"Rosy aurora was shivering in green
Serenity Court. Laborious old Chose." (Ada,
1.28)
Darkbloom: a touch of
Baudelaire.
Boyd: From [Baudelaire's] "Le
Crepuscle du Matin" ("Morning Twilight," 1852), ll. 24-28:
Les debauches rentraient, brises par leurs
travaux.
L'aurore grelottante en robe rose et
verte
S'avancait lentement sur la Seine
deserte,
Et le sombre Paris, en se frottant les
yeux,
Empoignait ses outils, vieillard
laborieux.
Like Le Crepuscle du Soir that mentions
whores and cardsharps, Le Crepuscle du Matin is included in
Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du Mal. The title of Baudelaire's book
reminds one of Aqua's and Marina's talc powder Quelques Fleurs (1.3) that
brings to mind the French stock phrase quelque chose (something).
So we are back at Chose.
Btw., "Dawn en robe rose et verte" (2.9)
alludes not only to Baudelaire but also to Chekhov's play "The Three Sisters."
As I pointed out before, a character in Chekhov's P'yesa bez
nazvaniya (Play without a Title) says that his tenant's daughter
is kelk shoz ("a pretty little thing," quelque chose
in Russian spelling). He then calls
Platonov's late father shtukar' (trickster). Shtukar' comes
from shtuka, "thing" (French chose). Shtuka = shutka (joke).
Chose is Van's alma mater. Mater
is Latin for "mother." Mat' ("Mother") is a tale by Maxim
Gorky. The third part of Gorky's autobiographic trilogy is entitled
Moi universitety ("My Universities"). The second part's title is V
lyudyakh ("Away from Home"). Lyudyakh is prepositional case of
lyudi, "people." Now, the letter L (cf. Ada's L disaster) was
called lyudi in the old Russian alphabet. Roman L looks like
Cyrillic ç (glagol', "gallows," of the old Russian alphabet; Gorky's
initial) turned upside down.*
Btw., alma mater + u = mal + amateur; alma mater + inn = Tamara + Lenin + m =
Lamartine + man = Maler + matin +
Anton - ton (mal is French for "evil," German for "time,
occasion;" Maler is German for "painter;" matin is French
for "morning;" Anton is Chekhov's first name; ton is French
"tone" and "your").
*In certain fonts the Cyrillic letter Λ (that
corresponds to Roman L) looks like Roman V (Van Veen's initial) turned upside
down. Normally, the Cyrillic counterpart of L looks like
this: ì
Alexey Sklyarenko