In their discussion of love the spectral narrators in VN's novel Transparent Things (1972) mention the customs of certain Far Eastern people, virtually halfwits in many other respects:
Her sexual oddities perplexed and distressed Hugh. He put up with them during their trip. They became routine stuff when he returned with a difficult bride to his New York apartment. Armande decreed they regularly make love around teatime, in the living room, as upon an imaginary stage, to the steady accompaniment of casual small talk, with both performers decently clothed, he wearing his best business suit and a polka-dotted tie, she a smart black dress closed at the throat. In concession to nature, undergarments could be parted, or even undone, but only very, very discreetly, without the least break in the elegant chit-chat: impatience was pronounced unseemly, exposure, monstrous. A newspaper or coffee-table book hid such preparations as he absolutely had to conduct, wretched Hugh, and woe to him if he winced or fumbled during the actual commerce; but far worse than the awful pull of long underwear in the chaos of his pinched crotch or the crisp contact with her armor-smooth stockings was the prerequisite of light colloquy, about acquaintances, or politics, or zodiacal signs, or servants, and in the meantime, with visible hurry banned, the poignant work had to be brought surreptitiously to a convulsive end in a twisted half-sitting position on an uncomfortable little divan. Hugh's mediocre potency might not have survived the ordeal had she concealed from him more completely than she thought she did the excitement derived from the contrast between the fictitious and the factual - a contrast which after all has certain claims to artistic subtlety if we recall the customs of certain Far Eastern people, virtually halfwits in many other respects. But his chief support lay in the never deceived expectancy of the dazed ecstasy that gradually idiotized her dear features, notwithstanding her efforts to maintain the flippant patter. In a sense he preferred the parlor setting to the even less normal decor of those rare occasions when she desired him to possess her in bed, well under the bedclothes, while she telephoned, gossiping with a female friend or hoaxing an unknown male. Our Person's capacity to condone all this, to find reasonable explanations and so forth, endears him to us, but also provokes limpid mirth, alas, at times. For example, he told himself that she refused to strip because she was shy of her tiny pouting breasts and the scar of a ski accident along her thigh. Silly Person!
Was she faithful to him throughout the months of their marriage spent in frail, lax, merry America? During their first and last winter there she went a few times to ski without him, at Aval, Quebec, or Chute, Colorado. While alone, he forbade himself to dwell in thought on the banalities of betrayal, such as holding hands with a chap or permitting him to kiss her good night. Those banalities were to him quite as excruciating to imagine as would be voluptuous intercourse. A steel door of the spirit remained securely shut as long as she was away, but no sooner had she arrived, her face brown and shiny, her figure as trim as that of an air hostess, in that blue coat with flat buttons as bright as counters of gold, than something ghastly opened up in him and a dozen lithe athletes started swarming around and prying her apart in all the motels of his mind, although actually, as we know, she had enjoyed full conjunction with only a dozen crack lovers in the course of three trips.
Nobody, least of all her mother, could understand why Armande married a rather ordinary American with a not very solid job, but we must end now our discussion of love. (Chapter 17)
Halfwits and Witt (a Swiss mountain resort visited by Hugh Person) bring to mind Count Sergey Yulievich Witte (a Russian statesman who served as the first prime minister of the Russian Empire, replacing the emperor as head of government, 1849-1915). On September 5, 1905, Witte, Korostovets and K. D. Nabokov (VN's uncle) signed the Treaty of Portsmouth that ended the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05. After defeat in the war, Russia ceded the southern part of Sakhalin Island below the 50th parallel north to Japan. As a result, Witte's enemies called him "Count Sakhalinsky," or "Count Half-Sakhalinsky." The author of The Secret Doctrine (1888), Helena Blavatsky (born von Hahn, 1831-1891) was Sergey Witte's first cousin.
In his poem Warjag (1904) inspired by the battle of the cruiser "Varyag" and the gunboat "Koreyets" with the superior forces of the Japanese squadron on February 9, 1904, a poem that was translated into Russian and became a popular song, Rudolf Greinz (an Austrian writer, 1866-1942, who died on his 76th birthday, August 16, 1942) calls Japanese soldiers "die gelbe Teufel (the yellow devils):"
Aus dem sichern Hafen hinaus in die See,
Fürs Vaterland zu sterben
Dort lauern die gelben Teufel auf uns
Und speien Tod und Verderben!
Из пристани верной мы в битву идем,
Навстречу грозящей нам смерти,
За Родину в море открытом умрем,
Где ждут желтолицые черти!
In the Russian version die gelben Teufel became zheltolitsye cherti (the yellow-faced devils). The spectral narrators in VN's novel, including Mr. R. (an American writer of German descent whom Hugh Person visits in Switzerland), seem to be the devils. In his poem Petrogradskoe nebo mutilos' dozhdyom ("The Petrograd sky was clouded with rain," 1914) Alexander Blok mentions the soldiers who sang Varyag, while others were singing Yermak:
Петроградское небо мутилось дождем,
На войну уходил эшелон.
Без конца — взвод за взводом и штык за штыком
Наполнял за вагоном вагон.
В этом поезде тысячью жизней цвели
Боль разлуки, тревоги любви,
Сила, юность, надежда… В закатной дали
Были дымные тучи в крови.
И, садясь, запевали Варяга одни,
А другие — не в лад — Ермака,
И кричали ура, и шутили они,
И тихонько крестилась рука.
Вдруг под ветром взлетел опадающий лист,
Раскачнувшись, фонарь замигал,
И под черною тучей веселый горнист
Заиграл к отправленью сигнал.
И военною славой заплакал рожок,
Наполняя тревогой сердца.
Громыханье колес и охрипший свисток
Заглушило ура без конца.
Уж последние скрылись во мгле буфера,
И сошла тишина до утра,
А с дождливых полей всё неслось к нам ура,
В грозном клике звучало: пора!
Нет, нам не было грустно, нам не было жаль,
Несмотря на дождливую даль.
Это — ясная, твердая, верная сталь,
И нужна ли ей наша печаль?
Эта жалость — ее заглушает пожар,
Гром орудий и топот коней.
Грусть — ее застилает отравленный пар
С галицийских кровавых полей…
In the seventh poem of Blok's cycle Zhizn’ moego priyatelya ("The Life of my Pal," 1915), Greshi, poka tebya volnuyut... ("Do sin, while your innocent sins..."), the devils speak:
Сверкнут ли дерзостные очи -
Ты их сверканий не отринь,
Грехам, вину и страстной ночи
Шепча заветное «аминь».
...И станешь падать — но толпою
Мы все, как ангелы, чисты,
Тебя подхватим, чтоб пятою
О камень не преткнулся ты...
Should the daring eyes sparkle at you,
do not reject their sparkling,
whispering "amen"
to sins, wine and the amorous night.
...And you'll begin to fall, but in a crowd
we all, pure as angels,
shall pick you up in order to prevent
you to stumble on the stone...
See why at the end of the novel Hugh Person (who chokes to death in a hotel fire) does not fall from the window of his hotel room, as one would expect him to do? In his diary (the entry of February 11, 1913) Blok says that, if he were the devil, he would have arranged a merry literary quadrille:
Чтобы изобразить человека, надо полюбить его — узнать. Грибоедов любил Фамусова, уверен, что временами — больше, чем Чацкого. Гоголь любил Хлестакова и Чичикова, Чичикова — особенно. Пришли Белинские и сказали, что Грибоедов и Гоголь «осмеяли». — Отсюда — начало порчи русского сознания, понятия об искусстве — вплоть до мелочи — полного убийства вкуса.
Они нас похваливают и поругивают, но тем пьют кашу художническую кровь. Они жиреют, мы спиваемся. Всякая шавочка способна превратиться в дракончика. <…> Они спихивают министров... Это от них — так воняет в литературной среде, что надо бежать вон, без оглядки. Им — игрушки, а нам — слёзки. Вернисажи, бродячие собаки, премьеры — ими существуют. Патронессы, либералки, актриски, прихлебательницы, секретарши, старые девы, мужние жёны, хорошенькие кокоточки — им нет числа. Если бы я был чортом, я бы устроил весёлую литературную кадриль, чтобы закружилась вся «литературная среда» в кровосмесительном плясе и вся бы провалилась прямо ко мне на кулички.