In his essay "The Texture of Time" (1922) Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) mentions the horn of abundance whose stucco pineapple just missed his head:
My first recollection goes back to mid-July, 1870, i.e., my seventh month of life (with most people, of course, retentive consciousness starts somewhat later, at three or four years of age) when, one morning, in our Riviera villa, a chunk of green plaster ornament, dislodged from the ceiling by an earthquake, crashed into my cradle. The 195 days preceding that event being indistinguishable from infinite unconsciousness, are not to be included in perceptual time, so that, insofar as my mind and my pride of mind are concerned, I am today (mid-July, 1922) quite exactly fifty-two, et trêve de mon style plafond peint.
In the same sense of individual, perceptual time, I can put my Past in reverse gear, enjoy this moment of recollection as much as I did the horn of abundance whose stucco pineapple just missed my head, and postulate that next moment a cosmic or corporeal cataclysm might — not kill me, but plunge me into a permanent state of stupor, of a type sensationally new to science, thus depriving natural dissolution of any logical or chronal sense. (Part Four)
and ananas, pineapple juice:
The utilitarian trivialities of their table talk — or, rather, of his gloomy monologue — seemed to him positively degrading. He explained at length — fighting her attentive silence, sloshing across the puddles of pauses, abhorring himself — that he had a long and hard journey; that he slept badly; that he was working on an investigation of the nature of Time, a theme that meant struggling with the octopus of one’s own brain. She looked at her wrist watch.
‘What I’m telling you,’ he said harshly, ‘has nothing to do with timepieces.’ The waiter brought them their coffee. She smiled, and he realized that her smile was prompted by a conversation at the next table, at which a newcomer, a stout sad Englishman, had begun a discussion of the menu with the maître d’hôtel.
‘I’ll start,’ said the Englishman, ‘with the bananas.’
‘That’s not bananas, sir. That’s ananas, pineapple juice.’
‘Oh, I see. Well, give me some clear soup.’
Young Van smiled back at young Ada. Oddly, that little exchange at the next table acted as a kind of delicious release. (ibid.)
At the beginning of his memoir essay on Count Loris-Melikov, Diktator na pokoe (“The Retired Dictator”), included in his book Na kladbishchakh (“At Cemeteries,” 1921) Vasiliy Nemirovich-Danchenko calls Alexander III (the tsar who in the Manifesto issued two months after the assassination of his father used the phrase a na nas lezhit obyazannost’, “and upon us lies the responsibility”) Ananas Tretiy i Posledniy (Pineapple the Third and the Last):
Каждому, кто дожил до великой русской революции, таким далеким, странным и чуждым кажутся и время, и люди, о которых я вспоминаю теперь. А они сыграли в нашей истории и даже в том, что творится сейчас, громадную роль. Ведь случайностей нет. События кажутся неожиданными только слепым кротам да деревянным идолам, которых народное движение из министерских дворцов бросило в темничные казематы. Их бездарность и политическое невежество равнялись только их наглости. Все ужасы, переживаемые нашею родиной, могли бы быть предотвращены, если бы эти ташкентцы приготовительного класса хотя немного знали то, что происходило в Западной Европе с Людовика XIV до крушения Наполеона III. Они ничего не видели и не предвидели. Титулованные и сановные шуты гороховые в этом отношении отстали даже от сотрудников и современников Александра II, хотя и этим, говоря правду, была не большая цена на всемирной правительственной бирже. Настоящее царство самоуверенной и варварской никчеми началось с его сына и преемника на прародительском троне, Ананаса III и последнего. Вы помните его знаменитый манифест, отменявший даже канунные призрачные упования: "А на нас лежит обязанность"? Ананас III и последний разогнал всех деятелей предшествовавшего царствования, все-таки кое-что делавших для своей страны и народа. Одного из таких я встречал. "Старый кот на покое", как непочтительно называл его дух тьмы и человеконенавистничества, мрачный инквизитор Победоносцев, был очень словоохотлив и любил делиться своими воспоминаниями.
In his memoir essay Nemirovich describes the panic during an earthquake in Nice:
В Ницце было сильное землетрясение.
-- Наш дом ходуном, -- рассказывали мне на place Grimaldi. -- Ждали, вот-вот рухнет. Все бежали, кого в чем застало (дело было ночью) -- на улицу, на площадь, к берегу.
Денщик (при нем остался такой) будит графа.
-- Вставайте, ваше сиятельство!
-- Зачем?
-- Земля трясётся! Сейчас всё провалится!
-- Что провалится?
-- Земля!
-- Куда?
-- Скрось землю!
Как раз в это время глухой удар и судорога кабинета, где спал на диване Михаил Тариелович.
-- Что ж, ты думаешь, если я встану, земля успокоится? Ступай, не мешай мне спать.
Перевернулся и заснул.
А кругом росла паника, обезумевшие ниццарды чуть не кидались в море. Перепуганные иностранцы в костюмах, не поддававшихся описанию, сослепу носились по улицам, а великолепный Мамонт Дальский, как был в постели, так и влез на фонарный столб, весьма основательно сообразив, что дома, пожалуй, и не уцелеют, а столб во всяком случае устоит.
Ananas Tretiy i Posledniy (Pineapple the Third and the Last) brings to mind Thurgus the Third and Uran the Last, the kings mentioned by Kinbote (in VN's novel Pale Fire, 1962, Shade's mad commentator who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla) in his Commentary and Index to Shade’s poem:
Thurgus the Third, surnamed The Turgid, K's grandfather, d. 1900 at seventy-five, after a long dull reign; sponge-bagcapped, and with only one medal on his Jaeger jacket, he liked to bicycle in the park; stout and bald, his nose like a congested plum, his martial mustache bristling with obsolete passion, garbed in a dressing gown of green silk, and carrying a flambeau in his raised hand, he used to meet, every night, during a short period in the middle-Eighties, his hooded mistress, Iris Acht (q.v.) midway between palace and theater in the secret passage later to be rediscovered by his grandson, 130.
Uran the Last, Emperor of Zembla, reigned 1798-1799; an incredibly brilliant, luxurious and cruel monarch whose whistling whip made Zembla spin like a rainbow top; dispatched one night by a group of his sister's united favorites, 681.
Uran the Last seems to correspond to the Russian tsar Paul I (who reigned in 1796-1801). In the lines 65-88 of his ode Vol’nost’ (“Liberty,” 1817) Pushkin describes the murder of Paul I whom Pushkin calls tiran (tyrant), a word that in Russian rhymes with Uran:
Когда на мрачную Неву
Звезда полуночи сверкает,
И беззаботную главу
Спокойный сон отягощает,
Глядит задумчивый певец
На грозно спящий средь тумана
Пустынный памятник тирана,
Забвенью брошенный дворец —
И слышит Клии страшный глас
За сими страшными стенами,
Калигуллы последний час
Он видит живо пред очами,
Он видит — в лентах и звездах,
Вином и злобой упое́нны
Идут убийцы потае́нны,
На лицах дерзость, в сердце страх.
Молчит неверный часовой,
Опущен молча мост подъёмный,
Врата отверсты в тьме ночной
Рукой предательства наёмной…
О стыд! о ужас наших дней!
Как звери, вторглись янычары!…
Падут бесславные удары…
Погиб увенчанный злодей.
When down upon the gloomy Neva
The star Polaris scintillates
And peaceful slumber overwhelms
The head that is devoid of cares,
The pensive poet contemplates
The grimly sleeping in the mist
Forlorn memorial of a tyrant,
A palace to oblivion cast,
And hears the dreadful voice of Clio
Above yon gloom-pervaded walls
And vividly before his eyes
He sees Caligula's last hours.
He sees: beribanded, bestarred,
With Wine and Hate intoxicated,
They come, the furtive assassins,
Their faces brazen, hearts afraid.
Silent is the untrusty watchman,
The drawbridge silently is lowered,
The gate is opened in the dark
Of night by hired treachery's hand.
O shame! O horror of our days!
Like animals, the Janissaries
Burst in. The infamous blows fall,
And perished has the crowned villain!
(VN’s translation)
Pushkin compares Paul I to Caligula, a Roman Emperor whose nickname means in Latin “little boot.” According to Kinbote (the author of books on surnames), Botkin is the one who makes bottekins (fancy footwear):
A Commentary where placid scholarship should reign is not the place for blasting the preposterous defects of that little obituary. I have only mentioned it because that is where I gleaned a few meager details concerning the poet's parents. His father, Samuel Shade, who died at fifty, in 1902, had studied medicine in his youth and was vice-president of a firm of surgical instruments in Exton. His chief passion, however, was what our eloquent necrologist calls "the study of the feathered tribe," adding that "a bird had been named for him: Bombycilla Shadei" (this should be "shadei," of course). The poet's mother, nee Caroline Lukin, assisted him in his work and drew the admirable figures of his Birds of Mexico, which I remember having seen in my friend's house. What the obituarist does not know is that Lukin comes from Luke, as also do Locock and Luxon and Lukashevich. It represents one of the many instances when the amorphous-looking but live and personal hereditary patronymic grows, sometimes in fantastic shapes, around the common pebble of a Christian name. The Lukins are an old Essex family. Other names derive from professions such as Rymer, Scrivener, Limner (one who illuminates parchments), Botkin (one who makes bottekins, fancy footwear) and thousands of others. My tutor, a Scotsman, used to call any old tumble-down buildings a "hurley-house." But enough of this. (note to Line 71)
A "hurley-house" brings to mind pustynnyi pamyatnik tirana, zabven’yu broshennyi dvorets (forlorn memorial of a tyrant, a palace to oblivion cast), as Pushkin calls the Mikhaylovski castle where Paul I was murdered. On Oct. 31, 1838 (Dostoevski’s seventeenth birthday), Dostoevski (a student of the Military Engineer School housed in the Mikhaylovski castle) wrote a letter to his brother in which he twice used the word gradus (degree).
Thurgus the Turgid seems to hint at Turgenev. In his note to Line 69 of Pushkin’s Ode to Liberty (EO Commentary, vol. III, p.344) VN writes:
According to Vigel's Memoirs (1864) and a letter from Nikolay Turgenev to Pyotr Bartenev (in 1867), Pushkin wrote (no doubt from memory – poets do not compose in public) the ode, or part of it, in the rooms of Nikolay Turgenev, who at the time lived in St. Petersburg on the Fontanka Quay, opposite the Mikhaylovski Palace (also known as the Inzhenernyi Castle), whither, flushed after a champagne supper and wearing their resplendent decorations, the assassins made their way to Tsar Paul’s bedroom on the night of Mar. 11, 1801.
In his next note VN calls Clio “the hysterical Muse of history.” At the end of his Commentary Kinbote says that, history permitting, he may sail back to his recovered kingdom:
"And you, what will you be doing with yourself, poor King, poor Kinbote?" a gentle young voice may inquire.
God will help me, I trust, to rid myself of any desire to follow the example of the other two characters in this work. I shall continue to exist. I may assume other disguises, other forms, but I shall try to exist. I may turn up yet, on another campus, as an old, happy, health heterosexual Russian, a writer in exile, sans fame, sans future, sans audience, sans anything but his art. I may join forces with Odon in a new motion picture: Escape from Zembla (ball in the palace, bomb in the palace square). I may pander to the simple tastes of theatrical critics and cook up a stage play, an old-fashioned melodrama with three principles: a lunatic who intends to kill an imaginary king, another lunatic who imagines himself to be that king, and a distinguished old poet who stumbles by chance into the line of fire, and perishes in the clash between the two figments. Oh, I may do many things! History permitting, I may sail back to my recovered kingdom, and with a great sob greet the gray coastline and the gleam of a roof in the rain. I may huddle and groan in a madhouse. But whatever happens, wherever the scene is laid, somebody, somewhere, will quietly set out--somebody has already set out, somebody still rather far away is buying a ticket, is boarding a bus, a ship, a plane, has landed, is walking toward a million photographers, and presently he will ring at my door--a bigger, more respectable, more competent Gradus. (note to Line 1000)
Shade’s poem consists of 999 lines and is almost finished when the author is killed by Gradus. Kinbote believes that, to be completed, Shade’s poem needs but one line (Line 1000, identical to Line 1: “I was the shadow of the waxwing slain”). But it seems that, like some sonnets, Shade’s poem also needs a coda (Line 1001: “By its own double in the windowpane”). Dvoynik (“The Double”) is a short novel (1846) by Dostoevski and a poem (1909) by Alexander Blok (who, according to G. Ivanov, did not know what a coda is).
Coda rhymes with soda. In VN’s novel Lolita (1955) Humbert Humbert and Lolita have breakfast in the township of Soda:
We had breakfast in the township of Soda, pop. 1001.
“Judging by the terminal figure,” I remarked, “Fatface is already here.”
“Your humor,” said Lo, “is sidesplitting, deah fahther.” (2.18)
A little earlier Lolita draws HH’s attention to the three nines changing into the next thousand in the odometer:
“If he’s really a cop,” she said shrilly but not illogically, “the worst thing we could do, would be to show him we are scared. Ignore him, Dad.”
“Did he ask where we were going?”
“Oh, he knows that” (mocking me).
“Anyway,” I said, giving up, “I have seen his face now. He is not pretty. He looks exactly like a relative of mine called Trapp.”
“Perhaps he is Trapp. If I were you - Oh, look, all the nines are changing into the next thousand. When I was a little kid,” she continued unexpectedly, “I used to think they’d stop and go back to nines, if only my mother agreed to put the car in reverse.”
It was the first time, I think, she spoke spontaneously of her pre-Humbertian childhood; perhaps, the theatre had taught her that trick; and silently we traveled on, unpursued. (ibid.)
In the Russian version (1967) of Lolita “Soda pop” becomes Ana nas:
Утренний завтрак мы ели в городе Ана, нас. 1001 чел.
«Судя по единице», заметил я, «наш толстомордик уже тут как тут».
«Твой юмор», сказала Лолита, «положительно уморителен, драгоценный папаша».
Tolstomordik (Fatface) mentioned by Gumbert Gumbert (Humbert Humbert in Russian spelling) seems to blend Tolstoy with Chernomordik, the chemist in Chekhov’s story Aptekarsha (“A Chemist’s Wife,” 1886). In a letter of February 14, 1900, to Olga Knipper (a leading actress of the Moscow Art Theater whom Chekhov married in 1901) Chekhov says that he will go to Sevastopol incognito and put himself down in the hotel-book Count Chernomordik:
Я решил не писать Вам, но так как Вы прислали фотографии, то я снимаю с Вас опалу и вот, как видите, пишу. Даже в Севастополь приеду, только, повторяю, никому об этом не говорите, особенно Вишневскому. Я буду там incognito, запишусь в гостинице так: граф Черномордик.
I had made up my mind not to write to you, but since you have sent the photographs I have taken off the ban, and here you see I am writing. I will even come to Sevastopol, only I repeat, don’t tell that to anyone, especially not to Vishnevsky. I shall be there incognito, I shall put myself down in the hotel-book Count Blackphiz.
Nemirovich’s book “At Cemeteries” begins with his memoir essay O Chekhove (“On Chekhov”).
Zavtrak v Ananase (breakfast in Soda pop) brings to mind dzhinanas (gin and pineapple juice, "pin"), Humbert Humbert’s favorite mixture that always doubles his energy:
Любимый напиток мой, джинанас - смесь джина и ананасного сока - всегда удваивает мою энергию. (1.17)
As to “Soda pop,” it reminds one of “that orgiastic soda” mentioned by Van as he speaks over the dorophone (hydraulic telephone) to his secretary:
At this point, as in a well-constructed play larded with comic relief, the brass campophone buzzed and not only did the radiators start to cluck but the uncapped soda water fizzed in sympathy.
Van (crossly): ‘I don’t understand the first word... What’s that? L’adorée? Wait a second’ (to Lucette). ‘Please, stay where you are.’ (Lucette whispers a French child-word with two ‘p’s.). ‘Okay’ (pointing toward the corridor). ‘Sorry, Polly. Well, is it l’adorée? No? Give me the context. Ah — la durée. La durée is not... sin on what? Synonymous with duration. Aha. Sorry again, I must stopper that orgiastic soda. Hold the line.’ (Yells down the ‘cory door,’ as they called the long second-floor passage at Ardis.) ‘Lucette, let it run over, who cares!’
He poured himself another glass of brandy and for a ridiculous moment could not remember what the hell he had been — yes, the polliphone.
It had died, but buzzed as soon as he recradled the receiver, and Lucette knocked discreetly at the same time.
‘La durée... For goodness sake, come in without knocking... No, Polly, knocking does not concern you — it’s my little cousin. All right. La durée is not synonymous with duration, being saturated — yes, as in Saturday — with that particular philosopher’s thought. What’s wrong now? You don’t know if it’s dorée or durée? D, U, R. I thought you knew French. Oh, I see. So long.
‘My typist, a trivial but always available blonde, could not make out durée in my quite legible hand because, she says, she knows French, but not scientific French.’
‘Actually,’ observed Lucette, wiping the long envelope which a drop of soda had stained, ‘Bergson is only for very young people or very unhappy people, such as this available rousse.’
‘Spotting Bergson,’ said the assistant lecher, ‘rates a B minus dans ton petit cas, hardly more. Or shall I reward you with a kiss on your krestik — whatever that is?’ (2.5)
La durée is a theory of time and consciousness posited by the French philosopher Henri Bergson. Bergson is the author of Le Rire (“Laughter,” 1900). In a letter of October 17 (29), 1897, to Suvorin Chekhov (who stayed in the Pension Russe in Nice) asks Suvorin to bring from Paris Le Rire, zhurnal s portretom Gumberta (the magazine issue with King Umberto’s portrait):
Привезите журнал «Le rire» с портретом Гумберта, если попадётся на глаза.
Bring the issue of Le Rire with Umberto’s portrait, if you catch sight of it.
Le Rire was a successful French humor magazine. Umberto’s portrait mentioned by Chekhov is a cartoon. Describing his performance in variety shows as Mascodagama, Van mentions cartoonists:
On February 5, 1887, an unsigned editorial in The Ranter (the usually so sarcastic and captious Chose weekly) described Mascodagama’s performance as ‘the most imaginative and singular stunt ever offered to a jaded music-hall public.’ It was repeated at the Rantariver Club several times, but nothing in the programme or in publicity notices beyond the definition ‘Foreign eccentric’ gave any indication either of the exact nature of the ‘stunt’ or of the performer’s identity. Rumors, carefully and cleverly circulated by Mascodagama’s friends, diverted speculations toward his being a mysterious visitor from beyond the Golden Curtain, particularly since at least half-a-dozen members of a large Good-will Circus Company that had come from Tartary just then (i.e., on the eve of the Crimean War) — three dancing girls, a sick old clown with his old speaking goat, and one of the dancers’ husbands, a make-up man (no doubt, a multiple agent) — had already defected between France and England, somewhere in the newly constructed ‘Chunnel.’ Mascodagama’s spectacular success in a theatrical club that habitually limited itself to Elizabethan plays, with queens and fairies played by pretty boys, made first of all a great impact on cartoonists. Deans, local politicians, national statesmen, and of course the current ruler of the Golden Horde were pictured as mascodagamas by topical humorists. A grotesque imitator (who was really Mascodagama himself in an oversophisticated parody of his own act!) was booed at Oxford (a women’s college nearby) by local rowdies. A shrewd reporter, who had heard him curse a crease in the stage carpet, commented in print on his ‘Yankee twang.’ Dear Mr ‘Vascodagama’ received an invitation to Windsor Castle from its owner, a bilateral descendant of Van’s own ancestors, but he declined it, suspecting (incorrectly, as it later transpired) the misprint to suggest that his incognito had been divulged by one of the special detectives at Chose — the same, perhaps, who had recently saved the psychiatrist P.O. Tyomkin from the dagger of Prince Potyomkin, a mixed-up kid from Sebastopol, Id. (1.30)
Van’s stage name blends maska (Russ., mask) with Vasco da Gama (a Portuguese navigator who discovered the sea route from Portugal around the continent of Africa to India). Maska (“The Mask,” 1884) is a story by Chekhov. In his memoir essay Nemirovich quotes the words of Chekhov who in jest compared himself to Vasco da Gama and Stanley:
-- А то ещё куда меня гонят? В Африку. Что я Васко да Гама, что ли? Ведь это, слушайте же, в опере хорошо... Ни за что не поеду. Тоже нашли Стенли. Пусть Василий Иванович едет. Его мамка в детстве ушибла. Ему чем дальше, тем лучше... А я ни за что. Мало я черномази видал! Даже если мне ещё тарелку гречневой каши дадут, не поеду!
In the Russian Lolita one of Clare Quilty's aliases is P. O. Tyomkin, Odessa, Texas:
Я замечал, что, как только ему начинало казаться, что его плутни становятся чересчур заумными, даже для такого эксперта, как я, он меня приманивал опять загадкой полегче. "Арсен Люпэн" был очевиден полуфранцузу, помнившему детективные рассказы, которыми он увлекался в детстве; и едва ли следовало быть знатоком кинематографа, чтобы раскусить пошлую подковырку в адресе: "П. О. Тёмкин, Одесса, Техас". (2.23)
In a letter of February 18, 1889, to Leontiev-Shcheglov (a fellow writer who compared Chekhov to Prince Potyomkin, a favorite of Catherine II) Chekhov says that he is Cincinnatus, not Potyomkin:
Я не Потёмкин, а Цинциннат.
Nemirovich's memoir essay on D. I. Milyutin (also included in his book "At Cemeteries") is entitled Otechestvennyi Tsintsinnat ("The Russian Cincinnatus").
Tsintsinnat Ts. (Cincinnatus C.) is the main character in VN's novel Priglashenie na kazn' ("Invitation to a Beheading," 1935). Van’s fencing master, Pierre Legrand (2.8) seems to combine the tsar Peter I ("Peter the Great") with M'sieur Pierre, the executioner in "Invitation to a Beheading."
See also the updated full version of my previous post, “dying gladiator, nurse Joan the Terrible, Baron d’Onsky, Colonel St Alin & Pierre Legrand in Ada.”