Van's maternal grandmother Daria ('Dolly')
Durmanov was the daughter of Prince Peter Zemski, Governor of Bras d'Or, an
American province in the Northeast of our great and variegated country, who had
married, in 1824, Mary O'Reilly, an Irish woman of fashion. (1.1)
Prince Pyotr Vyazemski
(1792-1878) was "an Irishman on his mother's side (O'Reilly)." (EO
Commentary, vol. II, p. 27)
At the beginning of his poem Tolstomu ("To Tolstoy," 1818)
addressed to Count Tolstoy the American (1782-1846) Vyazemski mentions
myatezhnykh sklonnostey durman (the drug of rebellious
inclinations) hurling Tolstoy iz raya v ad, iz ada v ray (from paradise
to hell, from hell to paradise):
Американец и цыган,
На свете нравственном
загадка,
Которого, как лихорадка,
Мятежных склонностей дурман
Или
страстей кипящих схватка
Всегда из края мечет в край,
Из рая в ад, из ада
в рай!
In his poem Vyazemski writes:
Ты знаешь цену Кондильяку,
В Вольтере любишь шуток
дар
И платишь сердцем дань Жан-Жаку
You know the worth of Condillac,
you love in Voltaire his gift of jokes
and with your heart you give Jean Jacques his due.
In his reply to these lines Tolstoy says that he is
more familiar with cognac than with Condillac (a French philosopher,
1715-80):
Ценю Вольтера
остроту:
Подобен ум его Протею;
Талант женевца — прямоту,
Подчас о
бедняках жалею.
Благоговею духом я
Пред важным мужем
Кондильяком…
Скажу, морочить не любя:
Я более знаком с
коньяком!
Bras d'Or is a Hennessy cognac.
Ada begins
with a "quotation" from Tolstoy's Anna Karenin:
‘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). That pronouncement has little if any relation to the story to be unfolded
now, a family chronicle, the first part of which is, perhaps, closer to another
Tolstoy work, Detstvo i Otrochestvo (Childhood and
Fatherland, Pontius Press, 1858). (1.1)
Tolstoy the American was a first cousin of Leo Tolstoy's father.
According to
Leo Tolstoy (who as a boy met his father's first cousin), Tolstoy the
American was an extraordinary person, criminal and - at the same time
- attractive:
Много бы хотелось рассказать про этого необыкновенного,
преступного и привлекательного человека. (P. I.
Biryukov, "L. N. Tolstoy. The Biography," Berlin, 1921)
Leo Tolstoy's eldest son Sergey is the author
of the biographical essay "Fyodor Tolstoy the American" (Moscow,
1926). At the beginning of its Foreword S. L. Tolstoy quotes his
father's words:
Граф Фёдор Иванович Толстой, прозванный Американцем,
был человек необыкновенный, преступный и привлекательный; так о нём выразился
его двоюродный племянник Лев Толстой. Он прожил бурную жизнь, нередко преступая
основы общечеловеческой нравственности и игнорируя уголовный кодекс. Вместе с
тем он был человек храбрый, энергичный, неглупый, остроумный, образованный для
своего времени и преданный друг своих друзей.
In his reply to Vyazemski (quoted above in full) Tolstoy the American
compares Voltaire's mind to Proteus (a sea god, son of Oceanus and
Thetys, noted for his ability to assume different forms and to prophesy).
In his poem Zhelanie ("Desire," 1858) Vyazemski compares desire to ever
diverse Proteus:
Протей, всегда разнообразный,
Во все приманки
красоты,
Во все мечты, во все соблазны
Волшебно облекалось
ты.
In the poem's closing lines Vyazemski says that all he wants is
spend the rest of his life in absence of desire:
Бесплодны будут заклинанья;
Отстань, не искушай
меня;
В одном отсутствии желанья
Хочу провесть остаток дня.
This brings to mind Ada's epilogue:
Nirvana, Nevada, Vaniada. By the way, should I not add,
my Ada, that only at the very last interview with poor dummy-mummy, soon after
my premature — I mean, premonitory — nightmare about, ‘You can, Sir,’ she
employed mon petit nom, Vanya, Vanyusha — never had before, and it
sounded so odd, so tend… (voice trailing off, radiators tinkling).
‘Dummy-mum’ —
(laughing). ‘Angels, too, have brooms — to sweep one’s soul clear of horrible
images. My black nurse was Swiss-laced with white whimsies.’
Sudden ice hurtling down the rain pipe: brokenhearted
stalactite.
Recorded and replayed
in their joint memory was their early preoccupation with the strange idea of
death. There is one exchange that it would be nice to enact against the green
moving backdrop of one of our Ardis sets. The talk about ‘double guarantee’ in
eternity. Start just before that.
‘I know there’s a Van
in Nirvana. I’ll be with him in the depths moego ada, of my Hades,’
said Ada.
‘True, true’ (bird-effects here, and acquiescing
branches, and what you used to call ‘golden gouts’).
‘As lovers and siblings,’ she cried, ‘we have
a double chance of being together in eternity, in terrarity. Four pairs of eyes
in paradise!’
‘Neat, neat,’ said
Van.
Something of the
sort. One great difficulty. The strange mirage-shimmer standing in for death
should not appear too soon in the chronicle and yet it should permeate the first
amorous scenes. Hard but not insurmountable (I can do anything, I can tango and
tap-dance on my fantastic hands). By the way, who dies first?
Ada. Van. Ada.
Vaniada. Nobody. Each hoped to go first, so as to concede, by implication, a
longer life to the other, and each wished to go last, in order to spare the
other the anguish or worries, of widowhood. One solution would be for you to
marry Violet. (5.6)
Aged ninety-seven and ninety-four and a
half, Van and Ada die immediately after finishing their
book. They suffer of cancer (as their mother did), and bid
Dr Lagosse to make them the last merciful injection of morphine.
In his poem Ferney (1859)
Vyazemski says that, a fallen exile of heavenly kingdom, Voltaire poured
poison into his holy vessel:
Он, падший изгнанник небесного
царства,
В
сосуд свой священный отраву вливал.
The
Durmanovs’ favorite domain, however, was Raduga near the burg of that name,
beyond Estotiland proper, in the Atlantic panel of the continent between elegant
Kaluga, New Cheshire, U.S.A., and no less elegant Ladoga, Mayne, where they had
their town house and where their three children were born: a son, who died young
and famous, and a pair of difficult female twins. (1.1)
In Ferney
Vyazemski mentions raduga (a rainbow):
Великий художник и зодчий
великий
Дал
жизнь сей природе красивой и дикой.
Вот радуга пышно сквозь тучи
блеснула,
Широко полнеба она обогнула
И в горы краями дуги
уперлась.
Любуюсь красою воздушной сей
арки:
Как
свежие краски прозрачны и ярки!
Как резко и нежно слились их
оттенки!
А
горы и тучи, как зданья простенки,
За аркой чернеют в глубокой
дали.
But nature meant nothing to Voltaire:
Страстей
возжигатель, сам в рабстве у страсти,
Не мог покориться мирительной
власти
Природы бесстрастной, разумно
спокойной,
С
такою любовью и роскошью стройной
Пред ним расточившей богатства
свои.
Не слушал он гласа ее
вдохновений;
И дня лучезарность, и сумрака
тени,
Природы зерцала, природы
престолы,
Озера и горы, дубравы и долы
—
Всё
мертвою буквой немело пред ним.
In the
poem's closing line Vyazemski calls Voltaire greshnik slavy
("the sinner of fame"):
О нет, не укором, а скорбью
глубокой,
О
немощах наших и в доле высокой,
Я, грешника славы, тебя
помяну!
These lines echo the last
paragraph of Pushkin's article "Voltaire (Correspondance inédite de
Voltaire avec le président de Brosses, etc. Paris, 1836)" that appeared in
the 3rd issue (the 4th issue was the last edited by
Pushkin) of Sovremennik (The
Contemporary):
Что из
этого заключить? что гений имеет свои слабости, которые утешают
посредственность, но печалят благородные сердца, напоминая им о несовершенстве
человечества; что настоящее место писателя есть его учёный кабинет и что,
наконец, независимость и самоуважение одни могут нас возвысить над мелочами
жизни и над бурями судьбы.
A genius has his
weaknesses that comfort mediocrity but sadden noble hearts reminding them
of mankind's imperfection. A writer's ture place is his
study. Independence and self-respect alone can raise us above the
trifles of life and storms of Fate.
Alexey Sklyarenko