to be saddled.’
‘Last night two men recognized me,’ she said. ‘Two separate Californians, but they didn’t dare bow — with that silk-tuxedoed bretteur of mine glaring around. One was Anskar, the producer, and the other, with a cocotte, Paul Whinnier, one of your father’s London pals. I sort of hoped we’d go back to bed.’
‘We shall now go for a ride in the park,’ said Van firmly, and rang, first of all, for a Sunday messenger to take the letter to Lucette’s hotel — or to the Verma resort, if she had already left.
‘I suppose you know what you’re doing?’ observed Ada.
‘Yes,’ he answered.
‘You are breaking her heart,’ said Ada.
‘Ada girl, adored girl,’ cried Van, ‘I’m a radiant void. I’m convalescing after a long and dreadful illness. You cried over my unseemly scar, but now life is going to be nothing but love and laughter, and corn in cans. I cannot brood over broken hearts, mine is too recently mended. You shall wear a blue veil, and I the false mustache that makes me look like Pierre Legrand, my fencing master.’ (2.8)
Peg hints at Pegasus, the winged horse of inspiration. In his poem in octaves Domik v Kolomne (“A Small Cottage in Kolomna,” 1830) Pushkin says that Pegasus is old, has no teeth, that Parnassus got badly overgrown with nettles and that Phoebus (the god of poetry) lives in retirement:
Скажу, рысак! Парнасский иноходец
Его не обогнал бы. Но Пегас
Стар, зуб уж нет. Им вырытый колодец
Иссох. Порос крапивою Парнас;
В отставке Феб живёт, а хороводец
Старушек муз уж не прельщает нас.
И табор свой с классических вершинок
Перенесли мы на толкучий рынок. (VIII)
Another name of Phoebus is Apollo. In an apologetic note to Lucette Van says “we apollo:”
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. (2.8)
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)
Spazmochka is a diminutive of spazm or spazma (spasm). In a letter of August 21, 1825, to Anna Kern Pushkin mentions the spasms that make Anna Kern so interesting and uses the phrase au beau milieu de ma verve (in the midst of my eloquence):
Vous êtes désolante; j’étais en train de vous écrire des folies, qui vous eussent fait mourir de rire, et voilà que votre lettre vient m’attrister au beau milieu de ma verve. Tâchez de vous défaire de ces spasmes qui vous rendent si intéressante, mais qui ne valent pas le diable, je vous en avertis. Pourquoi fait-il donс que je vous gronde? Si vous aviez le bras en écharpe, il ne fallait pas m’écrire. Quelle mauvaise tête!
According to Van, the L disaster happened on Demonia (aka Antiterra, Earth’s twin planet on which Ada is set) in the beau milieu of the 19th century:
The details of the L disaster (and I do not mean Elevated) in the beau milieu of last century, which had the singular effect of both causing and cursing the notion of 'Terra,' are too well-known historically, and too obscene spiritually, to be treated at length in a book addressed to young laymen and lemans - and not to grave men or gravemen. (1.3)
After the L disaster electricity was banned on Antiterra. Elektrichestvo - vid energii ("Electricity is a Form of Energy," 1928) and Elevator ("The Grain Elevator," 1923) are poems by Mayakovski, the author of Levyi marsh ("Left March," 1918), Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (1924) and Vo ves' golos ("At the Top of my Voice," 1930). Mayakovski's book Dlya golosa ("For the Voice," 1923) was designed by El Lissitzky. Golos (voice) is an anagram of Logos. In his poem Pyatyi Inernatsional ("The Fifth International," 1922) Mayakovski mentions Logos:
Мистики пишут: «Логос,
Это всемогущество. От господа бога-с».
The mystics write: "Logos
is omnipotence. From God, the Lord."
Ot gospoda boga-s (from God, the Lord) brings to mind Khorosho-s, a pomnite grazhdane ("Now then, citizens, you remember how long"), the beginning of the Mayakovski pastiche in VN's story Istreblenie tiranov ("Tyrants Destroyed," 1938). The Supreme Being on Antiterra, Log seems to hint at Logos. Log rhymes with Bog (God) and slava Logu ("thank Log," a phrase used by Van and Ada), with slava Bogu (thank God).
Chronologically, the Antiterran L disaster seems to correspond to the mock execution of Dostoevski and the Petrashevskians on January 3, 1850 (NS), in our world. In the old Russian alphabet the letter L was called lyudi. The characters in Dostoevski’s novel Bednye lyudi (“Poor Folk,” 1846) written in an epistolary form include Theresa, an old servant woman who brings Makar Devushkin’s letters to Varenka Dobrosyolov and Varenka’s letters to Makar. Theresa and Flora are the characters in Van’s novel Letters from Terra:
Poor Van! In his struggle to keep the writer of the letters from Terra strictly separate from the image of Ada, he gilt and carmined Theresa until she became a paragon of banality. This Theresa maddened with her messages a scientist on our easily maddened planet; his anagram-looking name, Sig Leymanksi, had been partly derived by Van from that of Aqua’s last doctor. When Leymanski’s obsession turned into love, and one’s sympathy got focused on his enchanting, melancholy, betrayed wife (née Antilia Glems), our author found himself confronted with the distressful task of now stamping out in Antilia, a born brunette, all traces of Ada, thus reducing yet another character to a dummy with bleached hair.
After beaming to Sig a dozen communications from her planet, Theresa flies over to him, and he, in his laboratory, has to place her on a slide under a powerful microscope in order to make out the tiny, though otherwise perfect, shape of his minikin sweetheart, a graceful microorganism extending transparent appendages toward his huge humid eye. Alas, the testibulus (test tube — never to be confused with testiculus, orchid), with Theresa swimming inside like a micromermaid, is ‘accidentally’ thrown away by Professor Leyman’s (he had trimmed his name by that time) assistant, Flora, initially an ivory-pale, dark-haired funest beauty, whom the author transformed just in time into a third bromidic dummy with a dun bun.
(Antilia later regained her husband, and Flora was weeded out. Ada’s addendum.) (2.2)
Fifty years later Van’s novel was made into a movie by Victor Vitry:
Ada, who resented the insufficiency of her brother’s fame, felt soothed and elated by the success of The Texture of Time (1924). That work, she said, always reminded her, in some odd, delicate way, of the sun-and-shade games she used to play as a child in the secluded avenues of Ardis Park. She said she had been somehow responsible for the metamorphoses of the lovely larvae that had woven the silk of ‘Veen’s Time’ (as the concept was now termed in one breath, one breeze, with ‘Bergson’s Duration,’ or ‘Whitehead’s Bright Fringe’). But a considerably earlier and weaker work, the poor little Letters from Terra, of which only half a dozen copies existed — two in Villa Armina and the rest in the stacks of university libraries — was even closer to her heart because of its nonliterary associations with their 1892-93 sojourn in Manhattan. Sixty-year-old Van crustily and contemptuously dismissed her meek suggestion to the effect that it should be republished, together with the Sidra reflections and a very amusing anti-Signy pamphlet on Time in Dreams. Seventy-year-old Van regretted his disdain when Victor Vitry, a brilliant French director, based a completely unauthorized picture on Letters from Terra written by ‘Voltemand’ half a century before.
Vitry dated Theresa’s visit to Antiterra as taking place in 1940, but 1940 by the Terranean calendar, and about 1890 by ours. The conceit allowed certain pleasing dips into the modes and manners of our past (did you remember that horses wore hats — yes, hats — when heat waves swept Manhattan?) and gave the impression — which physics-fiction literature had much exploited — of the capsulist traveling backward in terms of time. Philosophers asked nasty questions, but were ignored by the wishing-to-be-gulled moviegoers. (5.5)
At the beginning of his essay on Mayakovski, Dekol’tirovannaya loshad’ (“The Horse in a Décolleté Dress,” 1927), Hodasevich mentions a horse wearing a lady’s hat that he saw in a circus:
Представьте себе лошадь, изображающую старую англичанку. В дамской шляпке, с цветами и перьями, в розовом платье, с короткими рукавами и с розовым рюшем вокруг гигантского вороного декольтэ, она ходит на задних ногах, нелепо вытягивая бесконечную шею и скаля жёлтые зубы.
In his essay Hodasevich compares VN’s “late namesake” to a horse (wearing not a lady’s hat, though, but a Jacobin’s cap):
Не спорю, для этого и для многого "тому подобного" Маяковский нашел ряд выразительнейших, отлично составленных формул. И в награду за крылатое слово он теперь жуёт рябчиков, отнятых у буржуев. Новый буржуй, декольтированная лошадь взгромоздилась за стол, точь-в-точь как тогда, в цирке. Если не в дамской шляпке, то в колпаке якобинца. И то и другое одинаково ей пристало.
Demon Veen and Baron d’Onsky (Marina’s lover whose nickname Skonky is an anagram of konskiy, “of a horse”) have the same London hatter:
Both men were a little drunk, and Demon secretly wondered if the rather banal resemblance of that Edenic girl to a young actress, whom his visitor had no doubt seen on the stage in ‘Eugene and Lara’ or ‘Lenore Raven’ (both painfully panned by a ‘disgustingly incorruptible’ young critic), should be, or would be, commented upon. It was not: such nymphs were really very much alike because of their elemental limpidity since the similarities of young bodies of water are but murmurs of natural innocence and double-talk mirrors, that’s my hat, his is older, but we have the same London hatter. (1.2)
The name d’Onsky seems to hint at Onegin’s donskoy zherebets (Don stallion) in Chapter Two (V: 4) of Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin. In Chapter One (XXXII: 1-4) of EO Pushkin says that he prefers Terpsichore's little foot to Diana's charming bosom and Flora's charming cheeks:
Дианы грудь, ланиты Флоры
Прелестны, милые друзья!
Однако ножка Терпсихоры
Прелестней чем-то для меня.
Diana's bosom, Flora's cheeks
are charming, dear friends!
However, the little foot of Terpsichore
is for me in some way more charming.
Terpsichore is the muse of dance. Describing a stage performance in which Marina (Van’s, Ada’s and Lucette’s mother) played the heroine, Van mentions the violent dance called kurva or ‘ribbon boule:’
Even before the old Eskimo had shuffled off with the message, Demon Veen had left his pink velvet chair and proceeded to win the wager, the success of his enterprise being assured by the fact that Marina, a kissing virgin, had been in love with him since their last dance on New Year’s Eve. Moreover, the tropical moonlight she had just bathed in, the penetrative sense of her own beauty, the ardent pulses of the imagined maiden, and the gallant applause of an almost full house made her especially vulnerable to the tickle of Demon’s moustache. She had ample time, too, to change for the next scene, which started with a longish intermezzo staged by a ballet company whose services Scotty had engaged, bringing the Russians all the way in two sleeping cars from Belokonsk, Western Estoty. In a splendid orchard several merry young gardeners wearing for some reason the garb of Georgian tribesmen were popping raspberries into their mouths, while several equally implausible servant girls in sharovars (somebody had goofed — the word ‘samovars’ may have got garbled in the agent’s aerocable) were busy plucking marshmallows and peanuts from the branches of fruit trees. At an invisible sign of Dionysian origin, they all plunged into the violent dance called kurva or ‘ribbon boule’ in the hilarious program whose howlers almost caused Veen (tingling, and light-loined, and with Prince N.’s rose-red banknote in his pocket) to fall from his seat. (1.2)
Darkbloom ('Notes to Ada'): Raspberries; ribbon: allusions to ludicrous blunders in Lowell’s versions of Mandelshtam’s poems (in the N.Y. Review, 23 December 1965).
In his memoir essay "Gorki" Chukovski (the author of "The Art of Translation") cites several amusing mistakes made by the Russian translators:
«…Вполне своевременно переизданная книжка об «Искусстве перевода», очевидно, не влияет на переводчиков, они свирепствуют, как привыкли:
«Дезертиры (?) и маорисы — дикие племена Новой Зеландии»; «Они пустились через шею острова»; «Захохотал сам с собою»; «Только тут он заметил, что прошел мимо себя, и, быстро возвратясь, позвонил в дверь», — черт их возьми! В романе Р. Бенжамена «Жизнь Бальзака» Жоффруа Сент-Иллер — Жоффруа Святой Иллер!» (II)
Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire (a character in René Benjamin's novel about Balzac) who became in translation "the Holy Hilaire" brings to mind St Alin, one of the two seconds in Demon's duel with d'Onsky (1.2). The characters in Gorki's novel Zhizn’ Klima Samgina (“The Life of Klim Samgin,” 1925-36) include Alina Telepnyov (a cabaret singer). In Chapter Seven of Pushkin's EO Princess Alina is the Moscow cousin of Praskovia Larin (Tatiana's and Olga's mother).
In his essay Chukovski mentions Gorki's story about a lady who apologized in society that she would neigh and who actually started neighig, like a horse:
Но вот однажды, после нескольких предварительных встреч, среди заседания, которое шло напряженно и туго, он вдруг засмеялся и сказал виновато:
— Прошу прощения… ради бога, извините. И опять засмеялся.
— Я ни об ком из вас… это не имеет никакого отношения к вам. Просто Фёдор вчера вечером рассказывал… ха, ха, ха… я весь день смеюсь… ночью вспомнил и ночью смеялся… как одна дама в обществе вдруг вежливо сказала: «Извините, пожалуйста, не сердитесь, я сейчас заржу», — и заржала, как лошадь, а за нею другие, кто робко, кто гневно… Удивительно это у Фёдора вышло. (I)
According to Chukovski, this story was told to Gorki by Shalyapin, the famous bass singer. In 'Ursus' Van, Ada and Lucette listen to a Lyaskan soprano and a Banff bass:
Here Van stood up again, as Ada, black fan in elegant motion, came back followed by a thousand eyes, while the opening bars of a romance (on Fet’s glorious Siyala noch’) started to run over the keys (and the bass coughed à la russe into his fist before starting).
A radiant night, a moon-filled garden. Beams
Lay at our feet. The drawing room, unlit;
Wide open, the grand piano; and our hearts
Throbbed to your song, as throbbed the strings in it…
Then Banoffsky launched into Glinka’s great amphibrachs (Mihail Ivanovich had been a summer guest at Ardis when their uncle was still alive — a green bench existed where the composer was said to have sat under the pseudoacacias especially often, mopping his ample brow):
Subside, agitation of passion! (2.8)
In his essay on Gorki Chukovski tells two anecdotes about Leo Tolstoy, Fet and Shalyapin:
«Однажды в лесу Лев Толстой сказал мне: «Вот на этом месте Фет читал свои стихи. Смешной был человек Фет». — «Смешной?» — «Ну да, смешной, все люди смешные. И вы смешной, и я смешной — все».
И ещё.
«Была пасха. Шаляпин подошел к Толстому похристосоваться:
— Христос воскресе, Лев Николаевич!
Толстой промолчал, дал Шаляпину поцеловать себя в щёку, потом сказал неторопливо и веско:
— Христос не воскрес, Фёдор Иванович… Не воскрес…» (I)
The Antiterran name of Alaska, Lyaska rhymes with plyaska (dance; dancing). According to Chukovski, Gorki wanted him to revise a Russian translation of Rex Beach's novel The Spoilers (1906) and write an article on the history of Alaska (that belonged to Russia before it was sold to the United States):
Странно, что до сих пор у нас не изданы многие книги, которые Горький настойчиво рекомендовал для издания. Посылая мне вырванный из какого-то журнала роман Рэкса Бича «Хищники», он в своей краткой записке отозвался о нём так:
«Очень интересный роман, кинематографически живо рисующий быт золотоискателей.
Если к нему добавить статью об Аляске, будет довольно полезная книга.
Перевод отчаянно плох и требует серьёзнейшей редакции».
Тут же он указывал, каково должно быть содержание этой статьи об Аляске:
«Аляска: География. — История продажи её Россией Соединенным Штатам Северной Америки. — Разработка золотоносных жил. — Законоположения. — Быт». (II)