Describing Hugh’s and Armande’s last evening together, the anonymous narrators of VN’s novel Transparent Things (1972) mention a heavy piece of inscrutable sculpture catalogued as "Pauline anide:"
We are back in New York and this is their last evening together.
After serving them an excellent supper (a little on the rich side, perhaps, but not overabundant - neither was a big eater) obese Pauline, the femme de ménage, whom they shared with a Belgian artist in the penthouse immediately above them, washed the dishes and left at her usual hour (nine fifteen or thereabouts). Since she had the annoying propensity of sitting down for a moment to enjoy a bit of TV, Armande always waited for her to have gone before running it for her own pleasure. She now turned it on, let it live for a moment, changed channels - and killed the picture with a snort of disgust (her likes and dislikes in these matters lacked all logic, she might watch one or two programs with passionate regularity or on the contrary not touch the set for a week as if punishing that marvelous invention for a misdemeanor known only to her, and Hugh preferred to ignore her obscure feuds with actors and commentators). She opened a book, but here Phil's wife rang up to invite her on the morrow to the preview of a Lesbian drama with a Lesbian cast. Their conversation lasted twenty-five minutes, Armande using a confidential undertone, and Phyllis speaking so sonorously that Hugh, who sat at a round table correcting a batch of galleys, could have heard, had he felt so inclined, both sides of the trivial torrent. He contented himself instead with the resume Armande gave him upon returning to the settee of gray plush near the fake fireplace. As had happened on previous occasions, around ten o'clock a most jarring succession of bumps and scrapes suddenly came from above: it was the cretin upstairs dragging a heavy piece of inscrutable sculpture (catalogued as "Pauline anide") from the center of his studio to the corner it occupied at night. In invariable response, Armande glared at the ceiling and remarked that in the case of a less amiable and helpful neighbor she would have complained long ago to Phil's cousin (who managed the apartment house). When placidity was restored, she started to look for the book she had had in her hand before the telephone rang. Her husband always felt a flow of special tenderness that reconciled him to the boring or brutal ugliness of what not very happy people call "life" every time that he noted in neat, efficient, clear-headed Armande the beauty and helplessness of human abstraction. He now found the object of her pathetic search (it was in the magazine rack near the telephone) and, as he restored it to her, he was allowed to touch with reverent lips her temple and a strand of blond hair. Then he went back to the galleys of Tralatitions and she to her book, which was a French touring guide that listed many splendid restaurants, forked and starred, but not very many "pleasant, quiet, well-situated hotels" with three or more turrets and sometimes a little red songbird on a twig. (Chapter 19)
“Pauline anide” and "a Lesbian drama with a Lesbian cast" make one think of Pauline Viardot, a French singer in whose family Turgenev lived. In his Literaturnye vospominaniya. 1890-1902 (“Literary Reminescences. 1890-1902,” 1933) Pyotr Pertsov (whose surname comes from perets, “pepper;” Hugh’s and Armande’s supper served them by Pauline is a little on the rich side) tells about Yakov Polonski’s friendship with Turgenev and mentions Polonski’s wife Zhozefina Antonovna, a talented sculptor who also was a friend of Turgenev:
Для начала знакомства Полонский подарил мне экземпляр своей только что вышедшей отдельным изданием поэмы «Собаки» с надписью и звал бывать. Семья его в то время состояла, кроме жены, из двух сыновей – старший был студентом, младший – правоведом, и хорошенькой брюнетки-дочери, вскоре вышедшей замуж. Жозефина Антоновна была, как известно, не лишённой таланта скульпторшей, и до сих пор в Одессе украшает городской бульвар памятник-фонтан Пушкину с бюстом поэту её работы. Как и её муж, она была в большой дружбе с Тургеневым, и тень великого писателя, память о котором была тогда ещё очень жива, как бы витала в семье Полонских. Заметна была и ревность этих друзей к Виардо, столь ярко сказывающаяся в переписке Якова Петровича со своим другом. Он положительно не выносил Виардо, и, когда однажды я спросил его, была ли знаменитая подруга Тургенева в каком-либо отношении привлекательна, в ответ получилось краткое, но с чрезвычайной энергией сказанное определение: «Чёрт!»
According to Pertsov, to his question “was Viardot in any respect attractive” Polonski (who could not stand Viardot) curtly replied: “Chyort!” (“the Devil!”). The invisible narrators in Transparent Things seem to be the devils.
In a letter of Dec. 11, 1894, to Elena Shavrov (a lady writer and talented singer) Chekhov mentions his new story Tri goda (“Three Years,” 1895) that will appear in the January issue of Russian Thought and says that he wants to write about devils, about horrible, volcano-like women, about sorcerers – but, alas, the readers (and literary reviews) demand stories from the lives of Ivan Gavrilychs and their spouses:
Исполняю Ваше желание: посылаю фотографию работы Асикритова — лучшей у меня нет.
Буду теперь ждать Вашего портрета. Если пошлете его заказным письмом, то адресуйтесь в редакцию «Русской мысли».
Я совершенно здоров. В янв<арской> книжке «Русской мысли» будет моя повесть — «Три года». Замысел был один, а вышло что-то другое, довольно вялое и не шёлковое, как я хотел, а батистовое. Вы экспрессионистка, Вам не понравится.
Надоело всё одно и то же, хочется про чертей писать, про страшных, вулканических женщин, про колдунов — но увы! — требуют благонамеренных повестей и рассказов из жизни Иванов Гаврилычей и их супруг.
Chekhov is the author of Dama s sobachkoy (“The Lady with the Lap Dog,” 1899). Hugh Person moves to Floor Three of the Ascot Hotel (and dies in the hotel fire), because the lady with the little dog leaves before dinner:
Monsieur Wilde, taking him for a drunk or madman, had lumbered away. The pretty receptionist (flesh is flesh, the red sting is l'aiguillon rouge, and my love would not mind) had begun to signal again. He got up and walked to her desk. The Stresa hotel was undergoing repairs after a fire. Mais (pretty index erect) -
All his life, we are glad to note, our Person had experienced the curious sensation (known to three famous theologians and two minor poets) of there existing behind him - at his shoulder, as it were - a larger, incredibly wiser, calmer and stronger stranger, morally better than he. This was, in fact, his main "umbral companion" (a clownish critic had taken R. to task for that epithet) and had he been without that transparent shadow, we would not have bothered to speak about our dear Person. During the short stretch between his chair in the lounge and the girl's adorable neck, plump lips, long eyelashes, veiled charms. Person was conscious of something or somebody warning him that he should leave Witt there and then for Verona, Florence, Rome, Taormina, if Stresa was out. He did not heed his shadow, and fundamentally he may have been right. We thought that he had in him a few years of animal pleasure; we were ready to waft that girl into his bed, but after all it was for him to decide, for him to die, if he wished.
Mais! (a jot stronger than "but" or even "however") she had some good news for him. He had wanted to move to Floor Three, hadn't he? He could do so tonight. The lady with the little dog was leaving before dinner. It was a history rather amusing. It appeared that her husband looked after dogs when their masters had to absent themselves. The lady, when she voyaged herself, generally took with her a small animal, choosing from among those that were most melancholic. This morning her husband telephoned that the owner had returned earlier from his trip and was reclaiming his pet with great cries. (Chapter 25)
In his memoir essay Pertsov mentions Polonski’s humorous poem Sobaki (“The Dogs,” 1892) that just appeared in a separate edition and an inscribed copy of which Polonski gave him. Sobaka (“The Dog”) is a story (1866) and a poem in prose (1878) by Turgenev.
Ten' velikogo pisatelya (the shade of the great writer), as Pertsov calls Turgenev, also appears in Transparent Things:
Of the two thrills young Hugh experienced, one was general, the other specific. The general sense of liberation came first, as a great breeze, ecstatic and clean, blowing away a lot of life's rot. Specifically, he was delighted to discover three thousand dollars in his father's battered, but plump, wallet. Like many a young man of dark genius who feels in a wad of bills all the tangible thickness of immediate delights, he had no practical sense, no ambition to make more money, and no qualms about his future means of subsistence (these proved negligible when it transpired that the cash had been more than a tenth of the actual inheritance). That same day he moved to much finer lodgings in Geneva, had homard l'américaine for dinner, and went to find his first whore in a lane right behind his hotel.
For optical and animal reasons sexual love is less transparent than many other much more complicated things. One knows, however, that in his home town Hugh had courted a thirty-eight-year-old mother and her sixteen-year-old daughter but had been impotent with the first and not audacious enough with the second. We have here a banal case of protracted erotic itch, of lone practice for its habitual satisfaction, and of memorable dreams. The girl he accosted was stumpy but had a lovely, pale, vulgar face with Italian eyes. She took him to one of the better beds in a hideous old roominghouse - to the precise "number," in fact, where ninety-one, ninety-two, nearly ninety-three years ago a Russian novelist had sojourned on his way to Italy. The bed - a different one, with brass knobs - was made, unmade, covered with a frock coat, made again; upon it stood a half-open green-checkered grip, and the frock coat was thrown over the shoulders of the night-shirted, bare-necked, dark-tousled traveler whom we catch in the act of deciding what to take out of the valise (which he will send by mail coach ahead) and transfer to the knapsack (which he will carry himself across the mountains to the Italian frontier). He expects his friend Kandidatov, the painter, to join him here any moment for the outing, one of those lighthearted hikes that romantics would undertake even during a drizzly spell in August; it rained even more in those uncomfortable times; his boots are still wet from a ten-mile ramble to the nearest casino. They stand outside the door in the attitude of expulsion, and he has wrapped his feet in several layers of German-language newspaper, a language which incidentally he finds easier to read than French. The main problem now is whether to confide to his knapsack or mail in his grip his manuscripts: rough drafts of letters, an unfinished short story in a Russian copybook bound in black cloth, parts of a philosophical essay in a blue cahier acquired in Geneva, and the loose sheets of a rudimentary novel under the provisional title of Faust in Moscow. As he sits at that deal table, the very same upon which our Person's whore has plunked her voluminous handbag, there shows through that bag, as it were, the first page of the Faust affair with energetic erasures and untidy insertions in purple, black, reptile-green ink. The sight of his handwriting fascinates him; the chaos on the page is to him order, the blots are pictures, the marginal jottings are wings. Instead of sorting his papers, he uncorks his portable ink and moves nearer to the table, pen in hand. But at that minute there comes a joyful banging on the door. The door flies open and closes again. (Chapter 6)
Turgenev is the author of Faust. A Story in Nine Letters (1855). At the beginning of Ottsy i deti (“Fathers and Sons,” 1862) Turgenev mentions zvanie kandidata (a university degree) that Arkadiy Kirsanov had just taken:
В 55-м году он повез сына в университет; прожил с ним три зимы в Петербурге, почти никуда не выходя и стараясь заводить знакомства с молодыми товарищами Аркадия. На последнюю зиму он приехать не мог, — и вот мы видим его в мае месяце 1859 года, уже совсем седого, пухленького и немного сгорбленного: он ждёт сына, получившего, как некогда он сам, звание кандидата.
In 1855 he brought his son to the university and spent three winters in Petersburg with him, hardly going out anywhere and trying to make acquaintance with Arkady’s young comrades. The last winter he was unable to go, and here we see him in May, 1859, already entirely grey-haired, plump and rather bent, waiting for his son, who had just taken his university degree, as once he had taken it himself. (chapter 1)
One of the characters (and spectral narrators) in Transparent Things is Mr. R., the writer. The characters in “Fathers and Sons” include Princess R., the late mistress of Pavel Petrovich Kirsanov. In the epilogue of Turgenev's novel Pavel Petrovich moves to Dresden (where Princess R. lived). In the penultimate line of his poem Kiprenskomu ("To Kiprenski," 1827) Pushkin mentions Rome, Dresden and Paris:
Любимец моды легкокрылой,
Хоть не британец, не француз,
Ты вновь создал, волшебник милый,
Меня, питомца чистых муз,
- И я смеюся над могилой,
Ушед навек от смертных уз.
Себя как в зеркале я вижу,
Но это зеркало мне льстит.
Оно гласит, что не унижу
Пристрастья важных аонид.
Так Риму, Дрездену, Парижу
Известен впредь мой будет вид.
The darling of light-winged fashion,
Though not British, not French
You created again, dear wizard,
Me, a pet of pure muses, -
And I laugh at the grave
Gone forever from mortal bonds.
I see myself as in a mirror
But this mirror flatters me.
It says that I will not humiliate
The predilection of serious Aonian maids.
So Rome, Dresden, Paris
Will know henceforth my appearance.
Pristrast'ya vazhnykh aonid (the predilection of serious Aonian maids) brings to mind "Pauline anide." Aonidy (Aonian maids) are the Muses. Pushkin also mentions them at the end of Chapter Two (XL: 10) of Eugene Onegin:
Покамест упивайтесь ею,
Сей легкой жизнию, друзья!
Ее ничтожность разумею
И мало к ней привязан я;
Для призраков закрыл я вежды;
Но отдаленные надежды
Тревожат сердце иногда:
Без неприметного следа
Мне было б грустно мир оставить.
Живу, пишу не для похвал;
Но я бы, кажется, желал
Печальный жребий свой прославить,
Чтоб обо мне, как верный друг,
Напомнил хоть единый звук.
И чье-нибудь он сердце тронет;
И, сохраненная судьбой,
Быть может, в Лете не потонет
Строфа, слагаемая мной;
Быть может (лестная надежда!),
Укажет будущий невежда
На мой прославленный портрет
И молвит: то-то был поэт!
Прими ж мои благодаренья,
Поклонник мирных аонид,
О ты, чья память сохранит
Мои летучие творенья,
Чья благосклонная рука
Потреплет лавры старика!
Meanwhile enjoy your fill of it
— of this lightsome life, friends!
Its insignificance I realize
and little am attached to it;
to phantoms I have closed my eyelids;
but distant hopes
sometimes disturb my heart:
without an imperceptible trace, I'd be sorry
to leave the world.
I live, I write not for the sake of praise;
but my sad lot, meseems,
I would desire to glorify,
so that a single sound at least
might, like a faithful friend, remind one about me.
And it will touch
the heart of someone; and preserved by fate,
perhaps in Lethe will not drown
the strophe made by me;
perhaps — flattering hope! —
a future dunce will point
at my famed portrait
and utter: “That now was a poet!”
So do accept my thanks, admirer
of the peaceful Aonian maids,
you whose memory will preserve
my volatile creations,
you whose benevolent hand will pat
the old man's laurels!
Pushkin began Eugene Onegin (on May 9, 1823) in Kishinev and continued his work on EO in Odessa. Late in "1823" Pushkin and Onegin briefly meet in Odessa, after a separation of three and a half years. In his memoir essay on Polonski (see the quote above) Pertsov mentions Pushkin's fountain-monument in Odessa made by Polonski's wife Zhozefina Antonovna.
In Chapter Four (XXX: 1-2) of Eugene Onegin Pushkin mentions razroznennye tomy iz bibilioteki chertey (odd volumes out of the devils' library):
Но вы, разрозненные томы
Из библиотеки чертей,
Великолепные альбомы,
Мученье модных рифмачей,
Вы, украшенные проворно
Толстого кистью чудотворной
Иль Баратынского пером,
Пускай сожжёт вас божий гром!
Когда блистательная дама
Мне свой in-quarto подаёт,
И дрожь и злость меня берёт,
И шевелится эпиграмма
Во глубине моей души,
А мадригалы им пиши!
But you, odd volumes
from the bibliotheca of the devils,
the gorgeous albums,
the rack of fashionable rhymesters;
you, nimbly ornamented
by Tolstoy's wonder-working brush,
or Baratïnski's pen,
let the Lord's levin burn you!
Whenever her in-quarto a resplendent lady
proffers to me,
a tremor and a waspishness possess me,
and at the bottom of my soul
there stirs an epigram —
but madrigals you have to write for them!
Ada being Gen. of ad (Russian for "hell"), VN's novels Ada (1969) and Transparent Things seem to be odd volumes from the bibliotheca of the devils.