nobody knew how far Terra, or other
innumerable planets with cottages and cows, might be situated in outer or inner
space: 'inner,' because why not assume their microcosmic presence in the golden
globules ascending quick-quick in this flute of Moёt or in the corpuscles
of my, Van Veen's - (or my, Ada Veen's) - bloodstream, or in the pus of a Mr
Nekto's ripe boil newly lanced in Nektor or Neckton. (Ada, 2.2)
While Nekto means in Russian "someone,"
Nektor reminds one of nektar (Russ., "nectar"):
The recently repapered wall immediately
west of the now louder-murmuring (et pour cause) dorocene lamp is
ornamented in the central girl's honor with Peruvian 'honeysuckle' being visited
(not only for its nectar, I'm afraid, but for the animalcules
stuck in it) by marvelous Loddigesia Hummingbirds... (2.8)
As to Neckton, there is neck in it. Ada's long neck
is Van's favorite part of her
body:
Her neck had been, and remained, his most
delicate, most poignant delight, especially when she let her hair flow freely,
and the warm, white, adorable skin showed through in chance separations of
glossy black strands. Boils and mosquito bites had stopped pestering
her... (1.35)
In the debauche à trois scene (2.8) Ada wears
her diamond necklace: Ada's red-lacquered talons, which lead
a man's reasonably recalcitrant, pardonably yealding wrist out of the dim east
to the bright russet west, and the sparkle of her diamond necklace, which, for
the nunce, is not much more valuable than the aquamarines on the other (west)
side of Novelty Novel lane. La rivière de diamants is a story by Mlle
Larivière (1.13). Lucette's governess is a namesake
of Dr Larivière, the character in Flaubert's Madame
Bovary who fails to save Emma. As Humbert Humbert puts it: Never will Emma rally, revived by the sympathetic salts in
Flaubert's father's timely tear.
(Lolita, Part Two, 27) For more tears, see in Zembla my
Russian article "Terra and Antiterra: Two Worlds, Two Kinds of Truth."
nekto = token = konets - s
konets + v = venets + k
Nektor = kreton =
kornet (konets - end; venets - crown; kreton -
cretonne; kornet - cornet)
И вот как на колёсиках вкатывается ко мне
некто восковой, поджарый, с копотью в красных ноздрях
(VN, Fame)
...deranged minds (ready to plunge into any abyss) accepted it
[Terra] in support and token of
their own irrationality (Ada, 1.3)
Nekto v
serom (Someone in Grey) is a character in L. Andreev's play "Жизнь человека" (Man's Life, 1907) and the title
of M. Voloshin's article on Andreev.
In Tolstoy's
The Death of Ivan Ilyich the drawing
room of Ivan Ilyich's widow is upholstered in pink cretonne: "When they
reached the drawing-room, upholstered in pink cretonne and lighted by a dim
lamp, they sat down at the table — she on a sofa and Peter Ivanovich on a low
pouffe, the springs of which yielded spasmodically under his weight."
Ivanilich (a kind
of sighing old hassock upholstered in leather) is mentioned in
Ada: 1.37.
In Pushkin's drama Boris Godunov (the omitted
scene "Mnishek's Castle in Sanbor") Marina mentions almaznyi moy venets ("my diamond diadem"). Valentin
Kataev (Evgeniy Petrov's elder brother) chose it for the title of his
autobiographical novel that appeared in 1978, after VN's
death.
Alexey Sklyarenko