Началась обедня, домашние певчие пели на крылосе, Кирила Петрович сам подтягивал, молился, не смотря ни на право, ни на лево, и с гордым смирением
поклонился в землю, когда дьякон громогласно упомянул и о зиждителе храма сего. (Ibid.)

 

During the meeting with Vadim's benefactor, old Count Starov, Iris Black mentions the temple she and her husband are going to build:

Count Starov "chewed his lips," as old men are wont to do in Russian novels. Miss Vrode-Vorodin, the elderly cousin who kept house for him, made a timely entrance and led Iris to an adjacent alcove (illuminated by a resplendent portrait by Serov, 1896, of the notorious beauty, Mme. de Blagidze, in Caucasian costume) for a nice cup of tea. (LATH, 1.10)

 

According to Vadim, Serov (whose name comes from seryi, "grey") is also the author of Five-petaled Lilac depicting a girl who is Vadim's first cousin Ada Bredow:

 

I am thinking of Serov's Five-petaled Lilac, oil, which depicts a tawny-haired girl of twelve or sositting at a sun-flecked table and manipulating a raceme of lilac in search of that lucky token. The girl is no other than Ada Bredow, a first cousin of mine whom I flirted with disgracefully that very summer, the sun of which ocellates the garden table and her bare arms. (4.3)

 

As to Vadim's father, he was portrayed by Vrubel:

 

My father was a gambler and a rake. His society nickname was Demon. Vrubel has portrayed him with his vampire-pale cheeks, his diamond eyes, his black hair. What remained on the palette has been used by me, Vadim, son of Vadim, for touching up the father of the passionate siblings in the best of my English romaunts, Ardis (1970). (2.5)

 

In Bely's Na rubezhe Vrubel is mentioned immediately after kalos k'agathos:

 

Мне приходилось когда-то слышать едва ли не каждый день подобного рода замечания о Врубеле: "Дикое уродство: несосветимый бред!"
(I once heard nearly every day people say about Vrubel's paintings: "fantastic monstrosity, utter nonsense [bred]!")

 

Like Vrubel, Serov and Sredin (L. V. Sredin's younger brother, a painter, 1872-1934, who portrayed Chekhov's wife O. L. Knipper) are mentioned in Bely's memoirs. Clystère de Tchékhov is, of course, a play on violon d'Ingres (hobby). Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres (1780-1867) is a French painter. As to violins, Smychyok i struny ("The Bow and the Strings") is a famous poem by I. Annenski included in Kiparisovyi larets ("The Cypress Casket", 1910). It begins: Kakoy tyazhyolyi, tyomnyi bred (What a heavy and dark delirium...):

 

 

How dark and heavy’s the delirium’s embrace!
How they’re turbid under moon – the heights!
To have touched Violin for so many years
And not distinguish those Strings in light!

 

Who craves for us? Who, insolent, has set
In flames two faces, yellow and vexed,
And suddenly the saddened Bow felt
That someone took them and forever merged.

 

‘How long ago it was – as in a dream –
Tell me trough dark: are you the same one, else?’…
And Strings pressed close, caressing, to him,
Ringing and tossing in their fond caress.

 

‘Is that all true, that it’s enough, God blessed,
That we shall never ever part again?
And poor Violin replied him always ‘yes’,
Though its heart was sinking in sharp pain.

 

Bow fell silent, understanding, then,
But poor Violin still echoed its complaint,
And what seemed music to the most men,
To both of them was everlasting pain.

 

The man didn’t blow, till the night was gone,
The candles … And the Strings were singing, yet…
And they were found, drained of strength, by sun
On the black velvet of the sleepless bed.

(transl. E. Bonver)

 

Alexey Sklyarenko (from lime-blossoming St. Petersburg)