Describing King Victor’s last visit to Villa Venus (Eric Veen’s floramors), Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) mentions a line composed by Seneca that King Victor wrote in the Shell Pink Book:
In 1905 a glancing blow was dealt Villa Venus from another quarter. The personage we have called Ritcov or Vrotic had been induced by the ailings of age to withdraw his patronage. However, one night he suddenly arrived, looking again as ruddy as the proverbial fiddle; but after the entire staff of his favorite floramor near Bath had worked in vain on him till an ironic Hesperus rose in a milkman’s humdrum sky, the wretched sovereign of one-half of the globe called for the Shell Pink Book, wrote in it a line that Seneca had once composed:
subsidunt montes et juga celsa ruunt,
— and departed, weeping. About the same time a respectable Lesbian who conducted a Villa Venus at Souvenir, the beautiful Missouri spa, throttled with her own hands (she had been a Russian weightlifter) two of her most beautiful and valuable charges. It was all rather sad. (2.3)
Darkbloom ('Notes to Ada'): subsidunt etc.: mountains subside and heights deteriorate.
In Chapter Five (XXXII: 9) of Eugene Onegin Pushkin mentions Seneca among the authors who are not as popular as Martin Zadeck (interpreter of dreams):
Но та, сестры не замечая,
В постеле с книгою лежит,
За листом лист перебирая,
И ничего не говорит.
Хоть не являла книга эта
Ни сладких вымыслов поэта,
Ни мудрых истин, ни картин,
Но ни Виргилий, ни Расин,
Ни Скотт, ни Байрон, ни Сенека,
Ни даже Дамских Мод Журнал
Так никого не занимал:
То был, друзья, Мартын Задека,
Глава халдейских мудрецов,
Гадатель, толкователь снов.
But she, not noticing her sister,
lies with a book in bed,
page after page
keeps turning over, and says nothing.
Although that book displayed
neither the sweet inventions of a poet,
nor sapient truths, nor pictures,
yet neither Virgil, nor Racine, nor Scott, nor Byron,
nor Seneca, nor even
the Magazine of Ladies' Fashions
ever engrossed anybody so much:
it was, friends, Martin Zadeck,33
head of Chaldean sages,
divinistre, interpreter of dreams.
33. Divinatory books in our country come out under the imprint of Martin Zadeck — a worthy person who never wrote divinatory books, as B. M. Fyodorov observes. (Pushkin’s note)
Pushkin rhymes Seneka with Zadeka (Zadeck). In his EO Commentary (vol. II, p. 515) VN lists Martin Zadeck’s predictions made on his deathbed: Turkey’s disintegration, the coming opulence of Scandinavia and Russia, Danzig’s dazzling grandeur, the conquest of Italy by France, the complete invasion of Africa by three Northern nations, the destruction of most of the New World by cataclysms, and the end of the world in 1969 (the year of Ada’s publication). Nero's tutor, Seneca died in 65 AD, fourteen years before the disastrous eruption of Mt Vesuvius that destroyed Pompeii and Herculaneum.
The ruler of the British Commonwealth on Demonia (aka Antiterra, Earth’s twin planet on which Ada is set), King Victor brings to mind Aurelius Victor, a Roman historian of the 4th century (the author of De Viris illustribus) mentioned by Aleksey Ivanovich in Pushkin’s fragment My provodili vecher na dache… (“We were spending the evening at the dacha,” 1835):
— Ей-богу, — сказал молодой человек, — я робею: я стал стыдлив, как ценсура. Ну, так и быть...
Надобно знать, что в числе латинских историков есть некто Аврелий Виктор, о котором, вероятно, вы никогда не слыхивали.
— Aurelius Victor? — прервал Вершнев, который учился некогда у езуитов, — Аврелий Виктор, писатель четвертого столетия. Сочинения его приписываются Корнелию Непоту и даже Светонию; он написал книгу de Viris illustribus — о знаменитых мужах города Рима, знаю...
— Точно так, — продолжал Алексей Иваныч, — книжонка его довольно ничтожна, но в ней находится то сказание о Клеопатре, которое так меня поразило. И, что замечательно, в этом месте сухой и скучный Аврелий Виктор силою выражения равняется Тациту: Наес tantae libidinis fuit ut saepe prostiterit; tantae pulchritudinis ut multi noctem illius morte emerint...
— Прекрасно! — воскликнул Вершнев. — Это напоминает мне Саллюстия — помните? Tantae...
— Что же это, господа? — сказала хозяйка, — уж вы изволите разговаривать по-латыни! Как это для нас весело! Скажите, что значит ваша латинская фраза?
— Дело в том, что Клеопатра торговала своею красотою, и что многие купили ее ночи ценою своей жизни...
According to Aurelius Victor, Cleopatra (the queen of Egypt) used to sell her beauty and many men bought her nights at the price of their lives. Pushkin’s unfinished novella Egipetskie nochi (“The Egyptian Nights,” 1835) brings to mind three Egyptian squaws mentioned by Van when he describes his first visit to Villa Venus:
Because the particular floramor that I visited for the first time on becoming a member of the Villa Venus Club (not long before my second summer with my Ada in the arbors of Ardis) is today, after many vicissitudes, the charming country house of a Chose don whom I respect, and his charming family (charming wife and a triplet of charming twelve-year-old daughters, Ala, Lolá and Lalage — especially Lalage), I cannot name it — though my dearest reader insists I have mentioned it somewhere before.
I have frequented bordels since my sixteenth year, but although some of the better ones, especially in France and Ireland, rated a triple red symbol in Nugg’s guidebook, nothing about them pre-announced the luxury and mollitude of my first Villa Venus. It was the difference between a den and an Eden.
Three Egyptian squaws, dutifully keeping in profile (long ebony eye, lovely snub, braided black mane, honey-hued faro frock, thin amber arms, Negro bangles, doughnut earring of gold bisected by a pleat of the mane, Red Indian hairband, ornamental bib), lovingly borrowed by Eric Veen from a reproduction of a Theban fresco (no doubt pretty banal in 1420 B.C.), printed in Germany (Künstlerpostkarte Nr. 6034, says cynical Dr Lagosse), prepared me by means of what parched Eric called ‘exquisite manipulations of certain nerves whose position and power are known only to a few ancient sexologists,’ accompanied by the no less exquisite application of certain ointments, not too specifically mentioned in the pornolore of Eric’s Orientalia, for receiving a scared little virgin, the descendant of an Irish king, as Eric was told in his last dream in Ex, Switzerland, by a master of funerary rather than fornicatory ceremonies.
Those preparations proceeded in such sustained, unendurably delicious rhythms that Eric dying in his sleep and Van throbbing with foul life on a rococo couch (three miles south of Bedford) could not imagine how those three young ladies, now suddenly divested of their clothes (a well-known oneirotic device), could manage to draw out a prelude that kept one so long on the very lip of its resolution. I lay supine and felt twice the size I had ever been (senescent nonsense, says science!) when finally six gentle hands attempted to ease la gosse, trembling Adada, upon the terrible tool. Silly pity — a sentiment I rarely experience — caused my desire to droop, and I had her carried away to a feast of peach tarts and cream. The Egypsies looked disconcerted, but very soon perked up. I summoned all the twenty hirens of the house (including the sweet-lipped, glossy chinned darling) into my resurrected presence. After considerable examination, after much flattering of haunches and necks, I chose a golden Gretchen, a pale Andalusian, and a black belle from New Orleans. The handmaids pounced upon them like pards and, having empasmed them with not unlesbian zest, turned the three rather melancholy graces over to me. The towel given me to wipe off the sweat that filmed my face and stung my eyes could have been cleaner. I raised my voice, I had the reluctant accursed casement wrenched wide open. A lorry had got stuck in the mud of a forbidden and unfinished road, and its groans and exertions dissipated the bizarre gloom. Only one of the girls stung me right in the soul, but I went through all three of them grimly and leisurely, ‘changing mounts in midstream’ (Eric’s advice) before ending every time in the grip of the ardent Ardillusian, who said as we parted, after one last spasm (although non-erotic chitchat was against the rules), that her father had constructed the swimming pool on the estate of Demon Veen’s cousin.
It was now all over. The lorry had gone or had drowned, and Eric was a skeleton in the most expensive corner of the Ex cemetery (‘But then, all cemeteries are ex,’ remarked a jovial ‘protestant’ priest), between an anonymous alpinist and my stillborn double.
Darkbloom ('Notes to Ada'): Künstlerpostkarte: Germ., art picture postcards.
la gosse: the little girl.
In "Integer vitae," a famous poem in Carminum liber primus, the Roman poet Horace professes his love for Lalage and mentions poisoned arrows and the inhospitable Caucasus (Stalin's native land). In Chapter Six (VII: 12) of EO Pushkin compares Zaretski (Lenski’s second in his duel with Onegin) to Horace:
Как я сказал, Зарецкий мой,
Под сень черёмух и акаций
От бурь укрывшись наконец,
Живёт, как истинный мудрец,
Капусту садит, как Гораций,
Разводит уток и гусей
И учит азбуке детей.
As I've said, my Zaretski,
beneath the racemosas and the pea trees
having at last found shelter
from tempests, lives like a true sage,
plants cabbages like Horace,
breeds ducks and geese,
and teaches [his] children the A B C.
In Maykov's lyrical drama Tri smerti ("Three Deaths," 1851) Seneca compares life to divnaya azbuka (a wondrous ABC) in which death is but a new character:
Одну имел я в жизни цель,
И к ней я шел тропой тяжелой.
Вся жизнь моя была досель
Нравоучительною школой;
И смерть есть новый в ней урок,
Есть буква новая, средь вечной
И дивной азбуки, залог
Науки высшей, бесконечной!
On the other hand, King Victor is the Antierran counterpart of the British Queen Victoria. Victoria Regia (“Victoria Amazonica,” 1909) is a poem by Igor Severyanin:
Наша встреча — Виктория Регия:
Редко, редко в цвету…
До и после нее жизнь — элегия
И надежда в мечту.
Ты придешь — изнываю от неги я,
Трепещу на лету.
Наша встреча — Виктория Регия:
Редко, редко в цвету…
Severyanin means "northerner." At the beginning of EO (One: II: 14) Pushkin says that sever (North) is harmful to him:
Так думал молодой повеса,
Летя в пыли на почтовых,
Всевышней волею Зевеса
Наследник всех своих родных.
Друзья Людмилы и Руслана!
С героем моего романа
Без предисловий, сей же час
Позвольте познакомить вас:
Онегин, добрый мой приятель,
Родился на брегах Невы,
Где, может быть, родились вы
Или блистали, мой читатель;
Там некогда гулял и я:
Но вреден север для меня.
Thus a young scapegrace thought
as with post horses in the dust he flew,
by the most lofty will of Zeus
the heir of all his kin.
Friends of Lyudmila and Ruslan!
The hero of my novel,
without preambles, forthwith,
I'd like to have you meet:
Onegin, a good pal of mine,
was born upon the Neva's banks,
where maybe you were born,
or used to shine, my reader!
There formerly I too promenaded —
but harmful is the North to me.1
1. Written in Bessarabia. (Pushkin's note)
At the Goodson airport Demon Veen (Van's and Ada's father) tells Van that his friend Bessborodko will rule Bessarabia:
At the Goodson Airport, in one of the gilt-framed mirrors of its old-fashioned waiting room, Van glimpsed the silk hat of his father who sat awaiting him in an armchair of imitation marblewood, behind a newspaper that said in reversed characters: ‘Crimea Capitulates.’ At the same moment a raincoated man with a pleasant, somewhat porcine, pink face accosted Van. He represented a famous international agency, known as the VPL, which handled Very Private Letters. After a first flash of surprise, Van reflected that Ada Veen, a recent mistress of his, could not have chosen a smarter (in all senses of the word) way of conveying to him a message whose fantastically priced, and prized, process of transmission insured an absoluteness of secrecy which neither torture nor mesmerism had been able to break down in the evil days of 1859. It was rumored that even Gamaliel on his (no longer frequent, alas) trips to Paris, and King Victor during his still fairly regular visits to Cuba or Hecuba, and, of course, robust Lord Goal, Viceroy of France, when enjoying his randonnies all over Canady, preferred the phenomenally discreet, and in fact rather creepy, infallibility of the VPL organization to such official facilities as sexually starved potentates have at their disposal for deceiving their wives. The present messenger called himself James Jones, a formula whose complete lack of connotation made an ideal pseudonym despite its happening to be his real name. A flurry and flapping had started in the mirror but Van declined to act hastily. In order to gain time (for, on being shown Ada’s crest on a separate card, he felt he had to decide whether or not to accept her letter), he closely examined the badge resembling an ace of hearts which J.J. displayed with pardonable pride. He requested Van to open the letter, satisfy himself of its authenticity, and sign the card that then went back into some secret pit or pouch within the young detective’s attire or anatomy. Cries of welcome and impatience from Van’s father (wearing for the flight to France a scarlet-silk-lined black cape) finally caused Van to interrupt his colloquy with James and pocket the letter (which he read a few minutes later in the lavatory before boarding the airliner).
Stocks,’ said Demon, ‘are on the zoom. Our territorial triumphs, et cetera. An American governor, my friend Bessborodko, is to be installed in Bessarabia, and a British one, Armborough, will rule Armenia. I saw you enlaced with your little Countess near the parking lot. If you marry her I will disinherit you. They’re quite a notch below our set.’
‘In a couple of years,’ said Van, ‘I’ll slide into my own little millions’ (meaning the fortune Aqua had left him). ‘But you needn’t worry, sir, we have interrupted our affair for the time being — till the next time I return to live in her girlinière’ (Canady slang).
Demon, flaunting his flair, desired to be told if Van or his poule had got into trouble with the police (nodding toward Jim or John who having some other delivery to make sat glancing through Crime Copulate Bessarmenia).
‘Poule,’ replied Van with the evasive taciturnity of the Roman rabbi shielding Barabbas.
‘Why gray?’ asked Demon, alluding to Van’s overcoat. ‘Why that military cut? It’s too late to enlist.’
‘I couldn’t — my draft board would turn me down anyway.’
‘How’s the wound?’
‘Komsi-komsa. It now appears that the Kalugano surgeon messed up his job. The rip seam has grown red and raw, without any reason, and there’s a lump in my armpit. I’m in for another spell of surgery — this time in London, where butchers carve so much better. Where’s the mestechko here? Oh, I see it. Cute (a gentian painted on one door, a lady fern on the other: have to go to the herbarium).’
He did not answer her letter, and a fortnight later John James, now got up as a German tourist, all pseudo-tweed checks, handed Van a second message, in the Louvre right in front of Bosch’s Bâteau Ivre, the one with a jester drinking in the riggings (poor old Dan thought it had something to do with Brant’s satirical poem!). There would be no answer — though answers were included, with the return ticket, in the price, as the honest messenger pointed out. (2.1)
Darkbloom ('Notes to Ada'): poule: tart.
komsi etc.: comme-ci comme-ça in Russ. mispronunciation: so-so.
mestechko: Russ., little place.
bateau ivre: ‘sottish ship’, title of Rimbaud’s poem here used instead of ‘ship of fools’.
The surname Veen means in Dutch what Neva means in Finnish: "peat bog." In one of her letters to Van (written after Van left Ardis forever) Ada mentions the legendary river of Old Rus:
[Los Angeles, 1889]
We are still at the candy-pink and pisang-green albergo where you once stayed with your father. He is awfully nice to me, by the way. I enjoy going places with him. He and I have gamed at Nevada, my rhyme-name town, but you are also there, as well as the legendary river of Old Rus. Da. Oh, write me, one tiny note, I’m trying so hard to please you! Want some more (desperate) little topics? Marina’s new director of artistic conscience defines Infinity as the farthest point from the camera which is still in fair focus. She has been cast as the deaf nun Varvara (who, in some ways, is the most interesting of Chekhov’s Four Sisters). She sticks to Stan’s principle of having lore and role overflow into everyday life, insists on keeping it up at the hotel restaurant, drinks tea v prikusku (‘biting sugar between sips’), and feigns to misunderstand every question in Varvara’s quaint way of feigning stupidity — a double imbroglio, which annoys strangers but which somehow makes me feel I’m her daughter much more distinctly than in the Ardis era. She’s a great hit here, on the whole. They gave her (not quite gratis, I’m afraid) a special bungalow, labeled Marina Durmanova, in Universal City. As for me, I’m only an incidental waitress in a fourth-rate Western, hip-swinging between table-slapping drunks, but I rather enjoy the Houssaie atmosphere, the dutiful art, the winding hill roads, the reconstructions of streets, and the obligatory square, and a mauve shop sign on an ornate wooden façade, and around noon all the extras in period togs queuing before a glass booth, but I have nobody to call.
Speaking of calls, I saw a truly marvelous ornithological film the other night with Demon. I had never grasped the fact that the paleotropical sunbirds (look them up!) are ‘mimotypes’ of the New World hummingbirds, and all my thoughts, oh, my darling, are mimotypes of yours. I know, I know! I even know that you stopped reading at ‘grasped’ — as in the old days. (ibid.)
Darkbloom ('Notes to Ada'): da: Russ., yes.
See also the updated (much superior) version of my post “Ruinen & marble columns in Ada.”