'Et pourtant,' said the
sound-sensitive governess, wincing, 'I read to her twice Ségur's adaptation in
fable form of Shakespeare's play about the wicked usurer.'
'She also knows my revised monologue of his mad
king,' said Ada:
Ce beau jardin fleurit en
mai,
Mais en hiver
Jamais, jamais, jamais, jamais,
jamais
N'est vert, n'est vert, n'est vert,
n'est vert, n'est
vert.
'Oh, that's good,' exclaimed Greg with a
veritable sob of admiration. (1.14)
In Povest' o Sonechke ("The Tale about Little
Sonya," 1937) Marina Tsvetaev quotes Cordelia's words to her father: "I love
you, like salt; nor more nor less" in King Lear (Act 1, scene
1) adapted for children:
Как Корделия, в моём детском Шекспире, про
Короля Лира - о соли, так я про Сонечку - о сахаре, и с той же скромностью: она
мне была необходима - как сахар.
Как всем известно, сахар - не необходим, и жить без него можно, и четыре года
Революции мы без него жили, заменяя - кто патокой, кто - тёртой свеклой, кто -
сахарином, кто - вовсе ничем. Пили пустой чай. От этого не умирают. Но и не
живут.
Без соли делается цинга, без сахару - тоска.
Живым
белым целым куском сахара - вот чем для меня была Сонечка.
Грубо? Грубо
- как Корделия: Я вас люблю, как соль, не больше, не меньше? Старого короля
можно любить, как соль, но... маленькую девочку? Нет, довольно соли. Пусть раз в
мире это будет сказано: я её любила, как сахар - в революцию. И всё
тут.
For Marina Tsvetaev little Sonya was a live white lump of
sugar. For his first cup of tea at Ardis Van asks a lot of cream and three
lumps of sugar:
'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).
Marina Tsvetaev's Sonya is a namesake of Sonya Marmeladov, a prostitute in
Dostoevski's "Crime and Punishment" (1866).
In "Mother and Music" Marina Tsvetaev mentions Ségur's tale
Forêt des
Lilas: Labemol же было для меня
пределом лиловизны: лиловее тарусских ирисов, лиловее страховской тучи, лиловее
сегюровской "Forêt des
Lilas."
In "The Tale about Little Sonya" Marina Tsvetaev highly
praises Ségur's Nouveaux Contes de Fées:
Графиня де Сегюр - большая писательница, имевшая
глупость вообразить себя бабушкой и писать только для детей. Прошу обратить
внимание на её сказки «Nouveaux Contes de Fées» (Bibliothèque Rose)
- лучшее и наименее известное из всего ею написанного - сказки
совершенно-исключительные, потому что совершенно единоличные (без ни единого
заимствования - хотя бы из народных сказок). Сказки, которым я верна уже
четвертый десяток, сказки, которые я уже здесь в Париже четырежды дарила и
трижды сохранила, ибо увидеть их в витрине для меня - неизбежно -
купить).
According to Marina Tsvetaev, Countess de Ségur is
a gifted writer who made the mistake imagining that she was a
grandmother and writing only for children.
A sort of hoary riddle (Les Sophismes
de Sophie by Mlle Stopchin in the Bibliothèque Vieux Rose series): did the
Burning Barn come before the Cockloft or the Cockloft come first.
(1.19)
Darkbloom ('Notes to Ada'): Mlle Stopchin: a representative of Mme de Ségur, née
Rostopchine, author of Les Malheurs de Sophie (nomenclatorially
occupied on Antiterra by Les Malheurs de Swann).
Swann is the title character in Marcel Proust's
Du côté de chez Swann, the first novel in
A la recherche du temps perdu. In "My Pushkin" (1937) Marina Tsvetaev
compares Pushkin to Proust ("a genius who recently has left us").
Marina Tsvetaev begins her Povest' o Sonechke
with a quotation of the opening lines of a poem by Victor Hugo:
Elle était pâle - et pourtant rose, Petite -
avec de grands cheveux...
Нет, бледности в ней не было никакой, ни в чем,
всё в ней было - обратное бледности, а всё-таки она была - pourtant rose, и это
своеместно будет доказано и показано.
Ada is a pale fatal beauty with long black hair.
Her habit to blush distresses Van:
'Oh yes, Ada,' he said, 'Van here is anxious to
know something. What were you doing, my dear, while he and I were taking care of
the fire?'
Its reflection invaded Ada. Van had never seen a
girl (as translucently white-skinned as she), or indeed anybody else, porcelain
or peach, blush so substantially and habitually, and the habit distressed him as
being much more improper than any act that might cause it. She stole a foolish
glance at the somber boy and began saying something about having been fast
ablaze in her bedroom.
'You were not,' interrupted Van harshly, 'you
were with me looking at the blaze from the library window. Uncle Dan is all
wet.'
'Ménagez vos américanismes,' said the
latter - and then opened his arms wide in paternal welcome as guileless Lucette
trotted into the room with a child's pink, stiff-bagged butterfly net in her
little fist, like an oriflamme. (1.20)
The day following the Night of the Burning Barn (when Van
and Ada make love for the first time, 1.19) is Sunday:
But she was not down yet. In the bright
dining room, full of yellow flowers in drooping clusters of sunshine, Uncle Dan
was feeding. He wore suitable clothes for a suitably hot day in the country -
namely, a candy-striped suit over a mauve flannel shirt and piqué waistcoat,
with a blue-and-red club tie and a safety-goldpinned very high soft collar (all
his trim stripes and colors were a little displaced, though, in the process of
comic strip printing, because it was Sunday). (ibid.)
In Povest' o Sonechke Marina
Tsvetaev's twelve-year-old son Mur (Georgiy Efron, 1925-44) mentions
"American Sunday:"
Ещё тире - и ещё подлиннее: в целые десять
лет. 14-ое мая 1937 г., пятница. Спускаемся с Муром, тем, двухгодовалым, ныне
двенадцатилетним, к нашему метро Mairie d'Issy и приблизительно у лавки Provence
он - мне, верней - себе:
- A American Sunday это ведь ихнее Dimanche
Illustré!
- А что значит - Holiday?
- Свободный день, вообще -
каникулы.
- Это значит - праздник. Так звали женщину, которую я больше всех
женщин на свете любила. А может быть - больше всех. Я думаю - больше всего.
Сонечка Голлидэй. Вот, Мур, тебе бы такую жену!
Marina Tsvetaev's Sonya is also a namesake of Sonya
Zilanov, a character in VN's novel Podvig (Glory, 1930)
with whom Martin Edelweiss is hopelessly in love. The surname of Marina
Tsvetaev's Sonya is Gollidey (Holliday in Russian spelling). The fact that
the Goloday island in St. Petersburg received its name after Holliday (an
English manufacturer) is mentioned in Podvig. Ada's hero
and narrator, Van Veen, was born in Switzerland (1.1). Martin Edelweiss'
grandfather was a Swiss citizen (and so is Martyn's uncle Gustav who
marries his widowed mother).
Soon after the Night of the Burning Barn, Van and Ada
discover in the attic of Ardis Hall an old issue of the still existing
but rather gaga Kaluga Gazette and find out that they are brother and
sister:
According to the Sunday supplement of a
newspaper that had just begun to feature on its funnies page the now long
defunct Goodnight Kids, Nicky and Pimpernella (sweet siblings who shared a
narrow bed), and that had survived with other old papers in the cockloft of
Ardis Hall, the Veen-Durmanov wedding took place on St Adelaida's Day, 1871.
Twelve years and some eight months later, two naked children, one dark-haired
and tanned, the other dark-haired and milk-white, bending in a shaft of hot
sunlight that slanted through the dormer window under which the dusty cartons
stood, happened to collate that date (December 16, 1871) with another (August
16, same year) anachronistically scrawled in Marina's hand across the corner of
a professional photograph (in a raspberry-plush frame on her husband's kneehole
library table) identical in every detail - including the commonplace sweep of a
bride's ectoplasmic veil, partly blown by a parvis breeze athwart the groom's
trousers - to the newspaper reproduction. A girl was born on July 21, 1872, at
Ardis, her putative father's seat in Ladore County, and for some obscure
mnemonic reason was registered as Adelaida. Another daughter, this time Dan's
very own, followed on January 3, 1876. (1.1)
Sonya Gollidey was a young talented actress (Vakhtangov's
pupil whom Kachalov* loved). When Van returns from Ardis to Manhattan,
his father invites him to a party where Demon's companion is Cordelia O'Leary
("a budding Duse," as Demon calls her):
'My suggestion is, come with me to a cocktail
party today. It is given by the excellent widow of an obscure Major de Prey -
obscurely related to our late neighbor, a fine shot but the light was bad on the
Common, and a meddlesome garbage collector hollered at the wrong moment. Well,
that excellent and influential lady who wishes to help a friend of mine'
(clearing his throat) 'has, I'm told, a daughter of fifteen summers, called
Cordula, who is sure to recompense you for playing Blindman's Buff all summer
with the babes of Ardis Wood.'
'We played mostly Scrabble and Snap,' said Van.
'Is the needy friend also in my age group?'
'She's a budding Duse,' replied Demon austerely,
'and the party is strictly a "prof push." You'll stick to Cordula de Prey, I, to
Cordelia O'Leary.'
'D'accord,' said Van. (1.27)
Marina Tsvetaev's Sonya died of cancer of the
liver:
Мама! Забыла Вам написать! Я разыскала следы
Сонечки Голлидэй, Вашей Сонечки - но слишком поздно. Она умерла в прошлом году
от рака печени - без страданий.
Van's, Ada's and Lucette's mother Marina (a professional
actress) also dies of cancer:
Early in 1900, a few days before he saw
Marina, for the last time, at the clinic in Nice (where he learned for the
first time the name of her illness), Van had a 'verbal' nightmare,
caused, maybe, by the musky smell in the Miramas (Bouches Rouges-du-Rhône) Villa
Venus. Two formless fat transparent creatures were engaged in some discussion,
one repeating 'I can't!' (meaning 'can't die' - a difficult procedure to carry
out voluntarily, without the help of the dagger, the ball, or the bowl), and the
other affirming 'You can, sir!' She died a fortnight later, and her body was
burnt, according to her instructions. (3.1)
Sonya's body was burnt after her death:
Соню - сожгли?..
Да, меня жжёт, что Сонечку - сожгли, что нет
креста - написать на нём - как она просила:
И кончалось всё припевом:
Моя маленькая!
...Первое, что я о ней услышала, было: костёр, последнее: сожгли.
Первое, что я о ней услышала, было: костёр, и последнее:
костёр.
The fire was the first and
the last word that Marina Tsvetaev heard about Sonya.
Three
elements, fire, water and air, destroyed, in that sequence, Marina, Lucette and
Demon. (3.1)
*Marina Durmanov's partner in Stanislavski's stage version of
Griboedov's Woe from Wit (1.37). Marina played Sofia, Kachalov played
Chatski.
Alexey Sklyarenko