In a letter to Van Ada mentions Marina’s new director of artistic conscience who defines Infinity as the farthest point from the camera which is still in fair focus:
Marina’s new director of artistic conscience defines Infinity as the farthest point from the camera which is still in fair focus. She has been cast as the deaf nun Varvara (who, in some ways, is the most interesting of Chekhov’s Four Sisters). She sticks to Stan’s principle of having lore and rôle overflow into everyday life, insists on keeping it up at the hotel restaurant, drinks tea v prikusku (‘biting sugar between sips’), and feigns to misunderstand every question in Varvara’s quaint way of feigning stupidity — a double imbroglio, which annoys strangers but which somehow makes me feel I’m her daughter much more distinctly than in the Ardis era. (2.1)
The new director of Marina’s artistic conscience, Stan Slavsky hints at Stanislavski (stage name of K. S. Alekseev, one of the founders of the Moscow Art Theater). In his memoirs Iz Proshlogo (“From the Past,” 1936) Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko (the playwright and co-founder of the Moscow Art Theater) describes the flop of The Merchant of Venice at the Moscow Art Theater (because Stanislavski made Darski, the actor who played Shylock, speak with the Jewish accent) and mentions a demanding artist and his khudozhestvennaya sovest’ (artistic conscience):
Да, публика ловится на излюбленный шаблон, как рыба на червяка; да, над нею имеют власть много эффектов, пользоваться которыми взыскательному художнику не позволит его художественная совесть; да, много замечательных вещей долгое время оставались непризнанными, — и все же мне навсегда запомнилась фраза критика Васильева-Флёрова, о котором я уже упоминал: «Публика никогда не бывает виновата». (Chapter Ten, 4)
In Amfiteatrov’s novel Vos’midesyatniki (“The Eighty-ers,” 1911) Varvara mentions tea v prikusku and v nakladku (with sugar in):
С блюдечка, — это кто в прикуску, а Тиша пьёт в накладку,—поправила Варвара.
In his novel Otravlennaya sovest’ (“Poisoned Conscience,” 1895) Amfiteatrov mentions obman and obmanshchitsa (female cheat, deceiver):
Кто так храбро и самоотверженно ненавидит ложь и обман, -- наученный этой ненависти тайною лгуньею и обманщицей, -- какое страшное разочарование ждёт его, когда она снимет маску!.. Как должен он будет разувериться в правде света, как станет презирать и ненавидеть наставницу-фарисейку... презирать и ненавидеть родную мать! (Chapter XVI)
Describing a game of poker that he played at Chose (Van’s English University), Van calls Dick. C. (a cardsharp) “the cheated cheater” and mentions his slightly overweight conscience:
Van fumed and fretted the rest of the morning, and after a long soak in a hot bath (the best adviser, and prompter and inspirer in the world, except, of course, the W.C. seat) decided to pen — pen is the word — a note of apology to the cheated cheater. As he was dressing, a messenger brought him a note from Lord C. (he was a cousin of one of Van’s Riverlane schoolmates), in which generous Dick proposed to substitute for his debt an introduction to the Venus Villa Club to which his whole clan belonged. Such a bounty no boy of eighteen could hope to obtain. It was a ticket to paradise. Van tussled with his slightly overweight conscience (both grinning like old pals in their old gymnasium) — and accepted Dick’s offer. (1.28)
To Dick’s question “what on earth is an artist” Van promptly replies “an underground observatory:”
‘I say, Dick, ever met a gambler in the States called Plunkett? Bald gray chap when I knew him.’
‘Plunkett? Plunkett? Must have been before my time. Was he the one who turned priest or something? Why?’
‘One of my father’s pals. Great artist.’
‘Artist?’
‘Yes, artist. I’m an artist. I suppose you think you’re an artist. Many people do.’
‘What on earth is an artist?’
‘An underground observatory,’ replied Van promptly.
‘That’s out of some modem novel,’ said Dick, discarding his cigarette after a few avid inhales.
‘That’s out of Van Veen,’ said Van Veen. (1.28)
Five or six years later, when Van meets Dick C. in Monte Carlo, Dick mentions a microscopic point of euphorion, a precious metal:
He did not ‘twinkle’ long after that. Five or six years later, in Monte Carlo, Van was passing by an open-air café when a hand grabbed him by the elbow, and a radiant, ruddy, comparatively respectable Dick C. leaned toward him over the petunias of the latticed balustrade:
‘Van,’ he cried, ‘I’ve given up all that looking-glass dung, congratulate me! Listen: the only safe way is to mark ‘em! Wait, that’s not all, can you imagine, they’ve invented a microscopic — and I mean microscopic — point of euphorion, a precious metal, to insert under your thumbnail, you can’t see it with the naked eye, but one minuscule section of your monocle is made to magnify the mark you make with it, like killing a flea, on one card after another, as they come along in the game, that’s the beauty of it, no preparations, no props, nothing! Mark ‘em! Mark ‘em!’ good Dick was still shouting, as Van walked away. (ibid.)
In Part Two of Goethe’s Faust Euphorion is the son of Faust and Helen of Troy. In VN’s novel Dar (“The Gift,” 1937) Fyodor quotes the words of Goethe (who said, pointing with his cane at the starry sky: “there is my conscience”):
Если в те дни ему пришлось бы отвечать перед каким-нибудь сверхчувственным судом (помните, как Гёте говаривал, показывая тростью на звёздное небо: "Вот моя совесть!"), то вряд ли бы он решился сказать, что любит её, -- ибо давно догадывался, что никому и ничему всецело отдать душу неспособен: оборотный капитал ему был слишком нужен для своих частных дел; но зато, глядя на нее, он сразу добирался (чтобы через минуту скатиться опять) до таких высот нежности, страсти и жалости, до которых редкая любовь доходит.
If, during those days, he had had to answer before some pretersensuous court (remember how Goethe said, pointing with his cane at the starry sky: “There is my conscience!”) he would scarcely have decided to say that he loved her—for he had long since realized that he was incapable of giving his entire soul to anyone or anything: its working capital was too necessary to him for his own private affairs; but on the other hand, when he looked at her he immediately reached (in order to fall off again a minute later) such heights of tenderness, passion and pity as are reached by few loves. (Chapter Three)
In Amfiteatrov’s story Belyi okhotnik (“The White Hunter,” 1886) the narrator’s grandfather (a friend of Saint-Germain, Cagliostro and Mesmer) died on March 22, 1832, on the same day and hour as Goethe (who also was his friend), and is said to have predicted this coincidence a day before his demise:
Мой прадед, Никита Афанасьевич Ладьин,-- самый крупный из этих чудаков: богач -- вельможа XVIII века, он всю свою девяностолетнюю жизнь возился с магами, заклинателями, дружил с Сен-Жерменом, Калиостро, Месмером и едва ли не принадлежал к розенкрейцерской ложе. Сын его Иван Никитич, страстный ориенталист, провел свою молодость в странствиях по Азиатским землям и вернулся в цивилизованные края человеком как бы не от мира сего, одарённый способностью ясновидения и редкою магнетической силой. Он умер 22 марта 1832 года, в один день и час с Гёте, которому был приятелем при жизни, и, говорят, предсказал это совпадение за день до кончины.
The biography of Ivan Nikitich Ladyin (the narrator’s grandfather who spent his youth traveling in Asia) brings to mind Fyodor’s father (the explorer of Asia) and grandfather (an adventurer) in “The Gift.” Describing his grandfather’s adventures in America, Fyodor mentions Kirill Ilyich’s pistol duel on a Mississippi steamer. The name of Van’s adversary in a pistol duel in Kalugano, Tapper seems to hint at Chekhov’s story Tapyor (“The Ballroom Pianist,” 1885) and taper dessus, a phrase used by Liza’s French friend in VN’s novel Pnin (1957):
One of her admirers, a banker, and straightforward patron of the arts, selected among the Parisian Russians an influential literary critic, Zhorzhik Uranski, and for a champagne dinner at the Ougolok had the old boy devote his next feuilleton in one of the Russian--language newspapers to an appreciation of Liza's muse on whose chestnut curls Zhorzhik calmly placed Anna Akhmatov's coronet, whereupon Liza burst into happy tears--for all the world like little Miss Michigan or the Oregon Rose Queen. Pnin, who was not in the know, carried about a folded clipping of that shameless rave in his honest pocket-book, naively reading out passages to this or that amused friend until it got quite frayed and smudgy. Nor was he in the know concerning graver matters, and in fact was actually pasting the remnants of the review in an album when, on a December day in 1938, Liza telephoned from Meudon, saying that she was going to Montpellier with a man who understood her 'organic ego', a Dr Eric Wind, and would never see Timofey again. An unknown French woman with red hair called for Liza's things and said, well, you cellar rat, there is no more any poor lass to taper dessus--and a month or two later there dribbled in from Dr Wind a German letter of sympathy and apology assuring lieber Herr Pnin that he, Dr Wind, was eager to marry 'the woman who has come out of your life into mine.' (Chapter Two, 5)
Taper dessus (beat up) brings to mind dessous (underwear) mentioned by Amfiteatrov at a banquet (described by G. Ivanov in his memoir essay "House of Arts," 1925) at the end of 1920 in the cold and hungry Petrograd in honor of H. G. Wells:
Банкет был позорный. Уэллс с видимым усилием ел «роскошный завтрак», плохо слушал ораторов и изредка невпопад им отвечал. Ораторы... некоторые из них выказали большое гражданское мужество - например Амфитеатров, предложивший присутствующим, чтобы показать высокому гостю, «что они с нами сделали», - расстегнуться и продемонстрировать ему свой «дессу».
Это смелое предложение принято не было. Но Амфитеатров был наказан: Уэллс, обратившись к нему, назвал его мистером Шкловским.
H. G. Wells is the author of The War of the Worlds (1897). Describing the torments of poor mad Aqua (Marina’s twin sister who was obsessed with the idea of Terra, Demonia’s twin planet), Van mentions her War of the Worlds:
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. She had plans at one time to seek a modicum of health (‘just a little grayishness, please, instead of the solid black’) in such Anglo-American protectorates as the Balkans and Indias, and might even have tried the two Southern Continents that thrive under our joint dominion. Of course, Tartary, an independent inferno, which at the time spread from the Baltic and Black seas to the Pacific Ocean, was touristically unavailable, though Yalta and Altyn Tagh sounded strangely attractive… But her real destination was Terra the Fair and thither she trusted she would fly on libellula long wings when she died. Her poor little letters from the homes of madness to her husband were sometimes signed: Madame Shchemyashchikh-Zvukov (‘Heart rending-Sounds’). (1.3)
It seems that Aqua (who married Demon Veen soon after Demon's sword duel with Baron d’Onsky) went mad, because she was poisoned by Marina. At the Kalugano hospital (where he recovers after his duel with Captain Tapper) Van visits Philip Rack, Lucette’s music teacher (and one of Ada’s lovers) who was poisoned by his jealous wife Elsie (and who dies in Ward Five of the Kalugano hospital):
For half a minute Van was sure that he still lay in the car, whereas actually he was in the general ward of Lakeview (Lakeview!) Hospital, between two series of variously bandaged, snoring, raving and moaning men. When he understood this, his first reaction was to demand indignantly that he be transferred to the best private palata in the place and that his suitcase and alpenstock be fetched from the Majestic. His next request was that he be told how seriously he was hurt and how long he was expected to remain incapacitated. His third action was to resume what constituted the sole reason of his having to visit Kalugano (visit Kalugano!). His new quarters, where heartbroken kings had tossed in transit, proved to be a replica in white of his hotel apartment — white furniture, white carpet, white sparver. Inset, so to speak, was Tatiana, a remarkably pretty and proud young nurse, with black hair and diaphanous skin (some of her attitudes and gestures, and that harmony between neck and eyes which is the special, scarcely yet investigated secret of feminine grace fantastically and agonizingly reminded him of Ada, and he sought escape from that image in a powerful response to the charms of Tatiana, a torturing angel in her own right. Enforced immobility forbade the chase and grab of common cartoons. He begged her to massage his legs but she tested him with one glance of her grave, dark eyes — and delegated the task to Dorofey, a beefy-handed male nurse, strong enough to lift him bodily out of bed. with the sick child clasping the massive nape. When Van managed once to twiddle her breasts, she warned him she would complain if he ever repeated what she dubbed more aptly than she thought ‘that soft dangle.’ An exhibition of his state with a humble appeal for a healing caress resulted in her drily remarking that distinguished gentlemen in public parks got quite lengthy prison terms for that sort of thing. However, much later, she wrote him a charming and melancholy letter in red ink on pink paper; but other emotions and events had intervened, and he never met her again). His suitcase promptly arrived from the hotel; the stick, however, could not be located (it must be climbing nowadays Wellington Mountain, or perhaps, helping a lady to go ‘brambling’ in Oregon); so the hospital supplied him with the Third Cane, a rather nice, knotty, cherry-dark thing with a crook and a solid black-rubber heel. Dr Fitzbishop congratulated him on having escaped with a superficial muscle wound, the bullet having lightly grooved or, if he might say so, grazed the greater serratus. Doc Fitz commented on Van’s wonderful recuperational power which was already in evidence, and promised to have him out of disinfectants and bandages in ten days or so if for the first three he remained as motionless as a felled tree-trunk. Did Van like music? Sportsmen usually did, didn’t they? Would he care to have a Sonorola by his bed? No, he disliked music, but did the doctor, being a concert-goer, know perhaps where a musician called Rack could be found? ‘Ward Five,’ answered the doctor promptly. Van misunderstood this as the title of some piece of music and repeated his question. Would he find Rack’s address at Harper’s music shop? Well, they used to rent a cottage way down Dorofey Road, near the forest, but now some other people had moved in. Ward Five was where hopeless cases were kept. The poor guy had always had a bad liver and a very indifferent heart, but on top of that a poison had seeped into his system; the local ‘lab’ could not identify it and they were now waiting for a report, on those curiously frog-green faeces, from the Luga people. If Rack had administered it to himself by his own hand, he kept ‘mum’; it was more likely the work of his wife who dabbled in Hindu-Andean voodoo stuff and had just had a complicated miscarriage in the maternity ward. Yes, triplets — how did he guess? Anyway, if Van was so eager to visit his old pal it would have to be as soon as he could be rolled to Ward Five in a wheelchair by Dorofey, so he’d better apply a bit of voodoo, ha-ha, on his own flesh and blood.
That day came soon enough. After a long journey down corridors where pretty little things tripped by, shaking thermometers, and first an ascent and then a descent in two different lifts, the second of which was very capacious with a metal-handled black lid propped against its wall and bits of holly or laurel here and there on the soap-smelling floor, Dorofey, like Onegin’s coachman, said priehali (‘we have arrived’) and gently propelled Van, past two screened beds, toward a third one near the window. There he left Van, while he seated himself at a small table in the door corner and leisurely unfolded the Russian-language newspaper Golos (Logos). (1.42)
In a canceled variant of Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin (One: LII: 11) Ivan (apparently, Onegin’s coachman) says: Priehali (Here we are)! In Chapter Four (XIV: 5) of EO Onegin, as he speaks to Tatiana, mentions his sovest’ (conscience):
Но я не создан для блаженства;
Ему чужда душа моя;
Напрасны ваши совершенства:
Их вовсе недостоин я.
Поверьте (совесть в том порукой),
Супружество нам будет мукой.
Я, сколько ни любил бы вас,
Привыкнув, разлюблю тотчас;
Начнёте плакать: ваши слёзы
Не тронут сердца моего,
А будут лишь бесить его.
Судите ж вы, какие розы
Нам заготовит Гименей
И, может быть, на много дней.
“But I'm not made for bliss;
my soul is strange to it;
in vain are your perfections:
I'm not at all worthy of them.
Believe me (conscience is thereof the pledge),
wedlock to us would be a torment.
However much I loved you,
having grown used, I'd cease to love at once;
you would begin to weep; your tears
would fail to touch my heart —
they merely would exasperate it.
Judge, then, what roses
Hymen would lay in store for us —
and, possibly, for many days!” (Four: XIV)
In Kurochkin’s fable Vorchun Dorofey (“The Grumbler Dorofey,” 1860) Dorofey is the name of the author’s conscience:
Наживая грехом
Капитал,
Иногда я тайком
Размышлял:
«Всё бы ладно: житьё!
Гладкий путь...
Только совесть... её
Как надуть?»
Мне Башуцкий помог.
Млад и стар,
Веселись - Фео - бог,
Дорос - дар;
Значит: совесть людей -
Имя рек -
Божий дар - Дорофей -
Человек.
Я сошёлся с таким
И верчу
Дорофеем своим,
Как хочу.
Усмирил я врага
Злых людей:
В моем доме слуга -
Дорофей.
Совесть редко молчит;
Господа,
Дорофей мой ворчит;
Но когда
Дерзость сделает он
(Мой лакей!) -
Я сейчас: «Пошёл вон,
Дорофей!»
Я украл адамант.
«Стыдно вам! -
Заворчал мой педант!.. -
Это страм!
Бог и кара людей
Впереди...»
- «Дорофей, Дорофей!
Уходи!»
Я для бедных сбирал...
В свой карман;
Зашумел, замычал
Мой грубьян:
«Жить нельзя!.. Ты злодей!
Это сви...»
- «Дорофей, Дорофей!
Не живи».
Умножая доход,
Я пускать
Стал книжонки в народ;
Он опять:
«Ты морочишь людей,
Старый чёрт!»
- «Дорофей, Дорофей!
Вот паспорт».
Местом он дорожит:
Я плачу.
Он же выпить сердит -
Закачу
«Ерофеичу» штоф
Похмельней,
И - что хочешь - готов
Дорофей!
Будь покорен судьбе,
Маловер,
И бери - вот тебе -
Мой пример!
Станет стыдно подчас,
Не робей!
Знай, что совесть у нас -
Дорофей.
In his poem Kurochkin mentions kapital (the capital) and points out that the name Dorofey comes from Theo (God) and doros (gift). In “The Gift” Fyodor Godunov-Cherdyntsev (whose name also means “God’s gift”) mentions his soul’s oborotnyi kapital (working capital):
Если в те дни ему пришлось бы отвечать перед каким-нибудь сверхчувственным судом (помните, как Гёте говаривал, показывая тростью на звёздное небо: "Вот моя совесть!"), то вряд ли бы он решился сказать, что любит её, -- ибо давно догадывался, что никому и ничему всецело отдать душу неспособен: оборотный капитал ему был слишком нужен для своих частных дел; но зато, глядя на нее, он сразу добирался (чтобы через минуту скатиться опять) до таких высот нежности, страсти и жалости, до которых редкая любовь доходит.
If, during those days, he had had to answer before some pretersensuous court (remember how Goethe said, pointing with his cane at the starry sky: “There is my conscience!”) he would scarcely have decided to say that he loved her—for he had long since realized that he was incapable of giving his entire soul to anyone or anything: its working capital was too necessary to him for his own private affairs; but on the other hand, when he looked at her he immediately reached (in order to fall off again a minute later) such heights of tenderness, passion and pity as are reached by few loves. (Chapter Three)
Among the minor writers mentioned by Fyodor in Zhizn’ Chernyshevskogo (“The Life of Chernyshevski”) is Kurochkin:
Чернышевский приходил, садился за столик и пристукивая ладьей (которую называл "пушкой"), рассказывал невинные анекдоты. Приходил Серно-Соловьевич (тургеневское тире) и в уединённом углу заводил с кем-нибудь беседу. Было довольно пусто. Пьющая братия -- Помяловский, Курочкин, Кроль -- горланила в буфете. Первый, впрочем, кое-что проповедовал и своё: идею общинного литературного труда, -- организовать, мол, общество писателей-труженников для исследования разных сторон нашего общественного быта, как то: нищие, мелочные лавки, фонарщики, пожарные -- и все добытые сведения помещать в особом журнале. Чернышевский его высмеял, и пошёл вздорный слух, что Помяловский "бил ему морду". "Это враньё, я слишком вас уважаю для этого",-- писал к нему Помяловский.
Chernyshevski would come and sit at a table, tapping upon it with a rook (which he called a “castle”), and relate innocuous anecdotes. The radical Serno-Solovievich would arrive—(this is a Turgenevian dash) and strike up a conversation with someone in a secluded corner. It was fairly empty. The drinking fraternity—the minor writers Pomyalovski, Kurochkin, Krol—would vociferate in the bar. The first, by the way, did a little preaching of his own, promoting the idea of communal literary work—“Let’s organize,” he said, “a society of writer-laborers for investigating various aspects of our social life, such as: beggars, haberdashers, lamplighters, firemen—and pool in a special magazine all the material we get.” Chernyshevski derided him and a silly rumor went around to the effect that Pomyalovski had “bashed his mug in.” “It’s all lies, I respect you too much for that,” wrote Pomyalovski to him. (Chapter Four)
Ward Five (where hopeless cases are kept) of the Kalugano hospital brings to mind Chekhov’s story Palata No. 6 (“Ward Six,” 1892). In his essay Tvorchestvo iz nichego ("Creation from Nothing," 1905) Lev Shestov (the philosopher who was born in 1866 and whose pseudonym comes from shest', "six") calls Chekhov pevets beznadezhnosti (a poet of hopelessness):
Чтобы в двух словах определить его тенденцию, я скажу: Чехов был певцом безнадежности. Упорно, уныло, однообразно в течение всей своей почти 25-летней литературной деятельности Чехов только одно и делал: теми или иными способами убивал человеческие надежды. В этом, на мой взгляд, сущность его творчества.
To define his tendency in a word, I would say that Chekhov was the poet of hopelessness. Stubbornly, sadly, monotonously, during all the years of his literary activity, nearly a quarter of a century long, Chekhov was doing one alone: by one means or another he was killing human hopes. Herein, I hold, lies the essence of his work. (I)
On Demonia (aka Antiterra, Earth’s twin planet on which Ada is set) Chekhov’s play Tri sestry (“The Three Sisters,” 1901) is known as “The Four Sisters” (3, 4, 5, 6). In the film version of Chekhov’s play Marina (Van’s, Ada’s and Lucette’s mother) plays sister Varvara:
The beginning of Ada’s limelife in 1891 happened to coincide with the end of her mother’s twenty-five-year-long career. What is more, both appeared in Chekhov’s Four Sisters. Ada played Irina on the modest stage of the Yakima Academy of Drama in a somewhat abridged version which, for example, kept only the references to Sister Varvara, the garrulous originalka (‘odd female’ — as Marsha calls her) but eliminated her actual scenes, so that the title of the play might have been The Three Sisters, as indeed it appeared in the wittier of the local notices. It was the (somewhat expanded) part of the nun that Marina acted in an elaborate film version of the play; and the picture and she received a goodly amount of undeserved praise.
…Varvara, the late General Sergey Prozorov’s eldest daughter, comes in Act One from her remote nunnery, Tsitsikar Convent, to Perm (also called Permwail), in the backwoods of Akimsk Bay, North Canady, to have tea with Olga, Marsha, and Irina on the latter’s name day. Much to the nun’s dismay, her three sisters dream only of one thing — leaving cool, damp, mosquito-infested but otherwise nice and peaceful ‘Permanent’ as Irina mockingly dubs it, for high life in remote and sinful Moscow, Id., the former capital of Estotiland. In the first edition of his play, which never quite manages to heave the soft sigh of a masterpiece, Tchechoff (as he spelled his name when living that year at the execrable Pension Russe, 9, rue Gounod, Nice) crammed into the two pages of a ludicrous expository scene all the information he wished to get rid of, great lumps of recollections and calendar dates — an impossible burden to place on the fragile shoulders of three unhappy Estotiwomen. Later he redistributed that information through a considerably longer scene in which the arrival of the monashka Varvara provides all the speeches needed to satisfy the restless curiosity of the audience. This was a neat stroke of stagecraft, but unfortunately (as so often occurs in the case of characters brought in for disingenuous purposes) the nun stayed on, and not until the third, penultimate, act was the author able to bundle her off, back to her convent. (2.9)
A close friend of Chekhov, Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko also lived at the Pension Russe in Nice.
Telling Van about a stage version of Chekhov's play in which she played Irina, Ada mentions Stan’s protégé Altshuler in the role of Baron Nikolay Lvovich Tuzenbach-Krone-Altschauer:
‘Ever since I planned to go on the stage,’ said Ada (we are using her notes), ‘I was haunted by Marina’s mediocrity, au dire de la critique, which either ignored her or lumped her in the common grave with other "adequate sustainers"; or, if the role had sufficient magnitude, the gamut went from "wooden " to "sensitive" (the highest compliment her accomplishments had ever received). And here she was, at the most delicate moment of my career, multiplying and sending out to friends and foes such exasperating comments as "Durmanova is superb as the neurotic nun, having transferred an essentially static and episodical part into et cetera, et cetera, et cetera."
‘Of course, the cinema has no language problems,’ continued Ada (while Van swallowed, rather than stifled, a yawn). ‘Marina and three of the men did not need the excellent dubbing which the other members of the cast, who lacked the lingo, were provided with; but our wretched Yakima production could rely on only two Russians, Stan’s protégé Altshuler in the role of Baron Nikolay Lvovich Tuzenbach-Krone-Altschauer, and myself as Irina, la pauvre et noble enfant, who is a telegraph operator in one act, a town-council employee in another, and a schoolteacher in the end. All the rest had a macedoine of accents — English, French, Italian — by the way what’s the Italian for "window"?’
‘Finestra, sestra,’ said Van, mimicking a mad prompter. (ibid.)
The name of Stan's protégé brings to mind shuler, the Russian word for "cardsharp" mentioned by Van:
‘Same here, Dick,’ said Van. ‘Pity you had to rely on your crystal balls. I have often wondered why the Russian for it — I think we have a Russian ancestor in common — is the same as the German for "schoolboy," minus the umlaut’ — and while prattling thus, Van refunded with a rapidly written check the ecstatically astonished Frenchmen. Then he collected a handful of cards and chips and hurled them into Dick’s face. The missiles were still in flight when he regretted that cruel and commonplace bewgest, for the wretched fellow could not respond in any conceivable fashion, and just sat there covering one eye and examining his damaged spectacles with the other — it was also bleeding a little — while the French twins were pressing upon him two handkerchiefs which he kept good-naturedly pushing away. Rosy aurora was shivering in green Serenity Court. Laborious old Chose.
(There should be a sign denoting applause. Ada’s note.) (1.28)
Applause suggests theatrical audience.
In my previous post, “obmanipulations & obmanshchitsa in Ada,” I forgot to mention Gospoda Obmanovy (“The Obmanov Family,” 1902), Amfiteatrov’s satire on the Russian imperial family (the Romanovs).