As she speaks to Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969), Blanche (a French maid at Ardis) calls Philip Rack (Lucette’s music teacher) l’immonde Monsieur Rack:
She nodded, fear and adoration in her veiled eyes. When and how had it started? Last August, she said. Votre demoiselle picking flowers, he squiring her through the tall grass, a flute in his hand. Who he? What flute? Mais le musicien allemand, Monsieur Rack. The eager informer had her own swain lying upon her on the other side of the hedge. How anybody could do it with l’immonde Monsieur Rack, who once forgot his waistcoat in a haystack, was beyond the informer’s comprehension. Perhaps because he made songs for her, a very pretty one was once played at a big public ball at the Ladore Casino, it went... Never mind how it went, go on with the story. Monsieur Rack, one starry night, in a boat on the river, was heard by the informer and two gallants in the willow bushes, recounting the melancholy tale of his childhood, of his years of hunger and music and loneliness, and his sweetheart wept and threw her head back and he fed on her bare throat, il la mangeait de baisers dégoûtants. He must have had her not more than a dozen times, he was not as strong as another gentleman — oh, cut it out, said Van — and in winter the young lady learnt he was married, and hated his cruel wife, and in April when he began to give piano lessons to Lucette the affair was resumed, but then —
‘That will do!’ he cried and, beating his brow with his fist, stumbled out into the sunlight. (1.41)
Darkbloom (‘Notes to Ada’): immonde: unspeakable.
il la mangeait etc.: he devoured her with disgusting kisses.
In Le Temps retrouvé (“Time Regained”), the last novel of Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu (“In Search of Lost Time”), Marcel calls Rachel (Saint-Loup’s mistress whom Marcel meets at a soirée given by the Prince de Guermantes) cette immonde vieille (this horrible old woman):
On y remarquait la duchesse de Guermantes en grande conversation avec une affreuse vieille femme que je regardais sans pouvoir du tout deviner qui elle était : je n’en savais absolument rien. « Comme c’est drôle de voir ici Rachel », me dit à l’oreille Bloch qui passait à ce moment. Ce nom magique rompit aussitôt l’enchantement qui avait donné à la maîtresse de Saint-Loup la forme inconnue de cette immonde vieille, et je la reconnus alors parfaitement.
’How curious it is to see Rachel here!’ he [Bloch] whispered in my ear. At once the magic name broke the enchantment which had given to the mistress of Saint-Loup the unknown form of this horrible old woman. And once I knew who she was, I did indeed recognize her perfectly.
When Van visits Rack in Ward Five (where hopeless cases are kept) of the Kalugano hospital, Rack calls him “Baron von Wien:”
Will he ask me to transmit a message? Shall I refuse? Shall I consent — and not transmit it?
‘Have they all gone to Hollywood already? Please, tell me, Baron von Wien.’
‘I don’t know,’ answered Van. ‘They probably have. I really —’
‘Because I sent my last flute melody, and a letter for all the family, and no answer has come. I must vomit now. I ring myself.’ (1.42)
The characters in À la recherche du temps perdu include Baron de Charlus (Proust’s artistic representation of the homosexual). In Kalugano Van fights a pistol duel with Captain Tapper, of Wild Violet Lodge. Like the two seconds, Van’s adversary (a member of the Do-Re-La Country Club) is a homosexual.
According to Dr Fitzbishop, Rack (who was poisoned by his jealous wife Elsie) will soon leave Demonia (aka Antiterra, Earth’s twin planet on which Ada is set) and be on Terra in time for evensong:
On Monday around noon he was allowed to sit in a deckchair, on the lawn, which he had avidly gazed at for some days from his window. 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. (ibid.)
In his sonnet Le Mort joyeux (“The Joyful Corpse”) Baudelaire mentions une terre grasse (a fat soil) and his carcasse immonde (filthy carcass):
Dans une terre grasse et pleine d'escargots
Je veux creuser moi-même une fosse profonde,
Où je puisse à loisir étaler mes vieux os
Et dormir dans l'oubli comme un requin dans l'onde.
Je hais les testaments et je hais les tombeaux;
Plutôt que d'implorer une larme du monde,
Vivant, j'aimerais mieux inviter les corbeaux
À saigner tous les bouts de ma carcasse immonde.
Ô vers! noirs compagnons sans oreille et sans yeux,
Voyez venir à vous un mort libre et joyeux;
Philosophes viveurs, fils de la pourriture,
À travers ma ruine allez donc sans remords,
Et dites-moi s'il est encor quelque torture
Pour ce vieux corps sans âme et mort parmi les morts!
In a rich, heavy soil, infested with snails,
I wish to dig my own grave, wide and deep,
Where I can at leisure stretch out my old bones
And sleep in oblivion like a shark in the wave.
I have a hatred for testaments and for tombs;
Rather than implore a tear of the world,
I'd sooner, while alive, invite the crows
To drain the blood from my filthy carcass.
O worms! black companions with neither eyes nor ears,
See a dead man, joyous and free, approaching you;
Wanton philosophers, children of putrescence,
Go through my ruin then, without remorse,
And tell me if there still remains any torture
For this old soulless body, dead among the dead!
(tr. W. Aggeler)
In a letter to Van Ada says that Rack was always, in fact, mostly corpse:
Mere pity, a Russian girl’s zhalost’, drew me to R. (whom musical critics have now ‘discovered’). He knew he would die young and was always, in fact, mostly corpse, never once, I swear, rising to the occasion, even when I showed openly my compassionate non-resistance because I, alas, was brimming with Van-less vitality, and had even considered buying the services of some rude, the ruder the better, young muzhik. As to P., I could explain my submitting to his kisses (first tender and plain, later growing fiercely expert, and finally tasting of me when he returned to my mouth — a vicious circle set spinning in early Thargelion, 1888) by saying that if I stopped seeing him he would divulge my affair with my cousin to my mother. He did say he could produce witnesses, such as the sister of your Blanche, and a stable boy who, I suspect, was impersonated by the youngest of the three demoiselles de Tourbe, witches all — but enough. (2.1)
In their first night in “Ardis the Second” Ada tells Van about her quandary and calls her lovers (Philip Rack and Percy de Prey) “those two poor worms:”
The situation was repeated in a much more pleasing strain a few hours later. For supper Ada wore another dress, of crimson cotton, and when they met at night (in the old toolroom by the glow of a carbide lantern) he unzipped her with such impetuous force that he nearly tore it in two to expose her entire beauty. They were still fiercely engaged (on the same bench covered with the same tartan lap robe — thoughtfully brought) when the outside door noiselessly opened, and Blanche glided in like an imprudent ghost. She had her own key, was back from a rendezvous with old Sore, the Burgundian night watchman, and stopped like a fool gaping at the young couple. ‘Knock next time,’ said Van with a grin, not bothering to pause — rather enjoying, in fact, the bewitching apparition: she wore a miniver cloak that Ada had lost in the woods. Oh, she had become wonderfully pretty, and elle le mangeait des yeux — but Ada slammed the lantern shut, and with apologetic groans, the slut groped her way to the inner passage. His true love could not help giggling; and Van resumed his passionate task.
‘My teacher,’ she said, ‘at the Drama School thinks I’m better in farces than in tragedy. If they only knew!’
‘There is nothing to know,’ retorted Van. ‘Nothing, nothing has changed! But that’s the general impression, it was too dim down there for details, we’ll examine them tomorrow on our little island: "My sister, do you still recall..."’
‘Oh shut up!’ said Ada. ‘I’ve given up all that stuff — petits vers, vers de soie...’
‘Come, come,’ cried Van, ‘some of the rhymes were magnificent arcrobatics on the part of the child’s mind: "Oh! qui me rendra, ma Lucile, et le grand chêne and zee big hill." Little Lucile,’ he added in an effort to dissipate her frowns with a joke, ‘little Lucile has become so peachy that I think I’ll switch over to her if you keep losing your temper like that. I remember the first time you got cross with me was when I chucked a stone at a statue and frightened a finch. That’s memory!’
She was on bad terms with memory. She thought the servants would be up soon now, and then one could have something hot. That fridge was all fudge, really.
‘Why, suddenly sad?’
Yes, she was sad, she replied, she was in dreadful trouble, her quandary might drive her insane if she did not know that her heart was pure. She could explain it best by a parable. She was like the girl in a film he would see soon, who is in the triple throes of a tragedy which she must conceal lest she lose her only true love, the head of the arrow, the point of the pain. In secret, she is simultaneously struggling with three torments — trying to get rid of a dreary dragging affair with a married man, whom she pities; trying to nip in the bud — in the sticky red bud — a crazy adventure with an attractive young fool, whom she pities even more; and trying to keep intact the love of the only man who is all her life and who is above pity, above the poverty of her feminine pity, because as the script says, his ego is richer and prouder than anything those two poor worms could imagine.
What had she actually done with the poor worms, after Krolik’s untimely end?
‘Oh, set them free’ (big vague gesture), ‘turned them out, put them back onto suitable plants, buried them in the pupal state, told them to run along, while the birds were not looking — or alas, feigning not to be looking. (1.31)
Darkbloom (‘Notes to Ada’): elle le mangeait etc.: she devoured him with her eyes.
petits vers etc.: fugitive poetry and silk worms.
Blanche who le mangeait des yeux (devoured Van with her eyes) brings to mind Rack who la mangeait de baisers dégoûtants (devoured Ada with disgusting kisses), as Blanche puts it.
In "Ardis the First" Mlle Larivière (Lucette's governess) mentions cette pâte britannique, masse indigeste et immonde (that indigestible and vile British dough):
Van drank a glass of milk and suddenly felt such a wave of delicious exhaustion invading his limbs that he thought he’d go straight to bed. ‘Tant pis,’ said Ada, reaching voraciously for the keks (English fruit cake). ‘Hammock?’ she inquired; but tottering Van shook his head, and having kissed Marina’s melancholy hand, retired.
‘Tant pis,’ repeated Ada, and with invincible appetite started to smear butter allover the yolk-tinted rough surface and rich incrustations — raisins, angelica, candied cherry, cedrat — of a thick slice of cake.
Mlle Larivière, who was following Ada’s movements with awe and disgust, said:
‘Je rêve. Il n’est pas possible qu’on mette du beurre par-dessus toute cette pâte britannique, masse indigeste et immonde.’
‘Et ce n’est que la première tranche,’ said Ada.
‘Do you want a sprinkle of cinnamon on your lait caillé?’ asked Marina. ‘You know, Belle’ (turning to Mlle Larivière), ‘she used to call it "sanded snow" when she was a baby.’
‘She was never a baby,’ said Belle emphatically. ‘She could break the back of her pony before she could walk.’
‘I wonder,’ asked Marina, ‘how many miles you rode to have our athlete drained so thoroughly.’
‘Only seven,’ replied Ada with a munch smile. (1.24)
Darkbloom ('Notes to Ada'): tant pis: too bad.
je rêve etc.: I must be dreaming. It cannot be that anyone should spread butter on top of all that indigestible and vile British dough.
et ce n’est que etc.: and it is only the first slice.
lait caillé!: curds and whey.
According to Van, upon his return to Ardis he has paid Ada eight compliments:
‘Pah!’ exclaimed Ada. ‘I had quite forgotten. He’s coming today, with a movie man, and our afternoon will be ruined. But I feel refreshed and fit,’ she added (after a third cup of coffee).
‘It is only ten minutes to seven now. We shall go for a nice stroll in the park; there are one or two places that you might recognize.’
‘My love,’ said Van, ‘my phantom orchid, my lovely bladder-senna! I have not slept for two nights — one of which I spent imagining the other, and this other turned out to be more than I had imagined. I’ve had enough of you for the time being.’
‘Not a very fine compliment,’ said Ada, and rang resonantly for more toast.
‘I’ve paid you eight compliments, as a certain Venetian —’
‘I’m not interested in vulgar Venetians. You have become so coarse, dear Van, so strange…’
‘Sorry,’ he said, getting up. ‘I don’t know what I’m saying, I’m dead tired, I’ll see you at lunch.’
‘There will be no lunch today,’ said Ada. ‘It will be some messy snack at the poolside, and sticky drinks all day.’
He wanted to kiss her on her silky head but Bouteillan at that moment came in and while Ada was crossly rebuking him for the meager supply of toast, Van escaped. (1.31)
It seems that Rack was poisoned at the party on the next day:
If one dollied now to another group standing a few paces away under the purple garlands of the patio arch, one might take a medium shot of the young maestro’s pregnant wife in a polka-dotted dress replenishing goblets with salted almonds, and of our distinguished lady novelist resplendent in mauve flounces, mauve hat, mauve shoes, pressing a zebra vest on Lucette, who kept rejecting it with rude remarks, learned from a maid but uttered in a tone of voice just beyond deafish Mlle Larivière’s field of hearing. (1.32)
Describing his suicide attempt, Van mentions Sig's compliments:
Down. My first is a vehicle that twists dead daisies around its spokes; my second is Oldmanhattan slang for ‘money’; and my whole makes a hole.
As he traversed the second-floor landing, he saw, through the archway of two rooms, Ada in her black dress standing, with her back to him, at the oval window in the boudoir. He told a footman to convey her father’s message to her and passed almost at a run through the familiar echoes of the stone-flagged vestibule.
My second is also the meeting place of two steep slopes. Right-hand lower drawer of my practically unused new desk — which is quite as big as Dad’s, with Sig’s compliments. (2.11)
Sig seems to be Sig Heiler (the last doctor of Marina's poor mad twin sister Aqua):
In less than a week Aqua had accumulated more than two hundred tablets of different potency. She knew most of them — the jejune sedatives, and the ones that knocked you out from eight p.m. till midnight, and several varieties of superior soporifics that left you with limpid limbs and a leaden head after eight hours of non-being, and a drug which was in itself delightful but a little lethal if combined with a draught of the cleansing fluid commercially known as Morona; and a plump purple pill reminding her, she had to laugh, of those with which the little gypsy enchantress in the Spanish tale (dear to Ladore schoolgirls) puts to sleep all the sportsmen and all their bloodhounds at the opening of the hunting season. Lest some busybody resurrect her in the middle of the float-away process, Aqua reckoned she must procure for herself a maximum period of undisturbed stupor elsewhere than in a glass house, and the carrying out of that second part of the project was simplified and encouraged by another agent or double of the Isère Professor, a Dr Sig Heiler whom everybody venerated as a great guy and near-genius in the usual sense of near-beer. Such patients who proved by certain twitchings of the eyelids and other semiprivate parts under the control of medical students that Sig (a slightly deformed but not unhandsome old boy) was in the process of being dreamt of as a ‘papa Fig,’ spanker of girl bottoms and spunky spittoon-user, were assumed to be on the way to haleness and permitted, upon awakening, to participate in normal outdoor activities such as picnics. Sly Aqua twitched, simulated a yawn, opened her light-blue eyes (with those startlingly contrasty jet-black pupils that Dolly, her mother, also had), put on yellow slacks and a black bolero, walked through a little pinewood, thumbed a ride with a Mexican truck, found a suitable gulch in the chaparral and there, after writing a short note, began placidly eating from her cupped palm the multicolored contents of her handbag, like any Russian country girl lakomyashchayasya yagodami (feasting on berries) that she had just picked in the woods. She smiled, dreamily enjoying the thought (rather ‘Kareninian’ in tone) that her extinction would affect people about ‘as deeply as the abrupt, mysterious, never explained demise of a comic strip in a Sunday paper one had been taking for years. It was her last smile. She was discovered much sooner, but had also died much faster than expected, and the observant Siggy, still in his baggy khaki shorts, reported that Sister Aqua (as for some reason they all called her) lay, as if buried prehistorically, in a fetus-in-utero position, a comment that seemed relevant to his students, as it may be to mine. (1.3)
On Antiterra Les Malheurs de Sophie by Mme de Ségur, née Rostopchine, is nomenclatorially occupied by Les Malheurs de Swann. In Le Temps retrouvé Marcel compares M. d’Argencourt to général Dourakine (the title character of a novel by Mme de Ségur):
M. d’Argencourt, dans son incarnation de moribond-bouffe d’un Regnard exagéré par Labiche, était d’un accès aussi facile, aussi affable, que M. de Charlus roi Lear qui se découvrait avec application devant le plus médiocre salueur. Pourtant je n’eus pas l’idée de lui dire mon admiration pour la vision extraordinaire qu’il offrait. Ce ne fut pas mon antipathie ancienne qui m’en empêcha, car précisément il était arrivé à être tellement différent de lui-même que j’avais l’illusion d’être devant une autre personne aussi bienveillante, aussi désarmée, aussi inoffensive que l’Argencourt habituel était rogue, hostile et dangereux. Tellement une autre personne, qu’à voir ce personnage si ineffablement grimaçant, comique et blanc, ce bonhomme de neige simulant un général Dourakine en enfance, il me semblait que l’être humain pouvait subir des métamorphoses aussi complètes que celles de certains insectes.
Van’s and Ada’s uncle Dan is known as Durak Walter or simply Red Veen:
On April 23, 1869, in drizzly and warm, gauzy and green Kaluga, Aqua, aged twenty-five and afflicted with her usual vernal migraine, married Walter D. Veen, a Manhattan banker of ancient Anglo-Irish ancestry who had long conducted, and was soon to resume intermittently, a passionate affair with Marina. The latter, some time in 1871, married her first lover’s first cousin, also Walter D. Veen, a quite as opulent, but much duller, chap.
The ‘D’ in the name of Aqua’s husband stood for Demon (a form of Demian or Dementius), and thus was he called by his kin. In society he was generally known as Raven Veen or simply Dark Walter to distinguish him from Marina’s husband, Durak Walter or simply Red Veen. Demon’s twofold hobby was collecting old masters and young mistresses. He also liked middle-aged puns. (1.1)
Darkbloom ('Notes to Ada'): Durak: ‘fool’ in Russian.