In the epilogue of VN’s novel Ada (1969) Ada suggests that, after her death, Van should marry a local Gauguin girl or Yolande Kickshaw:
Nirvana, Nevada, Vaniada. By the way, should I not add, my Ada, that only at the very last interview with poor dummy-mummy, soon after my premature — I mean, premonitory — nightmare about, ‘You can, Sir,’ she employed mon petit nom, Vanya, Vanyusha — never had before, and it sounded so odd, so tend... (voice trailing off, radiators tinkling).
‘Dummy-mum’ — (laughing). ‘Angels, too, have brooms — to sweep one’s soul clear of horrible images. My black nurse was Swiss-laced with white whimsies.’
Sudden ice hurtling down the rain pipe: brokenhearted stalactite.
Recorded and replayed in their joint memory was their early preoccupation with the strange idea of death. There is one exchange that it would be nice to enact against the green moving backdrop of one of our Ardis sets. The talk about ‘double guarantee’ in eternity. Start just before that.
‘I know there’s a Van in Nirvana. I’ll be with him in the depths moego ada, of my Hades,’ said Ada.
‘True, true’ (bird-effects here, and acquiescing branches, and what you used to call ‘golden gouts’).
‘As lovers and siblings,’ she cried, ‘we have a double chance of being together in eternity, in terrarity. Four pairs of eyes in paradise!’
‘Neat, neat,’ said Van.
Something of the sort. One great difficulty. The strange mirage-shimmer standing in for death should not appear too soon in the chronicle and yet it should permeate the first amorous scenes. Hard but not insurmountable (I can do anything, I can tango and tap-dance on my fantastic hands). By the way, who dies first?
Ada. Van. Ada. Vaniada. Nobody. Each hoped to go first, so as to concede, by implication, a longer life to the other, and each wished to go last, in order to spare the other the anguish or worries, of widowhood. One solution would be for you to marry Violet.
‘Thank you. J’ai tâté de deux tribades dans ma vie, ça suffit. Dear Emile says "terme qu’on évite d’employer." How right he is!’
‘If not Violet, then a local Gauguin girl. Or Yolande Kickshaw.’
Why? Good question. Anyway. Violet must not be given this part to type. I’m afraid we’re going to wound a lot of people (openwork American lilt)! Oh come, art cannot hurt. It can, and how! (5.6)
Yolande Ardissone (b. 1927) is a French painter whose vivid, impressionistic style was strongly influenced by Renoir, Gauguin and especially Van Gogh. Her name brings to mind Ardisville (in 1884 Van and Ada visit the fair at Ardisville, 1.22; at the family dinner in "Ardis the Second" Marina tells Demon that Jones has rowed her from Ardisville to Ladore and back, 1.38) and Ada Ardis (Ada's screen name):
Van had seen the picture [the Hollywood version of Four Sisters, as Chekhov's play "The Three Sisters" is known on Demonia, aka Antiterra, Earth's twin planet on which Ada is set] and had liked it. An Irish girl, the infinitely graceful and melancholy Lenore Colline —
Oh! qui me rendra ma colline
Et le grand chêne and my colleen!
— harrowingly resembled Ada Ardis as photographed with her mother in Belladonna, a movie magazine which Greg Erminin had sent him, thinking it would delight him to see aunt and cousin, together, on a California patio just before the film was released. 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)
Kickshaw (delicacy; trinket, gewgaw) began its career in the late 16th century as a borrowing from the French quelque chose (literally, "something"). Chose is Van’s (and Demon's) English University:
In 1885, having completed his prep-school education, he went up to Chose University in England, where his fathers had gone, and traveled from time to time to London or Lute (as prosperous but not overrefined British colonials called that lovely pearl-gray sad city on the other side of the Channel). (1.28)
Describing the torments of poor mad Aqua (the twin sister of Van’s, Ada’s and Lucette’s mother Marina), Van mentions a half-full glass container marked colorfully Quelques Fleurs:
At one time Aqua believed that a stillborn male infant half a year old, a surprised little fetus, a fish of rubber that she had produced in her bath, in a lieu de naissance plainly marked X in her dreams, after skiing at full pulver into a larch stump, had somehow been saved and brought to her at the Nusshaus, with her sister’s compliments, wrapped up in blood-soaked cotton wool, but perfectly alive and healthy, to be registered as her son Ivan Veen. At other moments she felt convinced that the child was her sister’s, born out of wedlock, during an exhausting, yet highly romantic blizzard, in a mountain refuge on Sex Rouge, where a Dr Alpiner, general practitioner and gentian-lover, sat providentially waiting near a rude red stove for his boots to dry. Some confusion ensued less than two years later (September, 1871 — her proud brain still retained dozens of dates) when upon escaping from her next refuge and somehow reaching her husband’s unforgettable country house (imitate a foreigner: ‘Signor Konduktor, ay vant go Lago di Luga, hier geld’) she took advantage of his being massaged in the solarium, tiptoed into their former bedroom — and experienced a delicious shock: her talc powder in a half-full glass container marked colorfully Quelques Fleurs still stood on her bedside table; her favorite flame-colored nightgown lay rumpled on the bedrug; to her it meant that only a brief black nightmare had obliterated the radiant fact of her having slept with her husband all along — ever since Shakespeare’s birthday on a green rainy day, but for most other people, alas, it meant that Marina (after G.A. Vronsky, the movie man, had left Marina for another long-lashed Khristosik as he called all pretty starlets) had conceived, c’est bien le cas de le dire, the brilliant idea of having Demon divorce mad Aqua and marry Marina who thought (happily and correctly) she was pregnant again. Marina had spent a rukuliruyushchiy month with him at Kitezh but when she smugly divulged her intentions (just before Aqua’s arrival) he threw her out of the house. Still later, on the last short lap of a useless existence, Aqua scrapped all those ambiguous recollections and found herself reading and rereading busily, blissfully, her son’s letters in a luxurious ‘sanastoria’ at Centaur, Arizona. He invariably wrote in French calling her petite maman and describing the amusing school he would be living at after his thirteenth birthday. She heard his voice through the nightly tinnitus of her new, planful, last, last insomnias and it consoled her. He called her usually mummy, or mama, accenting the last syllable in English, the first, in Russian; somebody had said that triplets and heraldic dracunculi often occurred in trilingual families; but there was absolutely no doubt whatsoever now (except, perhaps, in hateful long-dead Marina’s hell-dwelling mind) that Van was her, her, Aqua’s, beloved son. (1.3)
In her last note Aqua mentions Ardis Park:
Her last note, found on her and addressed to her husband and son, might have come from the sanest person on this or that earth.
Aujourd’hui (heute-toity!) I, this eye-rolling toy, have earned the psykitsch right to enjoy a landparty with Herr Doktor Sig, Nurse Joan the Terrible, and several ‘patients,’ in the neighboring bor (piney wood) where I noticed exactly the same skunk-like squirrels, Van, that your Darkblue ancestor imported to Ardis Park, where you will ramble one day, no doubt. The hands of a clock, even when out of order, must know and let the dumbest little watch know where they stand, otherwise neither is a dial but only a white face with a trick mustache. Similarly, chelovek (human being) must know where he stands and let others know, otherwise he is not even a klok (piece) of a chelovek, neither a he, nor she, but ‘a tit of it’ as poor Ruby, my little Van, used to say of her scanty right breast. I, poor Princesse Lointaine, très lointaine by now, do not know where I stand. Hence I must fall. So adieu, my dear, dear son, and farewell, poor Demon, I do not know the date or the season, but it is a reasonably, and no doubt seasonably, fair day, with a lot of cute little ants queuing to get at my pretty pills.
[Signed] My sister’s sister who teper’
iz ada (‘now is out of hell’) (ibid.)
Van’s Darkblue ancestor is Prince Ivan Temnosiniy (whose name means “dark-blue”). In his poem Doch’ priekhala. Slyshu – vveli (“The daughter came. I hear: they showed her to my room…”) from the cycle Zagrobnye pesni (“Songs from Beyond the Grave,” 1902) Sluchevski mentions temno-sinyaya noch’ (the dark-blue night) that engulfed him and goluboy tsvetok (a blue flower):
Дочь приехала. Слышу — ввели…
Вот подходит ко мне, зарыдала;
Поклонилась, так кажется, мне до земли,
Крепко руки мои целовала!
Сколько сил было силы собрать,
Собрал я и глаза открываю…
Только милое личико трудно узнать…
Память сбилась, а всё же ласкаю!
Ты несчастной была, моя дочь;
Я виновен, бессовестный, в этом…
Вдруг объяла меня темно-синяя ночь…
Иль пришла она с добрым советом!
Голубому цветку на степи не расти,
Ты, голубушка-дочь, ты забудь, ты прости…
Звучно склянки стучат…
Знаю я, в склянках яд…
Ты цветок голубой…
Что поник головой?..
Распрямись и расти,
Дай мне сон обрести…
Ты слыхала ль: есть рай…
Дай надеяться, дай…
After Van’s and Ada’s death Violet Knox (old Van’s typist whom Ada calls Fialochka) marries Ronald Oranger (old Van’s secretary, the editor of Ada):
Violet Knox [now Mrs Ronald Oranger. Ed.], born in 1940, came to live with us in 1957. She was (and still is — ten years later) an enchanting English blonde with doll eyes, a velvet carnation and a tweed-cupped little rump [.....]; but such designs, alas, could no longer flesh my fancy. She has been responsible for typing out this memoir — the solace of what are, no doubt, my last ten years of existence. A good daughter, an even better sister, and half-sister, she had supported for ten years her mother’s children from two marriages, besides laying aside [something]. I paid her [generously] per month, well realizing the need to ensure unembarrassed silence on the part of a puzzled and dutiful maiden. Ada called her ‘Fialochka’ and allowed herself the luxury of admiring ‘little Violet’ ‘s cameo neck, pink nostrils, and fair pony-tail. Sometimes, at dinner, lingering over the liqueurs, my Ada would consider my typist (a great lover of Koo-Ahn-Trow) with a dreamy gaze, and then, quick-quick, peck at her flushed cheek. The situation might have been considerably more complicated had it arisen twenty years earlier. (5.4)
Fialochka (little violet) is the flower in Dmitriev's fable Repeynik i Fialka (“The Burdock and The Violet,” 1824). In his essay Dmitriev (1937), written for the centenary of the poet’s death (almost forty years his senior, Dmitriev outlived Pushkin by eight months*), Hodasevich quotes this fable as a good sample of Dmitriev's poetry:
РЕПЕЙНИК И ФИАЛКА
Между репейником и розовым кустом
Фиялочка себя от зависти скрывала;
Безвестною была, но горести не знала:
Тот счастлив, кто своим доволен уголком.
Between a burdock and a rose bush
the little violet hid herself from envy;
she was obscure, but knew no grief:
happy is he who is pleased with his corner.
Dmitriev's fable ends in the word ugolkom (Instr. of ugolok, "little corner"). Sluchevski is the author of Pesni iz Ugolka (“Songs from the Ugolok,” 1897). Ugolok (a diminutive of ugol, “corner”) was the name of Sluchevski’s estate near Narva (Estland). Konstantin Sluchevski (1837-1904) is the author of V snegakh (“In the Snows,” 1878), a narrative poem about a brother-and-sister incest (the action in it takes place in the backwoods of the Province of Perm). The children of Demon Veen and Marina Durmanov, Van and Ada are brother and sister and life-long lovers.
In “Ardis the Second” Marina, as she speaks to Van, quotes the words of Chatski in Griboedov's play Gore ot uma ("Woe from Wit," 1824):
'A propos de coins: in Griboedov's Gore ot uma, "How stupid to be so clever," a play in verse, written, I think, in Pushkin's time, the hero reminds Sophie of their childhood games, and says:
How oft we sat together in a corner
And what harm might there be in that?
but in Russian it is a little ambiguous, have another spot, Van?' (he shook his head, simultaneously lifting his hand, like his father), 'because, you see, - no, there is none left anyway - the second line, i kazhetsya chto v etom, can be also construed as "And in that one, meseems," pointing with his finger at a corner of the room. Imagine — when I was rehearsing that scene with Kachalov at the Seagull Theater, in Yukonsk, Stanislavski, Konstantin Sergeevich, actually wanted him to make that cosy little gesture (uyutnen’kiy zhest).' (1.37)
In Griboedov's play Chatski says:
Где время то? где возраст тот невинный,
Когда, бывало, в вечер длинный
Мы с вами явимся, исчезнем тут и там,
Играем и шумим по стульям и столам.
А тут ваш батюшка с мадамой, за пикетом;
Мы в тёмном уголке, и кажется, что в этом!
Вы помните? вздрогнем, что скрипнет столик, дверь...
Gone is the time! Gone are the innocent years!
Remember? We would run about pushing chairs,
We'd disappear then appear again,
Your father and Madame playing a table game,
we are in a dark corner - and what harm might there be in that? -
We would be startled by every little creak . . . (Part Two, scene 7)
At the end of Griboedov's play Chatski uses the word ugolok (a corner) again:
Бегу, не оглянусь, пойду искать по свету,
Где оскорблённому есть чувству уголок! -
Карету мне, карету!
I run away, without looking back. I shall go looking for a place in the world
where there is a corner for the insulted feeling!
A carriage for me, a carriage!
At the family dinner in “Ardis the Second” Demon asks Ada what she would like for her birthday and quotes Famusov’s words in Griboedov's play:
'By the way, Demon,' interrupted Marina, 'where and how can I obtain the kind of old roomy limousine with an old professional chauffeur that Praskovia, for instance, has had for years?'
'Impossible, my dear, they are all in heaven or on Terra. But what would Ada like, what would my silent love like for her birthday? It's next Saturday, po razschyotu po moemu (by my reckoning), isn't it? Une rivière de diamants?'
'Protestuyu!' cried Marina. 'Yes, I'm speaking seriozno. I object to your giving her kvaka sesva (quoi que ce soit), Dan and I will take care of all that.'
Besides you'll forget,' said Ada laughing, and very deftly showed the tip of her tongue to Van who had been on the lookout for her conditional reaction to 'diamonds.' (1.38)
Darkbloom (‘Notes to Ada’): po razschyotu po moemu: an allusion to Famusov (in Griboedov's Gore ot uma), calculating the pregnancy of a lady friend.
In her old age Ada amuses herself by translating (for the Oranger editions en regard) Griboedov into French and English:
Ada, who amused herself by translating (for the Oranger editions en regard) Griboyedov into French and English, Baudelaire into English and Russian, and John Shade into Russian and French, often read to Van, in a deep mediumesque voice, the published versions made by other workers in that field of semiconsciousness. The verse translations in English were especially liable to distend Van’s face in a grotesque grin which made him look, when he was not wearing his dental plates, exactly like a Greek comedial mask. He could not tell who disgusted him more: the well-meaning mediocrity, whose attempts at fidelity were thwarted by lack of artistic insight as well as by hilarious errors of textual interpretation, or the professional poet who embellished with his own inventions the dead and helpless author (whiskers here, private parts there) — a method that nicely camouflaged the paraphrast’s ignorance of the From language by having the bloomers of inept scholarship blend with the whims of flowery imitation. (5.4)
*In a letter of Sept. 19, 1818, to Alexander Turgenev Dmitriev termed young Pushkin "a beautiful flower of poetry that will not fade soon" (EO Commentary, vol. III, p. 142).
Let me also draw your attention to the updated version of my previous post (in which Bouguereau has been replaced with Boucher, the painter alluded to in Ada), "Cupidon peach & Ronald Oranger in Ada."