Describing his fellow writers in Paris, Vadim Vadimovich (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Look at the Harlequins! 1974) mentions the honest nonentity Suknovalov, author of the popular social satire Geroy nashey ery ("Hero of Our Era"):
I recognized the critic Basilevski, his sycophants Hristov and Boyarski, my friend Morozov, the novelists Shipogradov and Sokolovski, the honest nonentity Suknovalov, author of the popular social satire Geroy nashey ery ("Hero of Our Era") and two young poets, Lazarev (collection Serenity) and Fartuk (collection Silence). (Part Two, 4)
A play on Lermontov’s Geroy nashego vremeni ("A Hero of Our Time," 1840), "Hero of Our Era" brings to mind Dr Ero, whose action is reversed by Van Veen, the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada (1969):
Van left the pool-side patio and strode away. He turned into a side gallery that led into a grovy part of the garden, grading insensibly into the park proper. Presently, he noticed that Ada had hastened to follow him. Lifting one elbow, revealing the black star of her armpit, she tore off her bathing cap and with a shake of her head liberated a torrent of hair. Lucette, in color, trotted behind her. Out of charity for the sisters’ bare feet, Van changed his course from gravel path to velvet lawn (reversing the action of Dr Ero, pursued by the Invisible Albino in one of the greatest novels of English literature). They caught up with him in the Second Coppice. Lucette, in passing, stopped to pick up her sister’s cap and sunglasses — the sunglasses of much-sung lasses, a shame to throw them away! My tidy little Lucette (I shall never forget you…) placed both objects on a tree stump near an empty beer bottle, trotted on, then went back to examine a bunch of pink mushrooms that clung to the stump, snoring. Double take, double exposure. (1.32)
Darkbloom ('Notes to Ada'): Ero: thus the h-dropping policeman in Wells’ Invisible Man defined the latter’s treacherous friend.
In the Russian word for “harlequin,” arlekin, ‘h’ is dropped. In VN’s novel Transparent Things (1972) Hugh Person tells Armande (who mispronounces Hugh’s name) that she drops her haitches like pears in a blindman’s cup:
She rang him up around midnight, waking him in the pit of an evanescent, but definitely bad, dream (after all that melted cheese and young potatoes with a bottle of green wine at the hotel's carnotzet). As he scrabbled up the receiver, he groped with the other hand for his reading glasses, without which, by some vagary of concomitant senses, he could not attend to the telephone properly.
"You Person?" asked her voice.
He already knew, ever since she had recited the contents of the card he had given her on the train, that she pronounced his first name as "You."
"Yes, it's me, I mean 'you,' I mean you mispronounce it most enchantingly."
"I do not mispronounce anything. Look, I never received - "
"Oh, you do! You drop your haitches like - like pearls into a blindman's cup."
"Well, the correct pronunciation is 'cap.' I win. Now listen, tomorrow I'm occupied, but what about Friday - if you can be ready à sept heures précises?"
He certainly could.
She invited "Percy," as she declared she would call him from now on, since he detested "Hugh," to come with her for a bit of summer skiing at Drakonita, or Darkened Heat, as he misheard it, which caused him to conjure up a dense forest protecting romantic ramblers from the blue blaze of an alpine noon. He said he had never learned to ski on a holiday at Sugarwood, Vermont, but would be happy to stroll beside her, along a footpath not only provided for him by fancy but also swept clean with a snowman's broom - one of those instant unverified visions which can fool the cleverest man. (chapter 12)
“Percy” brings to mind Percy de Prey (one of Ada’s lovers who goes to the war and perishes in the Crimea on the second day of the invasion). “Lover number three, the gentleman farmer” mentioned by G. A. Vronsky (the movie man who makes a film of Mlle Larivière’s novel Les Enfants Maudits) in a conversation below seems to correspond to Percy de Prey:
And now hairy Pedro hoisted himself onto the brink and began to flirt with the miserable girl (his banal attentions were, really, the least of her troubles).
‘Your leetle aperture must be raccommodated,’ he said.
‘Que voulez-vous dire, for goodness sake?’ she asked, instead of dealing him a backhand wallop.
‘Permit that I contact your charming penetralium,’ the idiot insisted, and put a wet finger on the hole in her swimsuit.
‘Oh that’ (shrugging and rearranging the shoulder strap displaced by the shrug). ‘Never mind that. Next time, maybe, I’ll put on my fabulous new bikini.’
‘Next time, maybe, no Pedro?’
‘Too bad,’ said Ada. ‘Now go and fetch me a Coke, like a good dog.’
‘E tu?’ Pedro asked Marina as he walked past her chair. ‘Again screwdriver?’
‘Yes, dear, but with grapefruit, not orange, and a little zucchero. I can’t understand’ (turning to Vronsky), ‘why do I sound a hundred years old on this page and fifteen on the next? Because if it is a flashback — and it is a flashback, I suppose’ (she pronounced it is a flashback — and it is a flashback, I suppose’ (she pronounced it fleshbeck), ‘Renny, or what’s his name, René, should not know what he seems to know.’
‘He does not,’ cried G.A., ‘it’s only a half-hearted flashback. Anyway, this Renny, this lover number one, does not know, of course, that she is trying to get rid of lover number two, while she’s wondering all the time if she can dare go on dating number three, the gentleman farmer, see?’
‘Nu, eto chto-to slozhnovato (sort of complicated), Grigoriy Akimovich,’ said Marina, scratching her cheek, for she always tended to discount, out of sheer self-preservation, the considerably more slozhnïe patterns out of her own past.
‘Read on, read, it all becomes clear,’ said G.A., riffling through his own copy.
‘Incidentally,’ observed Marina, ‘I hope dear Ida will not object to our making him not only a poet, but a ballet dancer. Pedro could do that beautifully, but he can’t be made to recite French poetry.’
‘If she protests,’ said Vronsky, ‘she can go and stick a telegraph pole — where it belongs.’
The indecent ‘telegraph’ caused Marina, who had a secret fondness for salty jokes, to collapse in Ada-like ripples of rolling laughter (pokativshis’ so smehu vrode Adï): ‘But let’s be serious, I still don’t see how and why his wife — I mean the second guy’s wife — accepts the situation (polozhenie).’
Vronsky spread his fingers and toes.
‘Prichyom tut polozhenie (situation-shituation)? She is blissfully ignorant of their affair and besides, she knows she is fubsy and frumpy, and simply cannot compete with dashing Hélène.’
‘I see, but some won’t,’ said Marina. (1.32)
Pokativshis’ so smehu vrode Adï brings to mind Miss Vrode-Vorodin, Count Starov elderly cousin and house-keeper mentioned by Vadim in LATH:
"Your bride," he said, using, I knew, the word in the sense of fiancée (and speaking an English which Iris said later was exactly like mine in Ivor's unforgettable version) "is as beautiful as your wife will be!"
I quickly told him--in Russian--that the maire of Cannice had married us a month ago in a brisk ceremony. Nikifor Nikodimovich gave Iris another stare and finally kissed her hand, which I was glad to see she raised in the proper fashion (coached, no doubt, by Ivor who used to take every opportunity to paw his sister).
"I misunderstood the rumors," he said, "but all the same I am happy to make the acquaintance of such a charming young lady. And where, pray, in what church, will the vow be sanctified?"
"In the temple we shall build, Sir," said Iris--a trifle insolently, I thought.
Count Starov "chewed his lips," as old men are wont to do in Russian novels. Miss Vrode-Vorodin, the elderly cousin who kept house for him, made a timely entrance and led Iris to an adjacent alcove (illuminated by a resplendent portrait by Serov, 1896, of the notorious beauty, Mme. De Blagidze, in Caucasian costume) for a nice cup of tea. The Count wished to talk business with me and had only ten minutes "before his injection."
What was my wife's maiden name?
I told him. He thought it over and shook his head. What was her mother's name?
I told him that, too. Same reaction. What about the financial aspect of the marriage?
I said she had a house, a parrot, a car, and a small income--I didn't know exactly how much.
After another minute's thought, he asked me if I would like a permanent job in the White Cross? It had nothing to do with Switzerland. It was an organization that helped Russian Christians all over the world. The job would involve travel, interesting connections, promotion to important posts.
I declined so emphatically that he dropped the silver pill box he was holding and a number of innocent gum drops were spilled all over the table at his elbow. He swept them onto the carpet with a gesture of peevish dismissal. (Part One, 10)
The name Vrode-Vorodin seems to combine the word vrode (“like; a sort of, a kind of; such as”) with Borodin, a composer who set to music Pushkin’s poem Dlya beregov otchizny dal’ney… (“For the shores of distant fatherland…” 1830). In her memoir essay “Alexander Blok. A Biographical Sketch” (1930) Maria Beketov (the poet’s aunt) mentions Lyubov’ Delmas (Blok’s mistress, an opera singer to whom Blok’s cycle “Carmen” is dedicated) who beautifully sang this romance in Shakhmatovo (Blok’s estate in the Province of Moscow):
В конце лета приезжала на неделю Л. А. Дельмас, она пела нам, аккомпанируя себе на нашем старом piano-carre, напоминавшем клавесин – и из «Кармен», и из «Хованщины», и просто цыганские и другие романсы. Между прочим, и «Стеньку Разина»: «Из-за острова на стрежень». Необыкновенно хорошо выходил у неё романс Бородина «Для берегов отчизны дальной». Такого проникновенного исполнения этой вещи я никогда не слыхала. Блок особенно любил и эти стихи Пушкина, и музыку Бородина. Во время пребывания Дельмас погода была всё время хорошая. Они с Ал. Ал. много гуляли и разводили костёр под шахматовским садом (одно из любимейших занятий Блока). (chapter 11)
In her memoir essay Maria Beketov mentions Basilevski, a composer who set to music Blok’s drama Roza i krest (“The Rose and the Cross,” 1912):
В конце мая Александр Александрович узнал, что "Роза и Крест" пропущена цензурой без всяких ограничений. Около этого времени он сообщал матери, что написал краткие сведения о "Розе и Кресте" для композитора Базилевского, который написал музыку на его драму и собирался исполнять её в Москве. Сведения нужны были для концертной программы. Тут же Александр Александрович прибавляет: "Базилевский пишет, что Свободный театр думает о постановке "Розы и Креста". (Chapter 11)
Ada’s “lover number two” is the composer Philip Rack (Lucette’s music teacher who is poisoned by his jealous wife Elsie and dies in Ward Five of the Kalugano hospital):
On Monday around noon he was allowed to sit in a deckchair, on the lawn, which he had avidly gazed at for some days from his window. Dr Fitzbishop had said, rubbing his hands, that the Luga laboratory said it was the not always lethal ‘arethusoides’ but it had no practical importance now, because the unfortunate music teacher, and composer, was not expected to spend another night on Demonia, and would be on Terra, ha-ha, in time for evensong. Doc Fitz was what Russians call a poshlyak (‘pretentious vulgarian’) and in some obscure counter-fashion Van was relieved not to be able to gloat over the wretched Rack’s martyrdom. (1.42)
“The not always lethal ‘arethusoides’” seems to hint at Arethusa, a “peerless nymph” mentioned by Keats in Endymion (1818). According to Vadim, Basilevski translated the first line of Keats' Endymion, “A thing of beauty is a joy for ever,” as Vsegda nas raduet krasivaya veshchitsa (A pretty bauble always gladdens us):
It was good to see old Morozov's rough-hewn clever face with its shock of dingy hair and bright frosty eyes; and for a special reason I closely observed podgy dour Basilevski--not because he had just had or was about to have a row with his young mistress, a feline beauty who wrote doggerel verse and vulgarly flirted with me, but because I hoped he had already seen the fun I had made of him in the last issue of a literary review in which we both collaborated. Although his English was inadequate for the interpretation of, say, Keats (whom he defined as "a pre-Wildean aesthete in the beginning of the Industrial Era") Basilevski was fond of attempting just that. In discussing recently the "not altogether displeasing preciosity" of my own stuff, he had imprudently quoted a popular line from Keats, rendering it as:
Vsegda nas raduet krasivaya veshchitsa
which in retranslation gives:
"A pretty bauble always gladdens us."
Our conversation, however, turned out to be much too brief to disclose whether or not he had appreciated my amusing lesson. He asked me what I thought of the new book he was telling Morozov (a monolinguist) about--namely Maurois' "impressive work on Byron," and upon my answering that I had found it to be impressive trash, my austere critic muttered, "I don't think you have read it," and went on educating the serene old poet. (Part Two, 1)
“The beginning of the Industrial Era” brings to mind Suknovalov’s “Hero of Our Era.”
In his diary (the entry of Feb. 23, 1913) Blok says that he has flipped through "The Rose and the Cross" and disliked its sukonnyi yazyk (insipid language):
не нравится своё — перелистал «Розу и Крест» — суконный язык.
The epithet sukonnyi comes from sukno (cloth), the surname Suknovalov derives from suknoval (fuller). In the same entry of his diary Blok mentions Bely's novel Peterburg ("Petersburg," 1913) that was brought out by the publishing house "Sirin:"
И, при всём этом, неизмерим А. Белый, за двумя словами — вдруг притаится иное, всё становится иным. Какова будет участь романа в «Сирине» — беспокоит меня.
Andrey Bely’s poem Arlekinada (“The Harlequinade,” 1906) is dedicated to sovremennye arlekiny (the modern harlequins).
At the beginning of “The Rose and the Cross” Bertrand mentions yabloni staryi stvol (the trunk of an old apple-tree):
Яблони старый ствол,
Расшатанный бурей февральской!
Жадно ждёшь ты весны...
Тёплый ветер дохнёт, и нежной травою
Зазеленеет замковый вал...
Чем ты, старый, ответишь тогда
Ручьям и птицам певучим?
Лишь две-три бледно-розовых ветви протянешь
В воздух, омытый дождями,
Чёрный, бурей измученный ствол!
Prince Vadim Vadimovich Yablonski (whose family name comes from yablonya, "apple tree") and his first three wives (Iris Black, Annette Blagovo and Louise Adamson) seem to be the children of Count Starov (whose name comes from staryi, "old"). Vadim's fourth wife (a former schoolmate of Vadim's daughter Bel), "You," brings to mind "You Person" (as Armande calls her future husband). Madame Charles Chamar (Armande's mother) tells Hugh that Diablonnet (where Mr. R. lives) always reminds her of the Russian for 'apple trees:'
"He lives somewhere in Switzerland, I think?"
"Yes, at Diablonnet, near Versex."
"Diablonnet always reminds me of the Russian for 'apple trees': yabloni. He has a nice house?"
"Well, we met in Versex, in a hotel, not at his home. I'm told it's a very large and a very old-fashioned place. We discussed business matters. Of course the house is always full of his rather, well, frivolous guests. I shall wait for a little while and then go." (chapter 12)
Diablonnet combines French diable (devil) with Russian net (no; there is not). According to Charles Baudelaire (Petits Poèmes en prose, 1869), la plus belle des ruses du Diable est de vous persuader qu'il n'existe pas! (the greatest trick the devil ever played was convincing the world that he did not exist). The invisible narrators in Transparent Things seem to be the devils. In the seventh poem of Blok's cycle Zhizn’ moego priyatelya ("The Life of my Pal," 1913-15), Greshi, poka tebya volnuyut... ("Do sin, while your innocent sins..." 1915), cherti (the devils) speak:
Сверкнут ли дерзостные очи -
Ты их сверканий не отринь,
Грехам, вину и страстной ночи
Шепча заветное «аминь».
...И станешь падать — но толпою
Мы все, как ангелы, чисты,
Тебя подхватим, чтоб пятою
О камень не преткнулся ты...
Should the daring eyes sparkle at you,
do not reject their sparkling,
whispering "amen"
to sins, wine and the amorous night.
...And you'll begin to fall, but in a crowd
we all, pure as angels,
shall pick you up,
lest you stumble on the stone with your foot...
When Hugh Person (who dies of suffocation in a hotel fire) reaches the window of his room, a long lavender-tipped flame stops him with a graceful gesture of its gloved hand:
At last, suffocation made him try to get out by climbing out and down, but there were no ledges or balconies on that side of the roaring house. As he reached the window a long lavender-tipped flame danced up to stop him with a graceful gesture of its gloved hand. Crumbling partitions of plaster and wood allowed human cries to reach him, and one of his last wrong ideas was that those were the shouts of people anxious to help him, and not the howls of fellow men. Rings of blurred colors circled around him, reminding him briefly of a childhood picture in a frightening book about triumphant vegetables whirling faster and faster around a nightshirted boy trying desperately to awake from the iridescent dizziness of dream life. Its ultimate vision was the incandescence of a book or a box grown completely transparent and hollow. This is, I believe, it: not the crude anguish of physical death but the incomparable pangs of the mysterious mental maneuver needed to pass from one state of being to another.
Easy, you know, does it, son. (chapter 26)
The main purpose of this brief note is to draw your attention to the updated version of my previous post, “BINT & false passport in LATH; Princess Kachurin & Palermontovia in Ada” (https://thenabokovian.org/node/35702).