Describing his novel Letters from Terra, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Ada, 1969) mentions Nefzawi’s treatise on the best method of mating with obese or hunchbacked females:
The only other compliment was paid to poor Voltemand in a little Manhattan magazine (The Village Eyebrow) by the poet Max Mispel (another botanical name — ‘medlar’ in English), member of the German Department at Goluba University. Herr Mispel, who liked to air his authors, discerned in Letters from Terra the influence of Osberg (Spanish writer of pretentious fairy tales and mystico-allegoric anecdotes, highly esteemed by short-shift thesialists) as well as that of an obscene ancient Arab, expounder of anagrammatic dreams, Ben Sirine, thus transliterated by Captain de Roux, according to Burton in his adaptation of Nefzawi’s treatise on the best method of mating with obese or hunchbacked females (The Perfumed Garden, Panther edition, p.187, a copy given to ninety-three-year-old Baron Van Veen by his ribald physician Professor Lagosse). His critique ended as follows: ‘If Mr Voltemand (or Voltimand or Mandalatov) is a psychiatrist, as I think he might be, then I pity his patients, while admiring his talent.’
Upon being cornered, Gwen, a fat little fille de joie (by inclination if not by profession), squealed on one of her new admirers, confessing she had begged him to write that article because she could not bear to see Van’s ‘crooked little smile’ at finding his beautifully bound and boxed book so badly neglected. She also swore that Max not only did not know who Voltemand really was, but had not read Van’s novel. Van toyed with the idea of challenging Mr Medlar (who, he hoped, would choose swords) to a duel at dawn in a secluded corner of the Park whose central green he could see from the penthouse terrace where he fenced with a French coach twice a week, the only exercise, save riding, that he still indulged in; but to his surprise — and relief (for he was a little ashamed to defend his ‘novelette’ and only wished to forget it, just as another, unrelated, Veen might have denounced — if allowed a longer life — his pubescent dream of ideal bordels) Max Mushmula (Russian for ‘medlar’) answered Van’s tentative cartel with the warm-hearted promise of sending him his next article, ‘The Weed Exiles the Flower’ (Melville & Marvell). (2.2)
Darkbloom ('Notes to Ada'): fille de joie: whore.
Zhili byli dva gorbuna ("There lived two hunchbacks") is the first poem in Pyotr Potyomkin's collection Smeshnaya lyubov' ("The Funny Love," 1908):
Жили были два горбуна,
он любил и любила она.
Были длинны их цепкие руки,
но смешны их любовные муки,
потому что никто никому,
ни он ей, ни она ему,
поцелуя не мог подарить —
им горбы мешали любить.
Sirin - ptitsa pechali ("Sirin, the Bird of Sadness") is a cycle of five poems included in Potyomkin's collection Smeshnaya lyubov':
Осень желтая настала,
сердце бедное взалкало.
Я грущу слепыми днями,
плачу звездными ночами.
Милый, к берегу причаль,
полюби свою печаль.
Будет сон твой тих и мирен,
прилечу я птица-Сирин.
Я крылом тебя задену,
грусть-тоской тебя одену,
сяду рядом на кровать,
буду песней песню звать.
Край родимый отдан вьюгам —
улечу с желанным другом,
злой метелицей неволи
убаюкаю до боли,
вырву сердце, выпью кровь, —
Полюби мою любовь! (1)
In the cycle's fifth poem Potyomkin mentions kinzhal (the dagger):
Кто опустит буйный локон
на крутой висок?
Кто закроет стекла окон,
повернет замок?
Чью я, вестница Печали,
выпью кровь—вино?
Чье засохнет на кинжале
красное пятно?
Кто же гость мой ежедневный?
Жду - -кипит питье…
Наглядись твоей царевной,
поцелуй ее.
Сам к груди моей прижмешься,
повернешь замок,
сам, не ведая, наткнешься
на стальной клинок.
Сталь клинка вонзится в тело,
в кровь вольется яд,
удивленно и несмело
прянешь ты назад.
И уйдешь, не чуя раны,
но в груди Печаль,
сквозь незрячие туманы
в круговую даль.
Будешь ждать свиданья с другом,
не найдешь дорог,
и придешь туманным кругом
вновь на мой порог.
Describing his performance in variety shows as Mascodagama (when he dances the jig and tango on his hands), Van Veen mentions the dagger of Prince Potyomkin, a mixed-up kid from Sebastopol, Id.:
On February 5, 1887, an unsigned editorial in The Ranter (the usually so sarcastic and captious Chose weekly) described Mascodagama’s performance as ‘the most imaginative and singular stunt ever offered to a jaded music-hall public.’ It was repeated at the Rantariver Club several times, but nothing in the programme or in publicity notices beyond the definition ‘Foreign eccentric’ gave any indication either of the exact nature of the ‘stunt’ or of the performer’s identity. Rumors, carefully and cleverly circulated by Mascodagama’s friends, diverted speculations toward his being a mysterious visitor from beyond the Golden Curtain, particularly since at least half-a-dozen members of a large Good-will Circus Company that had come from Tartary just then (i.e., on the eve of the Crimean War) — three dancing girls, a sick old clown with his old speaking goat, and one of the dancers’ husbands, a make-up man (no doubt, a multiple agent) — had already defected between France and England, somewhere in the newly constructed ‘Chunnel.’ Mascodagama’s spectacular success in a theatrical club that habitually limited itself to Elizabethan plays, with queens and fairies played by pretty boys, made first of all a great impact on cartoonists. Deans, local politicians, national statesmen, and of course the current ruler of the Golden Horde were pictured as mascodagamas by topical humorists. A grotesque imitator (who was really Mascodagama himself in an oversophisticated parody of his own act!) was booed at Oxford (a women’s college nearby) by local rowdies. A shrewd reporter, who had heard him curse a crease in the stage carpet, commented in print on his ‘Yankee twang.’ Dear Mr ‘Vascodagama’ received an invitation to Windsor Castle from its owner, a bilateral descendant of Van’s own ancestors, but he declined it, suspecting (incorrectly, as it later transpired) the misprint to suggest that his incognito had been divulged by one of the special detectives at Chose — the same, perhaps, who had recently saved the psychiatrist P. O. Tyomkin from the dagger of Prince Potyomkin, a mixed-up kid from Sebastopol, Id. (1.30)