Describing the debauch á trois with Ada and Lucette in his Manhattan flat, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) says that sounds have colors and colors have smells:
What we have now is not so much a Casanovanic situation (that double-wencher had a definitely monochromatic pencil — in keeping with the memoirs of his dingy era) as a much earlier canvas, of the Venetian (sensu largo) school, reproduced (in ‘Forbidden Masterpieces’) expertly enough to stand the scrutiny of a borders vue d’oiseau.
Thus seen from above, as if reflected in the ciel mirror that Eric had naively thought up in his Cyprian dreams (actually all is shadowy up there, for the blinds are still drawn, shutting out the gray morning), we have the large island of the bed illumined from our left (Lucette’s right) by a lamp burning with a murmuring incandescence on the west-side bedtable. The top sheet and quilt are tumbled at the footboardless south of the island where the newly landed eye starts on its northern trip, up the younger Miss Veen’s pried-open legs. A dewdrop on russet moss eventually finds a stylistic response in the aquamarine tear on her flaming cheekbone. Another trip from the port to the interior reveals the central girl’s long white left thigh; we visit souvenir stalls: Ada’s red-lacquered talons, which lead a man’s reasonably recalcitrant, pardonably yielding wrist out of the dim east to the bright russet west, and the sparkle of her diamond necklace, which, for the nonce, is not much more valuable than the aquamarines on the other (west) side of Novelty Novel lane. The scarred male nude on the island’s east coast is half-shaded, and, on the whole, less interesting, though considerably more aroused than is good for him or a certain type of tourist. The recently repapered wall immediately west of the now louder-murmuring (et pour cause) dorocene lamp is ornamented in the central girl’s honor with Peruvian’ honeysuckle’ being visited (not only for its nectar, I’m afraid, but for the animalcules stuck in it) by marvelous Loddigesia Hummingbirds, while the bedtable on that side bears a lowly box of matches, a karavanchik of cigarettes, a Monaco ashtray, a copy of Voltemand’s poor thriller, and a Lurid Oncidium Orchid in an amethystine vaselet. The companion piece on Van’s side supports a similar superstrong but unlit lamp, a dorophone, a box of Wipex, a reading loupe, the returned Ardis album, and a separatum ‘Soft music as cause of brain tumors,’ by Dr Anbury (young Rattner’s waggish pen-name). Sounds have colors, colors have smells. The fire of Lucette’s amber runs through the night of Ada’s odor and ardor, and stops at the threshold of Van’s lavender goat. Ten eager, evil, loving, long fingers belonging to two different young demons caress their helpless bed pet. Ada’s loose black hair accidentally tickles the local curio she holds in her left fist, magnanimously demonstrating her acquisition. Unsigned and unframed.
That about summed it up (for the magical gewgaw liquefied all at once, and Lucette, snatching up her nightdress, escaped to her room). It was only the sort of shop where the jeweler’s fingertips have a tender way of enhancing the preciousness of a trinket by something akin to a rubbing of hindwings on the part of a settled lycaenid or to the frottage of a conjurer’s thumb dissolving a coin; but just in such a shop the anonymous picture attributed to Grillo or Obieto, caprice or purpose, ober- or unterart, is found by the ferreting artist. (2.8)
Darkbloom (‘Notes to Ada’): et pour cause: and no wonder.
karavanchik: small caravan of camels (Russ.).
oberart etc.: Germ., superspecies; subspecies.
A passionate lepidopterist, VN was also a synesthete. In his essay “On Rimsky-Korsakov” included in Vospominaniya o Rossii (“Reminiscences of Russia,” 1959) Leonid Sabaneyev says that Rimsky-Korsakov perceived sounds not only with his organs of hearing, but also with his sense of taste and sense of smell, and mentions Rimsky’s ability to perceive the sound structure also as colors:
Возможно, что эти «девиации» в области иных ощущений вообще были в натуре Римского-Корсакова. Он как-то воспринимал звуки не одним слухом, но одновременно и вкусом и обонянием. Звуковая ткань для него пахла и имела вкус. Я не могу это явление не поставить в связь с его уже ставшей широко известной способностью воспринимать звуковую ткань и как «цвета»: для него (об этом он неоднократно говорил и даже оставил письменные свидетельства) музыкальные тональности представлялись окрашенными в цвета – каждая в свой. Это явление довольно широко распространено среди музыкантов. Оно было предметом довольно многочисленных изучений, но исследования показали, что явление это чрезвычайно индивидуально. Я лично полагаю, что эта способность чрезвычайно обогащает музыкальное восприятие, но было на свете много великих музыкантов, которые не обладали ею (может быть, просто не обращали внимания), и обратно, было много очень слабых музыкантов, которые ею обладали в сильнейшей степени. Во всяком случае, она стоит в связи с изумительным колористическим даром Римского-Корсакова. Его звуки, в особенности его оркестровые звуки, действительно и звучат, и светятся разнообразными светами, и благоухают, и даже имеют дар ассоциировать известное вкусовое впечатление. Его духу вообще был свойственен известный рационализм, даже рассудочность. Тут было что-то опять-таки от «естествоиспытателя». Он и в музыке любил находить «вечные законы» и требовал от композитора точности мысли и действия. Его эстетические теории и построения очень часто имели склонность обращаться в схемы и приемы.
According to Sabaneyev, in Rimsky-Korsakov there was something of a naturalist. Grillo is Spanish and Italian for “cricket.” Obieto seems to blend objeto (Sp., object) with óbito (Sp., death), obet (Russ., vow) and obed (Russ., dinner). On the eve, Van, Ada and Lucette dined in 'Ursus' (the best Franco-Estotian restaurant in Manhattan Major) where they listened to Russian songs. On Van's first day at Ardis a Spanish architect comes to dinner:
A gong bronzily boomed on a terrace.
For some odd reason both children were relieved to learn that a stranger was expected to dinner. He was an Andalusian architect whom Uncle Dan wanted to plan an ‘artistic’ swimming pool for Ardis Manor. Uncle Dan had intended to come, too, with an interpreter, but had caught the Russian ‘hrip’ (Spanish flu) instead, and had phoned Marina asking her to be very nice to good old Alonso.
‘You must help me!’ Marina told the children with a worried frown.
‘I could show him a copy, perhaps,’ said Ada, turning to Van, ‘of an absolutely fantastically lovely nature morte by Juan de Labrador of Extremadura — golden grapes and a strange rose against a black background. Dan sold it to Demon, and Demon has promised to give it to me on my fifteenth birthday.’
‘We also have some Zurbarán fruit,’ said Van smugly. ‘Tangerines, I believe, and a fig of sorts, with a wasp upon it. Oh, we’ll dazzle the old boy with shop talk!’ (1.6)
Rimsky-Korsakov is the author of Capriccio Espagnol (cf. “caprice or purpose”) and of the symphonic suite Scheherazade. In “Ardis the Second” Van helps Ada to get rid of all three patches of body hair and tells her “now I’m Scheher, and you are his Ada:”
One day he brought his shaving kit along and helped her to get rid of all three patches of body hair:
‘Now I’m Scheher,’ he said, ‘and you are his Ada, and that’s your green prayer carpet.’ (1.35)
Before rewarding Lucette (who told him the name of Ada’s fiancé) with a very special kiss, Van asks her if she shaves her armpits:
‘My dear,’ said Van, ‘do help me. She told me about her Valentian estanciero but now the name escapes me and I hate bothering her.’
‘Only she never told you,’ said loyal Lucette, ‘so nothing could escape. Nope. I can’t do that to your sweetheart and mine, because we know you could hit that keyhole with a pistol.’
‘Please, little vixen! I’ll reward you with a very special kiss.’
‘Oh, Van,’ she said over a deep sigh. ‘You promise you won’t tell her I told you?’
‘I promise. No, no, no,’ he went on, assuming a Russian accent, as she, with the abandon of mindless love, was about to press her abdomen to his. ‘Nikak-s net: no lips, no philtrum, no nosetip, no swimming eye. Little vixen’s axilla, just that — unless’ — (drawing back in mock uncertainty) — ‘you shave there?’
‘I stink worse when I do,’ confided simple Lucette and obediently bared one shoulder.
‘Arm up! Point at Paradise! Terra! Venus!’ commanded Van, and for a few synchronized heartbeats, fitted his working mouth to the hot, humid, perilous hollow.
She sat down with a bump on a chair, pressing one hand to her brow.
‘Turn off the footlights,’ said Van. ‘I want the name of that fellow.’
‘Vinelander,’ she answered. (2.8)
Darkbloom (‘Notes to Ada’): Nikak-s net: Russ., certainly not.
“The louder-murmuring dorocene lamp,” Grillo (cricket) and "with the wasp on it" evoke Rimski-Korsakov’s Polyot shmelya (“Flight of the Bumblebee”), an orchestral interlude written for his opera Skazka o tsare Saltane (“The Tale of Tsar Saltan,” 1899-1900). In Pushkin's Skazka o Tsare Saltane (1831) the beautiful Tsarevna Lebed' (Swan Princess) vystupaet budto pava (walks like a peahen):
Месяц под косой блестит,
А во лбу звезда горит.
А сама-то величава,
Выступает будто пава;
Сладку речь-то говорит,
Будто реченька журчит.
Brighter than the sun at noon,
She outshines the midnight moon,
In her braids a crescent beams,
On her brow, a bright star gleams.
She herself is sweet of face.
Full of majesty and grace.
When she speaks, her voice doth seem
Like the music of a stream.
(transl. Louis Zellikoff)
As they cross the Atlantic on Admiral Tobakoff (btw., Rimsky-Korsakov was a naval officer), Lucette asks Van about a tall mulatto girl (“Miss Condor,” as Lucette calls her), who greeted Van with a loud ‘hullo!’, kto siya pava? (who's that stately dame?):
Two half-naked children in shrill glee came running toward the pool. A Negro nurse brandished their diminutive bras in angry pursuit. Out of the water a bald head emerged by spontaneous generation and snorted. The swimming coach appeared from the dressing room. Simultaneously, a tall splendid creature with trim ankles and repulsively fleshy thighs, stalked past the Veens, all but treading on Lucette's emerald-studded cigarette case. Except for a golden ribbon and a bleached mane, her long, ripply, beige back was bare all the way down to the tops of her slowly and lusciously rolling buttocks, which divulged, in alternate motion, their nether bulges from under the lame loincloth. Just before disappearing behind a rounded white corner, the Titianesque Titaness half-turned her brown face and greeted Van with a loud 'hullo!'
Lucette wanted to know: kto siya pava? (who's that stately dame?)
‘I thought she addressed you,’ answered Van, ‘I did not distinguish her face and do not remember that bottom.’
‘She gave you a big jungle smile,’ said Lucette, readjusting her green helmet, with touchingly graceful movements of her raised wings, and touchingly flashing the russet feathering of her armpits.
‘Come with me, hm?’ she suggested, rising from the mat.
He shook his head, looking up at her: ‘You rise,’ he said, ‘like Aurora.’
‘His first compliment,’ observed Lucette with a little cock of her head as if speaking to an invisible confidant. (3.5)
In Chapter Five (XXI: 11) of Eugene Onegin Pushkin describes Tatiana’s dream and compares her sister Olga to Northern Aurora:
Спор громче, громче; вдруг Евгений
Хватает длинный нож, и вмиг
Повержен Ленский; страшно тени
Сгустились; нестерпимый крик
Раздался... хижина шатнулась...
И Таня в ужасе проснулась...
Глядит, уж в комнате светло;
В окне cквозь мерзлое стекло
Зари багряный луч играет;
Дверь отворилась. Ольга к ней,
Авроры северной алей
И легче ласточки, влетает;
«Ну, говорит, скажи ж ты мне,
Кого ты видела во сне?»
The argument grows louder, louder: Eugene
suddenly snatches a long knife, and Lenski
forthwith is felled; the shadows awesomely
have thickened; an excruciating cry
resounds... the cabin lurches...
and Tanya wakes in terror....
She looks — 'tis light already in the room;
dawn's crimson ray
plays in the window through the frozen pane;
the door opens. Olga flits in to her
rosier than Northern Aurora
and lighter than a swallow. “Well,”
she says, “do tell me,
whom did you see in dream?”
On his first night onboard the Tobakoff Van dreams of an aquatic peacock:
At five p.m., June 3, his ship had sailed from Le Havre-de-Grâce; on the evening of the same day Van embarked at Old Hantsport. He had spent most of the afternoon playing court tennis with Delaurier, the famous Negro coach, and felt very dull and drowsy as he watched the low sun’s ardency break into green-golden eye-spots a few sea-serpent yards to starboard, on the far-side slope of the bow wave. Presently he decided to turn in, walked down to the A deck, devoured some of the still-life fruit prepared for him in his sitting room, attempted to read in bed the proofs of an essay he was contributing to a festschrift on the occasion of Professor Counterstone’s eightieth birthday, gave it up, and fell asleep. A tempest went into convulsions around midnight, but despite the lunging and creaking (Tobakoff was an embittered old vessel) Van managed to sleep soundly, the only reaction on the part of his dormant mind being the dream image of an aquatic peacock, slowly sinking before somersaulting like a diving grebe, near the shore of the lake bearing his name in the ancient kingdom of Arrowroot. Upon reviewing that bright dream he traced its source to his recent visit to Armenia where he had gone fowling with Armborough and that gentleman’s extremely compliant and accomplished niece. He wanted to make a note of it — and was amused to find that all three pencils had not only left his bed table but had neatly aligned themselves head to tail along the bottom of the outer door of the adjacent room, having covered quite a stretch of blue carpeting in the course of their stopped escape. (3.5)
A karavanchik of cigarettes on the bedtable in Van’s Manhattan flat brings to mind gusey kriklivykh karavan (the caravan of clamorous geese) mentioned by Pushkin in Chapter Four (XL: 11) of EO:
Но наше северное лето,
Карикатура южных зим,
Мелькнет и нет: известно это,
Хоть мы признаться не хотим.
Уж небо осенью дышало,
Уж реже солнышко блистало,
Короче становился день,
Лесов таинственная сень
С печальным шумом обнажалась,
Ложился на поля туман,
Гусей крикливых караван
Тянулся к югу: приближалась
Довольно скучная пора;
Стоял ноябрь уж у двора.
But our Northern summer is a caricature
of Southern winters;
it will glance by and vanish: this is known,
though to admit it we don't wish.
The sky already breathed of autumn,
the sun already shone more seldom,
the day was growing shorter,
the woods' mysterious canopy
with a sad murmur bared itself,
mist settled on the fields,
the caravan of clamorous geese
was tending southward; there drew near
a rather tedious period;
November stood already at the door.
Pushkin's Onegin lacks the lofty passion not to spare life for the sake of sounds:
Высокой страсти не имея
Для звуков жизни не щадить,
Не мог он ямба от хорея,
Как мы ни бились, отличить.
Бранил Гомера, Феокрита;
Зато читал Адама Смита
И был глубокой эконом,
То есть умел судить о том,
Как государство богатеет,
И чем живет, и почему
Не нужно золота ему,
Когда простой продукт имеет.
Отец понять его не мог
И земли отдавал в залог.
Lacking the lofty passion not to spare
life for the sake of sounds,
an iamb from a trochee —
no matter how we strove — he could not tell apart.
Theocritus and Homer he disparaged,
but read, in compensation, Adam Smith,
and was a deep economist:
that is, he could assess the way
a state grows rich,
what it subsists upon, and why
it needs not gold
when it has got the simple product.
His father could not understand him,
and mortgaged his lands. (One: VII)
In "The Fragments of Onegin's Journey" ([XIX]: 3-4) Pushkin mentions prozaicheskie bredni, flamandskoy shkoly pyostryi sor (prosy divagations, the Flemish School’s variegated dross):
Порой дождливою намедни
Я, завернув на скотный двор...
Тьфу! прозаические бредни,
Фламандской школы пестрый сор!
Таков ли был я, расцветая?
Скажи, фонтан Бахчисарая!
Такие ль мысли мне на ум
Навел твой бесконечный шум,
Когда безмолвно пред тобою
Зарему я воображал
Средь пышных, опустелых зал...
Спустя три года, вслед за мною,
Скитаясь в той же стороне,
Онегин вспомнил обо мне.
The other day, during a rainy spell,
as I had dropped into the cattle yard —
Fie! Prosy divagations,
the Flemish School's variegated dross!
Was I like that when I was blooming?
Say, Fountain of Bahchisaray!
Were such the thoughts that to my mind
your endless purl suggested
when silently in front of you
Zaréma I imagined?...
Midst the sumptuous deserted halls
after the lapse of three years, in my tracks
in the same region wandering,
Onegin remembered me.
The surname Veen means in Dutch what Neva means in Finnish: "peat bog." In his poem Mednyi vsadnik ("The Bronze Horseman," 1833), known on Demonia (aka Antiterra, Earth's twin planet on which Ada is set) as "The Headless Horseman" (1.28), Pushkin mentions the Finnish fisherman, sad stepson of Nature, who cast in the Neva's waters his ancient net:
Прошло сто лет, и юный град,
Полнощных стран краса и диво,
Из тьмы лесов, из топи блат
Вознесся пышно, горделиво;
Где прежде финский рыболов,
Печальный пасынок природы,
Один у низких берегов
Бросал в неведомые воды
Свой ветхой невод, ныне там
По оживленным берегам
Громады стройные теснятся
Дворцов и башен; корабли
Толпой со всех концов земли
К богатым пристаням стремятся;
В гранит оделася Нева;
Мосты повисли над водами;
Темно-зелеными садами
Ее покрылись острова,
И перед младшею столицей
Померкла старая Москва,
Как перед новою царицей
Порфироносная вдова.
An age passed, and the young stronghold,
The charm and sight of northern nations,
From the woods’ dark and marshes’ cold,
Rose the proud one and precious.
Where once the Finnish fisherman,
Sad stepson of Nature, alone,
By low riverbanks’ a sand,
Cast into waters, never known,
His ancient net, now on the place,
Along the full of people banks,
Cluster the tall and graceful masses
Of castles and palaces; and sails
Hasten in throng to the rich quays
From all the lands our planet masters;
The Neva-river’s dressed with rocks;
Bridges hang o’er the waters proud;
Abundantly her isles are covered
With dark-green gardens’ gorgeous locks…
(tr. E. Bonver)
Rimsky-Korsakov's opera Skazanie o nevidimom grade Kitezhe i deve Fevronii ("The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh and the Maiden Fevroniya," 1907) brings to mind Lake Kitezh mentioned by Van at the beginning of Ada:
Daniel Veen’s mother was a Trumbell, and he was prone to explain at great length — unless sidetracked by a bore-baiter — how in the course of American history an English ‘bull’ had become a New England ‘bell.’ Somehow or other he had ‘gone into business’ in his twenties and had rather rankly grown into a Manhattan art dealer. He did not have — initially at least — any particular liking for paintings, had no aptitude for any kind of salesmanship, and no need whatever to jolt with the ups and downs of a ‘job’ the solid fortune inherited from a series of far more proficient and venturesome Veens. Confessing that he did not much care for the countryside, he spent only a few carefully shaded summer weekends at Ardis, his magnificent manor near Ladore. He had revisited only a few times since his boyhood another estate he had, up north on Lake Kitezh, near Luga, comprising, and practically consisting of, that large, oddly rectangular though quite natural body of water which a perch he had once clocked took half an hour to cross diagonally and which he owned jointly with his cousin, a great fisherman in his youth. (1.1)
Sabaneyev's father, a zoologist, is the author of a popular book on fishing.