In VN’s novel Look at the Harlequins! (1974) Other Books by the Narrator include Krasnyy Tsilindr (The Red Top Hat, 1934):
Since 1925 I had written and published four novels; by the beginning of 1934 I was on the point of completing my fifth, Krasnyy Tsilindr (The Red Top Hat), the story of a beheading. None of those books exceeded ninety thousand words but my method of choosing and blending them could hardly be called a timesaving expedient. (2.2)
The title of Vadim Vadimovich’s fifth Russian novel hints at the euphemism in VN’s seventh novel Priglashenie na kazn’ (“Invitation to a Beheading,” 1935):
Обрывки этих речей, в которых, как пузыри воды, стремились и лопались слова "прозрачность" и "непроницаемость", теперь звучали у Цинцинната в ушах, и шум крови превращался в рукоплескания, а медальонное лицо Марфиньки всё оставалось в поле его зрения и потухло только тогда, когда судья, - приблизившись вплотную, так что можно было различить на его круглом смуглом носу расширенные поры, одна из которых, на самой дуле, выпустила одинокий, но длинный волос, - произнёс сырым шёпотом: "с любезного разрешения публики, вам наденут красный цилиндр", - выработанная законом подставная фраза, истинное значение коей знал всякий школьник.
Fragments of these speeches, in which the words ‘translucence’ and ‘opacity’ rose and burst like bubbles, now sounded in Cincinnatus’s ears, and the rush of blood became applause, and Marthe’s locket-like face remained in his field of vision and faded only when the judge — who had moved so close that on his large swarthy nose he could see the enlarged pores, one of which, on the very extremity, had sprouted a lone but long hair — pronounced in a moist undertone, ‘with the gracious consent of the audience, you will be made to don the red top hat’ — a token phrase that the courts had evolved, whose true meaning was known to every schoolboy. (Chapter One)
The red top hat that Cincinnatus will be made to don seems to be a cross between Onegin's shirokiy bolivar (broad bolivar) in Chapter One (XV: 12) and the driver's krasnyi kushak (red sash) in Chapter Five (II: 8) of Pushkin's Eugene Onegin:
Бывало, он еще в постеле:
К нему записочки несут.
Что? Приглашенья? В самом деле,
Три дома на вечер зовут:
Там будет бал, там детский праздник.
Куда ж поскачет мой проказник?
С кого начнет он? Все равно:
Везде поспеть немудрено.
Покамест в утреннем уборе,
Надев широкий боливар,3
Онегин едет на бульвар
И там гуляет на просторе,
Пока недремлющий брегет
Не прозвонит ему обед.
It happened, he'd be still in bed
when little billets would be brought him.
What? Invitations? Yes, indeed,
to a soiree three houses bid him:
here, there will be a ball; elsewhere, a children's fete.
So whither is my scamp to scurry?
Whom will he start with? Never mind:
'tis simple to get everywhere in time.
Meanwhile, in morning dress,
having donned a broad bolivar3,
Onegin drives to the boulevard
and there goes strolling unconfined
till vigilant Bréguet
to him chimes dinner.
3. Hat à la Bolivar. (Pushkin's note)
Зима!.. Крестьянин, торжествуя,
На дровнях обновляет путь;
Его лошадка, снег почуя,
Плетется рысью как-нибудь;
Бразды пушистые взрывая,
Летит кибитка удалая;
Ямщик сидит на облучке
В тулупе, в красном кушаке.
Вот бегает дворовый мальчик,
В салазки жучку посадив,
Себя в коня преобразив;
Шалун уж заморозил пальчик:
Ему и больно и смешно,
А мать грозит ему в окно...
Winter! The peasant, celebrating,
in a flat sledge inaugurates the track;
his naggy, having sensed the snow,
shambles at something like a trot.
Plowing up fluffy furrows,
a bold kibitka flies:
the driver sits upon his box
in sheepskin coat, red-sashed.
Here runs about a household lad,
upon a hand sled having seated “blackie,”
having transformed himself into the steed;
the scamp already has frozen a finger.
He finds it both painful and funny — while
his mother, from the window, threatens him...
In VN's novel Emmie's muarovyi kushak (moire sash) quickens the air in Cincinnatus's cell:
Она встала с корточек, но, еще согбенная, смотрела на дверь. Была смущена, не знала, что предпринять. Вдруг, оскалясь, сверкнув балеринными икрами, бросилась к двери, - разумеется, запертой. От ея муарового кушака в камере ожил воздух.
She left her squatting position, but was still stooping and looking at the door. She was embarrassed and did not know what to undertake. Suddenly she showed her teeth and, with a flash of ballerina calves, flew to the door — which of course proved to be locked. Her moire sash quickened the air in the cell. (Chapter Four)
The daughter of Rodrig Ivanovich (the prison director), Emmie has the calves of a ballerina. In Chapter One (XX-XXI) of EO Pushkin describes a ballet:
Театр уж полон; ложи блещут;
Партер и кресла, всё кипит;
В райке нетерпеливо плещут,
И, взвившись, занавес шумит.
Блистательна, полувоздушна,
Смычку волшебному послушна,
Толпою нимф окружена,
Стоит Истомина; она,
Одной ногой касаясь пола,
Другою медленно кружит,
И вдруг прыжок, и вдруг летит,
Летит, как пух от уст Эола;
То стан совьет, то разовьет,
И быстрой ножкой ножку бьет.
Всё хлопает. Онегин входит:
Идет меж кресел по ногам,
Двойной лорнет, скосясь, наводит
На ложи незнакомых дам;
Все ярусы окинул взором,
Всё видел: лицами, убором
Ужасно недоволен он;
С мужчинами со всех сторон
Раскланялся, потом на сцену
В большом рассеяньи взглянул,
Отворотился, и зевнул,
И молвил: «всех пора на смену;
Балеты долго я терпел,
Но и Дидло мне надоел».5
By now the house is full; the boxes blaze;
parterre and stalls — all seethes;
in the top gallery impatiently they clap,
and, soaring up, the curtain swishes.
Resplendent, half ethereal,
obedient to the magic bow,
surrounded by a throng of nymphs,
Istómina stands: she,
while touching with one foot the floor,
gyrates the other slowly,
and lo! a leap, and lo! she flies,
she flies like fluff from Eol's lips,
now twines and now untwines her waist
and beats one swift small foot against the other.
All clap as one. Onegin enters:
he walks — on people's toes — between the stalls;
askance, his double lorgnette trains
upon the loges of strange ladies;
he has scanned all the tiers;
he has seen everything; with faces, garb,
he's dreadfully displeased;
with men on every side
he has exchanged salutes; then at the stage
in great abstraction he has glanced,
has turned away, and yawned,
and uttered: “Time all were replaced;
ballets I long have suffered,
but even of Didelot I've had enough.”5
5. A trait of chilled sentiment worthy of Childe Harold. The ballets of Mr. Didelot are full of liveliness of fancy and extraordinary charm. One of our romantic writers found in them much more poetry than in the whole of French literature. (Pushkin's note)
A bolivar is a top hat (slightly funnelform). On the other hand, Bolivar is the horse in O. Henry's story The Roads We Take (1910). According to "Shark" Dodson (the story's main character), "Bolivar cannot carry double" (the story's punch line). O. Henry is the author of The Ransom of Red Chief (1907). Pushkin's poem Mednyi vsadnik ("The Bronze Horseman," 1833) brings to mind Captain Mayne Reid's novel The Headless Horseman (1865). In Pushkin's poem the ghost of Falconet's equestrian statue of Peter I haunts poor Eugene (whose sweetheart perished in the disastrous Neva flood of 1824). The executioner in Invitation to a Beheading, M'sieur Pierre is a namesake of the tsar Peter I ("Pierre le Grand"), the founder of VN's home city. In October 1698 Peter I (who was twenty-six) with his own hand beheaded five members of the Streltzy rebellion. The title of VN's novel seems to blend Chto? Priglashen'ya? V samom dele (What? Invitations? Yes, indeed), a line in EO (One: XV: 3), with kazn' (execution) mentioned by Pushkin in his poem May 26, 1828:
Дар напрасный, дар случайный,
Жизнь, зачем ты мне дана?
Иль зачем судьбою тайной
Ты на казнь осуждена?
Кто меня враждебной властью
Из ничтожества воззвал,
Душу мне наполнил страстью,
Ум сомненьем взволновал?..
Цели нет передо мною:
Сердце пусто, празден ум,
И томит меня тоскою
Однозвучный жизни шум.
A gift in vain, a gift by chance,
O Life, why have you been given to me?
And why have you been sentenced to death
By inscrutable fate?
Who has called me forth from nothingness
By his hostile power,
And filled my soul with suffering
And my mind with anguishing doubt?...
There is no goal before me:
My heart is empty, my mind lies idle,
And the monotonous din of life
torments me with anguish.
May 26, 1828, was Pushkin's twenty-ninth birthday. At the end of Chapter Six (XLIV: 14) of EO Pushkin asks "can it be true that I'll be thirty soon?":
Познал я глас иных желаний,
Познал я новую печаль;
Для первых нет мне упований,
А старой мне печали жаль.
Мечты, мечты! где ваша сладость?
Где, вечная к ней рифма, младость?
Ужель и вправду наконец
Увял, увял ее венец?
Ужель и впрям и в самом деле
Без элегических затей
Весна моих промчалась дней
(Что я шутя твердил доселе)?
И ей ужель возврата нет?
Ужель мне скоро тридцать лет?
I have learned the voice of other desires,
I've come to know new sadness;
I have no expectations for the first,
and the old sadness I regret.
Dreams, dreams! Where is your dulcitude?
Where is (its stock rhyme) juventude?
Can it be really true
that withered, withered is at last its garland?
Can it be true that really and indeed,
without elegiac conceits,
the springtime of my days is fled
(as I in jest kept saying hitherto),
and has it truly no return?
Can it be true that I'll be thirty soon?
Cincinnatus and M'sieur Pierre are both thirty. In his poem May 26, 1828 Pushkin calls life dar naprasnyi, dar sluchaynyi (vain gift, chance gift) and wonders why it is sentenced to death (na kazn' osuzhdena) by secret fate. In 1935 VN interrupted his work on Dar ("The Gift," 1937) in order to write Priglashenie na kazn'.
Tsilindr (cylinder) is not a Russian word. In Chapter One (XXVI: 7-8) of EO Pushkin says that pantalony (“pantaloons”), frak (“dress coat”), zhilet (“waistcoat”) — in Russian all these words are not:
В последнем вкусе туалетом
Заняв ваш любопытный взгляд,
Я мог бы пред ученым светом
Здесь описать его наряд;
Конечно б это было смело,
Описывать мое же дело:
Но панталоны, фрак, жилет,
Всех этих слов на русском нет;
А вижу я, винюсь пред вами,
Что уж и так мой бедный слог
Пестреть гораздо б меньше мог
Иноплеменными словами,
Хоть и заглядывал я встарь
В Академический словарь.
With toilette in the latest taste
having engaged your curious glance,
I might before the learned world
describe here his attire;
this would, no doubt, be daring;
however, 'tis my business to describe;
but “dress coat,” “waistcoat,” “pantaloons” —
in Russian all these words are not;
in fact, I see (my guilt I lay before you)
that my poor idiom as it is
might be diversified much less
with words of foreign stock,
though I did erstwhile dip
into the Academic Dictionary.
The death sentence is announced to Cincinnatus in a whisper:
Сообразно с законом, Цинциннату Ц. объявили смертный приговор шёпотом. Все встали, обмениваясь улыбками. Седой судья, припав к его уху, подышав, сообщив, медленно отодвинулся, как будто отлипал.
In accordance with the law the death sentence was announced to Cincinnatus C. in a whisper. All rose, exchanging smiles. The hoary judge put his mouth close to his ear, panted for a moment, made the announcement and slowly moved away, as though ungluing himself. (Chapter One)
In his Stikhi, sochinyonnye noch'yu vo vremya bessonnitsy ("Verses Composed at Night during the Insomnia," 1830) Pushkin mentions skuchnyi shyopot (dreary whisper):
Мне не спится, нет огня;
Всюду мрак и сон докучный.
Ход часов лишь однозвучный
Раздаётся близ меня,
Парки бабье лепетанье,
Спящей ночи трепетанье,
Жизни мышья беготня...
Что тревожишь ты меня?
Что ты значишь, скучный шёпот?
Укоризна, или ропот
Мной утраченного дня?
От меня чего ты хочешь?
Ты зовёшь или пророчишь?
Я понять тебя хочу,
Смысла я в тебе ищу...
I can't sleep, the light is out;
Chasing senseless dreams in gloom.
Clocks at once, inside my room,
Somewhere next to me, resound.
Parcae's soft and mild chatter,
Sleeping twilight's noisy flutter,
Life's commotion -- so insane..
Why am I to feel this pain?
What's your meaning, boring mumble?
Disapproving, do you grumble
Of the day I spent in vain?
What has made you so compelling?
Are you calling or foretelling?
I just want to understand,
Thus I'm seeking your intent...
(Transl. M. Kneller)
The poem's first line, Mne ne spitsya, net ognya (I can't sleep, the light is out), brings to mind Kak arlekina iz ognya, ty vyzval nakonets menya (Like an harlequin from the fire, you finally conjured me up), Mephistopheles's words to Faust in Pushkin's Scene from Faust (1825).