Subject
Aqua Durmanov, Mr Brod or Bred, Timur & Nabok in Ada
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Van and Ada are the children of Demon Veen and Marina Durmanov. Marina's poor twin sister Aqua (who was made to believe that Van was her beloved son) went mad soon after marrying Demon. (1.3)
Ada's sister-in-law Dorothy (Dasha) Vinelander marries a Mr Brod or Bred. (3.8)
In his poem Ne day mne Bog soyti s uma... ("The Lord Forbid My Going Mad," 1833) Pushkin mentions plamennyi bred (ardent ravings):
Когда б оставили меня
На воле, как бы резво я
Пустился в тёмный лес!
Я пел бы в пламенном бреду,
Я забывался бы в чаду
Нестройных, чудных грез.
...I would have sung in ardent ravings,
I would have forgotten myself in the intoxication
of disorderly wondrous dreams.
In Eugene Onegin (Two: XV: 13-14) Pushkin speaks of Lenski's yunyi bred (young delirium):
Простим горячке юных лет
И юный жар и юный бред.
let us forgive the fever of young years
both its young glow and young delirium.
The name Durmanov comes from durman (thorn apple; drug, intoxication). In his poem Tolstomu ("To Tolstoy," 1818) addressed to Count Tolstoy Amerikanets ("the American") Vyazemski speaks of myatezhnykh sklonnostey durman (the drug of rebellious inclinations) hurling Tolstoy iz raya v ad, iz ada v ray (from paradise to hell, from hell to paradise):
Американец и цыган,
На свете нравственном загадка,
Которого, как лихорадка,
Мятежных склонностей дурман
Или страстей кипящих схватка
Всегда из края мечет в край,
Из рая в ад, из ада в рай!
Которого душа есть пламень,
А ум — холодный эгоист;
Под бурей рока — твердый камень!
В волненьи страсти — легкий лист!
The last two lines ("Under fate's storm [he is] a hard stone! / In the agitation of passion, a light leaf!") Pushkin had planned to use as the epigraph to Kavkazskiy plennik ("The Caucasian Captive," 1822) but did not because of his enmity with Tolstoy.
A few lines further into the poem Vyazemski mentions brod (ford):
Здесь муза брода не найдёт:
Она над бездною повисла.
The muse won't find a ford here:
she droops above the abyss.
In Vyazemski's poem Stantsiya ("The Station," 1825) quoted by Pushkin in his note 42 to EO "through a puddle wade across (vbrod) a fly can with closed eyes."
Count Tolstoy the American (who killed eleven gentlemen in duels) was a bretteur. Vyazemski's poem Tolstomu was written in Warsaw. Baron d'Onsky (Marina's lover with whom Demon fought a sword duel in Nice) was Polish. One of the seconds in Demon's duel with Skonky (d'Onsky's oneway nickname) was Colonel St Alin, a scoundrel:
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)
According to Shell (the main character in Aldanov's novel Bred, "Delirium," 1955), the Soviet Colonel ("Colonel No. 2") is almost mad. When Edda (Shell's mistress and agent) asks him what kind of man the Colonel is, Shell replies that he is a mixture: "five percent of Lenin, five of Suvorov, five of Arakcheev, twenty of Gogol's madman and the rest [65 %] is water, aqua distillata:"
- Поддерживaй с ним контaкт, - скaзaл он тaк же, кaк полковник. - Можешь сегодня с ним и обедaть. Лучше у него в номере. А кaк нaш дорогой полковник, пропaди он пропaдом? Еще не совсем сошёл с умa?
- Почему сошёл с умa?
- Дa у него глaзa ненормaльного человекa, рaзве ты не зaметилa?
- Дa что он вообще зa человек?
- Он смесь. Пять процентов от Ленинa, пять от Суворовa, пять от Арaкчеевa, двaдцaть от гоголевского сумaсшедшего, a остaльное водa, aqua distillata. (chapter XXVI)
According to Marina, d'Onsky is a spiritual Samurai:
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. (1.2)
As he speaks to the American Colonel ("Colonel No. 1"), Shell mentions bushido (the code) of the Japanese Samurai:
Каков бы я ни был, у меня есть свой кодекс чести. Так сказать, «бусидо» японских самураев, — хмуро сказал Шелль. В глазах у него что-то мелькнуло. «При случае может быть страшен, самурай», — отметил полковник. ("Delirium," chapter II)
and Colonel No. 1, in the same dialogue with Shell, mentions Stalin (who hates to hear unpleasant things):
— Удивит ли вас, если я скажу, что полковник № 2 тоже честный человек, правда, со всячинкой, как они все, и окруженный негодяями. Его положение трудное. Сталину вообще надо докладывать то, что он желает слышать. Неприятных сведений он не выносит, — большой недостаток для главы правительства. (ibid.)
Iosif (Soso) Dzhugashvili (Stalin's real name) was born in Gori (a city in Georgia, in the Caucasus). In Lermontov's Demon (1829-41) the action takes place in the Caucasus.
With white-bloused, enthusiastically sweating Andrey Andreevich, he [Van] 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. (1.28)
Van's Russian tutor Andrey Andreevich Aksakov (AAA) is a namesake of Ada's husband (Dorothy's brother) Andrey Andreevich Vinelander, a great sportsman. In Aldanov's Bred Colonel No. 2 avidly reads Aksakov's book on hunting. Aksakov and bred (ravings; delirium) are mentioned by Vyazemski in Literaturnaya ispoved' ("The Literary Confession," 1853), a poem written in the Alexandrines. Vyazemski's poem Aleksandriyskiy stikh ("The Alexandrines," 1853) has the epigraph from the drafts of Pushkin's Domik v Kolomne ("The Small Cottage in Kolomna," 1830):
…А стих александрийский?..
Уж не его ль себе я залучу?
Извилистый, проворный, длинный, склизкий
И с жалом даже, точная змея;
Мне кажется, что с ним управлюсь я.
In "The Small Cottage in Kolomna" (the final version, written in the octaves) Pushkin compares the poet to Tamerlane or even to Napoleon:
Как весело стихи свои вести
Под цифрами, в порядке, строй за строем,
Не позволять им в сторону брести,
Как войску, в пух рассыпанному боем!
Тут каждый слог замечен и в чести,
Тут каждый стих глядит себе героем,
А стихотворец... с кем же равен он?
Он Тамерлан иль сам Наполеон. (V)
Tamerlane (1336?-1405), the Tartar conqueror in western and southern Asia, ruler of Samarkand, is also known as Timur. Timur and Nabok are paired in Ada:
Ada had declined to invite anybody except the Erminin twins to her picnic; but she had had no intention of inviting the brother without the sister. The latter, it turned out, could not come, having gone to New Cranton to see a young drummer, her first boy friend, sail off into the sunrise with his regiment. But Greg had to be asked to come after all: on the previous day he had called on her bringing a 'talisman' from his very sick father, who wanted Ada to treasure as much as his grandam had a little camel of yellow ivory carved in Kiev, five centuries ago, in the days of Timur and Nabok. (1.39)
The twins Greg and Grace are the children of Colonel Erminin. Kiev is the home city of Aldanov and Natasha (Shell's bride in Bred). Talisman (1827) is a poem by Pushkin. The talisman (finger-ring with a sard) was given to Pushkin in Odessa by Countess Eliza Vorontsov. Her namesake Eliza Khitrovo (Kutuzov's daughter who was hopelessly in love with Pushkin) was nicknamed Erminia (after a character in Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered) by the poet's sister Olga. Pushkin addressed to Olga his poem Vertograd moey sestry... ("My Sister's Garden," 1825). In Ada Miss Vertograd is Demon's librarian:
Soon upon his arrival at Ardis, Van warned his former governess (who had reasons to believe in his threats) that if he were not permitted to remove from the library at any time, for any length of time, and without any trace of 'en lecture,' any volume, collected works, boxed pamphlets or incunabulum that he might fancy, he would have Miss Vertograd, his father's librarian, a completely servile and infinitely accommodative spinster of Verger's format and presumable date of publication, post to Ardis Hall trunkfuls of eighteenth century libertines, German sexologists, and a whole circus of Shastras and Nefsawis in literal translation with apocryphal addenda. (1.21)
Vertograd's rhyme city is, of course, Leningrad (or Stalingrad). I notice that in his poem Molodoy turka ("A Young Turk," 1889) Vladimir Solovyov wittily rhymes vertograd with retrograd (a retrograde person, reactionary):
Да! папа - весьма упорный
Старый ретроград,
И блюдет евнух проворный
Папин вертоград.
The young Turk in Solovyov's poem fears the agile eunuch who watches after the girls in his father's vertograd (harem). In his sword duel with d'Onsky Demon was eager to castrate his adversary. Papa being Russian for "Pope," papin ("father's," the word used by Solovyov in his poem) can also mean "the Pope's." As Demon found out, d'Onsky had left for Vatican. In A. K. Tolstoy's poem Bunt v Vatikane ("The Riot in Vatican," 1864) the eunuch singers attempt to castrate the Pope Pius IX. A. K. Tolstoy's satirical poem Velikodushie smyagchaet serdtsa ("Magnanimity Softens the Hearts") was first published by Solovyov in Tri Razgovora ("Three Conversations," 1899). The second edition of "Three Conversations about the War, Progress and End of the World History" includes Povest' ob Antikhriste ("The Tale about Antichrist," 1900). Its authorship is ascribed to a monk named Pansofiy (Pansophius). "Pan Sophius, a Pole?" (asks the Politician). "The Tale about Antichrist" has the epigraph from Solovyov's poem Panmongolism (1894):
Панмонголизм! Хоть слово дико,
Но мне ласкает слух оно,
Как бы предвестием великой
Судьбины божией полно.
It brings to mind the Antiterran Tartary, also known as "the ruthless Sovietnamur Khanate" ruled by Khan Sosso (2.2). Incidentally, Blok's poem Skify ("The Scythians," 1918) also has the epigraph from Solovyov's Panmongolism. In his poem Blok mentions the Lissabon and Messina earthquakes:
Века, века ваш старый горн ковал
И заглушал грома, лавины,
И дикой сказкой был для вас провал
И Лиссабона, и Мессины!
Messina (a seaport in NE Sicily) brings to mind Messiah mentioned by Solovyov in Panmongolism:
Когда в растленной Византии
Остыл божественный алтарь
И отреклися от Мессии
Иерей и князь, народ и царь, -
Тогда он поднял от Востока
Народ безвестный и чужой,
И под орудьем тяжким рока
Во прах склонился Рим второй.
In Solovyov's poem Messiya rhymes with Vizantiya (Byzantine Empire) and altar' rhymes with tsar'. On Demonia (aka Antiterra) Altar and Palermontovia are parts of the British Commonwealth:
Actually, Aqua was less pretty, and far more dotty, than Marina. During her fourteen years of miserable marriage she spent a broken series of steadily increasing sojourns in sanatoriums. A small map of the European part of the British Commonwealth - say, from Scoto-Scandinavia to the Riviera, Altar and Palermontovia - as well as most of the U.S.A., from Estoty and Canady to Argentina, might be quite thickly prickled with enameled red-cross-flag pins, marking, in her War of the Worlds, Aqua's bivouacs. (1.3)
Palermontovia blends Palermo (a seaport in and the capital of Sicily) with Lermontov, the author of Demon and the prophetic Predskazanie ("Prediction," 1830). The War of the Worlds (1897) is a novel by H. G. Wells. In his Russia in the Shadows (1920) Wells calls Lenin "the Kremlin dreamer."
Arbenin + L = rab + Lenin
Arbenin - the main character in Lermontov's play in verse Maskarad ("The Masked Ball," 1835)
rab - slave
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.
Of course, today, after great anti-L years of reactionary delusion have gone by (more or less!) and our sleek little machines, Faragod bless them, hum again after a fashion, as they did in the first half of the nineteenth century, the mere geographic aspect of the affair possesses its redeeming comic side, like those patterns of brass marquetry, and bric-a-Braques, and the ormolu horrors that meant 'art' to our humorless forefathers. (1.3)
Faragod hints at Faraday (1791-1867), the English physicist and chemist, discoverer of electromagnetic induction. In his last stream of consciousness Braun (the main character in Aldanov's trilogy "The Key," "The Escape," "The Cave") recalls "Comrade Faraday." Like Aldanov's Braun, Marina's twin sister Aqua and, years later, Van's and Ada's half-sister Lucette (the daughter of Marina and her husband Daniel Veen) commit suicide.
Alexey Sklyarenko
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Ada's sister-in-law Dorothy (Dasha) Vinelander marries a Mr Brod or Bred. (3.8)
In his poem Ne day mne Bog soyti s uma... ("The Lord Forbid My Going Mad," 1833) Pushkin mentions plamennyi bred (ardent ravings):
Когда б оставили меня
На воле, как бы резво я
Пустился в тёмный лес!
Я пел бы в пламенном бреду,
Я забывался бы в чаду
Нестройных, чудных грез.
...I would have sung in ardent ravings,
I would have forgotten myself in the intoxication
of disorderly wondrous dreams.
In Eugene Onegin (Two: XV: 13-14) Pushkin speaks of Lenski's yunyi bred (young delirium):
Простим горячке юных лет
И юный жар и юный бред.
let us forgive the fever of young years
both its young glow and young delirium.
The name Durmanov comes from durman (thorn apple; drug, intoxication). In his poem Tolstomu ("To Tolstoy," 1818) addressed to Count Tolstoy Amerikanets ("the American") Vyazemski speaks of myatezhnykh sklonnostey durman (the drug of rebellious inclinations) hurling Tolstoy iz raya v ad, iz ada v ray (from paradise to hell, from hell to paradise):
Американец и цыган,
На свете нравственном загадка,
Которого, как лихорадка,
Мятежных склонностей дурман
Или страстей кипящих схватка
Всегда из края мечет в край,
Из рая в ад, из ада в рай!
Которого душа есть пламень,
А ум — холодный эгоист;
Под бурей рока — твердый камень!
В волненьи страсти — легкий лист!
The last two lines ("Under fate's storm [he is] a hard stone! / In the agitation of passion, a light leaf!") Pushkin had planned to use as the epigraph to Kavkazskiy plennik ("The Caucasian Captive," 1822) but did not because of his enmity with Tolstoy.
A few lines further into the poem Vyazemski mentions brod (ford):
Здесь муза брода не найдёт:
Она над бездною повисла.
The muse won't find a ford here:
she droops above the abyss.
In Vyazemski's poem Stantsiya ("The Station," 1825) quoted by Pushkin in his note 42 to EO "through a puddle wade across (vbrod) a fly can with closed eyes."
Count Tolstoy the American (who killed eleven gentlemen in duels) was a bretteur. Vyazemski's poem Tolstomu was written in Warsaw. Baron d'Onsky (Marina's lover with whom Demon fought a sword duel in Nice) was Polish. One of the seconds in Demon's duel with Skonky (d'Onsky's oneway nickname) was Colonel St Alin, a scoundrel:
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)
According to Shell (the main character in Aldanov's novel Bred, "Delirium," 1955), the Soviet Colonel ("Colonel No. 2") is almost mad. When Edda (Shell's mistress and agent) asks him what kind of man the Colonel is, Shell replies that he is a mixture: "five percent of Lenin, five of Suvorov, five of Arakcheev, twenty of Gogol's madman and the rest [65 %] is water, aqua distillata:"
- Поддерживaй с ним контaкт, - скaзaл он тaк же, кaк полковник. - Можешь сегодня с ним и обедaть. Лучше у него в номере. А кaк нaш дорогой полковник, пропaди он пропaдом? Еще не совсем сошёл с умa?
- Почему сошёл с умa?
- Дa у него глaзa ненормaльного человекa, рaзве ты не зaметилa?
- Дa что он вообще зa человек?
- Он смесь. Пять процентов от Ленинa, пять от Суворовa, пять от Арaкчеевa, двaдцaть от гоголевского сумaсшедшего, a остaльное водa, aqua distillata. (chapter XXVI)
According to Marina, d'Onsky is a spiritual Samurai:
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. (1.2)
As he speaks to the American Colonel ("Colonel No. 1"), Shell mentions bushido (the code) of the Japanese Samurai:
Каков бы я ни был, у меня есть свой кодекс чести. Так сказать, «бусидо» японских самураев, — хмуро сказал Шелль. В глазах у него что-то мелькнуло. «При случае может быть страшен, самурай», — отметил полковник. ("Delirium," chapter II)
and Colonel No. 1, in the same dialogue with Shell, mentions Stalin (who hates to hear unpleasant things):
— Удивит ли вас, если я скажу, что полковник № 2 тоже честный человек, правда, со всячинкой, как они все, и окруженный негодяями. Его положение трудное. Сталину вообще надо докладывать то, что он желает слышать. Неприятных сведений он не выносит, — большой недостаток для главы правительства. (ibid.)
Iosif (Soso) Dzhugashvili (Stalin's real name) was born in Gori (a city in Georgia, in the Caucasus). In Lermontov's Demon (1829-41) the action takes place in the Caucasus.
With white-bloused, enthusiastically sweating Andrey Andreevich, he [Van] 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. (1.28)
Van's Russian tutor Andrey Andreevich Aksakov (AAA) is a namesake of Ada's husband (Dorothy's brother) Andrey Andreevich Vinelander, a great sportsman. In Aldanov's Bred Colonel No. 2 avidly reads Aksakov's book on hunting. Aksakov and bred (ravings; delirium) are mentioned by Vyazemski in Literaturnaya ispoved' ("The Literary Confession," 1853), a poem written in the Alexandrines. Vyazemski's poem Aleksandriyskiy stikh ("The Alexandrines," 1853) has the epigraph from the drafts of Pushkin's Domik v Kolomne ("The Small Cottage in Kolomna," 1830):
…А стих александрийский?..
Уж не его ль себе я залучу?
Извилистый, проворный, длинный, склизкий
И с жалом даже, точная змея;
Мне кажется, что с ним управлюсь я.
In "The Small Cottage in Kolomna" (the final version, written in the octaves) Pushkin compares the poet to Tamerlane or even to Napoleon:
Как весело стихи свои вести
Под цифрами, в порядке, строй за строем,
Не позволять им в сторону брести,
Как войску, в пух рассыпанному боем!
Тут каждый слог замечен и в чести,
Тут каждый стих глядит себе героем,
А стихотворец... с кем же равен он?
Он Тамерлан иль сам Наполеон. (V)
Tamerlane (1336?-1405), the Tartar conqueror in western and southern Asia, ruler of Samarkand, is also known as Timur. Timur and Nabok are paired in Ada:
Ada had declined to invite anybody except the Erminin twins to her picnic; but she had had no intention of inviting the brother without the sister. The latter, it turned out, could not come, having gone to New Cranton to see a young drummer, her first boy friend, sail off into the sunrise with his regiment. But Greg had to be asked to come after all: on the previous day he had called on her bringing a 'talisman' from his very sick father, who wanted Ada to treasure as much as his grandam had a little camel of yellow ivory carved in Kiev, five centuries ago, in the days of Timur and Nabok. (1.39)
The twins Greg and Grace are the children of Colonel Erminin. Kiev is the home city of Aldanov and Natasha (Shell's bride in Bred). Talisman (1827) is a poem by Pushkin. The talisman (finger-ring with a sard) was given to Pushkin in Odessa by Countess Eliza Vorontsov. Her namesake Eliza Khitrovo (Kutuzov's daughter who was hopelessly in love with Pushkin) was nicknamed Erminia (after a character in Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered) by the poet's sister Olga. Pushkin addressed to Olga his poem Vertograd moey sestry... ("My Sister's Garden," 1825). In Ada Miss Vertograd is Demon's librarian:
Soon upon his arrival at Ardis, Van warned his former governess (who had reasons to believe in his threats) that if he were not permitted to remove from the library at any time, for any length of time, and without any trace of 'en lecture,' any volume, collected works, boxed pamphlets or incunabulum that he might fancy, he would have Miss Vertograd, his father's librarian, a completely servile and infinitely accommodative spinster of Verger's format and presumable date of publication, post to Ardis Hall trunkfuls of eighteenth century libertines, German sexologists, and a whole circus of Shastras and Nefsawis in literal translation with apocryphal addenda. (1.21)
Vertograd's rhyme city is, of course, Leningrad (or Stalingrad). I notice that in his poem Molodoy turka ("A Young Turk," 1889) Vladimir Solovyov wittily rhymes vertograd with retrograd (a retrograde person, reactionary):
Да! папа - весьма упорный
Старый ретроград,
И блюдет евнух проворный
Папин вертоград.
The young Turk in Solovyov's poem fears the agile eunuch who watches after the girls in his father's vertograd (harem). In his sword duel with d'Onsky Demon was eager to castrate his adversary. Papa being Russian for "Pope," papin ("father's," the word used by Solovyov in his poem) can also mean "the Pope's." As Demon found out, d'Onsky had left for Vatican. In A. K. Tolstoy's poem Bunt v Vatikane ("The Riot in Vatican," 1864) the eunuch singers attempt to castrate the Pope Pius IX. A. K. Tolstoy's satirical poem Velikodushie smyagchaet serdtsa ("Magnanimity Softens the Hearts") was first published by Solovyov in Tri Razgovora ("Three Conversations," 1899). The second edition of "Three Conversations about the War, Progress and End of the World History" includes Povest' ob Antikhriste ("The Tale about Antichrist," 1900). Its authorship is ascribed to a monk named Pansofiy (Pansophius). "Pan Sophius, a Pole?" (asks the Politician). "The Tale about Antichrist" has the epigraph from Solovyov's poem Panmongolism (1894):
Панмонголизм! Хоть слово дико,
Но мне ласкает слух оно,
Как бы предвестием великой
Судьбины божией полно.
It brings to mind the Antiterran Tartary, also known as "the ruthless Sovietnamur Khanate" ruled by Khan Sosso (2.2). Incidentally, Blok's poem Skify ("The Scythians," 1918) also has the epigraph from Solovyov's Panmongolism. In his poem Blok mentions the Lissabon and Messina earthquakes:
Века, века ваш старый горн ковал
И заглушал грома, лавины,
И дикой сказкой был для вас провал
И Лиссабона, и Мессины!
Messina (a seaport in NE Sicily) brings to mind Messiah mentioned by Solovyov in Panmongolism:
Когда в растленной Византии
Остыл божественный алтарь
И отреклися от Мессии
Иерей и князь, народ и царь, -
Тогда он поднял от Востока
Народ безвестный и чужой,
И под орудьем тяжким рока
Во прах склонился Рим второй.
In Solovyov's poem Messiya rhymes with Vizantiya (Byzantine Empire) and altar' rhymes with tsar'. On Demonia (aka Antiterra) Altar and Palermontovia are parts of the British Commonwealth:
Actually, Aqua was less pretty, and far more dotty, than Marina. During her fourteen years of miserable marriage she spent a broken series of steadily increasing sojourns in sanatoriums. A small map of the European part of the British Commonwealth - say, from Scoto-Scandinavia to the Riviera, Altar and Palermontovia - as well as most of the U.S.A., from Estoty and Canady to Argentina, might be quite thickly prickled with enameled red-cross-flag pins, marking, in her War of the Worlds, Aqua's bivouacs. (1.3)
Palermontovia blends Palermo (a seaport in and the capital of Sicily) with Lermontov, the author of Demon and the prophetic Predskazanie ("Prediction," 1830). The War of the Worlds (1897) is a novel by H. G. Wells. In his Russia in the Shadows (1920) Wells calls Lenin "the Kremlin dreamer."
Arbenin + L = rab + Lenin
Arbenin - the main character in Lermontov's play in verse Maskarad ("The Masked Ball," 1835)
rab - slave
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.
Of course, today, after great anti-L years of reactionary delusion have gone by (more or less!) and our sleek little machines, Faragod bless them, hum again after a fashion, as they did in the first half of the nineteenth century, the mere geographic aspect of the affair possesses its redeeming comic side, like those patterns of brass marquetry, and bric-a-Braques, and the ormolu horrors that meant 'art' to our humorless forefathers. (1.3)
Faragod hints at Faraday (1791-1867), the English physicist and chemist, discoverer of electromagnetic induction. In his last stream of consciousness Braun (the main character in Aldanov's trilogy "The Key," "The Escape," "The Cave") recalls "Comrade Faraday." Like Aldanov's Braun, Marina's twin sister Aqua and, years later, Van's and Ada's half-sister Lucette (the daughter of Marina and her husband Daniel Veen) commit suicide.
Alexey Sklyarenko
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