The action in VN's novel Ada (1969) takes place on Demonia, Earth's twin planet also known as Antiterra. Describing the phenomenon of the Terra planet, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in Ada) says that minds bien rangés (not apt to unhobble hobgoblins) rejected Terra as a fad or a fantom, and deranged minds (ready to plunge into any abyss) accepted it in support and token of their own irrationality:
The details of the L disaster (and I do not mean Elevated) in the beau milieu of last century, which had the singular effect of both causing and cursing the notion of ‘Terra,’ are too well-known historically, and too obscene spiritually, to be treated at length in a book addressed to young laymen and lemans — and not to grave men or gravemen.
Of course, today, after great anti-L years of reactionary delusion have gone by (more or less!) and our sleek little machines, Faragod bless them, hum again after a fashion, as they did in the first half of the nineteenth century, the mere geographic aspect of the affair possesses its redeeming comic side, like those patterns of brass marquetry, and bric-à-Braques, and the ormolu horrors that meant ‘art’ to our humorless forefathers. For, indeed, none can deny the presence of something highly ludicrous in the very configurations that were solemnly purported to represent a varicolored map of Terra. Ved’ (‘it is, isn’t it’) sidesplitting to imagine that ‘Russia,’ instead of being a quaint synonym of Estoty, the American province extending from the Arctic no longer vicious Circle to the United States proper, was on Terra the name of a country, transferred as if by some sleight of land across the ha-ha of a doubled ocean to the opposite hemisphere where it sprawled over all of today’s Tartary, from Kurland to the Kuriles! But (even more absurdly), if, in Terrestrial spatial terms, the Amerussia of Abraham Milton was split into its components, with tangible water and ice separating the political, rather than poetical, notions of ‘America’ and ‘Russia,’ a more complicated and even more preposterous discrepancy arose in regard to time — not only because the history of each part of the amalgam did not quite match the history of each counterpart in its discrete condition, but because a gap of up to a hundred years one way or another existed between the two earths; a gap marked by a bizarre confusion of directional signs at the crossroads of passing time with not all the no-longers of one world corresponding to the not-yets of the other. It was owing, among other things, to this ‘scientifically ungraspable’ concourse of divergences that minds bien rangés (not apt to unhobble hobgoblins) rejected Terra as a fad or a fantom, and deranged minds (ready to plunge into any abyss) accepted it in support and token of their own irrationality.
As Van Veen himself was to find out, at the time of his passionate research in terrology (then a branch of psychiatry) even the deepest thinkers, the purest philosophers, Paar of Chose and Zapater of Aardvark, were emotionally divided in their attitude toward the possibility that there existed’ a distortive glass of our distorted glebe’ as a scholar who desires to remain unnamed has put it with such euphonic wit. (Hm! Kveree-kveree, as poor Mlle L. used to say to Gavronsky. In Ada’s hand.)
There were those who maintained that the discrepancies and ‘false overlappings’ between the two worlds were too numerous, and too deeply woven into the skein of successive events, not to taint with trite fancy the theory of essential sameness; and there were those who retorted that the dissimilarities only confirmed the live organic reality pertaining to the other world; that a perfect likeness would rather suggest a specular, and hence speculatory, phenomenon; and that two chess games with identical openings and identical end moves might ramify in an infinite number of variations, on one board and in two brains, at any middle stage of their irrevocably converging development.
The modest narrator has to remind the rereader of all this, because in April (my favorite month), 1869 (by no means a mirabilic year), on St George’s Day (according to Mlle Larivière’s maudlin memoirs) Demon Veen married Aqua Veen — out of spite and pity, a not unusual blend.
Was there some additional spice? Marina, with perverse vainglory, used to affirm in bed that Demon’s senses must have been influenced by a queer sort of ‘incestuous’ (whatever that term means) pleasure (in the sense of the French plaisir, which works up a lot of supplementary spinal vibrato), when he fondled, and savored, and delicately parted and defiled, in unmentionable but fascinating ways, flesh (une chair) that was both that of his wife and that of his mistress, the blended and brightened charms of twin peris, an Aquamarina both single and double, a mirage in an emirate, a germinate gem, an orgy of epithelial alliterations.
Actually, Aqua was less pretty, and far more dotty, than Marina. During her fourteen years of miserable marriage she spent a broken series of steadily increasing sojourns in sanatoriums. A small map of the European part of the British Commonwealth — say, from Scoto-Scandinavia to the Riviera, Altar and Palermontovia — as well as most of the U.S.A., from Estoty and Canady to Argentina, might be quite thickly prickled with enameled red-cross-flag pins, marking, in her War of the Worlds, Aqua’s bivouacs. She had plans at one time to seek a modicum of health (‘just a little grayishness, please, instead of the solid black’) in such Anglo-American protectorates as the Balkans and Indias, and might even have tried the two Southern Continents that thrive under our joint dominion. Of course, Tartary, an independent inferno, which at the time spread from the Baltic and Black seas to the Pacific Ocean, was touristically unavailable, though Yalta and Altyn Tagh sounded strangely attractive... But her real destination was Terra the Fair and thither she trusted she would fly on libellula long wings when she died. Her poor little letters from the homes of madness to her husband were sometimes signed: Madame Shchemyashchikh-Zvukov (‘Heart rending-Sounds’). (1.3)
Darkbloom (‘Notes to Ada’): beau milieu: right in the middle.
Faragod: apparently, the god of electricity.
braques: allusion to a bric-à-brac painter.
In his essay Self-Reliance (1841) Ralph Waldo Emerson (an American essayist, lecturer, philosopher, minister, abolitionist, and poet who led the Transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century, 1803-82) says the following:
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day. — 'Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.' — Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.
The purest philosophers whose names hint at shoes (btw., W. R. Emerson said: "When you have worn out your shoes, the strength of the sole leather has passed into the fibre of your body. I measure your health by the number of shoes and hats and clothes you have worn out."), Paar of Chose and Zapater of Aardvark bring to mind little statesmen and philosophers and divines who, according to Emerson, adore a foolish consistency. Describing the torments of poor mad Aqua (the twin sister of Van's, Ada's and Lucette's mother Marina), Van mentions rearrangement for melodeon of all the cacophonies of all the divinities and divines ever spawned in the marshes of this our sufficient world:
Revelation can be more perilous than Revolution. Sick minds identified the notion of a Terra planet with that of another world and this ‘Other World’ got confused not only with the ‘Next World’ but with the Real World in us and beyond us. Our enchanters, our demons, are noble iridescent creatures with translucent talons and mightily beating wings; but in the eighteen-sixties the New Believers urged one to imagine a sphere where our splendid friends had been utterly degraded, had become nothing but vicious monsters, disgusting devils, with the black scrota of carnivora and the fangs of serpents, revilers and tormentors of female souls; while on the opposite side of the cosmic lane a rainbow mist of angelic spirits, inhabitants of sweet Terra, restored all the stalest but still potent myths of old creeds, with rearrangement for melodeon of all the cacophonies of all the divinities and divines ever spawned in the marshes of this our sufficient world.
Sufficient for your purpose, Van, entendons-nous. (Note in the margin.) (1.3)
Darkbloom (‘Notes to Ada’): entendons-nous: let’s have it clear (Fr.).
R. W. Emerson said: "The highest revelation is the divinity of the soul," and "For every seeing soul, there are two absorbing facts – I, and the abyss." At the beginning of his autobiography Speak, Memory (1951) VN mentions the cradle rocking above an abyss: "The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness." (Chapter One, 1) Dvoynaya bezdna ("The Double Abyss," 1901) is a poem by Dmitri Merezhkovski (1865-1941):
Не плачь о неземной отчизне,
И помни,— более того,
Что есть в твоей мгновенной жизни,
Не будет в смерти ничего.
И жизнь, как смерть необычайна…
Есть в мире здешнем — мир иной.
Есть ужас тот же, та же тайна —
И в свете дня, как в тьме ночной.
И смерть и жизнь — родные бездны;
Они подобны и равны,
Друг другу чужды и любезны,
Одна в другой отражены.
Одна другую углубляет,
Как зеркало, а человек
Их съединяет, разделяет
Своею волею навек.
И зло, и благо,— тайна гроба.
И тайна жизни — два пути —
Ведут к единой цели оба.
И все равно, куда идти.
Будь мудр,— иного нет исхода.
Кто цепь последнюю расторг,
Тот знает, что в цепях свобода
И что в мучении — восторг.
Ты сам — свой Бог, ты сам свой ближний.
О, будь же собственным Творцом,
Будь бездной верхней, бездной нижней,
Своим началом и концом.
According to Merezhkovski, life and death are two akin abysses that are reflected in each other, as in a mirror. A line in Merezhkovski's poem, Vedut k edinoy tseli oba (Both lead to one goal), and Svoim nachalom i kontsom ([Be] your own beginning and end), the poem's last line, bring to mind "two chess games with identical openings and identical end moves" mentioned by Van. Terra and Antiterra make one think of Merezhkovski's trilogy Khristos i Antikhrist ("Christ and Antichrist," 1895-1905). After the L disaster electricity was banned on Demonia. Elektrichestvo (“Electricity,” 1901) is a poem by Zinaida Hippius (Merezhkovski's wife, 1869-1945). In his book “Tolstoy and Dostoevski” (1902) Merezhkovski several times quoets Hippius's poem. Chronologically, the Antiterran L disaster in the beau milieu of the 19th century seems to correspond to the mock execution of Dostoevski and the Petrashevskians on Jan. 3, 1850 (NS), in our world. The Roman numeral equal to 50, L in the disaster's name seems to stand for Logos. In his essay V zashchitu A. Bloka ("In Defense of A. Blok," 1931) whose title brings to mind VN's novel Zashchita Luzhina ("The Luzhin Defense," 1930) Nikolay Berdyaev (a Russian philosopher, 1874-1948) says that Logos was absent from Blok's words when he spoke and from the poetry he wrote:
Это есть самая большая и мучительная проблема поэзии: она лишь в очень малой степени причастна Логосу, она причастна Космосу. В поэзии Блока стихия лирическая нашла себе самое чистое и совершенное выражение. Русский поэтический ренессанс начала XX века заключал в себе смертоносные яды, и в него вошли элементы онтологического растления (говорю — онтологического, а не морального). Но о Блоке должен быть совершенно особый разговор. А. Блок - один из величайших лирических поэтов. На нём можно изучать природу лирической стихии. Когда мне приходилось разговаривать с Блоком, меня всегда поражала нечленораздельность его речи и мысли. Его почти невозможно было понять. Стихи его я понимаю, но не мог понять того, что он говорил. Для понимания нужно было находиться в том состоянии, в каком он сам находился в это мгновение. В его словах совершенно отсутствовал Логос. Блок не знал никакого другого пути преодоления и просветления душевного хаоса, кроме лирической поэзии. В его разговорной речи ещё не совершалось того прекрасного преодоления хаоса, который совершался в его стихах, и потому речь его была лишена связи, смысла, формы, это были какие-то клочья мутных ещё душевных переживаний. Для философии Св. Фомы Аквината, которая видит в интеллекте самую благородную часть человека, соединяющую его с подлинным бытием, Блок был бы затруднителен. Он может быть выше ума, но ума в нём не было никакого, ему чуждо было начало Логоса, он пребывал исключительно в Космосе, в душе мира.
This is a very great and tortuous problem that involves poetry: it relates but to a small degree to the Logos, it relates rather to the Cosmos. Within the poetry of Blok, lyric verse has found itself a most pure and perfect expression. The Russian poetic renaissance of the beginning XXth Century contained within it deady poisons and into it entered elements of an ontological dissoluteness (I tend to say ontological, and not moral). But about Blok there ought to be a completely special discussion. A. Blok was one of the greatest of lyric poets. When I happened to converse with Blok, I was always struck by an inarticulate aspect underlying his talk and thought. It was almost always impossible to understand him. His verses I do understand, but I could not understand what he said while speaking. For a proper understanding one had to be situated in the same condition, in which he happened to be situated at that instant. The Logos was completely absent in his words. Blok did not know any other sort of path of surmounting and enlightening his emotional chaos, besides the lyrical poetry. Within his conversational speech there did not as yet transpire that beautiful surmounting of chaos, which was wrought in his verses, and therefore his conversation was bereft of connection, of sense, of form, and it was all in some sort of shreds of the still tormenting emotional experiences. Blok could not transform the cosmic-soul chaos either intellectually, through thought and knowledge, or religiously, through faith, or mystically, through contemplation of the Divine light, or morally through moral distinction and evaluation; he transformed it exclusively through lyrical poetry. And this was an hopeless lyricism. It has always seemed to me, that Blok was altogether lacking in a mental sense, he is the most non-intellectual of Russian poets. This does not mean, that Blok had a mind quite poor and of low quality, as occurs with stupid people, no, he simply was outside of intellectuality and not wont to judgement from the point of view of intellectual categories. For the philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, which sees in the intellect the most noble part of man, conjoining him with authentic being, Blok would have been an enigma. He was perhaps of an higher mind, but the mind in him was nowise akin and was foreign to the principle of the Logos, he dwelt exclusively within the Cosmos, within the soul of the world.
Smertonosnye yady (deadly poisons) that, according to Berdyaev, the Russian poetic renaissance of the beginning 20th century contained within it seem to confirm the idea that Aqua went mad, because she was poisoned by her her sister. In the third poem of his cycle Plyaski Smerti (“The Dances of Death,” 1912-14) Alexander Blok (a Russian poet, 1880-1921) mentions a chemist's closet marked Venena (poison). In the first line of his poem Priblizhaetsya zvuk... (“A sound approaches...” 1912) Blok mentions shchemyashchiy zvuk (a heart-rending sound) and dusha (the soul):
Приближается звук. И, покорна щемящему звуку,
Молодеет душа.
И во сне прижимаю к губам твою прежнюю руку,
Не дыша.
Blok is the author of Novaya Amerika ("The New America," 1913), a poem (by the New America Blok means Russia), and Na pole Kulikovom ("In the Field of Kulikovo," 1908), a cycle of five poems. It seems that on Demonia the Russians were defeated by the Tartars in the battle of Kulikovo (Sept. 8, 1380) and, crossing "the ha-ha of a doubled ocean" (as Van calls the Bering Strait), migrated to America.
The Russian title of R. W. Emerson's essay Self-Reliance is Doverie k sebe. Ne ver’ sebe (“Don’t Trust Yourself,” 1839) is a poem (quoted by Dostoevski at the beginning of Brothers Karamazov, 1880) is a poem by Lermontov. The author of the prophetic Predskazanie ("Prediction," 1830), Lermontov died in July of 1841 (the year when Self-Reliance appeared). A hundred years later, in June of 1941, the Germans invaded Russia. Lenin came to power in 1917 (Russia's "black year;" the tsars' crown fell down in March), a hundred years after Pushkin finished the Lyceum. VN was born in 1899, a hundred years after Pushkin's birth. A gap of up to a hundred years one way or another exists between Terra and Antiterra.