Describing his love life in the years of his last separation with Ada, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) mentions Lucy Manfristan, a red-haired English virgin:
During the years of their last separation, his libertinism had remained essentially as implacable as before; but sometimes the score of love-making would drop to once in four days, and sometimes he would realize with a shock that a whole week had passed in unruffled chastity. The series of exquisite harlots might still alternate with runs of amateur charmers at chance resorts and might still be broken by a month of inventive love in the company of some frivolous Women of fashion (there was one red-haired English virgin, Lucy Manfristan, seduced June 4, 1911, in the walled garden of her Norman manor and carried away to Fialta on the Adriatic, whom he recalled with a special little shiver of lust); but those false romances only fatigued him; the indifferently plumbed palazzina would soon be given away, the badly sunburnt girl sent back — and he would need something really nasty and tainted to revive his manhood. (5.3)
The Lucy poems (1798-1801) are a series of five poems by Wordsworth, the author of Lucy Gray (1799). Manfristan is a portmanteau combining Manfred with Tristan. Manfred (1817) is a dramatic poem by Lord Byron (father of Ada). Tristan and Iseult, alternatively known as Tristan and Isolde, is a chivalric romance retold in numerous variations since the 12th century. Among Alexander Blok’s drafts there are plans of several historical scenes. At least two of them (both dated 1919) are entitled Tristan.
“The walled garden of her Norman manor” brings to mind V etot sad, obnesyonnyi stenoy (In this garden enclosed with the wall), a line in the second poem of Blok’s cycle Solov’yinyi sad (“The Nightingale Garden,” 1915):
Не доносятся жизни проклятья
В этот сад, обнесённый стеной,
В синем сумраке белое платье
За решоткой мелькает резной.
Blok’s poem Predchuvstvuyu Tebya (“I Apprehend You”) is dated June 4, 1901:
И тяжкий сон житейского сознанья
Ты отряхнёшь, тоскуя и любя.
Вл. Соловьёв
Предчувствую Тебя. Года проходят мимо —
Всё в облике одном предчувствую Тебя.
Весь горизонт в огне — и ясен нестерпимо,
И молча жду, — тоскуя и любя.
Весь горизонт в огне, и близко появленье,
Но страшно мне: изменишь облик Ты,
И дерзкое возбудишь подозренье,
Сменив в конце привычные черты.
О, как паду — и горестно, и низко,
Не одолев смертельные мечты!
Как ясен горизонт! И лучезарность близко.
Но страшно мне: изменишь облик Ты.
4 июня 1901. С. Шахматово
And with longing and love you will shake off
The heavy dream of everyday consciousness.
V. Solovyov
I apprehend You. The years pass by -
Yet in constant form, I apprehend You.
The whole horizon is aflame - impossibly sharp,
And mute, I wait, - with longing and with love.
The whole horizon is aflame, and your appearance near.
And yet I fear that You will change your form,
Give rise to impudent suspicion
By changing Your familiar contours in the end.
Oh, how I'll fall - so low and bitter,
Defeated by my fatal dreams!
How sharp is the horizon! Radiance is near.
And yet I fear that You will change your form.
(tr. A. Wachtel, I. Kutik and M. Denner)
Van’s and Ada’s half-sister Lucette commits suicide (by jumping into the Atlantic from Admiral Tobakoff) on June 4, 1901. Describing the last day of Lucette’s life, Van mentions Spring in Fialta and a torrid May on Minataor, the famous artificial island:
To most of the Tobakoff’s first-class passengers the afternoon of June 4, 1901, in the Atlantic, on the meridian of Iceland and the latitude of Ardis, seemed little conducive to open air frolics: the fervor of its cobalt sky kept being cut by glacial gusts, and the wash of an old-fashioned swimming pool rhythmically flushed the green tiles, but Lucette was a hardy girl used to bracing winds no less than to the detestable sun. Spring in Fialta and a torrid May on Minataor, the famous artificial island, had given a nectarine hue to her limbs, which looked lacquered with it when wet, but re-evolved their natural bloom as the breeze dried her skin. With glowing cheekbones and that glint of copper showing from under her tight rubber cap on nape and forehead, she evoked the Helmeted Angel of the Yukonsk Ikon whose magic effect was said to change anemic blond maidens into konskie deti, freckled red-haired lads, children of the Sun Horse.
She returned after a brief swim to the sun terrace where Van lay and said:
‘You can’t imagine’ — (‘I can imagine anything,’ he insisted) — ‘you can imagine, okay, what oceans of lotions and streams of creams I am compelled to use — in the privacy of my balconies or in desolate sea caves — before I can exhibit myself to the elements. I always teeter on the tender border between sunburn and suntan — or between lobster and Obst as writes Herb, my beloved painter — I’m reading his diary published by his last duchess, it’s in three mixed languages and lovely, I’ll lend it to you. You see, darling, I’d consider myself a pied cheat if the small parts I conceal in public were not of the same color as those on show.’ (3.5)
“The tender border between sunburn and suntan” reminds one of the badly sunburnt girl who would be sent back by sated Van.
Miss May (1907) is a story by Zinaida Hippius. Minataor is an anagram of Taormina. The second stanza of Hippius’ poem Apel’sinnye tsvety (“The Orange Blossom,” 1897) begins with the line Pod serym nebom Taorminy (beneath gray sky of Taormina):
Под серым небом Таормины
Среди глубин некрасоты
На миг припомнились единый
Мне апельсинные цветы.
Beneath gray sky of Taormina
amidst the depths of non-beauty
I recalled for a moment
the orange blossom.
Pod serym nebom Taorminy brings to mind Pod znoynym nebom Argentiny, a tango that Van dances on his hands as Mascodagama (Van’s stage name):
Neither was the sheer physical pleasure of maniambulation a negligible factor, and the peacock blotches with which the carpet stained the palms of his hands during his gloveless dance routine seemed to be the reflections of a richly colored nether world that he had been the first to discover. For the tango, which completed his number on his last tour, he was given a partner, a Crimean cabaret dancer in a very short scintillating frock cut very low on the back. She sang the tango tune in Russian:
Pod znóynïm nébom Argentínï,
Pod strástnïy góvor mandolinï
‘Neath sultry sky of Argentina,
To the hot hum of mandolina
Fragile, red-haired ‘Rita’ (he never learned her real name), a pretty Karaite from Chufut Kale, where, she nostalgically said, the Crimean cornel, kizil’, bloomed yellow among the arid rocks, bore an odd resemblance to Lucette as she was to look ten years later. During their dance, all Van saw of her were her silver slippers turning and marching nimbly in rhythm with the soles of his hands. He recouped himself at rehearsals, and one night asked her for an assignation. She indignantly refused, saying she adored her husband (the make-up fellow) and loathed England. (1.30)
Rita bears an odd resemblance to Lucette as she is to look ten years later. Van seduces Lucy Manfristan on June 4, 1911, exactly ten years after Lucette’s death.
The orange blossom in Hippius’ poem brings to mind Ronald Oranger, old Van’s secretary (and the editor of Ada) who marries Violet Knox (old Van’s typist whom Ada calls Fialochka, "little violet") after Van’s and Ada’s death. Nochnaya Fialka (“The Night Violet,” 1906) is a poem in blank verse subtitled Son (“A Dream”) by Blok. At the beginning of VN’s story Vesna v Fial’te ("Spring in Fialta," 1936) the narrator mentions the sweet dark dampness of the most rumpled of small flowers:
Я этот городок люблю; потому ли, что во впадине его названия мне слышится сахаристо-сырой запах мелкого, тёмного, самого мятого из цветов, и не в тон, хотя внятное, звучание Ялты; потому ли, что его сонная весна особенно умащивает душу, не знаю; но как я был рад очнуться в нём, и вот шлёпать вверх, навстречу ручьям, без шапки, с мокрой головой, в макинтоше, надетом прямо на рубашку!
I am fond of Fialta; I am fond of it because I feel in the hollow of those violaceous syllables the sweet dark dampness of the most rumpled of small flowers, and because the altolike name of a lovely Crimean town is echoed by its viola; and also because there is something in the very somnolence of its humid Lent that especially anoints one's soul. So I was happy to be there again, to trudge uphill in inverse direction to the rivulet of the gutter, hatless, my head wet, my skin already suffused with warmth although I wore only a light mackintosh over my shirt.
A lovely Crimean town is Yalta. According to Van, the names Yalta and Altyn Tagh sounded strangely attractive to poor mad Aqua (Marina’s twin sister):
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)
Aqua’s pseudonym seems to hint at shchemyashchiy zvuk (the heart-rending sound) mentioned by Blok in the first line of his poem Priblizhaetsya zvuk... (“A sound approaches...” 1912):
Приближается звук. И, покорна щемящему звуку,
Молодеет душа.
И во сне прижимаю к губам твою прежнюю руку,
Не дыша.
A sound approaches. And, obedient to the heart-rending sound,
my soul gets younger.
And in a dream I press to my lips your former hand,
not breathing.
Blok is the author of "To E. A. Baratynski" (1900):
Так мгновенные созданья
Поэтической мечты
Исчезают от дыханья
Посторонней суеты. Баратынский
Тебе, поэт, в вечерней тишине
Мои мечты, волненья и досуги.
Близь Музы, ветреной подруги,
Попировать недолго, видно, мне.
Придёт пора — она меня покинет,
Настанет час тревожной суеты,
И прихоть лёгкая задумчивой мечты
В моей груди увянет и застынет.
In his poem Poslednyaya smert’ (“The Last Death,” 1827) Baratynski mentions iskusstvennye ostrova (the artificial islands):
Сначала мир явил мне дивный сад:
Везде искусств, обилия приметы;
Близ веси весь и подле града град,
Везде дворцы, театры, водометы,
Везде народ, и хитрый свой закон
Стихии все признать заставил он.
Уж он морей мятежные пучины
На островах искусственных селил,
Уж рассекал небесные равнины
По прихоти им вымышленных крил;
Всё на земле движением дышало,
Всё на земле как будто ликовало.
Minataor is the famous artificial island.
In his essay Sud’ba Pushkina (“The Fate of Pushkin,” 1897) Vladimir Solovyov quotes Pushkin’s sonnet Poetu (“To a Poet,” 1828) and the lines from Byron’s Manfred:
Уже в сонете "Поэту" высота самосознания смешивается с высокомерием и требование бесстрастия - с обиженным и обидным выражением отчуждения.
Ты - царь, живи один!
Это взято, кажется, из Байрона: the solitude of kings. Но ведь одиночество царей состоит не в том, что они живут одни,- чего, собственно, и не бывает,- а в том, что они среди других имеют единственное положение. Это есть одиночество горных вершин.
Монблан - монарх соседних гор:
Они его венчали.
("Манфред" Байрона). (chapter VII)
Mont Blanc is the monarch of mountains;
They crown'd him long ago (Manfred, Act One, scene 1).
Pushkin’s Sonet (“A Sonnet,” 1830) has an epigraph from Wordsworth: “Scorn not the sonnet, critic.” Lucy Manfristan is a red-haired English virgin. The Virgin is a sonnet by Wordsworth.
Manfred + Tristan + dei = Manfristan + red + deti
dei - Lat., gods
deti - Russ., children (cf. konskie deti, children of the Sun Horse)
Because love is blind, Van (who is sterile) never finds out that Andrey Vinelander (Ada's husband) and Ada have at least two children and that Ronald Oranger and Violet Knox are Ada's grandchildren.