In VN's novel Bend Sinister (1947) Krug recalls the words of his late wife Olga, 'togliwn ochnat divodiv [the daily surprise of awakening]!':
In the beginning, Krug, although professing to be amused, was greatly annoyed by the whole business, while Ember felt abashed and apologetic and covertly wondered whether perhaps his particular brand of rich synthetic English had contained some outlandish ingredient, some dreadful additional spice that might account for the unexpected excitement; but with a greater perspicacity than the two puzzled scholars showed, Olga prepared herself to enjoy thoroughly, far years to come, the success of a work whose very special points she knew better than its ephemeral reviewers could know. She it was who made the horrified Ember persuade Krug to go on that American lecture tour, as if she foresaw that its plangent reverberations would win him at home the esteem which his work in its native garb had neither wrung from academic stolidity nor induced in the comatose mass of amorphous readerdom. Not that the trip itself had been displeasing. Far from it. Although Krug, being as usual chary of squandering in idle conversation such experiences as might undergo unpredictable metamorphoses later on (if left to pupate quietly in the alluvium of the mind), had spoken little of his tour, Olga had managed to recompose it in full and to relay it gleefully to Ember who had vaguely expected a flow of sarcastic disgust. 'Disgust?' cried Olga. 'Why, he has known enough of that here. Disgust, indeed! Elation, delight, a quickening of the imagination, a disinfection of the mind, togliwn ochnat divodiv [the daily surprise of awakening]!' (Chapter 3)
Udivlyat'sya, davat'sya divu means in Russian "to be surprised" (surprise as a noun is udivlenie). Divodiv (surprise in the language spoken in Padukgrad) that Krug experienced during his American lecture tour seems to blend Ovid (the author of The Metamorphoses) with divo divnoe (a wonder of wonders) mentioned by Prince Gvidon in Pushkin's Skazka o tsare Saltane ("The Tale of Tsar Saltan," 1833):
Князь у синя моря ходит,
С синя моря глаз не сводит;
Глядь — поверх текучих вод
Лебедь белая плывет.
«Здравствуй, князь ты мой прекрасный!
Что ты тих, как день ненастный?
Опечалился чему?» —
Говорит она ему.
Князь Гвидон ей отвечает:
«Грусть-тоска меня съедает —
Диво б дивное хотел
Перенесть я в мой удел».
By the blue sea he is pacing,
On the blue sea he is gazing.
And once more, before his sight
Swam the graceful swan, snow-white.
"Greetings, my fair prince," said she,
"Why are you so sad, tell me?
Why are you so dismal, say,
Like a gloomy, cloudy day?"
"Grief is gnawing at my breast,"
Answered Prince Guidon, distressed–
"There's a wonder, I confess,
That I'm longing to possess,"
"Tell me then, what is this wonder?"
(tr. Louis Zellikoff)
In Pushkin's fairy tale Prince Gvidon assumes the disguise of a mosquito, of a fly and of a bumblebee to visit secretly the feasts of his father, Tsar Saltan. In Kafka's story Die Verwandlung (The Metamorphosis, 1915) Gregor Samsa wakes up one morning and finds out that he has turned into a beetle (presumably, a scarab). Kafka's story begins as follows:
Als Gregor Samsa eines Morgens aus unruhigen Träumen erwachte, fand er sich in seinem Bett zu einem ungeheueren Ungeziefer verwandelt. Er lag auf seinem panzerartig harten Rücken und sah, wenn er den Kopf ein wenig hob, seinen gewölbten, braunen, von bogenförmigen Versteifungen geteilten Bauch, auf dessen Höhe sich die Bettdecke, zum gänzlichen Niedergleiten bereit, kaum noch erhalten konnte. Seine vielen, im Vergleich zu seinem sonstigen Umfang kläglich dünnen Beine flimmerten ihm hilflos vor den Augen.
One morning, as Gregor Samsa was waking up from anxious dreams, he discovered that in bed he had been changed into a gigantic insect. He lay on his armour-hard back and saw, as he lifted his head up a little, his brown, arched abdomen divided up into rigid bow-like sections. From this height the blanket, just about ready to slide off completely, could hardly stay in place. His numerous legs, pitifully thin in comparison to the rest of his circumference, flickered helplessly before his eyes. (Chapter I)
Franz Kafka (1883-1924) is the author of Amerika, the incomplete first novel, also known as The Man Who Disappeared, The Missing Person and as Lost in America (Germ., Der Verschollene), written between 1911 and 1914 and published posthumously in 1927.
Togliwn seems to blend täglich (Germ., daily) with "tagline." The term "tagline" first appeared in the 1910s, or thereabouts, to refer to the final sentence spoken by an actor at the end of a performance, before entering the world of advertising and branding in 1935. The characters in VN's novel Pale Fire (1962) include Odon, a world-famous actor and Zemblan patriot who helps the king to escape from Zembla, and Dr Oscar Nattochdag, a distinguished Zemlan scholar, the head of Kinbote's department at Wordsmith University. Ochnat seems to be related to ochnut'sya (Russian for "to awaken"), but it also brings to mind dag och natt (day and night in Swedish) and Otche nash (Russian for "Pater noster"). "Terra the Fair, an orbicle of jasp" mentioned by Shade (the poet in Fale Fire) in Canto Three of his poem makes one think of in caelo et in terra (in heaven as on earth) in the prayer's Latin text:
Pater noster, qui es in caelis; sanctificetur nomen tuum; adveniat regnum tuum, fiat voluntas tua, sicut in caelo et in terra.
At the end of Pushkin's poem Poet i tolpa ("The Poet and the Crowd," 1828) the Poet says that we were born for sweet sounds and prayers:
Подите прочь – какое дело
Поэту мирному до вас!
В разврате каменейте смело,
Не оживит вас лиры глас!
Душе противны вы, как гробы.
Для вашей глупости и злобы
Имели вы до сей поры
Бичи, темницы, топоры; –
Довольно с вас, рабов безумных!
Во градах ваших с улиц шумных
Сметают сор, – полезный труд! –
Но, позабыв свое служенье,
Алтарь и жертвоприношенье,
Жрецы ль у вас метлу берут?
Не для житейского волненья,
Не для корысти, не для битв,
Мы рождены для вдохновенья,
Для звуков сладких и молитв.
Away from me! Such stupid thinking
Is odious to a peaceful bard!
Just turn to stone, debauchers stinking,
No lyre could wake a soul so hard.
As vile to spirit as a coffin,
You've used your axe and whip so often,
You’d rather pass a poison chalice
With all your foolishness and malice;—
Away, enough, you mindless toadies!
From hometown walks and noisy roadways
You’ve swept up trash — a useful chore —
But have you seen a priest forsaking
His altar, rites, and sermon-making
To grab your broom and sweep a floor?
Poets aren’t born for deeds domestic,
To follow greed or battle's fire,
We're born to author sounds majestic,
To nourish prayers, and to inspire.
(tr. D. M. Bennett)
Pushkin's poem has a Latin epigraph: Procul este, profani (Away, profaners!). The word sinister comes from a Latin word meaning “on the left side.” In Chapter One (VI: 1) of Eugene Onegin Pushkin says that Latin has gone at present out of fashion and, in one of the next stanzas (VIII: 9-10), mentions the art of soft passion which Naso (i. e. Ovid, the author of Ars amatoria) sang:
Всего, что знал еще Евгений,
Пересказать мне недосуг;
Но в чем он истинный был гений,
Что знал он тверже всех наук,
Что было для него измлада
И труд, и мука, и отрада,
Что занимало целый день
Его тоскующую лень, —
Была наука страсти нежной,
Которую воспел Назон,
За что страдальцем кончил он
Свой век блестящий и мятежный
В Молдавии, в глуши степей,
Вдали Италии своей.
All Eugene knew besides
I have no leisure to recount;
but where he was a veritable genius,
what he more firmly knew than all the arts,
what since his prime had been to him
toil, torment, and delight,
what occupied the livelong day
his fretting indolence —
was the art of soft passion
which Naso sang,
wherefore a sufferer
his brilliant and unruly span
he ended, in Moldavia,
deep in the steppes, far from his Italy.
In his elegy K Ovidiyu (To Ovid, 1821) written in Kishinev, not too far from Tomis (a remote Roman settlement on the Black Sea, the place of Ovid's exile), Pushkin compares his destiny to that of the Roman poet. In his poem Dozhdik ("Little Rain," 1909) Annenski says that pervyi Ovidiev vek (the first Ovidian century) is not yet finished:
Вот сизый чехол и распорот,—
Не все ж ему праздно висеть,
И с лязгом асфальтовый город
Хлестнула холодная сеть…
Хлестнула и стала мотаться…
Сама серебристо-светла,
Как масло в руке святотатца,
Глазеты вокруг залила.
И в миг, что с лазурью любилось,
Стыдливых молчаний полно,—
Всё темною пеной забилось
И нагло стучится в окно.
В песочной зароется яме,
По трубам бежит и бурлит,
То жалкими брызнет слезами,
То радугой парной горит.
..............
О нет! Без твоих превращений,
В одно что-нибудь застывай!
Не хочешь ли дремой осенней
Окутать кокетливо май?
Иль сделать Мною, быть может,
Одним из упрямых калек,
И всех уверять, что не дожит
И первый Овидиев век:
Из сердца за Иматру лет
Ничто, мол, у нас не уходит —
И в мокром асфальте поэт
Захочет, так счастье находит.
In his poem Annenski mentions raduga (rainbow). Krug calls his son David raduga moya (my rainbow). Asfal'tovyi gorod (the asphalt city) in the first stanza of Annenski's poem and mokryi asfal't (damp asphalt) in the poem's last stanza ("the poet, if he wishes, finds happiness in the damp asphalt") bring to mind an oblong puddle inset in the coarse asphalt at the beginning of Bend Sinister:
An oblong puddle inset in the coarse asphalt; like a fancy footprint filled to the brim with quicksilver; like a spatulate hole through which you can see the nether sky. Surrounded, I note, by a diffuse tentacled black dampness where some dull dun dead leaves have stuck. Drowned, I should say, before the puddle had shrunk to its present size. (Chapter 1)