KULYGIN [
laughs]. You've been hitting the bottle, Ivan Romanych!
[
Slaps him on the shoulder.] Bravo!
In vino veritas, the
ancients used to say.
On Antiterra Chekhov's play is known as Four Sisters
(2.1). In a Hollywood movie based on it Marina has been cast as the deaf nun Varvara (who, in some ways, is the
most interesting of Chekhov's Four Sisters) As to Marina's
daughter, Ada played Irina on the modest stage of the
Yakima Academy of Drama in a somewhat abridged version which, for example, kept
only the references to Sister Varvara, the garrulous originalka ('odd
female' - as Marsha calls her) but eliminated her actual scenes, so that the
title of the play might have been The Three Sisters, as indeed it
appeared in the wittier of the local notices.
(2.9)
Upset about Ada's coldness, Van recites Tuzenbakh's last
words to Irina in The Three Sisters: 'Tuzenbakh, not knowing what to say: "I have not had
coffee today. Tell them to make me some." Quickly walks away.' (1.37)
Just as Van imagines that he resembles Baron
Tuzenbakh, Solyony (the bretteur who in the last Act kills
Tuzenbakh in a duel) imagines that he resembles Lermontov (the author of
Demon who died in a duel).
Solyonyi means "salty." Marina had a secret fondness
for salty jokes:
'Incidentally,' observed Marina, 'I hope dear
Ida [Mlle Larivière] will not object to our making
him not only a poet, but a ballet dancer. Pedro could do that beautifully, but
he can't be made to recite French poetry.'
'If she protests,' said Vronsky, 'she can go and
stick a telegraph pole - where it belongs.'
The indecent 'telegraph' caused Marina, who had
a secret fondness for salty jokes, to collapse in Ada-like ripples of rolling
laughter (pokativshis' so smehu vrode Adï): 'But let's be serious, I
still don't see how and why his wife - I mean the second guy's wife - accepts
the situation (polozhenie).'
Vronsky spread his fingers and
toes.
'Prichyom tut polozhenie
(situation-shituation)?
In Russian, polozhenie (situation) also means
"pregnancy." Marina arrived in Nice a few days after
the duel, and tracked Demon down in his villa Armina, and in the ecstasy of
reconciliation neither remembered to dupe procreation, whereupon started the
extremely interesnoe polozhenie ('interesting condition') without
which, in fact, these anguished notes could not have been strung.
(1.2)
Van and Ada are the children of Demon and Marina. According to
a Russian saying, yabloko ot yabloni nedaleko padaet ("an apple falls
near the apple tree;" in other words: like mother, like child). Yabloko
(apple) has Blok in it. In Blok's poem Neznakomka (Incognita, 1906)
p'yanitsy s glazami krolikov (drunks with the eyes of rabbits) cry
out: In vino veritas!
Dr Krolik is Ada's teacher of natural history (it seems that
his brother, Karol, or Karapars, Krolik, a doctor of philosophy, born in Turkey
(2.8), was Ada's first lover). At the family dinner (1.38) Demon mentions Dr
Krolik and chelovek (a servant) s glazami (with the
eyes):
'Marina,' murmured Demon at the close of the
first course. 'Marina,' he repeated louder. 'Far from me' (a locution he
favored) 'to criticize Dan's taste in white wines or the manners de vos
domestiques. You know me, I'm above all that rot, I'm...' (gesture); 'but,
my dear,' he continued, switching to Russian, 'the chelovek who brought
me the pirozhki - the new man, the plumpish one with the eyes (s
glazami) -'
'Everybody has eyes,' remarked Marina
drily.
'Well, his look as if they were about to octopus
the food he serves. But that's not the point. He pants, Marina! He suffers from
some kind of odïshka (shortness of breath). He should see Dr Krolik.
It's depressing. It's a rhythmic pumping pant. It made my soup
ripple.'
'Look, Dad,' said Van, 'Dr Krolik can't do much,
because, as you know quite well, he's dead, and Marina can't tell her servants
not to breathe, because, as you also know, they're alive.'
Chelovek is Russian for "human being." In her last
note to Van poor mad Aqua (Marina's twin sister who was made to believe
that Van is her son) wrote: Similarly,
chelovek (human being) must know where he stands and let others know,
otherwise he is not even a klok (piece) of a chelovek, neither
a he, nor she, but 'a tit of it' as poor Ruby, my little Van, used to say of her
scanty right breast. (1.3)
Chtoby letela sherst' klokami
(to make animal hair fly in flocks) is a line in Kunyaev's poem
Dobro dolzhno byt' s kulakami... ("Good should have fists..." 1959). In
Turkic languages kulak (Russ., "fist") means "ear." The
readers of Ilf and Petrov know that uzun kulak ("long ear") is
Kazakh for "telegraph." And the readers of Jules Verne know that
Uzun Ada (a sea port on the Caspian) means "long island." Ada, who at the age of
ten or eleven had read Captain Grant's Microgalaxies (known on Terra as
Les Enfants du Capitaine Grant, by Jules Verne), after a
three-volume History of Prostitution and Hamlet (1.35), would
know it! In one of her letters to Van (2.1) Ada invites him
to Captain's Grant Horn, a Villa in Verna (in Russian, verna
means "faithful"):
Take the fastest flying machine you can rent
straight to El Paso, your Ada will be waiting for you there, waving like mad,
and we'll continue, by the New World Express, in a suite I'll obtain, to the
burning tip of Patagonia, Captain Grant's Horn, a Villa in Verna, my jewel, my
agony.
As he talks to Van before
the family dinner (1.38), Demon makes an unintentional
pun:
He inserted his monocle and examined the
bottles: 'By the way, son, do you crave any of these aperitifs? My father
allowed me Lilletovka and that Illinois Brat - awful bilge, antranou
svadi, as Marina would say. I suspect your uncle has a cache behind the
solanders in his study and keeps there a finer whisky than this usque ad
Russkum. Well, let us have the cognac, as planned, unless you are a
filius aquae?'
(No pun intended, but one gets carried away and
goofs.)
'Oh, I prefer claret. I'll concentrate
(nalyagu) on the Latour later on. No, I'm certainly no T-totaler, and
besides the Ardis tap water is not recommended!'
In a letter of Nov. 25, 1892, to Suvorin Chekhov
complains about the absense of alcohol in the works
of contemporary artists: "You are a hard drinker, and I have
regaled you with sweet lemonade [Chekhov's story "Ward No. 6"], and you, after
giving the lemonade its due, justly observe that there is no spirit in it. That
is just what is lacking in our productions—the alcohol which could intoxicate
and subjugate, and you state that very well... We lack "something," that is true, and that
means that, lift the robe of our muse, and you will find within an empty void.
Let me remind you that the writers, who we say are for all time or are simply
good, and who intoxicate us, have one common and very important characteristic;
they are going towards something and are summoning you towards it, too, and you
feel not with your mind, but with your whole being, that they have some object,
just like the ghost of Hamlet's father, who did not come and disturb the
imagination for nothing. Some have more immediate objects—the abolition of
serfdom, the liberation of their country, politics, beauty, or simply vodka,
like Denis Davydov; others have remote objects—God, life beyond the grave, the
happiness of humanity, and so on. The best of them are realists and paint life
as it is, but, through every line's being soaked in the consciousness of an
object, you feel, besides life as it is, the life which ought to be, and that
captivates you..."
In a letter of July 24, 1891, to
Suvorin Chekhov asks his correspondent if the poet Merezhkovski
(whom Chekhov and Suvorin had met in Venice) and his muse (the poet
Zinaida Hippius) are still abroad: И неужели поэт
Мережковский и его муза ещё за границею? Ах,
ах!
In a letter of February 5, 1893, to Suvorin Chekhov criticizes
Merezhkovski's play Proshla groza (The Thuderstorm Passed), in
which the situation in the author's family is described: В
январской книжке "Труда" напечатана пьеса Мережковского "Гроза
прошла". Если не хватит времени и охоты прочесть всю пьесу, то вкусите один
только конец, где Мережковский перещеголял даже Жана Щеглова. Литературное
ханжество самое скверное ханжество. According to Chekhov, literary
hypocrisy is the worst kind of hypocrisy.
Despite its "Permic" name, Tsitsikar is in China. In his
essay Gryadushchiy Kham (The Future Ham, 1906) Merezhkovski agrees
with Herzen who agrees with J. S. Mill that Europe can turn into China
soon:
Герцен соглашается с Миллем: "Если в
Европе не произойдёт какой-нибудь неожиданный переворот, который возродит
человеческую личность и даст ей силу победить мещанство, то, несмотря на
свои благородные антецеденты и своё христианство, Европа сделается
Китаем".
In another essay,
Prorok russkoy revolyutsii (The Prophet of Russian Revolution, on
the 25th anniversary of Dostoevski's death), Merezhkovski speaks of demonocracy (as opposed to
theocracy):
В первом случае "государство" понимается как
царство Божие, как теократия, то есть безгранично свободная, любовная
общественность, отрицающая всякую внешнюю насильственную власть и,
следовательно, как нечто не похожее ни на одну из доныне существовавших в
истории государственных форм; во втором случае "государство" разумеется как
внешняя насильственная власть, как царство от мира сего, царство дьявола -
демонократия.