Describing the torments and suicide of poor mad Aqua (the twin sister of Van's, Ada's and Lucette's mother Marina), Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) says that Aqua's last note was signed My sister's sister who teper' iz ada (now is out of hell):
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 bor (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.
Chekhov’s humorous story Zhenshchina s tochki zreniya p’yanitsy (“Woman as Seen by a Drunkard,” 1885), in which girls younger than sixteen are compared to aqua distillatae (distilled water), was signed Brat moego brata (My brother’s brother). The name of Daniel Veen's family estate, Ardis hints at paradise. In Peter and Alexey (1905), the third novel of his trilogy Christ and Antichrist, Dmitri Merezhkovski (a Russian writer and poet, 1865-1941) points out that the tsar Peter I (1672-1725) called the city he had founded in 1703 upon the Neva's banks "Paradiz:"
Несколько дней спустя, когда обычный вид Петербурга уже почти скрыл следы наводнения, Петр писал в шутливом послании к одному из птенцов своих:
"На прошлой неделе ветром вест-зюйд-вестом такую воду нагнало, какой, сказывают, не бывало. У меня в хоромах было сверху пола 21 дюйм; а по огороду и по другой стороне улицы свободно ездили в лодках. И зело было утешно смотреть, что люди по кровлям и по деревьям, будто во время потопа сидели, не только мужики, но и бабы. Вода, хотя и зело велика была, а беды большой не сделала".
Письмо было помечено: Из Парадиза.
A few days later, when the usual aspect of Petersburg had well nigh obliterated all traces of the flood, Peter wrote in a jovial letter to one of his eaglets:
“Last week, the west-south-west wind beat up such a flood, as, they say, had never happened before. In my apartments water stood twenty-one inches high, while in the garden and on the opposite shore it was high enough to boat on. It was very amusing to see people, men and women, perched on roofs and trees as on Ararat at the Great Flood. The water though high, didn’t do much damage.”
The letter was dated from “Paradise.”(Book Four: "The Flood," Chapter I)
Ray Zemnoy ili Son v zimnyuyu noch' ("The Earthly Paradise, or a Midwinter Night's Dream," 1903) is an utopian novel set in the 27th century on a Polynesian island by Konstantin Merezhkovski (Dmitri's elder brother, a zoologist and pedophile, 1855-1921). The last words written by Konstantin Merezhkovski (who was found dead in his hotel room in Geneva on January 9, 1921) were "Slishkom star, chtoby rabotat', i slishkom bolen, chtoby zhit' (Too old to work, and too sick to live)."
In his book Tayna zapada: Atlantida-Evropa ("The Secret of the West: Atlantis-Europe," 1930) Dmitri Merezhkovski mentions kremnevye nakonechniki strel (the flint arrowheads) used by the Marathon and Trasimene bowmen:
Взвешивая все эти свидетельства, не должно забывать, что у Марафонских и Тразименских стрелков наконечники стрел все еще кремневые, как у людей Каменного века (J. Morgan. Recherches sur les origines de l’Egypte, 1896, I, 187). (Part Two: "The Gods of Atlantis." Chapter 12: "Dionysus the Man," XXX)
According to Mlle Larivière (Lucette's governess who writes fiction under the penname Guillaume de Monparnasse), Ardis means in Greek 'the point of an arrow:'
He found the game rather fatiguing, and toward the end played hurriedly and carelessly, not deigning to check ‘rare’ or ‘obsolete’ but quite acceptable possibilities provided by a loyal dictionary. As to ambitious, incompetent and temperamental Lucette, she had to be, even at twelve, discreetly advised by Van who did so chiefly because it saved time and brought a little closer the blessed moment when she could be bundled off to the nursery, leaving Ada available for the third or fourth little flourish of the sweet summer day. Especially boring were the girls’ squabbles over the legitimacy of this or that word: proper names and place names were taboo, but there occurred borderline cases, causing no end of heartbreak, and it was pitiful to see Lucette cling to her last five letters (with none left in the box) forming the beautiful ARDIS which her governess had told her meant ‘the point of an arrow’ — but only in Greek, alas. (1.36)
In her last note Aqua calls herself "poor Princesse Lointaine, très lointaine by now." La Princesse Lointaine (1895) is a play by Edmond Rostand (a French dramatist, 1868-1918). In Dmitri Merezhkovski's Symbolist drama Budet radost' ("Joy Will Come," 1914) Pelageya mentions Printsessa gryoz (the tittle of Rostand's play in Tatiana Shchepkin-Kupernik's Russian translation):
Пелагея. Для кого большой, а для нас маленький, мальчик маленький, хорошенький! Вот захочу — зацелую, и ничего ты со мною не поделаешь. Я ведь бедовая, шельма, я, даром, что ряску ношу. Да, ведь, и ты, барин, тихоня, а в тихом омуте черти водятся. Ишь, как глазки бегают. Аль сконфузился? Ну, не буду, не буду! Знаю, есть у Гришеньки зазнобушка, «Принцесса грез».
И грезы, и слезы,
И уст упоительный яд…
А ты что думал? Я тоже ученая, люблю стишок пронзительный: «Ах, как красиво!» (Гриша хочет уйти, Пелагея удерживает его за руку). Стой, не пущу! сердитый какой! И пошутить нельзя… Ну, полно-ка лясы точить, а то и впрямь не подошел бы кто… Да ну же, глупенький, чего упрямишься? Послушание паче поста и молитвы. Лезь-ка, лезь — назвался груздем, полезай в кузов! (Act Two, II)