In VN’s novel Priglashenie na kazn’ (“Invitation to a Beheading,” 1935) the jailer Rodion uses the phrase styd i sram (shame on you):
Часы пробили семь, и вскоре явился Родион с обедом.
- Он, наверное, еще не приехал? - спросил Цинциннат.
Родион было ушел, но на пороге обернулся:
- Стыд и срам, - проговорил он, всхлипнув, - денно-нощно груши околачиваете... кормишь вас тут, холишь, сам на ногах не стоишь, а вы только и знаете, что с неумными вопросами лезть. Тьфу, бессовестный...
Время, ровно жужжа, продолжало течь. В камере воздух потемнел, и, когда он уже был совсем слепой и вялый, деловито зажегся свет посредине потолка, - нет, как раз-то и не посредине, - мучительное напоминание. Цинциннат разделся и лег в постель с Quercus'om. Автор уже добирался до цивилизованных эпох, - судя по разговору трёх весёлых путников, Тита, Пуда и Вечного Жида, тянувших из фляжек вино на прохладном мху под чёрным вечерним дубом.
- Неужели никто не спасёт? - вдруг громко спросил Цинциннат и присел на постели (руки бедняка, показывающего, что у него ничего нет).
- Неужто никто, - повторил Цинциннат, глядя на беспощадную желтизну стен и все так же держа пустые ладони.
Сквозняк обратился в дубравное дуновение. Упал, подпрыгнул и покатился по одеялу сорвавшийся с дремучих теней, разросшихся наверху, крупный, вдвое крупнее, чем в натуре, на славу выкрашенный в блестящий желтоватый цвет, отполированный и плотно, как яйцо, сидевший в своей пробковой чашке, бутафорский жёлудь.
The clock struck seven, and shortly Rodion appeared with dinner.
‘You are sure he still has not come?’ asked Cincinnatus.
Rodion was about to leave, but turned on the threshold.
‘Shame on you,’ he said with a sob in his voice, ‘day and night you do nothing... a body feeds you here, tends you lovingly, wears himself out for your sake, and all you do is ask stupid questions. For shame, you thankless man…’
Time, humming evenly, continued to pass. The air in the cell grew dark, and when it had become quite dense and dull, the light came on in business-like fashion in the centre of the ceiling — no, not quite in the centre, that was just it — an agonizing reminder. Cincinnatus undressed and got in bed with Quercus. The author was already getting to the civilized ages, to judge by the conversation of three merry wayfarers, Tit, Pud, and the Wandering Jew who were taking swigs of wine from their flasks on the cool moss beneath the black vespertine oak.
‘Will no one save me?’ Cincinnatus suddenly asked aloud and sat up on the bed (opening his pauper’s hands, showing that he had nothing).
‘Can it be that no one will?’ repeated Cincinnatus, gazing at the implacable yellowness of the walls and still holding up his empty palms.
The draft became a leafy breeze. From the dense shadows above there fell and bounced on the blanket a large dummy acorn, twice as large as life, splendidly painted a glossy buff, and fitting its cork cup as snugly as an egg. (Chapter XI)
Before the family dinner in “Ardis the Second” Demon Veen (in VN’s novel Ada, 1969, Van’s and Ada’s father) calls the new kerosene distillery "styd i sram (shame) of our county:"
‘You are a fantastically charming boy,’ said Demon, shedding another sweet-water tear. He pressed to his cheek Van’s strong shapely hand. Van kissed his father’s hairy fist which was already holding a not yet visible glass of liquor. Despite the manly impact of their Irishness, all Veens who had Russian blood revealed much tenderness in ritual overflows of affection while remaining somewhat inept in its verbal expression.
‘I say,’ exclaimed Demon, ‘what’s happened — your shaftment is that of a carpenter’s. Show me your other hand. Good gracious’ (muttering:) ‘Hump of Venus disfigured, Line of Life scarred but monstrously long…’ (switching to a gipsy chant:) ‘You’ll live to reach Terra, and come back a wiser and merrier man’ (reverting to his ordinary voice:) ‘What puzzles me as a palmist is the strange condition of the Sister of your Life. And the roughness!’
‘Mascodagama,’ whispered Van, raising his eyebrows.
‘Ah, of course, how blunt (dumb) of me. Now tell me — you like Ardis Hall?’
‘I adore it,’ said Van. ‘It’s for me the château que baignait la Dore. I would gladly spend all my scarred and strange life here. But that’s a hopeless fancy.’
‘Hopeless? I wonder. I know Dan wants to leave it to Lucile, but Dan is greedy, and my affairs are such that I can satisfy great greed. When I was your age I thought that the sweetest word in the language rhymes with "billiard," and now I know I was right. If you’re really keen, son, on having this property, I might try to buy it. I can exert a certain pressure upon my Marina. She sighs like a hassock when you sit upon her, so to speak. Damn it, the servants here are not Mercuries. Pull that cord again. Yes, maybe Dan could be made to sell.’
‘That’s very black of you, Dad,’ said pleased Van, using a slang phrase he had learned from his tender young nurse, Ruby, who was born in the Mississippi region where most magistrates, public benefactors, high priests of various so-called’ denominations,’ and other honorable and generous men, had the dark or darkish skin of their West-African ancestors, who had been the first navigators to reach the Gulf of Mexico.
‘I wonder,’ Demon mused. ‘It would cost hardly more than a couple of millions minus what Cousin Dan owes me, minus also the Ladore pastures, which are utterly mucked up and should be got rid of gradually, if the local squires don’t blow up that new kerosene distillery, the stïd i sram (shame) of our county. I am not particularly fond of Ardis, but I have nothing against it, though I detest its environs. Ladore Town has become very honky-tonky, and the gaming is not what it used to be. You have all sorts of rather odd neighbors. Poor Lord Erminin is practically insane. At the races, the other day, I was talking to a woman I preyed upon years ago, oh long before Moses de Vere cuckolded her husband in my absence and shot him dead in my presence — an epigram you’ve heard before, no doubt from these very lips —’
(The next thing will be ‘paternal repetitiousness.’)
‘— but a good son should put up with a little paternal repetitiousness — Well, she tells me her boy and Ada see a lot of each other, et cetera. Is that true?’
‘Not really,’ said Van. ‘They meet now and then — at the usual parties. Both like horses, and races, but that’s all. There is no et cetera, that’s out of the question.’
‘Good! Ah, the portentous footfall is approaching, I hear. Prascovie de Prey has the worst fault of a snob: overstatement. Bonsoir, Bouteillan. You look as ruddy as your native vine — but we are not getting any younger, as the amerlocks say, and that pretty messenger of mine must have been waylaid by some younger and more fortunate suitor.’
Proshu, papochka (please, Dad),’ murmured Van, who always feared that his father’s recondite jests might offend a menial — while sinning himself by being sometimes too curt.
But — to use a hoary narrational turn — the old Frenchman knew his former master too well to be bothered by gentlemanly humor. His hand still tingled nicely from slapping Blanche’s compact young bottom for having garbled Mr Veen’s simple request and broken a flower vase. After placing his tray on a low table he retreated a few steps, his fingers remaining curved in the tray-carrying position, and only then acknowledged Demon’s welcome with a fond bow. Was Monsieur’s health always good? Indeed it was. (1.38)
According to Van, Bouteillan had once helped him to fly a box kite:
None of the family was at home when Van arrived. A servant in waiting took his horse. He entered the Gothic archway of the hall where Bouteillan, the old bald butler who unprofessionally now wore a mustache (dyed a rich gravy brown), met him with gested delight — he had once been the valet of Van’s father — ‘Je parie,’ he said, ‘que Monsieur ne me reconnaît pas,’ and proceeded to remind Van of what Van had already recollected unaided, the farmannikin (a special kind of box kite, untraceable nowadays even in the greatest museums housing the toys of the past) which Bouteillan had helped him to fly one day in a meadow dotted with buttercups. Both looked up: the tiny red rectangle hung for an instant askew in a blue spring sky. The hall was famous for its painted ceilings. It was too early for tea: Would Van like him or a maid to unpack? Oh, one of the maids, said Van, wondering briefly what item in a schoolboy’s luggage might be supposed to shock a housemaid. The picture of naked Ivory Revery (a model)? Who cared, now that he was a man? (1.5)
Darkbloom ('Notes to Ada'): Je parie, etc.: I bet you do not recognize me, Sir.
In Pushkin’s short novel Kapitanskaya dochka (“The Captain’s Daughter,” 1836) young Petrusha Grinyov makes a kite of the map that hung against the wall without ever being used:
Надобно знать, что для меня выписана была из Москвы географическая карта. Она висела на стене безо всякого употребления и давно соблазняла меня шириною и добротою бумаги. Я решился сделать из нее змей и, пользуясь сном Бопре, принялся за работу. Батюшка вошёл в то самое время, как я прилаживал мочальный хвост к Мысу Доброй Надежды.
A map had been procured for me from Moscow, which hung against the wall without ever being used, and which had been tempting me for a long time from the size and strength of its paper. I had at last resolved to make a kite of it, and, taking advantage of Beaupré's slumbers, I had set to work. My father came in just at the very moment when I was tying a tail to the Cape of Good Hope. (chapter I)
According to M. Beaupré (Grinyov’s French tutor), he is not vrag butylki (averse to the bottle):
Бопре в отечестве своём был парикмахером, потом в Пруссии солдатом, потом приехал в Россию pour être outchitel, не очень понимая значение этого слова. Он был добрый малый, но ветрен и беспутен до крайности. Главною его слабостию была страсть к прекрасному полу; нередко за свои нежности получал он толчки, от которых охал по целым суткам. К тому же не был он (по его выражению) и врагом бутылки, т. е. (говоря по-русски) любил хлебнуть лишнее.
Beaupré, in his native country, had been a hairdresser, then a soldier in Prussia, and then had come to Russia to be "outchitel," without very well knowing the meaning of this word. He was a good creature, but wonderfully absent and hare-brained. His greatest weakness was a love of the fair sex. Neither, as he said himself, was he averse to the bottle, that is, as we say in Russia, that his passion was drink. (chapter I)
The name Bouteillan comes from bouteille (“bottle”). Like his bastard Bout (Van’s valet), Bouteillan (the French butler at Ardis) is a lover of Blanche, a French handmaid who marries Trofim Fartukov (the Russian coachman in "Ardis the Second"). When Van leaves Ardis forever, Trofim tells him that even through kozhanyi fartuk (a leathern apron) he would not think of touching Blanche (1.41). The jailer Rodion (who, in his role of Rodrig, the director of the prison, acts as a coachman of the carriage that brings Cincinnatus and M'sieur Pierre to Thriller Square, the site of the execution) wears a leathern apron:
Теперь газет в камеру не доставлялось: заметив, что из них вырезается всё, могущее касаться экзекуции, Цинциннат сам отказался от них. Утренний завтрак упростился: вместо шоколада - хотя бы слабого - давали брандахлыст с флотилией чаинок; гренков же было не раскусить. Родион не скрывал, что обслуживание молчаливо-привередливого узника наскучило ему.
За всем этим он как бы нарочно возился в камере всё дольше и дольше. Его жарко-рыжая бородища, бессмысленная синева глаз, кожаный фартук, руки, подобные клешням, - всё это повторно слагалось в такое гнетущее, нудное впечатление, что Цинциннат отворачивался к стене, покуда происходила уборка.
Now newspapers were no longer brought to the cell: having noticed that everything that might have any connection with the execution was clipped out, Cincinnatus himself had declined to receive them. Breakfast had grown simpler: instead of chocolate — albeit weak chocolate — he would receive some slop with a flotilla of tea leaves; the toast was so hard he could not bite through it. Rodion made no secret of the fact that he had grown bored with serving the silent and fastidious prisoner.
He would deliberately busy himself for a longer and longer time in the cell. His flame-red beard, the imbecile azure of his eyes, his leather apron, his clawlike hands — all this accumulated through repetition to form such a depressing, tedious impression that Cincinnatus would turn away toward the wall while the cleaning was in progress. (Chapter XI)
When told that his son participated in Pugachev’s rebellion, Grinyov’s father exclaims styd i sram nashemu rodu ("it is a shame and a disgrace to our race!"):
Сей неожиданный удар едва не убил отца моего. Он лишился обыкновенной своей твёрдости, и горесть его (обыкновенно немая) изливалась в горьких жалобах. «Как!» — повторял он, выходя из себя. — «Сын мой участвовал в замыслах Пугачева! Боже праведный, до чего я дожил! Государыня избавляет его от казни! От этого разве мне легче? Не казнь страшна: пращур мой умер на лобном месте, отстаивая то, что почитал святынею своей совести; отец мой пострадал вместе с Волынским и Хрущёвым. Но дворянину изменить своей присяге, соединиться с разбойниками, с убийцами, с беглыми холопьями!.. Стыд и срам нашему роду!..»
This unexpected blow almost killed my father. He lost his habitual firmness, and vented his (usually mute) grief in bitter lamentations.
What!" repeated he, beside himself. "That my son should have plotted with Pugachev! Oh, heavens! that I should have lived to see this! The empress delivers him from death! Am I the better for that? It is not execution that is dreadful; my great-grandfather died on the scaffold because he would not violate the dictates of his conscience; my father suffered with Volynski and Khrushchev. But that a nobleman should break his oath of allegiance, that he should unite himself with robbers, murderers, and runaway serfs! . . . It is a shame and a disgrace to our race! . . . ." (Chapter XIV)
In Istoriya Pugachyova ("The History of Pugachev," 1834) Pushkin describes the beheading of Pugachev in Moscow in January, 1775.
VN's Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle brings to mind Aksakov's novel Semeynaya khronika ("The Family Chronicle," 1856). According to Fyodor Godunov-Cherdyntsev, the narrator and main character in VN's novel Dar ("The Gift," 1937), his father used to call Aksakov's descriptions of nature styd i sram:
«Мой отец находил вопиющие ошибки в его и толстовских описаниях природы, и уж про Аксакова нечего говорить, добавлял он, – это стыд и срам».
«Быть может, если мёртвые тела убраны, мы примемся за поэтов? Как вы думаете? Кстати, о мёртвых телах. Вам никогда не приходило в голову, что лермонтовский „знакомый труп“ – это безумно смешно, ибо он, собственно, хотел сказать „труп знакомого“, – иначе ведь непонятно: знакомство посмертное контекстом не оправдано».
“My father used to find all kinds of howlers in Turgenev’s and Tolstoy’s hunting scenes and descriptions of nature, and as for the wretched Aksakov, let’s not even discuss his disgraceful blunders in that field.”
“Now that the dead bodies have been removed we might, perhaps, proceed to the poets? All right. By the way, speaking of dead bodies, has it ever occurred to you that in Lermontov’s most famous short poem the ‘familiar corpse’ at the end is extremely funny? What he really wanted to say was ‘corpse of the man she once knew.’ The posthumous acquaintance is unjustified and meaningless.” (Chapter One)
In his poem Son ("The Dream," 1841) Lermontov mentions znakomyi trup (familiar corpse). Like Lermontov's poem, VN's Ada seems to be a triple dream (a dream within a dream within a dream).
At ten Van puzzles out the exaggerated but, on the whole, complimentary allusions to his father’s volitations and loves in another life in Lermontov's diamond-faceted tetrameters:
The year 1880 (Aqua was still alive — somehow, somewhere!) was to prove to be the most retentive and talented one in his long, too long, never too long life. He was ten. His father had lingered in the West where the many-colored mountains acted upon Van as they had on all young Russians of genius. He could solve an Euler-type problem or learn by heart Pushkin’s ‘Headless Horseman’ poem in less than twenty minutes. With white-bloused, enthusiastically sweating Andrey Andreevich, he lolled for hours in the violet shade of pink cliffs, studying major and minor Russian writers — and puzzling out the exaggerated but, on the whole, complimentary allusions to his father’s volitations and loves in another life in Lermontov’s diamond-faceted tetrameters. He struggled to keep back his tears, while AAA blew his fat red nose, when shown the peasant-bare footprint of Tolstoy preserved in the clay of a motor court in Utah where he had written the tale of Murat, the Navajo chieftain, a French general’s bastard, shot by Cora Day in his swimming pool. (1.28)
Darkbloom ('Notes to Ada'): The Headless Horseman: Mayn Reid’s title is ascribed here to Pushkin, author of The Bronze Horseman.
Lermontov: author of The Demon.
Tolstoy etc.: Tolstoy’s hero, Haji Murad, (a Caucasian chieftain) is blended here with General Murat, Napoleon’s brother-in-law, and with the French revolutionary leader Marat assassinated in his bath by Charlotte Corday.
Van's Russian tutor, Andrey Andreevich Aksakov (AAA) has the same name and patronymic as Andrey Andreevich Vinelander, Ada's husband who addresses Demon “Dementiy Labirintovich” and calls him balagur (a wag):
'And then, one day, Demon warned me that he would not come any more if he heard again poor Andrey's poor joke (Nu i balagur-zhe vy, Dementiy Labirintovich) or what Dorothy, l'impayable ("priceless for impudence and absurdity") Dorothy, thought of my camping out in the mountains with only Mayo, a cowhand, to protect me from lions.' (3.8)
In a poem written in Sept., 1835, in the meter and rhyme scheme of the Eugene Onegin stanza Pushkin mentions a labyrinth:
В мои осенние досуги,
В те дни, как любо мне писать,
Вы мне советуете, други,
Рассказ забытый продолжать.
Вы говорите справедливо,
Что странно, даже неучтиво
Роман не конча перервать,
Отдав уже его в печать,
Что должно своего героя
Как бы то ни было женить,
По крайней мере уморить,
И лица прочие пристроя,
Отдав им дружеский поклон,
Из лабиринта вывесть вон.
Вы говорите: "Слава богу,
Покамест твой Онегин жив,
Роман не кончен - понемногу
Иди вперед; не будь ленив.
Со славы, вняв ее призванью,
Сбирай оброк хвалой и бранью -
Рисуй и франтов городских
И милых барышень своих,
Войну и бал, дворец и хату,
И келью. . . . и харем
И с нашей публики меж тем
Бери умеренную плату,
За книжку по пяти рублей -
Налог не тягостный, ей-ей."
During my days of autumn leisure -
those days when I so love to write -
you, friends, advise me to go on
with my forgotten tale.
You say - and you are right -
that it is odd, and even impolite,
to interrupt an uncompleted novel
and have it published as it is;
that one must marry off one's hero in any case,
or kill him off at least, and, after having
disposed of the remaining characters
and made to them a friendly bow,
expel them from a labyrinth.
You say: thank God,
while your Onegin is still alive,
the novel is not finished; forward go
little by little, don’t be lazy.
While heeding her appeal, from Fame
Collect a tax in praise and blame.
<Depict the dandies of the town,
your amiable misses,
warfare and ball, palace and hut,
cell…………… and harem, meantime>
take from our public
a reasonable payment –
five rubles for each published part;
really, ’tis not a heavy tax.
In his poem <Iz Pindemonti> (<From Pindemonte>, 1836) Pushkin mentions balagur (a joker):
Не дорого ценю я громкие права,
От коих не одна кружится голова.
Я не ропщу о том, что отказали боги
Мне в сладкой участи оспоривать налоги
Или мешать царям друг с другом воевать;
И мало горя мне, свободно ли печать
Морочит олухов, иль чуткая цензура
В журнальных замыслах стесняет балагура.
Все это, видите ль, слова, слова, слова*
Иные, лучшие, мне дороги права;
Иная, лучшая, потребна мне свобода:
Зависеть от царя, зависеть от народа —
Не все ли нам равно? Бог с ними. Никому
Отчета не давать, себе лишь самому
Служить и угождать; для власти, для ливреи
Не гнуть ни совести, ни помыслов, ни шеи;
По прихоти своей скитаться здесь и там,
Дивясь божественным природы красотам,
И пред созданьями искусств и вдохновенья
Трепеща радостно в восторгах умиленья.
Вот счастье! вот права...
*Hamlet (Pushkin's note)
I have but little use for those loud "rights" - the phrase
That seems to addle people's minds these days.
I do not fault the gods, nor to a soul begrudge it
That I'm denied the bliss of wrangling over a Budget,
Or keeping king from fighting king in martial glee;
Nor do I worry if the Press is free
To hoax the nitwits, or if censor-pokers
Spoil journalistic games for sundry jokers;
All this is merely "words, words, words" you see.
Quite other, better rights are dear to me;
To be dependent on king, or on a nation -
Is it not all the same? Good riddance! But to dance
To no one else's fiddle, foster and advance
one's private self alone; before gold braid and power
with neither conscience, thought, nor spine to cower;
to move now here, now there with fancy's whim for law,
at Nature's godlike works feel ecstasy and awe,
and start before the gifts of art and joyous adoration -
there's bliss for you! There are your rights…
(transl. W. Arndt)
In Pushkin's draft the date under this poem is July 5. In VN's novel Pale Fire (1962) July 5 is the birthday of the three main characters: the poet Shade, his commentator Kinbote and his murderer Gradus (while Shade was born in 1898, Kinbote and Gradus were born in 1915). Ada's birthday, July 21, is the day of Shade's death. A leitmotif in Shade’s poem are the opening lines of Goethe’s Erlkönig (1782): Wer reitet so spät durch Nacht und Wind? / Es ist der Vater mit seinem Kind (Who rides so late through night and wind? / It is the father with his child). Goethe is the author of Faust (1808-32). In his translation (1932) of Faust’s Zueignung (Dedication) into Russian VN mentions labirint zhiznennogo sna (the labyrinth of life’s dream):
Отрада в вас мне чудится былая,
а тень встаёт родная не одна,
встаёт любовь и дружба молодая,
как полузвук, преданье, старина,
и снова - боль, и жалуясь, блуждая
по лабиринту жизненного сна,
зову я милых, счастием жестоко
обмеренных, исчезнувших до срока.
You bring with you the sight of joyful days,
And many a loved shade rises to the eye:
And like some other half-forgotten phrase,
First Love returns, and Friendship too is nigh:
Pain is renewed, and sorrow: all the ways,
Life wanders in its labyrinthine flight,
Naming the good, those that Fate has robbed
Of lovely hours, those slipped from me and lost.
Ihr bringt mit euch die Bilder froher Tage,
Und manche liebe Schatten steigen auf;
Gleich einer alten halbverklungnen Sage
Kommt erste Lieb' und Freundschaft mit herauf;
Der Schmerz wird neu, es wiederholt die Klage
Des Lebens labyrinthisch irren Lauf,
Und nennt die Guten, die, um schöne Stunden
Vom Glück getäuscht, vor mir hinweggeschwunden.
In June of 1881 Aksakov reverently pointed out to Van Goethe’s marble footprints in Gardone on Lake Garda:
In June, Van was taken to Florence, and Rome, and Capri, where his father turned up for a brief spell. They parted again, Demon sailing back to America, and Van with his tutor going first to Gardone on Lake Garda, where Aksakov reverently pointed out Goethe’s and d’Annunzio’s marble footprints, and then staying for a while in autumn at a hotel on a mountain slope above Leman Lake (where Karamzin and Count Tolstoy had roamed). (1.24)