According to Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969), Dr Fitzbishop (a surgeon in the Kalugano hospital where Van recovers from the wound received in a pistol duel with Captain Tapper) is a poshlyak:
Dr Fitzbishop had said, rubbing his hands, that the Luga laboratory said it was the not always lethal 'arethusoides' but it had no practical importance now, because the unfortunate music teacher, and composer, was not expected to spend another night on Demonia, and would be on Terra, ha-ha, in time for evensong. Doc Fitz was what Russians call a poshlyak ('pretentious vulgarian') and in some obscure counter-fashion Van was relieved not to be able to gloat over the wretched Rack's martyrdom. (1.42)
In his essay on Chekhov, Tvorchestvo iz nichego (“Creation from Nothing,” 1905), Shestov speaks of Chekhov’s story Duel' ("The Duel," 1891) and uses the phrase pervyi vstrechnyi poshlyak (the first vulgar person [she encountered]):
Неизвестно зачем, без любви, даже без влечения она отдаётся первому встречному пошляку. Потом ей кажется, что её с ног до головы облили грязью, и эта грязь так пристала к ней, что не смоешь даже целым океаном воды.
For no reason at all, without love, without even attraction she [Laevski’s mistress] gives herself to the first vulgar person [poshlyak] she met. Then she feels that mud was flung at her and this mud got stuck to her whole body so that even an ocean of water would not wash it off. (VI)
In his essay on Mayakovski, Dekol’tirovannaya loshad’ (“The Horse in Décolleté Dress,” 1927), Hodasevich says that Mayakovski was the first who made poshlost' not a material, but the meaning of poetry and mentions grubiyan i poshlyak (a boor and a vulgarian) who began to neigh, like horses ("Here we are! We can think!"), from Mayakovski's verses:
Он первый сделал пошлость и грубость не материалом, но смыслом поэзии. Грубиян и пошляк заржали из его стихов: "Вот мы! Мы мыслим!"
In his essay Ob agitpyesakh Vladimira Mayakovskogo (“On the Propaganda Plays of Vladimir Mayakovski,” 1920) Lunacharski (the minister of education in Lenin’s government) says that Mayakovski is not pervyi vstrechnyi (just anyone):
Маяковский не первый встречный. Это один из крупнейших русских талантов, имеющий широкий круг поклонников, как в среде интеллигентской, так и в среде пролетариата (целый ряд пролетарских поэтов — его ученики и самым очевидным образом ему подражают), это человек, большинство произведений которого переведено на все европейские языки, поэт, которого очень высоко ценят такие отнюдь не футуристы, как Горький и Брюсов.
In his poem Pyatyi Internatsional ("The Fifth International," 1922) Mayakovski mentions Logos and A. V. Lunacharski:
Мистики пишут: «Логос,
Это всемогущество. От господа бога-с».
П. С. Коган:
«Ну, что вы, право,
это
просто символизируется посмертная слава».
Марксисты всесторонне обсудили диво.
Решили:
«Это
олицетворенная мощь коллектива».
А. В. Луначарский:
«Это он о космосе!»
Я не выдержал, наклонился и гаркнул на всю землю:
— Бросьте вы там, которые о космосе!
Что космос?
Космос далеко-с, мусью-с! (Part One)
In Ward Five of the Kalugano hospital male nurse Dorofey is reading the Russian-language newspaper Golos (Logos):
After a long journey down corridors where pretty little things tripped by, shaking thermometers, and first an ascent and then a descent in two different lifts, the second of which was very capacious with a metal-handled black lid propped against its wall and bits of holly or laurel here and there on the soap-smelling floor, Dorofey, like Onegin's coachman, said priehali ('we have arrived') and gently propelled Van, past two screened beds, toward a third one near the window. There he left Van, while he seated himself at a small table in the door corner and leisurely unfolded the Russian-language newspaper Golos (Logos). (1.42)
Vo ves' golos ("At the Top of my Voice," 1930) is a poem by Mayakovski; Golos iz khora ("Voice from Choir", 1914) is a poem by Alexander Blok. Chapter Two of Lunacharski's essay "Alexander Blok" (1932) is entitled Blok - muzykant (Blok as a Musician"). Lucette's music teacher, Philip Rack dies in Ward Five (where hopeless cases are kept) of the Kalugano hospital:
Did Van like music? Sportsmen usually did, didn’t they? Would he care to have a Sonorola by his bed? No, he disliked music, but did the doctor, being a concert-goer, know perhaps where a musician called Rack could be found? ‘Ward Five,’ answered the doctor promptly. Van misunderstood this as the title of some piece of music and repeated his question. Would he find Rack’s address at Harper’s music shop? Well, they used to rent a cottage way down Dorofey Road, near the forest, but now some other people had moved in. Ward Five was where hopeless cases were kept. The poor guy had always had a bad liver and a very indifferent heart, but on top of that a poison had seeped into his system; the local ‘lab’ could not identify it and they were now waiting for a report, on those curiously frog-green faeces, from the Luga people. If Rack had administered it to himself by his own hand, he kept ‘mum’; it was more likely the work of his wife who dabbled in Hindu-Andean voodoo stuff and had just had a complicated miscarriage in the maternity ward. Yes, triplets — how did he guess? Anyway, if Van was so eager to visit his old pal it would have to be as soon as he could be rolled to Ward Five in a wheelchair by Dorofey, so he’d better apply a bit of voodoo, ha-ha, on his own flesh and blood. (1.42)
In "Creation from Nothing" Shestov (the philosopher who was born in 1866 and whose pseudonym comes from shest', "six") calls Chekhov (the author of “Ward Six”) pevets beznadezhnosti (a poet of hopelessness):
Чтобы в двух словах определить его тенденцию, я скажу: Чехов был певцом безнадежности. Упорно, уныло, однообразно в течение всей своей почти 25-летней литературной деятельности Чехов только одно и делал: теми или иными способами убивал человеческие надежды. В этом, на мой взгляд, сущность его творчества.
To define his tendency in a word, I would say that Chekhov was the poet of hopelessness. Stubbornly, sadly, monotonously, during all the years of his literary activity, nearly a quarter of a century long, Chekhov was doing one alone: by one means or another he was killing human hopes. Herein, I hold, lies the essence of his work. (I)
The title of Shestov's essay on Chekhov brings to mind "sad nothings" fingerpainted on wet stone by poor Rack:
The melancholy young German was in a philosophical mood shading into the suicidal. He had to return to Kalugano with his Elsie, who Doc Ecksreher thought ‘would present him with driplets in dry weeks.’ He hated Kalugano, his and her home town, where in a moment of ‘mutual aberration’ stupid Elsie had given him her all on a park bench after a wonderful office party at Muzakovski’s Organs where the oversexed pitiful oaf had a good job.
‘When are you leaving?’ asked Ada.
‘Forestday — after tomorrow.’
‘Fine. That’s fine. Adieu, Mr Rack.’
Poor Philip drooped, fingerpainting sad nothings on wet stone, shaking his heavy head, gulping visibly.
‘One feels… One feels,’ he said, ‘that one is merely playing a role and has forgotten the next speech.’
‘I’m told many feel that,’ said Ada; ‘it must be a furchtbar feeling.’
‘Cannot be helped? No hope any more at all? I am dying, yes?’
‘You are dead, Mr Rack,’ said Ada. (1.32)
In a letter of Nov. 25, 1892, to Suvorin Chekhov compares his story Palata No. 6 (“Ward Six,” 1892) to lemonade and says that the works of contemporary artists lack the alcohol that would intoxicate the reader/viewer:
Вас нетрудно понять, и Вы напрасно браните себя за то, что неясно выражаетесь. Вы горький пьяница, а я угостил Вас сладким лимонадом, и Вы, отдавая должное лимонаду, справедливо замечаете, что в нем нет спирта. В наших произведениях нет именно алкоголя, который бы пьянил и порабощал, и это Вы хорошо даете попять. Отчего нет? Оставляя в стороне "Палату No 6" и меня самого, будем говорить вообще, ибо это интересней. Будем говорить об общих причинах, коли Вам не скучно, и давайте захватим целую эпоху. Скажите по совести, кто из моих сверстников, т. е. людей в возрасте 30--45 лет, дал миру хотя одну каплю алкоголя? Разве Короленко, Надсон и все нынешние драматурги не лимонад? Разве картины Репина или Шишкина кружили Вам голову? Мило, талантливо, Вы восхищаетесь и в то же время никак не можете забыть, что Вам хочется курить. Наука и техника переживают теперь великое время, для нашего же брата это время рыхлое, кислое, скучное, сами мы кислы и скучны, умеем рождать только гуттаперчевых мальчиков, и не видит этого только Стасов, которому природа дала редкую способность пьянеть даже от помоев. Причины тут не в глупости нашей, не в бездарности и не в наглости, как думает Буренин, а в болезни, которая для художника хуже сифилиса и полового истощения. У нас нет "чего-то", это справедливо, и это значит, что поднимите подол нашей музе, и Вы увидите там плоское место. Вспомните, что писатели, которых мы называем вечными или просто хорошими и которые пьянят нас, имеют один общий и весьма важный признак: они куда-то идут и Вас зовут туда же, и Вы чувствуете не умом, а всем своим существом, что у них есть какая-то цель, как у тени отца Гамлета, которая недаром приходила и тревожила воображение. У одних, смотря по калибру, цели ближайшие -- крепостное право, освобождение родины, политика, красота или просто водка, как у Дениса Давыдова, у других цели отдалённые -- бог, загробная жизнь, счастье человечества и т. п. Лучшие из них реальны и пишут жизнь такою, какая она есть, но оттого, что каждая строчка пропитана, как соком, сознанием цели, Вы, кроме жизни, какая есть, чувствуете ещё ту жизнь, какая должна быть, и это пленяет Вас.
It is easy to understand you, and there is no need for you to abuse yourself for obscurity of expression. You are a hard drinker, and I have regaled you with sweet lemonade, and you, after giving the lemonade its due, justly observe that there is no spirit in it. That is just what is lacking in our productions—the alcohol which could intoxicate and subjugate, and you state that very well. Why not? Putting aside "Ward No. 6" and myself, let us discuss the matter in general, for that is more interesting. Let ms discuss the general causes, if that won't bore you, and let us include the whole age. Tell me honestly, who of my contemporaries—that is, men between thirty and forty-five—have given the world one single drop of alcohol? Are not Korolenko, Nadson, and all the playwrights of to-day, lemonade? Have Repin's or Shishkin's pictures turned your head? Charming, talented, you are enthusiastic; but at the same time you can't forget that you want to smoke. Science and technical knowledge are passing through a great period now, but for our sort it is a flabby, stale, and dull time. We are stale and dull ourselves, we can only beget gutta-percha boys, and the only person who does not see that is Stasov, to whom nature has given a rare faculty for getting drunk on slops. The causes of this are not to be found in our stupidity, our lack of talent, or our insolence, as Burenin imagines, but in a disease which for the artist is worse than syphilis or sexual exhaustion. We lack "something," that is true, and that means that, lift the robe of our muse, and you will find within an empty void. Let me remind you that the writers, who we say are for all time or are simply good, and who intoxicate us, have one common and very important characteristic; they are going towards something and are summoning you towards it, too, and you feel not with your mind, but with your whole being, that they have some object, just like the ghost of Hamlet's father, who did not come and disturb the imagination for nothing. Some have more immediate objects—the abolition of serfdom, the liberation of their country, politics, beauty, or simply vodka, like Denis Davydov; others have remote objects—God, life beyond the grave, the happiness of humanity, and so on. The best of them are realists and paint life as it is, but, through every line's being soaked in the consciousness of an object, you feel, besides life as it is, the life which ought to be, and that captivates you.
In Blok’s poem Neznakomka (“The Unknown Woman,” 1906) p’yanitsy s glazami krolikov (the drunks with the eyes of rabbits) cry out: “In vino veritas!” In the last stanza of his poem Tam damy shchegolyayut modami… (“There ladies sport their dresses…” 1906-11), a variation on the theme of Neznakomka, Blok mentions tainstvennaya poshlost’ (mysterious vulgarity):
Средь этой пошлости таинственной,
Скажи, что делать мне с тобой —
Недостижимой и единственной,
Как вечер дымно-голубой?l
In Blok's "Unknown Woman" the girl wears shlyapa s traurnymi per'yami (a hat with funerary plumes). In "Tam damy shchegolyayut modami..." the girl's shlyapa (hat) becomes shlem (a helmet):
Вздыхая древними поверьями,
Шелками чёрными шумна,
Под шлемом с траурными перьями
И ты вином оглушена?
Describing his journey with Lucette on Admiral Tobakoff, Van mentions the Helmeted Angel of the Yukonsk Ikon whose magic effect changes anemic blond maidens into konskie deti:
With glowing cheekbones and that glint of copper showing from under her tight rubber cap on nape and forehead, she [Lucette] evoked the Helmeted Angel of the Yukonsk Ikon whose magic effect was said to change anemic blond maidens into konskie deti, freckled red-haired lads, children of the Sun Horse. (3.5)
In his poem Horosho! ("Good!" 1927) Mayakovski mentions kusok konskiy (a horse piece) that he is eating:
Мне
легше, чем всем,-
я
Маяковский.
Сижу
и ем
кусок
конский.
Chekhov is the author of Skoropostizhnaya konskaya smert', ili Velikodushie russkogo naroda ("A Horse's Sudden Death, or the Magnanimity of the Russian People," 1889), a dramatic sketch in one act.