Describing his dinner with Ada (now married to Andrey Vinelander) and her family in Bellevue Hotel in Mont Roux, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) mentions the ‘Swiss White’ page of the wine list and uses the phrase ‘passing the buck:’
Chance looked after the seating arrangement.
Lemorio’s agents, an elderly couple, unwed but having lived as man and man for a sufficiently long period to warrant a silver-screen anniversary, remained unsplit at table between Yuzlik, who never once spoke to them, and Van, who was being tortured by Dorothy. As to Andrey (who made a thready ‘sign of the cross’ over his un-unbuttonable abdomen before necking in his napkin), he found himself seated between sister and wife. He demanded the ‘cart de van’ (affording the real Van mild amusement), but, being a hard-liquor man, cast only a stunned look at the ‘Swiss White’ page of the wine list before ‘passing the buck’ to Ada who promptly ordered champagne. He was to inform her early next morning that her ‘Kuzen proizvodit (produces) udivitel’no simpatichnoe vpechatlenie (a remarkably sympathetic, in the sense of "fetching," impression),’ The dear fellow’s verbal apparatus consisted almost exclusively of remarkably sympathetic Russian common-places of language, but — not liking to speak of himself — he spoke little, especially since his sister’s sonorous soliloquy (lapping at Van’s rock) mesmerized and childishly engrossed him. Dorothy preambled her long-delayed report on her pet nightmare with a humble complaint (‘Of course, I know that for your patients to have bad dreams is a zhidovskaya prerogativa’), but her reluctant analyst’s attention every time it returned to her from his plate fixed itself so insistently on the Greek cross of almost ecclesiastical size shining on her otherwise unremarkable chest that she thought fit to interrupt her narrative (which had to do with the eruption of a dream volcano) to say: ‘I gather from your writings that you are a terrible cynic. Oh, I quite agree with Simone Traser that a dash of cynicism adorns a real man; yet I’d like to warn you that I object to anti-Orthodox jokes in case you intend making one.’ (3.8)
Darkbloom (‘Notes to Ada’): cart de van: Amer., mispronunciation of carte des vins.
zhidovskaya: Russ. (vulg.), Jewish.
‘Passing the buck’ seems to hint at Buck Mulligan, a character in James Joyce's Ulysses (1922). The two main characters in Joyce's novel are Leopold Bloom (a Hungarian Jew) and Stephen Dedalus (the protagonist in Joyce's earlier novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, 1916). Van's and Ada's father, Demon Veen (whom Ada's husband calls in jest 'Dementiy Labirintovich') is the son of Dedalus Veen (1799-1883) and Irina Garin (1820-38). James Joyce (1882-1941) only drank white wine, and his all-time favourite was a Swiss one, called Fendant de Sion. Sion is the capital of the Swiss Canton of Valais. The name 'Fendant' comes from the French verb fendre, meaning 'to split', which is what the Chasselas grape does if squeezed. Richard Ellmann (Joyce's bographer) describes how Joyce discovered his favorite wine in Zurich, and gave it a nickname:
'Several evenings were spent in tasting various crus, until one night drinking with Ottocaro Weiss, who had returned from the army in January 1919, he sampled a white Swiss wine called Fendant de Sion. This seemed to be the object of his quest, and after drinking it to his satisfaction, he lifted the half emptied glass, held it against the window like a test tube, and asked Weiss, 'What does this remind you of?' Weiss looked at Joyce and at the pale golden liquid and replied, 'Orina' (urine). 'Si', said Joyce laughing, 'ma di un'archiduchessa' ('Yes, but an archduchess's). From now on the wine was known as the Archduchess'.
Joyce's 'Si' (yes in Italian) brings to mind Valerio's reply to Demon's question as to whether his son is still living up there:
Next day, February 5, around nine p.m., Manhattan (winter) time, on the way to Dan’s lawyer, Demon noted — just as he was about to cross Alexis Avenue, an ancient but insignificant acquaintance, Mrs Arfour, advancing toward him, with her toy terrier, along his side of the street. Unhesitatingly, Demon stepped off the curb, and having no hat to raise (hats were not worn with raincloaks and besides he had just taken a very exotic and potent pill to face the day’s ordeal on top of a sleepless journey), contented himself — quite properly — with a wave of his slim umbrella; recalled with a paint dab of delight one of the gargle girls of her late husband; and smoothly passed in front of a slow-clopping horse-drawn vegetable cart, well out of the way of Mrs R4. But precisely in regard to such a contingency, Fate had prepared an alternate continuation. As Demon rushed (or, in terms of the pill, sauntered) by the Monaco, where he had often lunched, it occurred to him that his son (whom he had been unable to ‘contact’) might still be living with dull little Cordula de Prey in the penthouse apartment of that fine building. He had never been up there — or had he? For a business consultation with Van? On a sun-hazed terrace? And a clouded drink? (He had, that’s right, but Cordula was not dull and had not been present.)
With the simple and, combinationally speaking, neat, thought that, after all, there was but one sky (white, with minute multicolored optical sparks), Demon hastened to enter the lobby and catch the lift which a ginger-haired waiter had just entered, with breakfast for two on a wiggle-wheel table and the Manhattan Times among the shining, ever so slightly scratched, silver cupolas. Was his son still living up there, automatically asked Demon, placing a piece of nobler metal among the domes. Si, conceded the grinning imbecile, he had lived there with his lady all winter.
‘Then we are fellow travelers,’ said Demon inhaling not without gourmand anticipation the smell of Monaco’s coffee, exaggerated by the shadows of tropical weeds waving in the breeze of his brain. On that memorable morning, Van, after ordering breakfast, had climbed out of his bath and donned a strawberry-red terrycloth roalbe when he thought he heard Valerio’s voice from the adjacent parlor. Thither he padded, humming tunelessly, looking forward to another day of increasing happiness (with yet another uncomfortable little edge smoothed away, another raw kink in the past so refashioned as to fit into the new pattern of radiance). (2.10)
A waiter at the 'Monaco' (a good restaurant in the entresol of a tall building crowned by Van's penthouse and its spacious terrace), Valerio (a ginger-haired elderly Roman) seems to be a cross between two poets: Gaius Valerius Catullus (c. 84 BC - c. 54 BC) and Valeriy Bryusov (1873-1924). In her poem Valeriy, Valeriy, Valeriy, Valeriy! (1903) addressed to Byusov Zinaida Hippius mentions zhidy (Russ. vulg., Jews):
Валерий, Валерий, Валерий, Валерий!
Учитель, служитель священных преддверий!
Тебе поклонились, восторженно-чисты,
Купчихи, студенты, жиды, гимназисты…
И, верности чуждый – и чуждый закона,
Ты Грифа ласкаешь, любя Скорпиона.
Но всех покоряя – ты вечно покорен,
То красен – то зелен, то розов – то черен…
Ты соткан из сладких, как сны, недоверий,
Валерий, Валерий, Валерий, Валерий!
Валерий, Валерий, Валерий, Валерий!
Тебя воспевают и гады и звери.
Ты дерзко-смиренен – и томно-преступен,
Ты явно-желанен – и тайно-доступен.
Измена и верность – все мгла суеверий!
Тебе – открываются сразу все двери,
И сразу проникнуть умеешь во все ты,
О маг, о владыка, зверями воспетый,
О жрец дерзновенный московских мистерий,
Валерий, Валерий, Валерий, Валерий!
Zinaida Hippius (a Russian poet, playwright, novelist, editor and religious thinker, 1869-1945) was the wife of Dmitri Merezhkovski (a Russian novelist, poet, religious thinker, and literary critic, 1865-1941). In his essay Vlast’ idey (“The Power of Ideas,” 1905), a review of Merezhkovski’s book Tolstoy and Dostoevski (1902), the philosopher Lev Shestov (who was Jewish) says that he had always hoped that Merezhkovski would be the first writer to demand for prose the magna charta libertatis which is long considered poetry’s neosporimaya prerogativa (indisputable prerogative):
Я всегда надеялся, что г. Мережковский, скорей чем кто-нибудь другой, решится требовать и для прозы той magna charta libertatis, которая уже давно считается неоспоримой прерогативой поэзии. (II)
Magna carta libertatum ("Great Charter of Freedoms"), a royal charter of rights agreed to by King John of England at Runnymede, near Windsor, on 15 June 1215, brings to mind the ‘cart de van’ demanded by Andrey Vinelander.
In his essay Ubiytsa lebedey (“The Slayer of Swans,” 1916) Merezhkovski quotes Prospero’s words (“We are such stuff / As dreams are made on, and our little life / Is rounded with a sleep”) in Shakespeare’s The Tempest (Act IV, scene 1) and says that war is a bad dream of mankind:
Когда-нибудь, поверь, настанет день,
Когда все эти чудные виденья,
И храмы, и роскошные дворцы,
И тучами увенчанные башни,
И самый наш великий шар земной,
Со всем, что в нём находится поныне,
Исчезнет всё, следа не оставляя.
И сами мы вещественны, как сны,
Из нас самих родятся сновиденья,
И наша жизнь лишь сном окружена.
Жизнь ― сон. Сны бывают дурные и хорошие. Война ― дурной сон человечества.
Life is a dream. Dreams can be bad and good. War is a bad dream of mankind.
In Mont Roux Van puts up at his usual hotel, Les Trois Cygnes (The Three Swans):
arriving mont roux bellevue sunday
dinnertime adoration sorrow rainbows
Van got this bold cable with his breakfast on Saturday, October 10, 1905, at the Manhattan Palace in Geneva, and that same day moved to Mont Roux at the opposite end of the lake. He put up there at his usual hotel, Les Trois Cygnes. Its small, frail, but almost mythically ancient concierge had died during Van’s stay four years earlier, and instead of wizened Julien’s discreet smile of mysterious complicity that used to shine like a lamp through parchment, the round rosy face of a recent bellboy, who now wore a frockcoat, greeted fat old Van.
‘Lucien,’ said Dr Veen, peering over his spectacles, ‘I may have — as your predecessor would know — all kinds of queer visitors, magicians, masked ladies, madmen — que sais-je? and I expect miracles of secrecy from all three mute swans. Here’s a prefatory bonus.’
‘Merci infiniment,’ said the concierge, and, as usual, Van felt infinitely touched by the courteous hyperbole provoking no dearth of philosophical thought. (3.8)
Darkbloom (‘Notes to Ada’): que sais-je: what do I know.
Merci etc.: My infinite thanks.