Upon first noticing this immediate,
sustained, and in her case rather eager and mocking but really quite harmless
replay of this or that recent discourse, she felt tickled at the thought that
she, poor Aqua, had accidentally hit upon such a simple method of recording and
transmitting speech, while technologists (the so-called Eggheads) all over the
world were trying to make publicly utile and commercially rewarding the
extremely elaborate and still very expensive, hydrodynamic telephones and other
miserable gadgets that were to replace those that had gone k chertyam
sobach'im (Russian 'to the devil') with the banning of an unmentionable
'lammer.' (1.3)
Instead of staying for the night, Marina
stalked off and called Ada who, having been told to 'play in the garden,' was
mumbling and numbering in raw-flesh red the white trunks of a row of young
birches with Rose's purloined lipstick in the preamble to a game she now could
not remember - what a pity, said Van - when her mother swept her back straight
to Ardis in the same taxi leaving Dan - to his devices and vices, inserted Van -
and arriving home at sunrise. But, added Ada, just before being whisked away and
deprived of her crayon (tossed out by Marina k chertyam sobach'im, to
hell's hounds - and it did remind one of Rose's terrier that had kept trying to
hug Dan's leg) the charming glimpse was granted her of tiny Van, with another
sweet boy, and blond-bearded, white-bloused Aksakov, walking up to the house,
and, oh yes, she had forgotten her hoop - no, it was still in the
taxi. (1.24)
Especially so now - when
everything had gone to the hell curs, k chertyam sobach'im, of Jeroen
Anthniszoon van Äken and the molti aspetti affascinati of his enigmatica
arte, as Dan explained with a last sigh to Dr Nikulin and to nurse
Bellabestia ('Bess') to whom he bequeathed a trunkful of museum catalogues and
his second-best catheter. (2.10)
Poor mad Aqua is Marina's twin sister, Daniel
Veen ("Dan") is Marina's husband. All of them were born on January 5
(Marina Tsvetaev's Plach Yaroslavny, "The Weeping of Yaroslavna," a
cycle of three poems included in Lebedinyi stan, "The Swan
Camp," was written on January 5, 1921, NS):
Marina's affair with Demon Veen started on
his, her, and Daniel Veen's birthday, January 5, 1868, when she was twenty-four
and both Veens thirty. (1.2)
Demon Veen (Aqua's husband) is Van's and Ada's father.
Ada's furs were given her by Demon:
Ada's bobrï (princely plural of
bobr) were a gift from Demon, who as we know, had lately seen in the
Western states considerably more of her than he had in Eastern Estotiland when
she was a child. (2.6)
January 5 is also Vera Nabokov's birthday. When VN first met
Vera Slonim on a bridge over a chestnut-lined canal in Berlin,
she wore a black satin mask. In his poem Vstrecha ("The Encounter,"
1923) VN mentions the mask's lupine profile and the canal:
И ночь текла, и плыли молча
в её атласные
струи
той чёрной маски профиль волчий
и губы нежные твои.
И под
каштаны, вдоль канала,
прошла ты, искоса маня;
и что душа в тебе
узнала,
чем волновала ты меня?
VN's Vstrecha has an epigraph from Blok's
Incognita. In Blok's poem "Noch'. Ulitsa. Fonar'.
Apteka..." ("Night. Street. Lamp. Chemist's shop..." 1912) ledyanaya
ryab' kanala ("the canal's icy ripple") is mentioned.
kanal = kalan =
nakal
lutromarina + Erminin
= ultramarine + or + Minin (kanal - canal; kalan - kamchatskiy
bobr, Enhydra lutris; nakal -
incandescence; Erminin - the Erminin twins, Greg and
Grace, and their father, Colonel Erminin; or -
Fr., gold; Minin - Kuzma Minin, a national hero for
his role in defending Russia against the Polish invasion in 1612; cf. Marina
Mnishek, a Polish beauty after whom Marina Tsvetaev was
named)
When Van meets Lucette in Lute (as Paris is also known on
Antiterra), she is linked to Blok's Incognita:
He 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. (3.3)
'Lucette affirmed,' he
said, 'that she (Ada) imitated mountain lions.'
He was omniscient. Better say,
omni-incest.
'That's right,' said the other
total-recaller.
And, by the way, Grace - yes, Grace - was Vanda's real
favorite, pas petite moi and my little
crest. (2.6)
In Toska po rodine
("Home-Sickness") Marina Tsveatev compares herself not only to a Kamchatka bear,
but also to a captive lion:
Мне всё равно, каких
среди
Лиц ощетиниваться пленным
Львом, из какой людской среды
Быть
вытесненной — непременно —
В себя, в единоличье
чувств.
Камчатским медведём без
льдины
Где не ужиться (и не
тщусь!),
Где унижаться — мне едино.
Ada's "crayon" tossed out by Marina k
chertyam sobach'im brings to mind the "Cranach crayons"
that Ada brings from Ardis for Lucette:
'I'm not sure I did bring her
damned Cranach crayons,' said Ada a moment later, making a frightened frog
face...
'I'm a good, good girl. Here are her special pencils.
It was very considerate and altogether charming of you to invite her next
weekend. I think she's even more madly in love with you than with me, the poor
pet. Demon got them in Strassburg. After all she's a demi-vierge now'
('I hear you and Dad -' began Van, but the introduction of a new subject was
swamped) 'and we shan't be afraid of her witnessing our ébats'
(pronouncing on purpose, with triumphant hooliganism, for which my prose, too,
is praised, the first vowel à la Russe). (2.6)
Next weekend Van takes Ada and Lucette to 'Ursus:'
Knowing how fond his sisters were of Russian fare and
Russian floor shows, Van took them Saturday night to 'Ursus,' the best
Franco-Estotian restaurant in Manhattan Major. Both young ladies wore the very
short and open evening gowns that Vass 'miraged' that season - in the phrase of
that season: Ada, a gauzy black, Lucette, a lustrous cantharid green. Their
mouths 'echoed' in tone (but not tint) each other's lipstick; their eyes were
made up in a 'surprised bird-of-paradise' style that was as fashionable in Los
as in Lute. Mixed metaphors and double-talk became all three Veens, the children
of Venus. (2.8)
Ursus (Lat., "bear") is the wandering artist in Victor Hugo's
"The Laughing Man." The novel's characters include the tame wolf Homo (Lat.,
"man"). In her memoir essay on Valeriy Bryusov, Geroy truda ("The
Hero of Toil," 1925), Marina Tsvetaev calls Bryusov trizhdy
rimlyanin ("a triple Roman") and compares him to a wolf. It is Valerio, a
ginger-haired elderly Roman, who after Ada's arrival in
Manhattan brings her and Van a beautiful breakfast and who
procured neat Rose, the sportive Negro maid whom Van shares with Mr
Dean:
Lucette had gone (leaving a curt note with her room
number at the Winster Hotel for Young Ladies) when our two lovers, now
weak-legged and decently robed, sat down to a beautiful breakfast (Ardis' crisp
bacon! Ardis' translucent honey!) brought up in the lift by Valerio, a
ginger-haired elderly Roman, always ill-shaven and gloomy, but a dear old boy
(he it was who, having procured neat Rose last June, was being paid to keep her
strictly for Veen and Dean). (2.6)
In the preface to "The Stolen Fur Coats" Prince Shakhovskoy mentions
Boileau's poem Le Lutrin ("The Lectern," 1683) highly praised by
La Harpe:
Во Франции, в век Людовика XIV,
Буало сочинил совершеннейшее, по словам г. Лагарпа, в сём роде творение «Налой»
(«Le lutrin»), поэму, названную им, по примеру Тассония,
ирои-комическою.
"Tassonius" mentioned by Shakhovskoy is
Torquato Tasso, the author of Jerusalem Delivered (1581). The
poem's characters include Erminia, a girl who is hopelessly in love with
Tancred. "Erminia" was the nickname of Pushkin's friend Eliza Khitrovo, born
Kutuzov. Greg Erminin's twin sister Grace (with whom Ada played anagrams at the
picnic in "Ardis the First," 1.13) marries a Wellington:
So little did the world
realize the real state of affairs that even Cordula Tobak, born de Prey, and
Grace Wellington, born Erminin, spoke of Demon Veen, with his fashionable goatee
and frilled shirtfront, as 'Van's successor.' (2.6)
While Kutuzov (Erminia's father) opposed
Napoleon in the battles of Austerlitz (1805) and
Borodino (1812), Wellington opposed him in the battle of Waterloo (1815) lost by
Napoleon. The sole idol of Marina Tsvetaev, Napoleon (who seems to
have not existed on Antiterra) is mentioned by Pushkin in his poem
K moryu ("To the Sea," 1824): Proshchay, svobodnaya
stikhiya... ("Farewell, the free element..."). Pushkin is the author of
Skazka o medvedikhe ("The Fairy Tale about a She-Bear," 1830). S. P.
Krasheninnikov's Opisanie zemli Kamchatki ("The Description of the
Land Kamchatka," 1755) was one of the lasts books that Pushkin
read. A few days before his fatal duel the poet planned to write for "The
Contemporary" an article about Kamchatka.
Alexey Sklyarenko