Marina's brother Ivan had died in a sanatorium not far from Ex, somewhere
in Switzerland, where Van was born eight years later:
'You know, children,' interrupted Marina resolutely
with calming gestures of both hands, 'when I was your age, Ada, and my brother
was your age, Van, we talked about croquet, and ponies, and puppies,
and the last fête-d'enfants, and the next picnic, and - oh, millions of
nice normal things, but never, never of old French botanists and God knows
what!'
'But you just said you collected flowers?' said
Ada.
'Oh, just one season, somewhere in Switzerland. I don't
remember when. It does not matter now.'
The reference was to Ivan Durmanov: he had died of lung
cancer years ago in a sanatorium (not far from Ex, somewhere in Switzerland,
where Van was born eight years later). Marina often mentioned Ivan who had been
a famous violinist at eighteen, but without any special show of emotion, so that
Ada now noted with surprise that her mother's heavy make-up had started to thaw
under a sudden flood of tears (maybe some allergy to flat dry old flowers, an
attack of hay fever, or gentianitis, as a slightly later diagnosis might have
shown retrospectively). She blew her nose, with the sound of an elephant, as she
said herself - and here Mlle Larivière came down for coffee and recollections of
Van as a bambin angélique who adored à neuf ans - the precious
dear! - Gilberte Swann et la Lesbie de Catulle (and who had learned,
all by himself, to release the adoration as soon as the kerosene lamp had left
the mobile bedroom in his black nurse's fist). (1.10)
An actress, Marina mentions her old hobby in the hope to steer the
conversation to theater:
'Yes, indeed,' began Marina, 'when I was playing
Ophelia, the fact that I had once collected flowers -'
'Helped, no doubt,' said Ada. 'Now the Russian word for
marsh marigold is Kuroslep (which muzhiks in Tartary misapply, poor
slaves, to the buttercup) or else Kaluzhnitsa, as used quite properly
in Kaluga, U.S.A.' (ibid.)
According to Dahl, kuroslep is also a person who suffers from
kurinaya slepota (the night-blindness).
Krolik, who feeds his maggots in peace (1.41), is linked to
Polonius, Ophelia's father in Hamlet. Dr Krolik died in his
garden; Hamlet's father was poisoned while sleeping in his orchard. In a
letter of Nov. 25, 1892, to Suvorin Chekhov (the author of The Cherry
Orchard, 1904) mentions the ghost of Hamlet's father and the abolition of
serfdom:
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.
Van and Ada visit the family dentist in Kaluga:
They traveled to Kaluga and drank the Kaluga Waters,
and saw the family dentist. Van, flipping through a magazine, heard Ada scream
and say 'chort' (devil) in the next room, which he had never heard her
do before. (1.22)
Kretschmar learns about Magda's infidelity
thanks to his friend Segelkranz, the writer who intimately knew the late Marcel
Proust and who reads to Kretschmar a fresh fragment from his new
novella. Its hero visits a dentist:
Зегелькранц кокетливо засмеялся. "Это не роман и не
повесть, - сказал он. - Мне трудно определить... Тема такая: человек с
повышенной впечатлительностью отправляется к дантисту. Вот, собственно говоря, и
всё". (chapter 27)
Magda (who is unlikely to have ever read Hamlet) calls
Kretschmar's friend "Rosencrantz" (in Shakespeare's play Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern are Hamlet's former fellow students who are appointed to look after
him):
"Как тебе угодно, - сказала Магда. - Только ты подумай,
каково мне, - конечно, неважно, что я оскорблена тобой и твоим милым
Розенкранцем. Ну, ладно, ладно, давай укладываться". (chapter 28)
The characters of Kamera Obskura include the movie actress
Dorianna Karenina, whose pseudonym blends the name of Tolstoy's heroine (Horn
asks Dorianna if she ever read Tolstoy) with that of the hero of Oscar
Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray. Ada begins
with the opening sentence of Anna Karenin turned inside
out:
'All happy families are more or less dissimilar; all
unhappy ones are more or less alike,' says a great Russian writer in the
beginning of a famous novel (Anna Arkadievitch Karenina,
transfigured into English by R.G. Stonelower, Mount Tabor Ltd., 1880).
(1.1)
One of Marina's lovers is G. A. Vronsky, the movie man. In Tolstoy's novel
Aleksey Vronski is Anna's lover.
Onboard Tobakoff, just before Lucette's suicide, Van and
Lucette watch in the ship cinema Don Juan's Last Fling, the
movie in which Ada plays the gitanilla (3.5). After Lucette's death Van writes
in a letter to Ada:
On top of that, somebody she could not
compete with entered the picture. The Robinsons, Robert and Rachel, who, I know,
planned to write to you through my father, were the penultimate people to talk
to her that night. The last was a bartender...
As a psychologist, I know the
unsoundness of speculations as to whether Ophelia would not hove drowned herself
after all, without the help of a treacherous sliver, even if she had married her
Voltemand. Impersonally I believe she would have died in her bed, gray and
serene, had V. loved her; but since he did not really love the wretched little
virgin, and since no amount of carnal tenderness could or can pass for true
love, and since, above all, the fatal Andalusian wench who had come, I repeat,
into the picture, was unforgettable, I am bound to arrive, dear Ada and dear
Andrey, at the conclusion that whatever the miserable man could have thought up,
she would have pokonchila s soboy ('put an end to herself') all
the same. (3.6)
Kretschmar first meets Magda at a cinema where she works. Kretschmar,
who is too shy to speak to Magda, helplessly thinks that an ordinary Don
Juan that very day would have made her acquaintance:
"Дюжинный донжуан сегодня же с ней бы
познакомился," - беспомощно подумал Кречмар. (chapter II)
An art expert, Kretschmar notices Magda's
prodolgovatyi luinievskiy glaz ("the oblong luinesque eye").
Luinesque eyes are mentioned by McGore in VN's story Venetsianka
(La Veneziana, 1924):
"Но самая прелестная из всех Мадонн принадлежит
кисти Бернардо Луини. Во всех его творениях есть тишина и нежность озера, на
берегу которого он родился, - Лаго Маджиоре. Нежнейший мастер... Из имени его
даже создали новое прилагательное - "luinesco"... Луиниевские очи... Боже мой,
как я целовал их..."
"But the most enchanting Madonna of all comes from the brush
of Bernardo Luini. All his creations contain the quiet and the delicacy of the
lake on whose shore he was born, Lago Maggiore. The most delicate of
masters. His name even yielded a new adjective, "luinesco." ... Luinesque
eyes... God, how I kissed them...." (chapter 3)
An old connoiseur of art, McGore affirms that he managed many
times to step into the picture he was facing in a museum:
- Она - как живая, - задумчиво сказал Симпсон. -
Можно поверить в таинственные рассказы об оживающих портретах. Я читал где-то,
что какой-то король сошёл с полотна и как только...
Магор рассыпался тихим трескучим
смехом.
- Это, конечно, пустяки. Но вот бывает другое, -
обратное, так сказать.
"She looks absolutely real," Simpson said pensively. "It's
enough to make one believe mysterious tales about portraits coming to life. I
read somewhere that some king descended from a canvas, and, as soon as -
"
Mc Gore dissolved in a subdued, brittle laugh. "That's
nonesense, of course. But another phenomenon does occur - the inverse, so to
speak."
"...When I found a painting I particularly liked, I would
stand directly in front of it and concentrate all my willpower on one thought:
to enter it." (ibid.)
In Kamera Obskura Horn mentions Kretschmar's article on
Sebastiano del Piombo:
"Я читал вашу превосходную статью о Себастиано дель
Пиомбо. Вы напрасно только не привели его сонетов, - они прескверные, - но как
раз это и пикантно". (chapter 15)
VN's La Veneziana is a painting ascribed
to Del Piombo. One of the story's characters, Simpson, is compared to a man
who has awakened in his coffin:
Однообразие это особенно остро
ощущал Симпсон. Он чувствовал что-то страшное в том, что и сегодня второй
завтрак последует за первым, обед - за чаем, с ненарушимой правильностью. Когда
он подумал о том, что так будет продолжаться всю жизнь, ему захотелось кричать,
биться, как бьётся человек, проснувшийся в гробу.
Simpson was particularly conscious of this
monotony.He found it somehow terrifying that today, too, breakfast would be
followed by lunch, tea by supper, with inviolable regularity. He wanted to
scream at the thought that things would continue like that all his life, he
wanted to struggle like someone who has awakened in his coffin. (chapter
5)
"Luinesque" brings to mind the adjective Van tries to
form as he speaks to Lucette:
'Your hat,' he said, 'is positively
lautrémontesque - I mean, lautrecaquesque - no, I can't form the adjective.'
(3.3)
In that scene Lucette is compared to Blok's
Incognita:
He [Van] headed
for the bar, and as he was in the act of wiping the lenses of his black-framed
spectacles, made out, through the optical mist (Space's recent revenge!), the
girl whose silhouette he recalled having seen now and then (much more
distinctly!) ever since his pubescence, passing alone, drinking alone, always
alone, like Blok's Incognita. (ibid.)
"In vino veritas!" cry out p'yanitsy s glazami krolikov
(the drunks with the eyes of rabbits) in Blok's poem.
During the family dinner at Ardis Demon mentions
chelovek (the servant) s glazami who should see Dr
Krolik:
'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.'
'The Veen wit, the Veen wit,' murmured
Demon.
'Exactly,' said Marina. 'I simply refuse
to do anything about it. Besides poor Jones is not at all asthmatic, but only
nervously eager to please. He's as healthy as a bull and has rowed me from
Ardisville to Ladore and back, and enjoyed it, many times this summer. You are
cruel, Demon. I can't tell him "ne pïkhtite," as I can't tell Kim, the
kitchen boy, not to take photographs on the sly - he's a regular snap-shooting
fiend, that Kim, though otherwise an adorable, gentle, honest boy; nor can I
tell my little French maid [Blanche] to stop
getting invitations, as she somehow succeeds in doing, to the most exclusive
bals masqués in Ladore.' (1.38)
It is Jones who later becomes a policeman in Ladore and who
helps Van to blind Kim Beauharnais:
'But, you know, there's one thing I regret,' she
[Ada] added: 'Your use of an alpenstock to
release a brute's fury - not yours, not my Van's. I should never have told you
about the Ladore policeman. You should never have taken him into your
confidence, never connived with him to burn those files - and most of Kalugano's
pine forest. Eto unizitel'no (it is humiliating).'
'Amends have been made,' replied fat Van with a
fat man's chuckle. 'I'm keeping Kim safe and snug in a nice Home for Disabled
Professional People, where he gets from me loads of nicely brailled books on new
processes in chromophotography.' (2.11)
Kalugano blends Kaluga with Lugano, a city in Switzerland.
Lugano is mentioned in La Veneziana:
"Lugano, Como, Venice...," he [Simpson] murmured as he
sat on the bench under a soundless hazelnut tree, and right away he heard the
subdued plashing of sunny towns, and then, closer, the tinkling of bells, the
whistle of pigeon wings, a high-pitched laugh of akin to the laugh of Maureen,
and the ceaseless shuffling of unseen passerby. (chapter 2)
Como brings to mind one of Van's and Ada's
ancestors:
Van thrust his bare toe into a sneaker, retrieving the
while its mate from under the bed; he hurried down, past a pleased-looking
Prince Zemski and a grim Vincent Veen, Bishop of Balticomore and Como.
(1.20)
In his prose piece Vecher u Kantemira ("An Evening at
Kantemir's," 1816) the poet Batyushkov mentions archimandrite Krolik
(d. 1732).
Jones is a namesake of Van's teacher of history, 'Jeejee'
Jones:
Price, the mournful old footman who brought the
cream for the strawberries, resembled Van's teacher of history, 'Jeejee'
Jones.
'He resembles my teacher of history,' said Van
when the man had gone.
'I used to love history,' said Marina, 'I loved
to identify myself with famous women. There's a ladybird on your plate, Ivan.
Especially with famous beauties - Lincoln's second wife or Queen
Josephine.'
'Yes, I've noticed - it's beautifully done.
We've got a similar set at home.'
'Slivok (some cream)? I hope you speak
Russian?' Marina asked Van, as she poured him a cup of tea.
'Neohotno no sovershenno svobodno (reluctantly
but quite fluently),' replied Van, slegka ulïbnuvshis' (with a slight
smile). 'Yes, lots of cream and three lumps of sugar.'
'Ada and I share your extravagant tastes.
Dostoevski liked it with raspberry syrup.'
'Pah,' uttered Ada. (1.5)
"Queen Josephine" seems to hint at Napoleon's first wife,
Josephine Beauharnais. "Lincoln's second wife" brings to mind the Amerussia of
Abraham Milton (1.3) and the two wives of John Milton. The author of
Paradise Lost (1667) and Paradise Regained (1671), Milton
was blind.
For the last time in Ada Krolik is mentioned by Greg
Erminin:
'So odd to recall! It was frenzy, it was
fantasy, it was reality in the x degree. I'd have consented to be
beheaded by a Tartar, I declare, if in exchange I could have kissed her instep.
You were her cousin, almost a brother, you can't understand that obsession. Ah,
those picnics! And Percy de Prey who boasted to me about her, and drove me crazy
with envy and pity, and Dr Krolik, who, they said, also loved her, and Phil
Rack, a composer of genius - dead, dead, all dead!' (3.2)
It is Bout (Bouteillan's bastard who acts as Van's
valet in "Ardis the Second") who kisses Blanche's bare instep on one
of Kim's photos:
Young Bout devoutedly kissing the veined
instep of a pretty bare foot raised and placed on a balustrade.
(2.8)
The stone balustrade is mentioned by Ada in the book's
epilogue:
'Oh, Van, oh Van, we did not love her enough. That's
whom you should have married, the one sitting feet up, in ballerina black, on
the stone balustrade, and then everything would have been all right - I would
have stayed with you both in Ardis Hall, and instead of that happiness, handed
out gratis, instead of all that we teased her to death!' (5.6)
This is an obvious self-reference to the lines in Pale Fire:
And, also blond,
But with a touch of tawny in the shade,
Feet up, knees clasped, on a stone
balustrade
The other sits and raises a moist gaze
Toward the blue impenetrable haze. (Canto Three,
lines 576-80)
Pale Fire is the racehorse in the painting that hangs above
Cordula's and her husband's bed in their Tobakoff cabin:
There hung, she [Lucette] said, a steeplechase picture of 'Pale Fire
with Tom Cox Up' above dear Cordula's and Tobak's bed, in the suite 'wangled in
one minute flat' from them, and she wondered how it affected the Tobaks' love
life during sea voyages. (3.5)
In Ertel's novel "The Gardenins" Krolik is a
racehorse.
*translated by VN as Anya v strane chudes
(1923)
Alexey Sklyarenko