According to Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969), the false mustache makes him look like Pierre Legrand, his fencing master:
‘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)
In a letter of Oct. 19, 1836, to Chaadaev Pushkin mentions Pierre le Grand:
Et Pierre le Grand qui à lui seul est une histoire universelle! Et Catherine II qui a placé la Russie sur le seuil de l’Europe? et Alexandre qui vous a mené à Paris? et (la main sur le coeur) ne trouvez-vous pas quelque chose d’imposant dans la situation actuelle de la Russie, quelque chose qui frappera le futur historien? Croyez vous qu’il nous mettra hors l’Europe? Quoique personnellement attaché de coeur à l’Empereur, je suis loin d’admirer tout ce que je vois autour de moi; comme homme de lettre, je suis aigri; comme homme à préjugés, je suis froissé — mais je vous jure sur mon honneur, que pour rien au monde je n’aurais voulu changer de patrie, ni avoir d’autre histoire que celle de nos ancêtres, telle que Dieu nous l’a donnée.
Mémoires d’un maître d’armes, ou dix huits mois à Saint-Pétersbourg (“The Fencing Master,” 1840) is a novel by Alexandre Dumas père. Van’s chaste, angelic Russian tutor explained to a Negro lad that Pushkin and Dumas had African blood:
In 1880, Van, aged ten, had traveled in silver trains with showerbaths, accompanied by his father, his father’s beautiful secretary, the secretary’s eighteen-year-old white-gloved sister (with a bit part as Van’s English governess and milkmaid), and his chaste, angelic Russian tutor, Andrey Andreevich Aksakov (‘AAA’), to gay resorts in Louisiana and Nevada. AAA explained, he remembered, to a Negro lad with whom Van had scrapped, that Pushkin and Dumas had African blood, upon which the lad showed AAA his tongue, a new interesting trick which Van emulated at the earliest occasion and was slapped by the younger of the Misses Fortune, put it back in your face, sir, she said. (1.24)
Describing Demon’s sword duel with Baron d’Onsky, Van mentions an amusing Douglas d’Artagnan arrangement and the apron of a quite accidental milkmaid:
Upon being questioned in Demon’s dungeon, Marina, laughing trillingly, wove a picturesque tissue of lies; then broke down, and confessed. She swore that all was over; that the Baron, a physical wreck and a spiritual Samurai, had gone to Japan forever. From a more reliable source Demon learned that the Samurai’s real destination was smart little Vatican, a Roman spa, whence he was to return to Aardvark, Massa, in a week or so. Since prudent Veen preferred killing his man in Europe (decrepit but indestructible Gamaliel was said to be doing his best to forbid duels in the Western Hemisphere — a canard or an idealistic President’s instant-coffee caprice, for nothing was to come of it after all), Demon rented the fastest petroloplane available, overtook the Baron (looking very fit) in Nice, saw him enter Gunter’s Bookshop, went in after him, and in the presence of the imperturbable and rather bored English shopkeeper, back-slapped the astonished Baron across the face with a lavender glove. The challenge was accepted; two native seconds were chosen; the Baron plumped for swords; and after a certain amount of good blood (Polish and Irish — a kind of American ‘Gory Mary’ in barroom parlance) had bespattered two hairy torsoes, the whitewashed terrace, the flight of steps leading backward to the walled garden in an amusing Douglas d’Artagnan arrangement, the apron of a quite accidental milkmaid, and the shirtsleeves of both seconds, charming Monsieur de Pastrouil and Colonel St Alin, a scoundrel, the latter gentlemen separated the panting combatants, and Skonky died, not ‘of his wounds’ (as it was viciously rumored) but of a gangrenous afterthought on the part of the least of them, possibly self-inflicted, a sting in the groin, which caused circulatory trouble, notwithstanding quite a few surgical interventions during two or three years of protracted stays at the Aardvark Hospital in Boston — a city where, incidentally, he married in 1869 our friend the Bohemian lady, now keeper of Glass Biota at the local museum. (1.2)
The name of Demon’s adversary seems to blend Dmitri Donskoy, the Russian Prince who defeated Khan Mamay in the battle of Kulikovo (1380), with Onegin’s donskoy zherebets (Don stallion) in Chapter Two (V: 4) of Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin:
Сначала все к нему езжали;
Но так как с заднего крыльца
Обыкновенно подавали
Ему донского жеребца,
Лишь только вдоль большой дороги
Заслышит их домашни дроги, -
Поступком оскорбясь таким,
Все дружбу прекратили с ним.
At first they all would call on him,
but since to the back porch
there was habitually brought
a Don stallion for him
the moment that along the highway
one heard their homely shandrydans -
outraged by such behavior,
they all ceased to be friends with him.
“Colonel St Alin, a scoundrel,” clearly hints at Stalin, the Soviet leader who is also represented on Demonia (aka Antiterra, Earth’s twin planet on which Ada is set) as Khan Sosso, the ruler of Tartary (also known on Antiterra as the Golden Horde and the ruthless Sovietnamur Khanate). In the same letter to Chaadaev Pushkin mentions les tartars:
C’est la Russie, c’est son immense étendue qui a absorbé la conquête Mogole. Les tartares n’ont pas osé franchir nos frontières occidentales et nous laisser à dos. Ils se sont retirés vers leurs déserts, et la civilisation chrétienne a été sauvée… L’invasion des tartares est un triste et grand tableau.
In his poem Rossiya (“Russia,” 1924) Voloshin calls Count Aleksey Andreich Arakcheev (another AAA) “the first Communist:”
Минует век, и мрачная фигура
Встаёт над Русью: форменный мундир,
Бескровные щетинистые губы,
Мясистый нос, солдатский узкий лоб,
И взгляд неизречённого бесстыдства
Пустых очей из-под припухших век.
У ног её до самых бурых далей
Нагих равнин — казарменный фасад
И каланча: ни зверя, ни растенья…
Земля судилась и осуждена.
Все грешники записаны в солдаты.
Всяк холм понизился и стал как плац.
А надо всем солдатскою шинелью
Провис до крыш разбухший небосвод.
Таким он был написан кистью Доу —
Земли российской первый коммунист —
Граф Алексей Андреич Аракчеев. (3)
and the tsar Peter I “the first Bolshevik:”
Великий Пётр был первый большевик,
Замысливший Россию перебросить,
Склонениям и нравам вопреки,
За сотни лет к её грядущим далям. (4)
According to Voloshin, Peter the Great wanted perebrosit’ (to throw over) Russia in time across a couple of centuries. On Antiterra Russia is transferred in space to the opposite hemisphere:
Ved’ (‘it is, isn’t it’) sidesplitting to imagine that ‘Russia,’ instead of being a quaint synonym of Estoty, the American province extending from the Arctic no longer vicious Circle to the United States proper, was on Terra the name of a country, transferred as if by some sleight of land across the ha-ha of a doubled ocean to the opposite hemisphere where it sprawled over all of today’s Tartary, from Kurland to the Kuriles! But (even more absurdly), if, in Terrestrial spatial terms, the Amerussia of Abraham Milton was split into its components, with tangible water and ice separating the political, rather than poetical, notions of ‘America’ and ‘Russia,’ a more complicated and even more preposterous discrepancy arose in regard to time — not only because the history of each part of the amalgam did not quite match the history of each counterpart in its discrete condition, but because a gap of up to a hundred years one way or another existed between the two earths; a gap marked by a bizarre confusion of directional signs at the crossroads of passing time with not all the no-longers of one world corresponding to the not-yets of the other. It was owing, among other things, to this ‘scientifically ungraspable’ concourse of divergences that minds bien rangés (not apt to unhobble hobgoblins) rejected Terra as a fad or a fantom, and deranged minds (ready to plunge into any abyss) accepted it in support and token of their own irrationality. (1.3)
Kurland being a part of Livonia, “from Kurland to the Kuriles” brings to mind ot beregov Livonskikh do Alyaski (from the Livonian shores to Alaska) in Voloshin’s “Russia:”
Есть дух Истории — безликий и глухой,
Что действует помимо нашей воли,
Что направлял топор и мысль Петра,
Что вынудил мужицкую Россию
За три столетья сделать перегон
От берегов Ливонских до Аляски. (5)
According to Voloshin, it took the peasant Russia three centuries to cover the distance from the shores of Livonia to Alaska (known on Demonia as Lyaska). Lyaska rhymes with plyaska (dance; dancing). Plyaski smerti (“Dances of Death,” 1912-14) and Na pole Kulikovom (“In the Field of Kulikovo,” 1908) are the cycles by Alexander Blok, the author of Novaya Amerika (“The New America,” 1913) who repeats the word ved’ three times in his poem Pered sudom (“Before the Trial,” 1915). At the end of his poem Demon (1916) Blok mentions novye miry (the new worlds) and siyayushchaya pustota (a radiant void):
И, онемев от удивленья,
Ты у́зришь новые миры —
Невероятные виденья,
Создания моей игры…
Дрожа от страха и бессилья,
Тогда шепнёшь ты: отпусти…
И, распустив тихонько крылья,
Я улыбнусь тебе: лети.
И под божественной улыбкой
Уничтожаясь на лету,
Ты полетишь, как камень зыбкий,
В сияющую пустоту…
According to Van, he is a radiant void. Ada's blue veil brings to mind tyomnaya vual' (the dark veil) in Blok's poem Neznakomka ("Unknown Woman," 1906):
И странной близостью закованный,
Смотрю за тёмную вуаль,
И вижу берег очарованный
И очарованную даль.
And entranced by this strange nearness,
I look through her dark veil,
And see an enchanted shore
And a horizon enchanted.
Describing his meeting with Lucette's in Paris, Van mentions Blok's Incognita:
Upon entering, he stopped for a moment to surrender his coat; but he kept his black fedora and stick-slim umbrella as he had seen his father do in that sort of bawdy, albeit smart, place which decent women did not frequent — at least, unescorted. He headed for the bar, and as he was in the act of wiping the lenses of his black-framed spectacles, made out, through the optical mist (Space’s recent revenge!), the girl whose silhouette he recalled having seen now and then (much more distinctly!) ever since his pubescence, passing alone, drinking alone, always alone, like Blok’s Incognita. (3.3)
P’yanitsy s glazami krolikov (the drunks with the eyes of rabbits) who cry out “In vino veritas!” in Blok's poem bring to mind s glazami (with the eyes), a phrase used by Demon at the family dinner in "Ardis the Second," and Dr Krolik (the local entomologist, Ada’s beloved teacher of natural history):
'Marina,’ murmured Demon at the close of the first course. ‘Marina,’ he repeated louder. ‘Far from me’ (a locution he favored) ‘to criticize Dan’s taste in white wines or the manners de vos domestiques. You know me, I’m above all that rot, I’m…’ (gesture); ‘but, my dear,’ he continued, switching to Russian, ‘the chelovek who brought me the pirozhki — the new man, the plumpish one with the eyes (s glazami) —’
‘Everybody has eyes,’ remarked Marina drily.
‘Well, his look as if they were about to octopus the food he serves. But that’s not the point. He pants, Marina! He suffers from some kind of odïshka (shortness of breath). He should see Dr Krolik. It’s depressing. It’s a rhythmic pumping pant. It made my soup ripple.’
‘Look, Dad,’ said Van, ‘Dr Krolik can’t do much, because, as you know quite well, he’s dead, and Marina can’t tell her servants not to breathe, because, as you also know, they’re alive.’
‘The Veen wit, the Veen wit,’ murmured Demon. (1.38)
In her last note Demon's wife Aqua (Marina's poor mad twin sister) mentioned a trick mustache and twice repeated the word chelovek:
Aujourd’hui (heute-toity!) I, this eye-rolling toy, have earned the psykitsch right to enjoy a landparty with Herr Doktor Sig, Nurse Joan the Terrible, and several ‘patients,’ in the neighboring bor (piney wood) where I noticed exactly the same skunk-like squirrels, Van, that your Darkblue ancestor imported to Ardis Park, where you will ramble one day, no doubt. The hands of a clock, even when out of order, must know and let the dumbest little watch know where they stand, otherwise neither is a dial but only a white face with a trick mustache. Similarly, chelovek (human being) must know where he stands and let others know, otherwise he is not even a klok (piece) of a chelovek, neither a he, nor she, but ‘a tit of it’ as poor Ruby, my little Van, used to say of her scanty right breast. I, poor Princesse Lointaine, très lointaine by now, do not know where I stand. Hence I must fall. So adieu, my dear, dear son, and farewell, poor Demon, I do not know the date or the season, but it is a reasonably, and no doubt seasonably, fair day, with a lot of cute little ants queuing to get at my pretty pills.
[Signed] My sister’s sister who teper’
iz ada (‘now is out of hell’) (1.3)
In his memoir essay A. A. Blok kak chelovek (“A. A. Blok as a Person,” 1921) Korney Chukovski quotes Sergey Gorodetski who tells in his “Reminiscences of Blok” that Blok in jest called his collection Nechayannaya radost’ (“Inadvertent Joy,” 1907) Otchayannaya gadost’ (“Desperate Filth”) and himself, “Alexander Klok:”
Сергей Городецкий рассказывает в «Воспоминаниях о Блоке», что Блок в шутку назвал свою «Нечаянную Радость» – «Отчаянной Гадостью», а себя – Александром Клоком. Его тянуло смеяться над тем, что было пережито им, как святыня. Ему действительно нравилась пародия В. П. Буренина, в которой тот втаптывал в грязь его высокое стихотворение «Шаги Командора». Показывая «Новое Время», где была напечатана эта пародия, он сказал:
– Посмотрите, не правда ли, очень смешно:
В спальне свет.
Готова ванна.
Ночь, как тетерев, глуха.
Спит, раскинув руки, донна Анна,
И по Анне прыгает блоха.
Мне показалось, что такое откровенное хрюкание было ему милее, чем похвалы и приветы многих презираемых им тонких эстетов.
When Van's and Ada's parents make love for the first time, Marina is especially vulnerable to the tickle of Demon’s moustache:
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)
When Van after a long separation meets Ada (now married to Andrey Andreevich Vinelander) in Mont Roux, the first thing she tells him is sbrit’ usï! (that mustache must go):
He stopped on the threshold of the main lounge, but hardly had he begun to scan the distribution of its scattered human contents, than an abrupt flurry occurred in a distant group. Ada, spurning decorum, was hurrying toward him. Her solitary and precipitate advance consumed in reverse all the years of their separation as she changed from a dark-glittering stranger with the high hair-do in fashion to the pale-armed girl in black who had always belonged to him. At that particular twist of time they happened to be the only people conspicuously erect and active in the huge room, and heads turned and eyes peered when the two met in the middle of it as on a stage; but what should have been, in culmination of her headlong motion, of the ecstasy in her eyes and fiery jewels, a great explosion of voluble love, was marked by incongruous silence; he raised to his unbending lips and kissed her cygneous hand, and then they stood still, staring at each other, he playing with coins in his trouser pockets under his ‘humped’ jacket, she fingering her necklace, each reflecting, as it were, the uncertain light to which all that radiance of mutual welcome had catastrophically decreased. She was more Ada than ever, but a dash of new elegancy had been added to her shy, wild charm. Her still blacker hair was drawn back and up into a glossy chignon, and the Lucette line of her exposed neck, slender and straight, came as a heartrending surprise. He was trying to form a succinct sentence (to warn her about the device he planned for securing a rendezvous), but she interrupted his throat clearing with a muttered injunction: Sbrit’ usï! (that mustache must go) and turned away to lead him to the far corner from which she had taken so many years to reach him. (3.8)
In VN’s novel Priglashenie na kazn’ (“Invitation to a Beheading,” 1935) M'sieur Pierre (the executioner) uses the idiom sam s usam ("I’m no piker myself") that mentions usy (mustache):
- Сам я холост, но я понимаю, конечно... Вперёд. Я это быстро... Хорошие игроки никогда много не думают. Вперёд. Вашу супругу я мельком видал - ядрёная бабёнка, что и говорить, - шея больно хороша, люблю... Э, стойте. Это я маху дал, разрешите переиграть. Так-то будет правильнее. Я большой любитель женщин, а уж меня как они любят, подлые, прямо не поверите. Вот вы писали вашей супруге о её там глазках, губках. Недавно, знаете, я имел - Почему же я не могу съесть? Ах, вот что. Прытко, прытко. Ну, ладно, - ушёл. Недавно я имел половое общение с исключительно здоровой и роскошной особой. Какое получаешь удовольствие, когда крупная брюнетка... Это что же? Вот тебе раз. Вы должны предупреждать, так не годится. Давайте, сыграю иначе. Так-с. Да, роскошная, страстная - а я, знаете, сам с усам, обладаю такой пружиной, что - ух! Вообще говоря, из многочисленных соблазнов жизни, которые, как бы играя, но вместе с тем очень серьезно, собираюсь постепенно представить вашему вниманию, соблазн любви... - Нет, погодите, я еще не решил, пойду ли так. Да, пойду. Как - мат? Почему - мат? Сюда - не могу, сюда - не могу, сюда... Тоже не могу. Позвольте, как же раньше стояло? Нет, еще раньше. Ну, вот это другое дело. Зевок. Пошел так. Да, - красная роза в зубах, черные ажурные чулки по сии места и больше ни-че-го, - это я понимаю, это высшее... а теперь вместо восторгов любви - сырой камень, ржавое железо, а впереди... сами знаете, что впереди. Не заметил. А если так? Так лучше. Партия всё равно - моя, вы делаете ошибку за ошибкой. Пускай она изменяла вам, но ведь и вы держали её в своих объятиях. Когда ко мне обращаются за советами, я всегда говорю: господа, побольше изобретательности. Ничего нет приятнее, например, чем окружиться зеркалами и смотреть, как там кипит работа, - замечательно! А вот это вовсе не замечательно. Я, честное слово, думал, что пошёл не сюда, а сюда. Так что вы не могли... Назад, пожалуйста. Я люблю при этом курить сигару и говорить о незначительных вещах, и чтобы она тоже говорила, - ничего не поделаешь, известная развратность... Да, - тяжко, страшно и обидно сказать всему этому "прости" - и думать, что другие, такие же молодые и сочные, будут продолжать работать, работать... эх! не знаю, как вы, но я в смысле ласок обожаю то, что у нас, у борцов, зовется макароны: шлёп её по шее, и чем плотнее мяса... Во-первых, могу съесть, во-вторых, могу просто уйти; ну, так. Постойте, постойте, я все-таки еще подумаю. Какой был последний ход? Поставьте обратно и дайте подумать. Вздор, никакого мата нет. Вы, по-моему, тут что-то, извините, смошенничали, вот это стояло тут или тут, а не тут, я абсолютно уверен. Ну, поставьте, поставьте...
Он как бы нечаянно сбил несколько фигур и, не удержавшись, со стоном, смешал остальные. Цинциннат сидел, облокотясь на одну руку; задумчиво копал коня, который в области шеи был, казалось, не прочь вернуться в ту хлебную стихию, откуда вышел.
‘I’m a bachelor myself, but of course I understand . . . Forward. I shall quickly . . . Good players do not take a long time to think. Forward. I caught just a glimpse of your spouse — a juicy little piece, no two ways about it — what a neck, that’s what I like . . . Hey, wait a minute, that was an over- sight, allow me to take my move back. Here, this is better. I am a great aficionado of women, and the way they love me, the rascals, you simply wouldn’t believe it. You were writing to your spouse there about her pretty eyes and lips. Recently, you know, I had . . . Why can’t my pawn take it? Oh, I see. Clever, clever. All right, I retreat. Recently I had sexual intercourse with an extraordinarily healthy and splendid in- dividual. What pleasure you experience, when a large brunette . . . What is this? That’s a snide move on your part. You must warn your opponent, this won’t do. Here, let me change my last move. So. Yes, a gorgeous, passionate creature — and, you know. I’m no piker myself, I’ve got such a spring that — wow! Generally speaking, of the numerous earthly temptations, which, in jest, but really with the utmost seriousness, I intend to submit gradually for your consideration, the temptation of sex . . . No, wait a minute, I haven’t decided yet if I want to move that piece there. Yes, I will. What do you mean, checkmate? Why checkmate? I can’t go here; I can’t go there; I can’t go anywhere. Wait a minute, what was the position? No, before that. Ah, now that’s a different story. A mere oversight. All right, I’ll move here. Yes, a red rose between her teeth, black net stockings up to here, and not-a- stitch besides — that’s really something, that’s the supreme . . . and now, instead of the raptures of love, dank stone, rusty iron, and ahead — well, you know yourself what lies ahead. Now this I overlooked. And what if I move otherwise? Yes, this is better. The game is mine, anyway — you make one mistake after another. What if she was unfaithful to you — didn’t you also hold her in your embraces? When people ask me for advice I always tell them, “Gentlemen, be inventive. There is nothing more pleasant, for example, than to surround oneself with mirrors and watch the good work going on there — wonderful!” Hey! Now this is far from wonderful. Word of honour, I thought I had moved to this square, not to that. So therefore you were unable . . . Back, please. Simultaneously I like to smoke a cigar and talk of insignificant matters, and I like her to talk too — there’s nothing to be done, I have a certain streak of perversion in me ... Yes, how grievous, how frightening and hurtful to say farewell to all this — and to think that others, who are just as young and sappy, will continue to work and work . . . ah! I don’t know about you, but when it comes to caresses I love what we French wrestlers call “ macarons you give her a nice slap on the neck, and, the firmer the meat . . . First of all, I can take your knight, secondly, I can simply move my king away; all right — there. No, stop, stop, I’d like to think for a minute after all. What was your last move? Put that piece back and let me think. Nonsense, there’s no checkmate here. You, it seems to me — if you do not mind my saying so — are cheating: this piece stood here, or maybe here, but not there, I am absolutely certain. Come, put it back, put it back . . .’
As though accidentally, he knocked over several men, and, unable to restrain himself, with a groan, he mixed up the remainder. Cincinnatus sat leaning on one elbow; he was pensively picking at a knight which, in the neck region, seemed not loath to return to the mealy state whence it had sprung. (Chapter XIII)
A game of chess that Cincinnatus plays with M'sieur Pierre is a parody of the game of checkers that in Gogol's Myortvye dushi ("Dead Souls," 1842) Chichikov plays with Nozdryov. According to Van, he is a first-rate chess player:
Van, a first-rate chess player — he was to win in 1887 a match at Chose when he beat the Minsk-born Pat Rishin (champion of Underhill and Wilson, N.C.) — had been puzzled by Ada’s inability of raising the standard of her, so to speak, damsel-errant game above that of a young lady in an old novel or in one of those anti-dandruff color-photo ads that show a beautiful model (made for other games than chess) staring at the shoulder of her otherwise impeccably groomed antagonist across a preposterous traffic jam of white and scarlet, elaborately and unrecognizably carved, Lalla Rookh chessmen, which not even cretins would want to play with — even if royally paid for the degradation of the simplest thought under the itchiest scalp.
Ada did manage, now and then, to conjure up a combinational sacrifice, offering, say, her queen — with a subtle win after two or three moves if the piece were taken; but she saw only one side of the question, preferring to ignore, in the queer lassitude of clogged cogitation, the obvious counter combination that would lead inevitably to her defeat if the grand sacrifice were not accepted. On the Scrabble board, however, this same wild and weak Ada was transformed into a sort of graceful computing machine, endowed, moreover, with phenomenal luck, and would greatly surpass baffled Van in acumen, foresight and exploitation of chance, when shaping appetizing long words from the most unpromising scraps and collops. (1.36)
Darkbloom ('Notes to Ada'): Pat Rishin: a play on ‘patrician’. One may recall Podgoretz (Russ. ‘underhill’) applying that epithet to a popular critic, would-be expert in Russian as spoken in Minsk and elsewhere. Minsk and Chess also figure in Chapter Six of Speak, Memory (p.133, N.Y. ed. 1966).
At the beginning of VN's novel Zashchita Luzhina ("The Luzhin Defense," 1930) the stout French governess reads to little Luzhin Dumas's novel "The Count of Monte Cristo" and interrupts the reading to exclaim Bednyi, bednyi Dantes! (“poor, poor Dantès!”):
Больше всего его поразило то, что с понедельника он будет Лужиным. Его отец - настоящий Лужин, пожилой Лужин, Лужин, писавший книги,- вышел от него, улыбаясь, потирая руки, уже смазанные на ночь прозрачным английским кремом, и своей вечерней замшевой походкой вернулся к себе в спальню. Жена лежала в постели. Она приподнялась и спросила: "Ну что, как?" Он снял свой серый халат и ответил: "Обошлось. Принял спокойно. Ух... Прямо гора с плеч". "Как хорошо...- сказала жена, медленно натягивая на себя шелковое одеяло.- Слава Богу, слава Богу..."
Это было и впрямь облегчение. Всё лето - быстрое дачное лето, состоящее в общем из трёх запахов: сирень, сенокос, сухие листья - всё лето они обсуждали вопрос, когда и как перед ним открыться, и откладывали, откладывали, дотянули до конца августа. Они ходили вокруг него, с опаской суживая круги, но, только он поднимал голову, отец с напускным интересом уже стучал по стеклу барометра, где стрелка всегда стояла на шторме, а мать уплывала куда-то в глубь дома оставляя все двери открытыми, забывая длинный, неряшливый букет колокольчиков на крышке рояля. Тучная француженка, читавшая ему вслух "Монте-Кристо" и прерывавшая чтение, чтобы с чувством воскликнуть "бедный, бедный Дантес!", предлагала его родителям, что сама возьмёт быка за рога, хотя быка этого смертельно боялась. Бедный, бедный Дантес не возбуждал в нём участия, и, наблюдая её воспитательный вздох, он только щурился и терзал резинкой ватманскую бумагу, стараясь поужаснее нарисовать выпуклость её бюста.
What struck him most was the fact that from Monday on he would be Luzhin. His father — the real Luzhin, the elderly Luzhin, the writer, of books — left the nursery with a smile, rubbing his hands (already smeared for the night with transparent cold cream), and with his suede-slippered evening gait padded back to his bedroom. His wife lay in bed. She half raised herself and said: 'Well, how did it go?' He removed his gray dressing gown and replied: 'We managed. Took it calmly. Ouf... that's a real weight off my shoulders.' 'How nice...' said his wife, slowly drawing the silk blanket over her. 'Thank goodness, thank goodness...
It was indeed a relief. The whole summer — a swift country summer consisting in the main of three smells: lilac, new-mown hay, and dry leaves — the whole summer they had debated the question of when and how to tell him, and they had kept putting it off so that it dragged on until the end of August. They had moved around him in apprehensively narrowing circles, but he had only to raise his head and his father would already be rapping with feigned interest on the barometer dial, where the hand always stood at storm, while his mother would sail away somewhere into the depths of the house, leaving all the doors open and forgetting the long, messy bunch of bluebells on the lid of the piano. The stout French governess who used to read The Count of Monte Cristo aloud to him (and interrupt her reading in order to exclaim feelingly 'poor, poor Dantès!') proposed to the parents that she herself take the bull by the horns, though this bull inspired mortal fear in her. Poor, poor Dantès did not arouse any sympathy in him, and observing her educational sigh he merely slitted his eyes and rived his drawing paper with an eraser, as he tried to portray her protuberant bust as horribly as possible. (Chapter I)