Describing Flavita (the Russian Scrabble), Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) mentions the Gritz (a hotel in Venezia Rossa) and an unfortunate English tourist, Walter C. Keyway, Esq.:
Pedantic Ada once said that the looking up of words in a lexicon for any other needs than those of expression — be it instruction or art — lay somewhere between the ornamental assortment of flowers (which could be, she conceded, mildly romantic in a maidenly headcocking way) and making collage-pictures of disparate butterfly wings (which was always vulgar and often criminal). Per contra, she suggested to Van that verbal circuses, ‘performing words,’ ‘poodle-doodles,’ and so forth, might be redeemable by the quality of the brain work required for the creation of a great logogriph or inspired pun and should not preclude the help of a dictionary, gruff or complacent.
That was why she admitted ‘Flavita.’ The name came from alfavit, an old Russian game of chance and skill, based on the scrambling and unscrambling of alphabetic letters. It was fashionable throughout Estoty and Canady around 1790, was revived by the ‘Madhatters’ (as the inhabitants of New Amsterdam were once called) in the beginning of the nineteenth century, made a great comeback, after a brief slump, around 1860, and now a century later seems to be again in vogue, so I am told, under the name of ‘Scrabble,’ invented by some genius quite independently from its original form or forms.
Its chief Russian variety, current in Ada’s childhood, was played in great country houses with 125 lettered blocks. The object was to make rows and files of words on a board of 225 squares. Of these, 24 were brown, 12 black, 16 orange, 8 red, and the rest golden-yellow (i.e., flavid, in concession to the game’s original name). Every letter of the Cyrillic alphabet rated a number of points (the rare Russian F as much as 10, the common A as little as 1). Brown doubled the basic value of a letter, black tripled it. Orange doubled the sum of points for the whole word, red tripled the sum. Lucette would later recall how her sister’s triumphs in doubling, tripling, and even nonupling (when passing through two red squares) the numerical value of words evolved monstrous forms in her delirium during a severe streptococcal ague in September, 1888, in California.
For each round of the game each player helped himself to seven blocks from the container where they lay face down, and arrayed in turn his word on the board. In the case of the opening coup, on the still empty field, all he had to do was to align any two or all of his seven letters in such a way as to involve the central square, marked with a blazing heptagon. Subsequently, the catalyst of one of the letters already on the board had to be used for composing one’s word, across or down. That player won who collected the greatest number of points, letter by letter and word by word.
The set our three children received in 1884 from an old friend of the family (as Marina’s former lovers were known), Baron Klim Avidov, consisted of a large folding board of saffian and a boxful of weighty rectangles of ebony inlaid with platinum letters, only one of which was a Roman one, namely the letter J on the two joker blocks (as thrilling to get as a blank check signed by Jupiter or Jurojin). It was, incidentally, the same kindly but touchy Avidov (mentioned in many racy memoirs of the time) who once catapulted with an uppercut an unfortunate English tourist into the porter’s lodge for his jokingly remarking how clever it was to drop the first letter of one’s name in order to use it as a particule, at the Gritz, in Venezia Rossa.
By July the ten A’s had dwindled to nine, and the four D’s to three. The missing A eventually turned up under an Aproned Armchair, but the D was lost — faking the fate of its apostrophizable double as imagined by a Walter C. Keyway, Esq., just before the latter landed, with a couple of unstamped postcards, in the arms of a speechless multilinguist in a frock coat with brass buttons. The wit of the Veens (says Ada in a marginal note) knows no bounds. (1.36)
Darkbloom (‘Notes to Ada’): alfavit: Russ., alphabet.
particule: ‘de’ or ‘d’’.
Flavita brings to mind Alfavit - zerkalo zhizni ("The Mirror of Life Index"), a chapter in Ilf and Petrov's novel Dvenadtsat' stuliev ("The Twelve Chairs," 1928). The Gritz seems to hint at Mme Gritsatsuev ("a passionate woman, a poet's dream"), a character in Ilf and Petrov's novel. At the Sorbonne (a cheap hotel in Stargorod, the city where Mme Gritsatsuev lives) Father Fyodor attempts to sting Ostap Bender (the main character in The Twelve Chairs and Zolotoy telyonok, "The Little Golden Calf," the sequel novel, 1931) with a pencil pushed through a keyhole, but Bender snatches it, carves a rude word on its edge and pushes the pencil back through the keyhole of the door of the priest's room. There is karandash (a pencil) in VN's novel Priglashenie na kazn' ("Invitation to a Beheading," 1935):
На столе белел чистый лист бумаги, и, выделяясь на этой белизне, лежал изумительно очиненный карандаш, длинный как жизнь любого человека, кроме Цинцинната, и с эбеновым блеском на каждой из шести граней. Просвещённый потомок указательного перста. Цинциннат написал: "и всё-таки я сравнительно. Ведь этот финал я предчувствовал этот финал".
On the table glistened a clean sheet of paper and, distinctly outlined against this whiteness, lay a beautifully sharpened pencil, as long as the life of any man except Cincinnatus, and with an ebony gleam to each of its six facets. An enlightened descendant of the index finger. Cincinnatus wrote: "In spite of everything I am comparatively. After all I had premonitions, had premonitions of this finale." (Chapter One)
Cincinnatus is allowed to see M'sieur Pierre (the executioner who just arrived and took the adjascent cell in the huge fortress whose sole prisoner Cincinnatus is) through glazok (the peephole) on the door of his new neighbor's cell:
На цыпочках, балансируя руками, Родриг Иванович вышел и с ним Цинциннат в своих больших шепелявых туфлях. В глубине коридора, у двери с внушительными скрепами, уже стоял, согнувшись, Родион и, отодвинув заслонку, смотрел в глазок. Не отрываясь, он сделал рукой жест, требующий еще большей тишины, и незаметно изменил его на другой -- приглашающий. Директор еще выше поднялся на цыпочках, обернулся, грозно гримасничая, но Цинциннат не мог не пошаркивать немножко. Там и сям, в полутьме переходов, собирались, горбились, прикладывали козырьком ладонь, словно стараясь что-то вдали разглядеть, смутные фигуры тюремных служащих. Лаборант Родион пустил Родрига Ивановича к наставленному окуляру. Плотно скрипнув спиной, Родриг Иванович впился... Между тем, в серых потемках, смутные фигуры беззвучно перебегали, беззвучно подзывали друг друга, строились в шеренги, и уже как поршни ходили на месте их мягкие ноги, готовясь выступить. Директор наконец медленно отодвинулся и легонько потянул Цинцинната за рукав, приглашая его, как профессор -- захожего профана, посмотреть на препарат. Цинциннат кротко припал к светлому кружку. Сперва он увидел только пузыри солнца, полоски, -- а затем: койку, такую же, как у него в камере, около нее сложены были два добротных чемодана с горящими кнопками и большой продолговатый футляр вроде как для тромбона... -- Ну что, видите что-нибудь, -- прошептал директор, близко наклоняясь и благоухая, как лилии в открытом гробу. Цинциннат кивнул, хотя еще не видел главного; передвинул взгляд левее и тогда увидел по-настоящему. На стуле, бочком к столу, неподвижно, как сахарный, сидел безбородый толстячок, лет тридцати, в старомодной, но чистой, свежевыглаженной арестантской пижамке, -- весь полосатый, в полосатых носках, в новеньких сафьяновых туфлях, -- являл девственную подошву, перекинув одну короткую ногу через другую и держась за голень пухлыми руками; на мизинце вспыхивал прозрачный аквамарин, светло-русые волосы на удивительно круглой голове были разделены пробором посредине, длинные ресницы бросали тень на херувимскую щеку, между малиновых губ сквозила белизна чудных, ровных зубов. Весь он был как бы подернут слегка блеском, слегка таял в снопе солнечных лучей, льющихся на него сверху. На столе ничего не было, кроме щегольских дорожных часов в кожаной раме.
On tiptoe, balancing with his arms, Rodrig Ivanovich left the cell and with him went Cincinnatus in his oversize shuffling slippers. In the depths of the corridor Rodion was already stooping at the door with imposing bolts: he had pushed aside the cover of the peephole and was peering into it. Without turning, he made a motion with his hand demanding even greater silence and then imperceptibly changed the gesture into a different, beckoning one. The director rose even higher on tiptoe and turned with a threatening grimace, but Cincinnatus could not help scraping a little with his feet. Here and there, in the semi-darkness of the passageways, the shadowy figures of the prison employees gathered, stooped, shaded their eyes with their hands as if to make out something in the distance. Laboratory assistant Rodion let the boss look through the focused eyepiece. His back emitting a solid squeak, Rodrig Ivanovich bent to peer in . . . Meanwhile, in the grey shadows, indistinct figures noiselessly changed their positions, noiselessly summoned each other, formed ranks, and already their many silent feet were working in place like pistons, preparing to step out. At last the director slowly moved away and tugged Cincinnatus lightly by the sleeve, inviting him, as a professor would a layman who had dropped in, to examine the slide. Cincinnatus meekly placed his eye against the luminous circle. At first he saw only bubbles of sunlight and bands of colour, but then he distinguished a cot, identical to the one he had in his cell; piled nearby were two good suitcases with gleaming locks and a large oblong case like the kind used to carry a trombone. ‘Well, do you see anything?’ whispered the director, stooping close to him, and reeking of lilies in an open grave. Cincinnatus nodded, even though he did not yet see the main attraction; he shifted his gaze to the left, and then really saw something. Seated on a chair, sideways to the table, as still as if he were made of candy, was a beardless little fat man, about thirty years old, dressed in old-fashioned but clean and freshly ironed prison pyjamas; he was all in stripes — in striped socks, and brand-new morocco slippers — and revealed a virgin sole as he sat with one stubby leg crossed over the other and clasped his shin with his plump hands; a limpid aquamarine sparkled on his auricular finger, his honey-blond hair was parted in the middle of his remarkably round head, his long eyelashes cast shadows on his cherubic cheek, and the whiteness of his wonderful, even teeth gleamed between his crimson lips. He seemed to be all frosted with gloss, melting just a little in the shaft of sunlight falling on him from above. There was nothing on the table except an elegant travelling clock encased in leather. (Chapter 5)
A limpid aquamarine that sparkles on M'sieur Pierre's mizinetz (little finger) brings to mind the twins Aqua (Demon Veen's wife who goes mad and commits suicide) and Marina (Van's, Ada's and Lucette's mother). Glazok (peephole) is a diminutive of glaz (eye). At the family dinner in "Ardis the Second" Demon Veen mentions the chelovek (manservant) s glazami (with the eyes):
'Marina,' murmured Demon at the close of the first course. 'Marina,' he repeated louder. 'Far from me' (a locution he favored) 'to criticize Dan's taste in white wines or the manners de vos domestiques. You know me, I'm above all that rot, I'm...' (gesture); 'but, my dear,' he continued, switching to Russian, 'the chelovek who brought me the pirozhki - the new man, the plumpish one with the eyes (s glazami) -'
'Everybody has eyes,' remarked Marina drily.
'Well, his look as if they were about to octopus the food he serves. But that's not the point. He pants, Marina! He suffers from some kind of odïshka (shortness of breath). He should see Dr Krolik. It's depressing. It's a rhythmic pumping pant. It made my soup ripple.'
'Look, Dad,' said Van, 'Dr Krolik can't do much, because, as you know quite well, he's dead, and Marina can't tell her servants not to breathe, because, as you also know, they're alive.'
'The Veen wit, the Veen wit,' murmured Demon.
‘Exactly,’ said Marina. ‘I simply refuse to do anything about it. Besides poor Jones is not at all asthmatic, but only nervously eager to please. He’s as healthy as a bull and has rowed me from Ardisville to Ladore and back, and enjoyed it, many times this summer. You are cruel, Demon. I can’t tell him "ne pïkhtite," as I can’t tell Kim, the kitchen boy, not to take photographs on the sly — he’s a regular snap-shooting fiend, that Kim, though otherwise an adorable, gentle, honest boy; nor can I tell my little French maid to stop getting invitations, as she somehow succeeds in doing, to the most exclusive bals masqués in Ladore.’
‘That’s interesting,’ observed Demon.
‘He’s a dirty old man!’ cried Van cheerfully.
‘Van!’ said Ada.
‘I’m a dirty young man,’ sighed Demon.
‘Tell me, Bouteillan,’ asked Marina, ‘what other good white wine do we have — what can you recommend?’ The butler smiled and whispered a fabulous name.
Yes, oh, yes,’ said Demon. ‘Ah, my dear, you should not think up dinners all by yourself. Now about rowing — you mentioned rowing... Do you know that moi, qui vous parle, was a Rowing Blue in 1858? Van prefers football, but he’s only a College Blue, aren’t you Van? I’m also better than he at tennis — not lawn tennis, of course, a game for parsons, but "court tennis" as they say in Manhattan. What else, Van?’
‘You still beat me at fencing, but I’m the better shot. That’s not real sudak, papa, though it’s tops, I assure you.’
(Marina, having failed to obtain the European product in time for the dinner, had chosen the nearest thing, wall-eyed pike, or ‘dory,’ with Tartar sauce and boiled young potatoes.)
‘Ah!’ said Demon, tasting Lord Byron’s Hock. ‘This redeems Our Lady’s Tears.’ (1.38)
Darkbloom ('Notes to Ada'): ne pïkhtite: Russ., do not wheeze.
Demon's chelovek s glazami brings to mind a klok (piece) of a chelovek mentioned by Aqua in her last note:
Her last note, found on her and addressed to her husband and son, might have come from the sanest person on this or that earth.
Aujourd’hui (heute-toity!) I, this eye-rolling toy, have earned the psykitsch right to enjoy a landparty with Herr Doktor Sig, Nurse Joan the Terrible, and several ‘patients,’ in the neighboring bar (piney wood) where I noticed exactly the same skunk-like squirrels, Van, that your Darkblue ancestor imported to Ardis Park, where you will ramble one day, no doubt. The hands of a clock, even when out of order, must know and let the dumbest little watch know where they stand, otherwise neither is a dial but only a white face with a trick mustache. Similarly, chelovek (human being) must know where he stands and let others know, otherwise he is not even a klok (piece) of a chelovek, neither a he, nor she, but ‘a tit of it’ as poor Ruby, my little Van, used to say of her scanty right breast. I, poor Princesse Lointaine, très lointaine by now, do not know where I stand. Hence I must fall. So adieu, my dear, dear son, and farewell, poor Demon, I do not know the date or the season, but it is a reasonably, and no doubt seasonably, fair day, with a lot of cute little ants queuing to get at my pretty pills.
[Signed] My sister’s sister who teper’
iz ada (‘now is out of hell’)
‘If we want life’s sundial to show its hand,’ commented Van, developing the metaphor in the rose garden of Ardis Manor at the end of August, 1884, ‘we must always remember that the strength, the dignity, the delight of man is to spite and despise the shadows and stars that hide their secrets from us. Only the ridiculous power of pain made her surrender. And I often think it would have been so much more plausible, esthetically, ecstatically, Estotially speaking — if she were really my mother.’ (1.3)
Darkbloom ('Notes to Ada'): aujourd’hui, heute: to-day (Fr., Germ.).
Princesse Lointaine: Distant Princess, title of a French play.
There is nothing on the table in M'sieur Pierre cell except an elegant travelling clock encased in leather. Time in Invitation to a Beheading is a vague thing:
Пробили часы -- четыре или пять раз, и казематный отгул их, перегул и загулок вели себя подобающим образом.
A clock struck — four or five times — with the vibrations and re-vibrations, and reverberations proper to a prison. (Chapter One)
Опять с банальной унылостью пробили часы. Время шло в арифметической прогрессии: восемь.
With banal dreariness the clock struck again. Time was advancing in arithmetical progression: it was now eight. (ibid.)
The clock in the fortress is painted by the watchman:
Оба молчали, не глядя друг на друга, между тем как с бессмысленной гулкостью били часы.
- Вы обратите внимание, когда выйдете, - сказал Цинциннат, - на часы в коридоре. Это - пустой циферблат, но зато каждые полчаса сторож смывает старую стрелку и малюет новую, - вот так и живёшь по крашенному времени, а звон производит часовой, почему он так и зовётся.
They both remained silent, not looking at each other, while the clock struck with nonsensical resonance. ‘When you go out,’ said Cincinnatus, ‘note the clock in the corridor. The dial is blank; however, every hour the watchman washes off the old hand and daubs on a new one — and that’s how we live, by tarbrush time, and the ringing is the work of the watchman, which is why he is called a “watch” man.’ (Chapter Twelve)
Part Four of Ada is Van's essay The Texture of Time. In his essay Van mentions two memorable coachmen: Ben Wright (the English coachman in "Ardis the First) and Trofim Fartukov (the Russian coachman in "Ardis the Second"). In Pushkin's poem Telega zhizni ("The Cart of Life," 1823) Time is the coachman. In his poem May 26, 1828 Pushkin calls life dar naprasnyi, dar sluchaynyi (vain gift, chance gift) and wonders why it is sentenced to death (na kazn' osuzhdena) by secret fate:
Дар напрасный, дар случайный,
Жизнь, зачем ты мне дана?
Иль зачем судьбою тайной
Ты на казнь осуждена?
Кто меня враждебной властью
Из ничтожества воззвал,
Душу мне наполнил страстью,
Ум сомненьем взволновал?..
Цели нет передо мною:
Сердце пусто, празден ум,
И томит меня тоскою
Однозвучный жизни шум.
A gift in vain, a gift by chance,
O Life, why have you been given to me?
And why have you been sentenced to death
By inscrutable fate?
Who has called me forth from nothingness
By his hostile power,
And filled my soul with suffering
And my mind with anguishing doubt?...
There is no goal before me:
My heart is empty, my mind lies idle,
And the monotonous din of life
torments me with anguish.
In 1935 VN interrupted his work on Dar ("The Gift," 1937) to write Priglashenie na kazn' (“Invitation to a Beheading”). VN's seventh Russian novel, Priglashenie na kazn’ is the author's nightmarish dream whose deepest source should be sought in Pushkin's Stikhi, sochinyonnye noch'yu vo vremya bessonnitsy ("Verses Composed at Night during the Insomnia," 1830). Like Lermontov's poem Son ("A Dream," 1841), Ada (VN's sixth American novel) is a triple dream (a dream within a dream within a dream). Baron Klim Avidov (Marina's former lover who gave her children a set of Flavita) is an anagram of Vladimir Nabokov. The name of an unfortunate English tourist whom touchy Avidov catapulted with an uppercut into the porter’s lodge, Walter C. Keyway, Esq., also looks like an anagram. On the other hand, Klyuch ("The Key," 1929) is a novel by Mark Aldanov (Mark Aleksandrovich Landau, a Russian writer, 1886-1957), the first novel of Aldanov's trilogy Klyuch, Begstvo ("Escape," 1932) and Peshchera ("The Cave," 1936). Saint Mark the Evangelist is the patron saint of Venice (cf. Venezia Rossa). The Eve of Saint Mark (1819) is a poem by John Keats (1795-1821), an English poet to whom Van compares Andrey Vinelander (Ada's husband who dies of tuberculosis):
She led him around the hotel to an ugly rotunda, out of the miserable drizzle, and there she attempted to embrace him but he evaded her lips. She was leaving in a few minutes. Heroic, helpless Andrey had been brought back to the hotel in an ambulance. Dorothy had managed to obtain three seats on the Geneva-Phoenix plane. The two cars were taking him, her and the heroic sister straight to the helpless airport.
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 Hélène —’
‘Ach, perestagne!’
‘— et le phalène.’
‘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!’
‘Bozhe moy, I must be going. Say something to me, my darling, my only one, something that might help!’
There was a narrow chasm of silence broken only by the rain drumming on the eaves.
‘Stay with me, girl,’ said Van, forgetting everything — pride, rage, the convention of everyday pity.
For an instant she seemed to waver — or at least to consider wavering; but a resonant voice reached them from the drive and there stood Dorothy, gray-caped and mannish-hatted, energetically beckoning with her unfurled umbrella.
‘I can’t, I can’t, I’ll write you,’ murmured my poor love in tears.
Van kissed her leaf-cold hand and, letting the Bellevue worry about his car, letting all Swans worry about his effects and Mme Scarlet worry about Eveline’s skin trouble, he walked some ten kilometers along soggy roads to Rennaz and thence flew to Nice, Biskra, the Cape, Nairobi, the Basset range —
And o'er the summits of the Basset —
Would she write? Oh, she did! Oh, every old thing turned out superfine! Fancy raced fact in never-ending rivalry and girl giggles. Andrey lived only a few months longer, po pal’tzam (finger counting) one, two, three, four — say, five. Andrey was doing fine by the spring of nineteen six or seven, with a comfortably collapsed lung and a straw-colored beard (nothing like facial vegetation to keep a patient busy). Life forked and reforked. Yes, she told him. He insulted Van on the mauve-painted porch of a Douglas hotel where van was awaiting his Ada in a final version of Les Enfants Maudits. Monsieur de Tobak (an earlier cuckold) and Lord Erminin (a second-time second) witnessed the duel in the company of a few tall yuccas and short cactuses. Vinelander wore a cutaway (he would); Van, a white suit. Neither man wished to take any chances, and both fired simultaneously. Both fell. Mr Cutaway’s bullet struck the outsole of Van’s left shoe (white, black-heeled), tripping him and causing a slight fourmillement (excited ants) in his foot — that was all. Van got his adversary plunk in the underbelly — a serious wound from which he recovered in due time, if at all (here the forking swims in the mist). Actually it was all much duller.
So she did write as she had promised? Oh, yes, yes! In seventeen years he received from her around a hundred brief notes, each containing around one hundred words, making around thirty printed pages of insignificant stuff — mainly about her husband’s health and the local fauna. After helping her to nurse Andrey at Agavia Ranch through a couple of acrimonious years (she begrudged Ada every poor little hour devoted to collecting, mounting, and rearing!), and then taking exception to Ada’s choosing the famous and excellent Grotonovich Clinic (for her husband’s endless periods of treatment) instead of Princess Alashin’s select sanatorium, Dorothy Vinelander retired to a subarctic monastery town (Ilemna, now Novostabia) where eventually she married a Mr Brod or Bred, tender and passionate, dark and handsome, who traveled in eucharistials and other sacramental objects throughout the Severnïya Territorii and who subsequently was to direct, and still may be directing half a century later, archeological reconstructions at Goreloe (the ‘Lyaskan Herculanum’); what treasures he dug up in matrimony is another question.
Steadily but very slowly Andrey’s condition kept deteriorating. During his last two or three years of idle existence on various articulated couches, whose every plane could be altered in hundreds of ways, he lost the power of speech, though still able to nod or shake his head, frown in concentration, or faintly smile when inhaling the smell of food (the origin, indeed, of our first beatitudes). He died one spring night, alone in a hospital room, and that same summer (1922) his widow donated her collections to a National Park museum and traveled by air to Switzerland for an ‘exploratory interview’ with fifty-two-year-old Van Veen. (3.8)
Darkbloom (‘Notes to Ada’): phalène: moth (see also p.111).
tu sais etc.: you know it will kill me.
Bozhe moy: Russ., oh, my God.
A Mr Brod or Bred whom Dorothy Vinelander (Ada's sister-in-law) eventually marries brings to mind Bred ("Delirium," 1955), Aldanov's penultimate novel (its characters include Stalin). In his poem Ne day mne Bog soyti s uma... ("The Lord Forbid My Going Mad," 1833) Pushkin mentions plamennyi bred (ardent ravings):
Когда б оставили меня
На воле, как бы резво я
Пустился в тёмный лес!
Я пел бы в пламенном бреду,
Я забывался бы в чаду
Нестройных, чудных грез.
If only freedom I could keep,
Oh, how happily then I'd skip
About in a field,
And I would sing, and I would dream,
Over the air and water skim,
My madness be my shield.
(tr. A. Vagapov)
In Eugene Onegin (Two: XV: 13-14) Pushkin speaks of Lenski's yunyi bred (young delirium):
Простим горячке юных лет
И юный жар и юный бред.
let us forgive the fever of young years
both its young glow and young delirium.
The last paragraph of VN’s novel Dar (“The Gift,” 1937) mimics a Eugene Onegin stanza:
Прощай же, книга! Для видений отсрочки смертной тоже нет. С колен поднимется Евгений, но удаляется поэт. И всё же слух не может сразу расстаться с музыкой, рассказу дать замереть... судьба сама ещё звенит, и для ума внимательного нет границы там, где поставил точку я: продлённый призрак бытия синеет за чертой страницы, как завтрашние облака, и не кончается строка.
Good-bye, my book! Like mortal eyes, imagined ones must close some day. Onegin from his knees will rise - but his creator strolls away. And yet the ear cannot right now part with the music and allow the tale to fade; the chords of fate itself continue to vibrate; and no obstruction for the sage exists where I have to put The End: the shadows of my world extend beyond the skyline of the page, blue as tomorrow's morning haze - nor does this terminate the phrase. (Chapter Five)
At the end of The Gift neither Fyodor (whose keys have been stolen with his clothes), nor Zina Mertz (whose keys Marianna Nikolaevna, Zina’s mother, has left in the entrance hall) has the keys of their apartment. In a poem addressed to Zina Mertz Fyodor mentions Venetsiya (Venice):
Ожидание ее прихода. Она всегда опаздывала - и всегда приходила другой дорогой, чем он. Вот и получилось, что даже Берлин может быть таинственным. Под липовым цветением мигает фонарь. Темно, душисто, тихо. Тень прохожего по тумбе пробегает, как соболь пробегает через пень. За пустырем как персик небо тает: вода в огнях, Венеция сквозит, - а улица кончается в Китае, а та звезда над Волгою висит. О, поклянись, что веришь в небылицу, что будешь только вымыслу верна, что не запрешь души своей в темницу, не скажешь, руку протянув: стена.
Waiting for her arrival. She was always late—and always came by another road than he. Thus it transpired that even Berlin could be mysterious. Within the linden’s bloom the streetlight winks. A dark and honeyed hush envelops us. Across the curb one’s passing shadow slinks: across a stump a sable ripples thus. The night sky melts to peach beyond that gate. There water gleams, there Venice vaguely shows. Look at that street—it runs to China straight, and yonder star above the Volga glows! Oh, swear to me to put in dreams your trust, and to believe in fantasy alone, and never let your soul in prison rust, nor stretch your arm and say: a wall of stone. (Chapter Three)
Venezia Rossa (in Italian, rossa means red) also seems to hint at A sidel Shchyogolev na Rossii (and Russia was Shchyogolev's bottom) in The Gift:
"Ну что, Федор Константинович", начал Щеголев, утолив первый голод, "дело, кажется, подходит к развязке! Полный разрыв с Англией, Хинчука по шапке... Это, знаете, уже пахнет чем-то серьёзным. Помните, я еще так недавно говорил, что выстрел Коверды -- первый сигнал! Война! Нужно быть очень и очень наивным, чтобы отрицать ее неизбежность. Посудите сами, на востоке Япония не может потерпеть -- -- ".
И Щеголев пошел рассуждать о политике. Как многим бесплатным болтунам, ему казалось, что вычитанные им из газет сообщения болтунов платных складываются у него в стройную схему, следуя которой логический и трезвый ум (его ум, в данном случае) без труда может объяснить и предвидеть множество мировых событий. Названия стран и имена их главных представителей обращались у него вроде как в ярлыки на более или менее полных, но по существу одинаковых сосудах, содержание которых он переливал так и этак. Франция того-то боялась и потому никогда бы не допустила. Англия того-то добивалась. Этот политический деятель жаждал сближения, а тот увеличить свой престиж. Кто-то замышлял и кто-то к чему-то стремился. Словом -- мир создаваемый им, получался каким-то собранием ограниченных, безъюморных, безликих, отвлеченных драчунов, и чем больше он находил в их взаимных действиях ума, хитрости, предусмотрительности, тем становился этот мир глупее, пошлее и проще. Совсем страшно бывало, когда он попадал на другого такого же любителя политических прогнозов. Был, например, полковник Касаткин, приходивший иногда к обеду, и тогда сшибалась щеголевская Англия не с другой щеголевской страной, а с Англией касаткинской, такой же несуществующей, так что в каком-то смысле войны международные превращались в межусобные, хотя воюющие стороны находились в разных планах, никак не могущих соприкоснуться. Сейчас, слушая его, Федор Константинович поражался семейному сходству именуемых Щеголевым стран с различными частями тела самого Щеголева: так, "Франция" соответствовала его предостерегающе приподнятым бровям; какие-то "лимитрофы" -- волосам в ноздрях, какой-то "польский коридор" шел по его пищеводу; в "Данциге" был щелк зубов. А сидел Щеголев на России.
“Well, Fyodor Konstantinovich,” began Shchyogolev, having satisfied his first hunger, “it seems matters are coming to a head! A complete break with England, and Hinchuk walloped! You know it’s already beginning to smell of something serious. You remember, only the other day I said Koverda’s shot was the first signal! War! You have to be very, very naïve to deny it’s inevitable. Judge for yourself, in the Far East, Japan cannot put up with …”
And Shchyogolev launched on a discussion of politics. Like many unpaid windbags he thought that he could combine the reports he read in the papers by paid windbags into an orderly scheme, upon following which a logical and sober mind (in this case his mind) could with no effort explain and foresee a multitude of world events. The names of countries and of their leading representatives became in his hands something in the nature of labels for more or less full but essentially identical vessels, whose contents he poured this way and that. France was AFRAID of something or other and therefore would never ALLOW it. England was AIMING at something. This statesman CRAVED a rapprochement, while that one wanted to increase his PRESTIGE. Someone was PLOTTING and someone was STRIVING for something. In short, the world Shchyogolev created came out as some kind of collection of limited, humorless, faceless and abstract bullies, and the more brains, cunning and circumspection he found in their mutual activities the more stupid, vulgar and simple his world became. It used to be quite awesome when he came across another similar lover of political prognoses. For example, there was a Colonel Kasatkin, who used to come sometimes to dinner, and then Shchyogolev’s England clashed not with another Shchyogolev country but with Kasatkin’s England, equally nonexistent, so that in a certain sense international wars turned into civil wars, although the warring sides existed on different levels which could never come into contact with one another. At present, while listening to his landlord, Fyodor was amazed by the family likeness between the countries mentioned by Shchyogolev and the various parts of Shchyogolev’s own body: thus “France” corresponded to his warningly raised eyebrows; some kind of “limitrophes” to the hairs in his nostrils, some “Polish corridor” or other went along his esophagus; “Danzig” was the click of his teeth; and Russia was Shchyogolev’s bottom. (Chapter Three)