As he speaks to Ada, Van compares Andrey Vinelander (Ada¡¯s consumptive husband) to Keats (a poet who died of tuberculosis):
She asked for a handkerchief, and he pulled out a blue one from his windjacket pocket, but her tears had started to roll and she shaded her eyes, while he stood before her with outstretched hand.
'Part of the act?' he inquired coldly.
She shook her head, took the handkerchief with a childish 'merci,' blew her nose and gasped, and swallowed, and spoke, and next moment all, all was lost.
She could not tell her husband while he was ill. Van would have to wait until Andrey was sufficiently well to bear the news and that might take some time. Of course, she would have to do everything to have him completely cured, there was a wondermaker in Arizona -
'Sort of patching up a bloke before hanging him,' said Van.
'And to think,' cried Ada with a kind of square shake of stiff hands as if dropping a lid or a tray, 'to think that he dutifully concealed everything! Oh, of course, I can't leave him now!'
'Yes, the old story - the flute player whose impotence has to be treated, the reckless ensign who may never return from a distant war!'
'Ne ricane pas!' exclaimed Ada. 'The poor, poor little man! How dare you sneer?'
As had been peculiar to his nature even in the days of his youth, Van was apt to relieve a passion of anger and disappointment by means of bombastic and arcane utterances which hurt like a jagged fingernail caught in satin, the lining of Hell.
'Castle True, Castle Bright!' he now cried, 'Helen of Troy, Ada of Ardis! You have betrayed the Tree and the Moth!'
'Perestagne (stop, cesse)!'
'Ardis the First, Ardis the Second, Tanned Man in a Hat, and now Mount Russet -'
'Perestagne!' repeated Ada (like a fool dealing with an epileptic).
'Oh! Qui me rendra mon H¨¦l¨¨ne -'
'Ach, perestagne!'
'- et le phal¨¨ne.'
'Je t'emplie ("prie" and "supplie"), stop, Van. Tu sais que j'en vais mourir.'
'But, but, but' - (slapping every time his forehead) - 'to be on the very brink of, of, of - and then have that idiot turn Keats!' (3.8)
In Keats¡¯ Endymion (1818) Alpheus, as he speaks to Arethusa (a ¡°peerless nymph¡±), mentions his shady brink:
¡°Now thou dost taunt
So softly, Arethusa, that I think
If thou wast playing on my shady brink,
Thou wouldst bathe once again. Innocent maid!
Stifle thine heart no more; - nor be afraid
Of angry powers: there are deities
Will shade us with their wings. (Book II, Lines 975-981)
One of Ada¡¯s lovers, Philip Rack (¡°the flute player whose impotence has to be treated¡±) was poisoned by his wife Elsie and dies in the Kalugano hospital. According to Dr Fitzbishop, it was the not always lethal 'arethusoides' that killed Rack:
Dr Fitzbishop had said, rubbing his hands, that the Luga laboratory said it was the not always lethal 'arethusoides' but it had no practical importance now, because the unfortunate music teacher, and composer, was not expected to spend another night on Demonia, and would be on Terra, ha-ha, in time for evensong. Doc Fitz was what Russians call a poshlyak ('pretentious vulgarian') and in some obscure counter-fashion Van was relieved not to be able to gloat over the wretched Rack's martyrdom. (1.42)
In his poem The Eve of St Mark Keats mentions ¡°the Bishop's garden wall,¡± ¡°even-song and vesper prayer¡± and, in the poem¡¯s closing lines, ¡°the fervent martyrdom:¡±
From her fireside she could see
Sidelong its rich antiquity¡ª
Far as the Bishop's garden wall
Where Sycamores and elm trees tall
Full-leav'd the forest had outstript¡ª
Twice holy was the Sabbath bell:
The silent streets were crowded well
With staid and pious companies
Warm from their fire-side orat'ries
And moving with demurest air
To even-song and vesper prayer.
At length her constant eyelids come
Upon the fervent martyrdom;
Then lastly to his holy shrine
Exalt amid the tapers' shine
At Venice¡ª
In one of her letters to Van Ada says that mere pity drew her to Rack:
[Arizona, summer, 1890]
Mere pity, a Russian girl's zhalost', drew me to R. (whom musical critics have now 'discovered'). He knew he would die young and was always, in fact, mostly corpse, never once, I swear, rising to the occasion, even when I showed openly my compassionate non-resistance because I, alas, was brimming with Van-less vitality, and had even considered buying the services of some rude, the ruder the better, young muzhik. (2.1)
Keats is the author La Belle Dame sans Merci (1819), a poem that was translated into Russian by VN. Ada (who takes Van¡¯s handkerchief with a childish 'merci') is a beautiful lady not without mercy.
In The Eve of St Mark Keats also mentions ¡°some ghostly Queen of spades:¡±
Untir'd she read; her shadow still
Glower'd about as it would fill
The room with wildest forms and shades,
As though some ghostly Queen of spades
Had come to mock behind her back¡ª
And dance, and ruffle her garments black.
Pikovaya dama (¡°The Queen of Spades,¡± 1833) is a story by Pushkin. According to Tomski (a character in Pushkin¡¯s story), sixty years ago his eighty-year-old grandmother (the old Countess) was known in Paris as la V¨¦nus muscovite:
§¯§Ñ§Õ§à§Ò§ß§à §Ù§ß§Ñ§ä§î, §é§ä§à §Ò§Ñ§Ò§å§ê§Ü§Ñ §Þ§à§ñ, §Ý§Ö§ä §ê§Ö§ã§ä§î§Õ§Ö§ã§ñ§ä §ä§à§Þ§å §ß§Ñ§Ù§Ñ§Õ, §Ö§Ù§Õ§Ú§Ý§Ñ §Ó §±§Ñ§â§Ú§Ø §Ú §Ò§í§Ý§Ñ §ä§Ñ§Þ §Ó §Ò§à§Ý§î§ê§à§Û §Þ§à§Õ§Ö. §¯§Ñ§â§à§Õ §Ò§Ö§Ô§Ñ§Ý §Ù§Ñ §ß§Ö§ð, §é§ä§à§Ò §å§Ó§Ú§Õ§Ö§ä§î la V¨¦nus moscovite; §²§Ú§ê§Ö§Ý§î§Ö §Ù§Ñ §ß§Ö§ð §Ó§à§Ý§à§é§Ú§Ý§ã§ñ, §Ú §Ò§Ñ§Ò§å§ê§Ü§Ñ §å§Ó§Ö§â§ñ§Ö§ä, §é§ä§à §à§ß §é§å§ä§î §Ò§í§Ý§à §ß§Ö §Ù§Ñ§ã§ä§â§Ö§Ý§Ú§Ý§ã§ñ §à§ä §Ö§× §Ø§Ö§ã§ä§à§Ü§à§ã§ä§Ú.
About sixty years ago, my grandmother went to Paris, where she created quite a sensation. People used to run after her to catch a glimpse of the 'Muscovite Venus.' Richelieu courted her, and my grandmother maintains that he almost blew out his brains in consequence of her cruelty. (chapter I)
La V¨¦nus moscovite in Pushkin¡¯s story brings to mind Venus and the Moustique muscovite mentioned by Van in his description of his nights at Ardis:
The windows in the black castle went out in rows, files, and knight moves. The longest occupant of the nursery water closet was Mlle Larivi¨¨re, who came there with a rose-oil lampad and her buvard. A breeze ruffled the hangings of his now infinite chamber. Venus rose in the sky; Venus set in his flesh.
All that was a little before the seasonal invasion of a certain interestingly primitive mosquito (whose virulence the not-too-kind Russian contingent of our region attributed to the diet of the French winegrowers and bogberry-eaters of Ladore); but even so the fascinating fireflies, and the still more eerie pale cosmos coming through the dark foliage, balanced with new discomforts the nocturnal ordeal, the harassments of sweat and sperm associated with his stuffy room. Night, of course, always remained an ordeal, throughout the near-century of his life, no matter how drowsy or drugged the poor man might be - for genius is not all gingerbread even for Billionaire Bill with his pointed beardlet and stylized bald dome, or crusty Proust who liked to decapitate rats when he did not feel like sleeping, or this brilliant or obscure V.V. (depending on the eyesight of readers, also poor people despite our jibes and their jobs); but at Ardis, the intense life of the star-haunted sky troubled the boy's night so much that, on the whole, he felt grateful when foul weather or the fouler gnat - the Kamargsky Komar of our muzhiks and the Moustique moscovite of their no less alliterative retaliators - drove him back to his bumpy bed. (1.12)
Alexey Sklyarenko