Describing the escape of poor mad Aqua (the twin sister of Van’s, Ada’s and Lucette’s mother Marina) from a lunatic asylum, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) quotes Aqua’s words to a train conductor “Signor Konduktor, ay vant go Lago di Luga, hier geld:”
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)
The name Veen means in Dutch what Neva means in Finnish: "peat bog." Aqua's Signor Konduktor brings to mind konduktorsha (the conductress) in Nedorazumenie s Nevoyu (“A Confusion with the Neva,” 1926), Fyodor Sologub’s satire on the leaders of the Comintern:
Перетерпев судеб удары,
Мы в удареньях знатоки.
Никто не скажет, что мадьяры,
Хотя и храбры, но жидки,
И также знаем мы, что все напитки
Бывают жидки,
Какой ни примешай к ним густоты,
И если говорим мы про хвосты,
Так мы не говорим: прохвосты,
Все эти истины, конечно, просты,
И ведомы, бесспорно, всем.
Я речь о них завел затем,
Чтоб присказка была, потом же будет сказка,
И в ней завязка и развязка.
Нева не хочет быть Невой,
Уж каламбур наскучил ей избитый,
И плещется она волной сердитой,
Когда ей пушки говорят: не вой!
Шумит, ревет, взывает в злости ярой:
– Хочу быть Розой или Кларой! —
Склонилась наконец к ее моленью власть,
Ей дали имя Роза,
Но что же за напасть!
Бунтует Роза, нет зимой мороза.
Кондукторша стояла у окна
Чрез Розу проходящего вагона,
И объяснила так она
Причину бунта, рева, стона:
– Вишь, на подъем она легка,
Наделает немало злого.
Да что с воды спросить? Жидка,
Спросить бы надобно иного.
Нелегкие деньки
К нам в Ленинград приходят:
Волна вслед за волной повсюду колобродят,
Жидки.
Услышал эти речи
Внимательный и верный комсомол
И, взяв кондукторшу за плечи,
В милицию отвел.
Что жидко здесь, и что здесь густо,
Все объяснили ей. Идет домой,
Кричит: – Чтоб всем вам было пусто!
Всех, Роза, довела домой! —
Вы слышите здесь недоразуменье,
Поставлено неверно ударенье.
Всем надо знать, что воды у реки,
Так точно, как и все напитки,
Бывают жидки,
А не жидки,
И говоря неверно,
Вождей заденешь Коминтерна.
In Sologub’s poem the Neva (“the legendary river of Old Rus,” as Ada calls it in one of her letters to Van) says (btw., Aqua thinks that she can understand the language of her namesake, water) that it is sick of its name and wants to be Roza or Klara (presumably, in honor of Rosa Luxemburg and Clara Zetkin) and indeed is renamed Roza by Soviet authorities (who earlier renamed VN's home city Leningrad). As she speaks to her doctor, Aqua mentions the Hairy Alpine Rose in Marina's herbarium:
But that phase elapsed too. Other excruciations replaced her namesake’s loquacious quells so completely that when, during a lucid interval, she happened to open with her weak little hand a lavabo cock for a drink of water, the tepid lymph replied in its own lingo, without a trace of trickery or mimicry: Finito! It was now the forming of soft black pits (yamï, yamishchi) in her mind, between the dimming sculptures of thought and recollection, that tormented her phenomenally; mental panic and physical pain joined black-ruby hands, one making her pray for sanity, the other, plead for death. Man-made objects lost their significance or grew monstrous connotations; clothes hangers were really the shoulders of decapitated Tellurians, the folds of a blanket she had kicked off her bed looked back at her mournfully with a stye on one drooping eyelid and dreary reproof in the limp twist of a livid lip. The effort to comprehend the information conveyed somehow to people of genius by the hands of a timepiece, or piece of time, became as hopeless as trying to make out the sign language of a secret society or the Chinese chant of that young student with a non-Chinese guitar whom she had known at the time she or her sister had given birth to a mauve baby. But her madness, the majesty of her madness, still retained a mad queen’s pathetic coquetry: ‘You know, Doctor, I think I’ll need glasses soon, I don’t know’ (lofty laugh), ‘I just can’t make out what my wrist watch says... For heaven’s sake, tell me what it says! Ah! Half-past for — for what? Never mind, never mind, "never" and "mind" are twins, I have a twin sister and a twin son. I know you want to examine my pudendron, the Hairy Alpine Rose in her album, collected ten years ago’ (showing her ten fingers gleefully, proudly, ten is ten!). (1.3)
Balmont’s poem Golubaya roza (“The Blue Rose,” 1903) begins with the line Firval’dshtetskoe ozero – Roza Vetrov (Lake Lucerne – a Compass Rose):
Фирвальдштетское озеро – Роза Ветров,
Под ветрами колышутся семь лепестков.
Эта роза сложилась меж царственных гор
В изумрудно-лазурный узор.
Широки лепестки из блистающих вод,
Голубая мечта, в них качаясь, живет.
Под ветрами встает цветовая игра,
Принимая налет серебра.
Для кого расцвела ты, красавица вод?
Этой розы никто никогда не сорвет.
В водяной лепесток – лишь глядится живой,
Этой розе дивясь мировой.
Горы встали кругом, в снеге рады цветам,
Юной Девой одна называется там.
С этой Девой далекой ты слита Судьбой,
Роза-влага, цветок голубой.
Вы равно замечтались о горной весне.
Ваша мысль – в голубом, ваша жизнь – в белизне.
Дева белых снегов, голубых ледников,
Как идет к тебе Роза Ветров!
Lago di Luga means in Italian "Lake Luga." The master of Ardis, Daniel Veen (Van’s and Ada’s Uncle Dan) owns another estate, up north on Lake Kitezh, near Luga:
Daniel Veen’s mother was a Trumbell, and he was prone to explain at great length — unless sidetracked by a bore-baiter — how in the course of American history an English ‘bull’ had become a New England ‘bell.’ Somehow or other he had ‘gone into business’ in his twenties and had rather rankly grown into a Manhattan art dealer. He did not have — initially at least — any particular liking for paintings, had no aptitude for any kind of salesmanship, and no need whatever to jolt with the ups and downs of a ‘job’ the solid fortune inherited from a series of far more proficient and venturesome Veens. Confessing that he did not much care for the countryside, he spent only a few carefully shaded summer weekends at Ardis, his magnificent manor near Ladore. He had revisited only a few times since his boyhood another estate he had, up north on Lake Kitezh, near Luga, comprising, and practically consisting of, that large, oddly rectangular though quite natural body of water which a perch he had once clocked took half an hour to cross diagonally and which he owned jointly with his cousin, a great fisherman in his youth. (1.1)
On Demonia (aka Antiterra, Earth's twin planet on which Ada is set) the territory of the Soviet Russia is occupied by Tartary, "the independent inferno." In his poem Nerushimyi (“The Indestructible”) Balmont describes the invasion of Batu Khan (the founder of the Golden Horde) and says that the town of Kitezh is alive at the bottom of the forest lake Svetlyi Yar:
Как, топя ладью, косматый,
Вверх вскипает в море вал,
Нечестивый лютый Батый
Шел на Русь и воевал.
Ветер любит виться, воя,
Малый ветер вихрю брат.
Так разгульностям разбоя
Всяк Татарин сердцем рад.
Грады, веси разоряли,
Пожигали их огнем.
Плачьте, женщины, в печали,
Плачьте ночью, плачьте днем.
В сердце русском плач великий,
Бродит горе, как туман.
Только враг широколикий
Узкоглазый, сыт и пьян.
В храмах Божьих слышно ржанье,
Стук копыт и храп коней.
На крестах церквей дрожанье
Дальних зарев и теней.
Но в молитвенном восторге,
Сердцем тверд, хоть ратью мал,
Благоверный князь Георгий
В древний Китеж побежал.
Вплоть до озера лесного,
Что зовется Светлый Яр,
Бился снова он и снова,
Вражий крепче был удар.
Но когда, как зверь мохнатый,
Как бормочущий медведь,
Навалился лютый Батый,
Чтобы Русью овладеть, –
В свете, полном ослепленья
Для зениц толпы чужой,
Князь Георгий, как виденье,
Скрылся в глуби озерной.
Скрылись храмы, скрылся Китеж,
Глубь прияла прежний вид.
Нет, о Батый, не похитишь,
То, что Светлый Яр хранит.
И текут как прежде реки,
Китеж древний нерушим.
Но различны человеки,
И не всякому он зрим.
Тот, чей дух живет лукаво,
Кто ни в чем душой не весь,
Мыслит влево, мыслит вправо,
Место пусто видит здесь.
Кто с умом нераздвоенным,
С верой жаркою в груди,
К этим водам осребренным
Ранним утром приходи.
Жив на дне он, храм подводный,
Служба в храмах там светла,
И о правде всенародной,
Чу, поют колокола.
The Soviet national anthem began with the words Soyuz nerushimyi (The indestructible Union). Describing Demon's sword duel with Baron d'Onsky (Skonky), Van mentions “decrepit but indestructible Gamaliel” (a President of the United Americas):
Upon being questioned in Demon’s dungeon, Marina, laughing trillingly, wove a picturesque tissue of lies; then broke down, and confessed. She swore that all was over; that the Baron, a physical wreck and a spiritual Samurai, had gone to Japan forever. From a more reliable source Demon learned that the Samurai’s real destination was smart little Vatican, a Roman spa, whence he was to return to Aardvark, Massa, in a week or so. Since prudent Veen preferred killing his man in Europe (decrepit but indestructible Gamaliel was said to be doing his best to forbid duels in the Western Hemisphere — a canard or an idealistic President’s instant-coffee caprice, for nothing was to come of it after all), Demon rented the fastest petroloplane available, overtook the Baron (looking very fit) in Nice, saw him enter Gunter’s Bookshop, went in after him, and in the presence of the imperturbable and rather bored English shopkeeper, back-slapped the astonished Baron across the face with a lavender glove. The challenge was accepted; two native seconds were chosen; the Baron plumped for swords; and after a certain amount of good blood (Polish and Irish — a kind of American ‘Gory Mary’ in barroom parlance) had bespattered two hairy torsoes, the whitewashed terrace, the flight of steps leading backward to the walled garden in an amusing Douglas d’Artagnan arrangement, the apron of a quite accidental milkmaid, and the shirtsleeves of both seconds, charming Monsieur de Pastrouil and Colonel St Alin, a scoundrel, the latter gentlemen separated the panting combatants, and Skonky died, not ‘of his wounds’ (as it was viciously rumored) but of a gangrenous afterthought on the part of the least of them, possibly self-inflicted, a sting in the groin, which caused circulatory trouble, notwithstanding quite a few surgical interventions during two or three years of protracted stays at the Aardvark Hospital in Boston — a city where, incidentally, he married in 1869 our friend the Bohemian lady, now keeper of Glass Biota at the local museum. (1.2)
Darkbloom (‘Notes to Ada’): Aardvark: apparently, a university town in New England.
Gamaliel: a much more fortunate statesman than our W.G. Harding.
Describing his performance in variety shows as Mascodagama, Van mentions the Ladore, Ladoga, Laguna, Lugano and Luga papers:
Mascodagama’s fame reached inevitably the backwoods of America: a photograph of him, masked, it is true, but unable to mislead a fond relative or faithful retainer, was reproduced by the Ladore, Ladoga, Laguna, Lugano and Luga papers in the first week of 1888; but the accompanying reportage was not. The work of a poet, and only a poet (‘especially of the Black Belfry group,’ as some wit said), could have adequately described a certain macabre quiver that marked Van’s extraordinary act. (1.30)
In his poem Prosnuvshisya ne rano… (“Having woken up not early,” 1911) Sologub mentions ozero Lugano (Lake Lugano):
Проснувшися не рано,
Я вышел на балкон.
Над озером Лугано
Дымился лёгкий сон.
От горных высей плыли
Туманы к облакам,
Как праздничные были,
Рассказанные снам.
Весь вид здесь был так дивен,
Был так красив весь край,
Что не был мне противен
Грохочущий трамвай.
Хулы, привычно строгой,
В душе заснувшей нет.
Спокоен я дорогой,
Всем странам шлю привет.
Прекрасные, чужие, —
От них в душе туман;
Но ты, моя Россия,
Прекраснее всех стран.
Having woken up not early,
I came out onto the balcony.
A light dream smoked
Above Lake Lugano.
From the mountain heights
The mists swam to the clouds,
Like festive true stories
Told to the dreams.
The whole view was so wondrous,
The whole land was so beautiful
That a thundering streetcar
Wasn’t revolting to me.
There is no criticism, habitually strong,
In my sleeping soul.
I am calm en route,
To all countries I send greetings.
Beautiful, foreign,
They leave a haze in my soul;
But you, my Russia,
Is more beautiful than all countries.
Vsem stranam shlyu privet (To all countries I send greetings) brings to mind I vsem dolinam dagestanskim / ya shlyu zavistlivyi privet (and to all the Daghestan valleys / I send envious greetings), two lines in VN’s poem “To Prince S. M. Kachurin” (1947):
Качурин, твой совет я принял
и вот уж третий день живу
в музейной обстановке, в синей
гостиной с видом на Неву.
Священником американским
твой бедный друг переодет,
и всем долинам дагестанским
я шлю завистливый привет.
От холода, от перебоев
в подложном паспорте, не сплю:
исследователям обоев
лилеи и лианы шлю.
Но спит, на канапе устроясь,
коленки приложив к стене
и завернувшись в плед по пояс,
толмач, приставленный ко мне.
Kachurin, your advice I’ve accepted
and here I am, living for the third day
in a museumist setup: a blue
drawing room with a view on the Neva.
As an American clergyman
your poor friend is disguised,
and to all the Daghestan valleys
I send envious greetings.
Because of the cold, and the palpitations
of a false passport, I cannot sleep.
To wallpaper investigators
lianas and lilies I send.
But he sleeps (curled up on a canapé,
knees snugly pressed to the wall,
in a plaid rug wrapped up to the waist)
- the interpreter I've been assigned.
Describing his last visit to Villa Venus (Eric Veen's floramors), Van mentions Princess Kachurin, a maidservant:
Van never regretted his last visit to one last Villa Venus. A cauliflowered candle was messily burning in its tin cup on the window ledge next to the guitar-shaped paper-wrapped bunch of long roses for which nobody had troubled to find, or could have found, a vase. On a bed, some way off, lay a pregnant woman, smoking, looking up at the smoke mingling its volutes with the shadows on the ceiling, one knee raised, one hand dreamily scratching her brown groin. Far beyond her, a door standing ajar gave on what appeared to be a moonlit gallery but was really an abandoned, half-demolished, vast reception room with a broken outer wall, zigzag fissures in the floor, and the black ghost of a gaping grand piano, emitting, as if all by itself, spooky glissando twangs in the middle of the night. Through a great rip in the marbleized brick and plaster, the naked sea, not seen but heard as a panting space separated from time, dully boomed, dully withdrew its platter of pebbles, and, with the crumbling sounds, indolent gusts of warm wind reached the unwalled rooms, disturbing the volutes of shadow above the woman, and a bit of dirty fluff that had drifted down onto her pale belly, and even the reflection of the candle in a cracked pane of the bluish casement. Beneath it, on a rump-tickling coarse couch, Van reclined, pouting pensively, pensively caressing the pretty head on his chest, flooded by the black hair of a much younger sister or cousin of the wretched florinda on the tumbled bed. The child’s eyes were closed, and whenever he kissed their moist convex lids the rhythmic motion of her blind breasts changed or stopped altogether, and was presently resumed.
He was thirsty, but the champagne he had bought, with the softly rustling roses, remained sealed and he had not the heart to remove the silky dear head from his breast so as to begin working on the explosive bottle. He had fondled and fouled her many times in the course of the last ten days, but was not sure if her name was really Adora, as everybody maintained — she, and the other girl, and a third one (a maidservant, Princess Kachurin), who seemed to have been born in the faded bathing suit she never changed and would die in, no doubt, before reaching majority or the first really cold winter on the beach mattress which she was moaning on now in her drugged daze. And if the child really was called Adora, then what was she? — not Rumanian, not Dalmatian, not Sicilian, not Irish, though an echo of brogue could be discerned in her broken but not too foreign English. Was she eleven or fourteen, almost fifteen perhaps? Was it really her birthday — this twenty-first of July, nineteen-four or eight or even several years later, on a rocky Mediterranean peninsula?
A very distant church clock, never audible except at night, clanged twice and added a quarter.
‘Smorchiama la secandela,’ mumbled the bawd on the bed in the local dialect that Van understood better than Italian. The child in his arms stirred and he pulled his opera cloak over her. In the grease-reeking darkness a faint pattern of moonlight established itself on the stone floor, near his forever discarded half-mask lying there and his pump-shod foot. It was not Ardis, it was not the library, it was not even a human room, but merely the squalid recess where the bouncer had slept before going back to his Rugby-coaching job at a public school somewhere in England. The grand piano in the otherwise bare hall seemed to be playing all by itself but actually was being rippled by rats in quest of the succulent refuse placed there by the maid who fancied a bit of music when her cancered womb roused her before dawn with its first familiar stab. The ruinous Villa no longer bore any resemblance to Eric’s’ organized dream,’ but the soft little creature in Van’s desperate grasp was Ada. (2.3)
See also the updated versions of my three or four latest posts.