Trying to remember his family name, Vadim Vadimovich (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Look at the Harlequins!, 1974) wonders if his surname is Nebesnyy:
To the best of my knowledge my Christian name was Vadim; so was my father's. The U.S.A. passport recently issued me--an elegant booklet with a golden design on its green cover perforated by the number 00678638--did not mention my ancestral title; this had figured, though, on my British passport, throughout its several editions. Youth, Adulthood, Old Age, before the last one was mutilated beyond recognition by friendly forgers, practical jokers at heart. All this I re-gleaned one night, as certain brain cells, which had been frozen, now bloomed anew. Others, however, still puckered like retarded buds, and although I could freely twiddle (for the first time since I collapsed) my toes under the bedclothes, I just could not make out in that darker corner of my mind what surname came after my Russian patronymic. I felt it began with an N, as did the term for the beautifully spontaneous arrangement of words at moments of inspiration like the rouleaux of red corpuscles in freshly drawn blood under the microscope--a word I once used in See under Real, but could not remember either, something to do with a roll of coins, capitalistic metaphor, eh, Marxy? Yes, I definitely felt my family name began with an N and bore an odious resemblance to the surname or pseudonym of a presumably notorious (Notorov? No) Bulgarian, or Babylonian, or, maybe, Betelgeusian writer with whom scatterbrained émigrés from some other galaxy constantly confused me; but whether it was something on the lines of Nebesnyy or Nabedrin or Nablidze (Nablidze? Funny) I simply could not tell. I preferred not to overtax my willpower (go away, Naborcroft) and so gave up trying--or perhaps it began with a B and the n just clung to it like some desperate parasite? (Bonidze? Blonsky?--No, that belonged to the BINT business.) Did I have some princely Caucasian blood? Why had allusions to a Mr. Nabarro, a British politician, cropped up among the clippings I received from England concerning the London edition of A Kingdom by the Sea (lovely lilting title)? Why did Ivor call me "MacNab"? (7.3)
Nebesnyy brings to mind the epithet used by Vadim (or by Vadim's double) in his poem about heavenly stars (Zvezdoobraznost' nebesnyh zvyozd...):
After that jarring call, I saw little to choose between the tossings of insomnia and a walk to rue Cuvier which leads to the Seine, where according to police statistics an average of forty foreigners and God knows how many unfortunate natives drown yearly between wars. I have never experienced the least urge to commit suicide, that silly waste of selfhood (a gem in any light). But I must admit that on that particular night on the fourth or fifth or fiftieth anniversary of my darling's death, I must have looked pretty suspect, in my black suit and dramatic muffler, to an average policeman of the riparian department. And it is a particularly bad sign when a hatless person sobs as he walks, being moved not by lines he might have composed himself but by something he hideously mistakes for his own and presently flinches, yet is too much of a coward to make amends:
Zvezdoobraznost' nebesnyh zvyozd
Vidish' tol'ko skvoz' slyozy...
(Heavenly stars are seen as stellate
only through tears.)
I am much bolder now, of course, much bolder and prouder than the ambiguous hoodlum caught progressing that night between a seemingly endless fence with its tattered posters and a row of spaced streetlamps whose light would delicately select for its heart-piercing game overhead a young emerald-bright linden leaf. I now confess that I was bothered that night, and the next and some time before, by a dream feeling that my life was the nonidentical twin, a parody, an inferior variant of another man's life, somewhere on this or another earth. A demon, I felt, was forcing me to impersonate that other man, that other writer who was and would always be incomparably greater, healthier, and cruder than your obedient servant. (2.3)
In his story Svyatye Gory (“Holy Mountains,” 1895) Bunin mentions zvezdoobraznye sledy (the star-shaped footprints) left on the silt by wagtails:
За курганом блеснула круглая ложбина, налитая весенней водой. Я свернул к ней на отдых. Есть что-то чистое и веселое в этих полевых апрельских болотцах; над ними вьются звонкоголосые чибисы, серенькие трясогузки щеголевато и легко перебегают по их бережкам и оставляют на иле свои тонкие, звездообразные следы, а в мелкой, прозрачной воде их отражается ясная лазурь и белые облака весеннего неба. Курган был дикий, еще ни разу не тронутый плугом. Он расплывался на два холма и, словно поблекшей скатертью из мутно-зеленого бархата, был покрыт прошлогодней травой. Седой ковыль тихо покачивался на его склонах - жалкие остатки ковыля. «Время его, подумал я, - навсегда проходит; в вековом забытьи он только смутно вспоминает теперь далекое былое, прежние стони и прежних людей, души которых были роднее и ближе; ему, лучше нас умели понимать его шепот, полный от века задумчивости пустыни, так много говорящей без слов о ничтожестве земного существования». (1)
At the end of his story Ptitsy nebesnye (“The Birds of Heaven,” 1909) Bunin mentions planets, stars and constellations. In the penultimate line of his poem Rozy (“Roses,” 1903) Bunin uses the phrase skvoz' slyozy (through tears):
Блистая, облака лепились
В лазури пламенного дня.
Две розы под окном раскрылись —
Две чаши, полные огня.
В окно, в прохладный сумрак дома,
Глядел зеленый знойный сад,
И сена душная истома
Струила сладкий аромат.
Порою, звучный и тяжелый,
Высоко в небе грохотал
Громовый гул… Но пели пчелы,
Звенели мухи — день сиял.
Порою шумно пробегали
Потоки ливней голубых…
Но солнце и лазурь мигали
В зеркально-зыбком блеске их —
И день сиял, и млели розы,
Головки томные клоня,
И улыбалися сквозь слёзы
Очами, полными огня.
In his poem Moroz (“Frost,” 1903) Bunin (who served as a model for Morozov, Vadim’s friend and fellow poet in Paris) mentions svet ot sozvezdiy Oriona (the light from the constellations of Orion):
Так ярко звезд горит узор,
Так ясно Млечный Путь струится,
Что занесенный снегом двор
Весь и блестит и фосфорится.
Свет серебристо-голубой,
Свет от созвездий Ориона,
Как в сказке, льется над тобой
На снег морозный с небосклона.
И фосфором дымится снег,
И видно, как мерцает нежно
Твой ледяной душистый мех,
На плечи кинутый небрежно,
Как серьги длинные блестят,
И потемневшие зеницы
С восторгом жадности глядят
Сквозь серебристые ресницы.
Betelgeuse (cf. Betelgeusian writer with whom scatterbrained émigrés from some other galaxy constantly confused Vadim) is the second-brightest star in the constellation of Orion. In his story Lance (1952) VN mentions Betelgeuse:
If Boke's sources are accurate, the name "Lanceloz del Lac" occurs for the first time in Verse 3676 of the twelfth-century Roman de la Charrette. Lance, Lancelin, Lancelotik -- diminutives murmured at the brimming, salty, moist stars. Young knights in their teens learning to harp, hawk, and hunt; the Forest Dangerous and the Dolorous Tower; Aldebaran, Betelgeuse -- the thunder of Saracenic war cries. Marvelous deeds of arms, marvelous warriors, sparkling within the awful constellations above the Bokes' balcony: Sir Persand the Black Knight, and Sir Perimones the Red Knight, and Sir Pertolepe the Green Knight, and Sir Persant the Indigo Knight, and that bluff old party Sir Grummore Grummursum, muttering northern oaths under his breath. The field glass is not much good, the chart is all crumpled and damp, and: "You do not hold the flashlight properly"-- this to Mrs. Boke. (3)
“MacNab” (as Ivor Black called Vadim) brings to mind “names beginning with Mac” in Lance:
So the good guy grins, and the villain sneers, and a noble heart sports a slangy speech. Star tsars, directors of Galactic Unions, are practically replicas of those peppy, red-haired executives in earthy earth jobs, that illustrate with their little crinkles the human interest stories of the well-thumbed slicks in beauty parlors. Invaders of Denebola and Spica, Virgo's finest, bear names beginning with Mac; cold scientists are usually found under Steins; some of them share with the supergalactic gals such abstract labels as Biola or Vala. Inhabitants of foreign planets, "intelligent" beings, humanoid or of various mythic makes, have one remarkable trait in common: their intimate structure is never depicted. In a supreme concession to biped propriety, not only do centaurs wear loincloths; they wear them about their forelegs. (1)
One of Bunin's most famous stories is Antonovskie yabloki ("The Antonov Apples," 1900). Vadim's family name that he finally manages to remember seems to be Prince Yablonski. It comes from yablonya (apple tree).