"An American governor, my
friend Bessborodko, is to be installed in Bessarabia..."
(Ada, 2.1)
The name of Demon's friend seems to hint at
Aleksandr Andreevich Bezborodko (1747-99), Catherine II's minister of
foreign affairs de facto who was promoted to Grand Chancellor
and made a prince of the Russian Empire by Paul I. One of the richest men of his
time and a big lover of arts, Bezborodko owned a great collection of pictures
and statues that he enjoyed showing his guests. When Stahl, the hero
of Aldanov's novel Le Pont de Diable, and his young friend
Ribaupierre marvel the marble statue of Eros in Bezborodko's St. Petersburg
house (Part Three, IV), the former recites the two last stanzas of Krezova
Erota ("Croesus' Eros", 1796), Derzhavin's epigram on
Bezborodko:
Я у
Креза зрел Эрота:
Он расплакавшись сидел
Среди мраморного
грота,
Окруженный лесом стрел.
Пуст колчан был, лук изломан,
Опущенна
тетива,
Факел хладом околдован,
Чуть струилась синева.
Что, сказал я, так слезами
Льётся
сей крылатый бог?
Иль толикими стрелами
В сердце чьё попасть не
мог?
Иль его бессилен пламень?
Тщетен
ток опасных слез?
Ах! нашла коса на камень:
Знать, любить не может
Крез.
"Ah! Creosus has run into a marble
wall: he seems unable to love any more" (my paraphase of the two
closing lines). In his old age
Bezborodko (who tells Ribaupierre in Aldanov's
novel that he probably knew more women in his life than there
were times Ribaupierre masturbated) was ill and impotent. So his art
collection was his only passion. Interestingly, when spelled
Bessborodko, the Chancellor's Ukrainian name (that means "beardless")
reminds one of Bess, old Daniel Veen's nurse who managed to extract orally a few last drops of
‘play-zero’ out of Dan's poor body (2.10), but also of
the Russian saying sedina v borodu, bes v rebro ("one's beard is
turning grey - a demon settles in one's rib"). It is quoted by Ostap Bender, the hero of Ilf and Petrov's "The 12
chairs", as he punishes Vorob'yaninov (the wretched old Don Juan) after the
failure at the "art" auction (I speak in more detail about it in my "leporine"
article that recently appeared in Zembla).
Van's uncle, Daniel Veen, is a Manhattan art
dealer. The twofold hobby of Dan's cousin, Demon
Veen (Van's and Ada's father, a friend of Bessborodko), "was collecting old
masters and young mistresses. He also liked middle-aged
puns" (1.1). Demon no doubt would remember this one:
Vyazemsky called Pushkin, who spent a year or so in Kishinev (Moldavia's
capital), bes arapskiy ("the Moorish fiend"), punning on
bessarabskiy ("Bessarabian").
Btw., like Van's father in Ada,
Pushkin and Vyazemsky were gamblers (cf. "play-zero"). Pushkin was even known to
the Moscow police as bankomyot ("banker at cards").
Bessborodko = bes + dobro +
sok
bes - Russ.,
fiend
dobro - Russ., good (as
opposed to evil)
sok - Russ., juice;
sap
Alexey Sklyarenko