Vladimir Nabokov

dyakon’s rich growl on ambon in Ada

By Alexey Sklyarenko, 13 April, 2022

Describing the death of his, Ada’s and Lucette’s mother Marina, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) mentions the dyakon’s rich growl on the ambon:

 

Numbers and rows and series — the nightmare and malediction harrowing pure thought and pure time — seemed bent on mechanizing his mind. Three elements, fire, water, and air, destroyed, in that sequence, Marina, Lucette, and Demon. Terra waited.

For seven years, after she had dismissed her life with her husband, a successfully achieved corpse, as irrelevant, and retired to her still dazzling, still magically well-staffed Côte d’Azur villa (the one Demon had once given her), Van’s mother had been suffering from various ‘obscure’ illnesses, which everybody thought she made up, or talentedly simulated, and which she contended could be, and partly were, cured by willpower. Van visited her less often than dutiful Lucette, whom he glimpsed there on two or three occasions; and once, in 1899, he saw, as he entered the arbutus-and-laurel garden of Villa Armina, a bearded old priest of the Greek persuasion, clad in neutral black, leaving on a motor bicycle for his Nice parish near the tennis courts. Marina spoke to Van about religion, and Terra, and the Theater, but never about Ada, and just as he did not suspect she knew everything about the horror and ardor of Ardis, none suspected what pain in her bleeding bowels she was trying to allay by incantations, and ‘self-focusing’ or its opposite device, ‘self-dissolving.’ She confessed with an enigmatic and rather smug smile that much as she liked the rhythmic blue puffs of incense, and the dyakon’s rich growl on the ambon, and the oily-brown ikon coped in protective filigree to receive the worshipper’s kiss, her soul remained irrevocably consecrated, naperekor (in spite of) Dasha Vinelander, to the ultimate wisdom of Hinduism.

Early in 1900, a few days before he saw Marina, for the last time, at the clinic in Nice (where he learned for the first time the name of her illness), Van had a ‘verbal’ nightmare, caused, maybe, by the musky smell in the Miramas (Bouches Rouges-du-Rhône) Villa Venus. Two formless fat transparent creatures were engaged in some discussion, one repeating ‘I can’t!’ (meaning ‘can’t die’ — a difficult procedure to carry out voluntarily, without the help of the dagger, the ball, or the bowl), and the other affirming ‘You can, sir!’ She died a fortnight later, and her body was burnt, according to her instructions. (3.1)

 

Darkbloom ('Notes to Ada'): dyakon: deacon.

 

In Voyna i mir (”War and Peace,” 1869) Leo Tolstoy describes a church service in Moscow in July, 1812, and mentions the dyakon who comes out to the amvon (ambon):

 

Дьякон вышел на амвон, выправил, широко отставив большой палец, длинные волосы из-под стихаря и, положив на груди крест, громко и торжественно стал читать слова молитвы:

— «Миром Господу помолимся».

«Миром, — все вместе, без различия сословий, без вражды, а соединенные братской любовью — будем молиться», — думала Наташа.

«О свышнем мире и о спасении душ наших!»

«О мире ангелов и душ всех бестелесных существ, которые живут над нами», — молилась Наташа.

 

The deacon came out to the ambon, used his thumb to pull his long hair out from under his surplice, and, pressing his cross to his heart, began to read in a loud and solemn voice the words of the prayer.

"As one community let us pray unto the Lord."

"As one community, without distinction of class, without enmity, united by brotherly love--let us pray!" thought Natasha.

"For the peace that is from above, and for the salvation of our souls."

"For the world of angels and all the spirits who dwell above us," prayed Natasha. (Book Three, Part One, chapter 18)

 

1812 is the year of Napoleon’s invasion of Russia and of the Great Moscow Fire. In Griboedov’s play in verse Gore ot uma (“Woe from Wit,” 1824) Colonel Skalozub says that the fire made a lot for Moscow’s adornment:

 

Фамусов

                        Решительно скажу: едва
Другая сыщется столица как Москва.

Скалозуб

        По моему сужденью,
Пожар способствовал ей много к украшенью.

Фамусов

Не поминайте нам, уж мало ли крехтят:
        С тех пор дороги, тротуары,
        Дома и все на новый лад.

Чацкий

     Дома новы́, но предрассудки стары.
        Порадуйтесь, не истребят
     Ни годы их, ни моды, ни пожары.

 

Famusov

Of all the capitals, big or small,

Moscow is surely best of all.

Skalozub

As far as I can judge,

To a large extent the fire made it such.

Famusov

Don't talk about the fire. Don't tease.

So much has changed ever since:

The roads, the houses, the pavements and all . . .

Chatski

The houses are new, the prejudices are old.

You should be pleased because a prejudice never dies,

It will survive the years, the fashions and the fires. (Act Two, scene 6)

 

The element that destroys Marina (whose body was burnt, according to her instructions) is fire. “Naperekor (in spite of) Dasha Vinelander” brings to mind naperekor stikhiyam (in spite of the elements), a phrase used in Griboedov’s play by Chatski:

 

Пускай меня объявят старовером,

Но хуже для меня наш Север во сто крат

С тех пор, как отдал всё в обмен, на новый лад,

И нравы, и язык, и старину святую,

И величавую одежду на другую

По шутовскому образцу:

Хвост сзади, спереди какой-то чудный выем,

Рассудку вопреки, наперекор стихиям;

Движенья связаны, и не краса лицу;

Смешные, бритые, седые подбородки!

Как платья, волосы, так и умы коротки!..

Ах! если рождены мы всё перенимать,

Хоть у китайцев бы нам несколько занять

Премудрого у них незнанья иноземцев;

Воскреснем ли когда от чужевластья мод?

Чтоб умный, бодрый наш народ
Хотя по языку нас не считал за немцев.

 

I may be called an old-believer, yet I think

Our North is worse a hundredfold

Since it adopted the new mode,

Having abandoned everything :

Our customs and our conditions,

The language, moral values and traditions,

And, in exchange of the grand gown,

Regardless of all trends

And common sense, in spite of the elements

We put on this apparel of a clown:

A tail, a funny cut - oh, what a scene !

It's tight and doesn't match the face;

This funny, grey-haired shaven chin !

'Which covers thee discovers thee!'- there's a phrase

If we adopt traditions from abroad with ease

We'd better learn a little from Chinese,

Their ignorance of foreigners.

Shall we awaken from the power of alien fashions

So that our wise and cheerful Russians

Might never think us to be Germans? (Act III, scene 22)

 

Dasha Vinelander is Ada’s pravoslavnaya (Greek-Orthodox) sister-in-law. While Dasha (a diminutive of Darya) is a Russian first name, Vinelander is a German surname. The Russian version of the surname Vinelander, Виноземцев, neatly rhymes with иноземцев (of foreigners), a word used by Chatski.

 

In “Ardis the Second” Marina quotes Chatski’s words to Sofia in Act One of Griboedov’s play:

 

Naked-faced, dull-haired, wrapped up in her oldest kimono (her Pedro had suddenly left for Rio), Marina reclined on her mahogany bed under a golden-yellow quilt, drinking tea with mare’s milk, one of her fads.

‘Sit down, have a spot of chayku,’ she said. ‘The cow is in the smaller jug, I think. Yes, it is.’ And when Van, having kissed her freckled hand, lowered himself on the ivanilich (a kind of sighing old hassock upholstered in leather): ‘Van, dear, I wish to say something to you, because I know I shall never have to repeat it again. Belle, with her usual flair for the right phrase, has cited to me the cousinage-dangereux-voisinage adage — I mean "adage," I always fluff that word — and complained qu’on s’embrassait dans tous les coins. Is that true?’

Van’s mind flashed in advance of his speech. It was, Marina, a fantastic exaggeration. The crazy governess had observed it once when he carried Ada across a brook and kissed her because she had hurt her toe. I’m the well-known beggar in the saddest of all stories.

‘Erunda (nonsense),’ said Van. ‘She once saw me carrying Ada across the brook and misconstrued our stumbling huddle (spotïkayushcheesya sliyanie).’

‘I do not mean Ada, silly,’ said Marina with a slight snort, as she fussed over the teapot. ‘Azov, a Russian humorist, derives erunda from the German hier und da, which is neither here nor there. Ada is a big girl, and big girls, alas, have their own worries. Mlle Larivière meant Lucette, of course. Van, those soft games must stop. Lucette is twelve, and naive, and I know it’s all clean fun, yet (odnako) one can never behave too delikatno in regard to a budding little woman. A propos de coins: in Griboedov’s Gore ot uma, "How stupid to be so clever," a play in verse, written, I think, in Pushkin’s time, the hero reminds Sophie of their childhood games, and says:

 

How oft we sat together in a corner

And what harm might there be in that?

 

but in Russian it is a little ambiguous, have another spot, Van?’ (he shook his head, simultaneously lifting his hand, like his father), ‘because, you see, — no, there is none left anyway — the second line, i kazhetsya chto v etom, can be also construed as "And in that one, meseems," pointing with his finger at a corner of the room. Imagine — when I was rehearsing that scene with Kachalov at the Seagull Theater, in Yukonsk, Stanislavski, Konstantin Sergeevich, actually wanted him to make that cosy little gesture (uyutnen’kiy zhest).’

‘How very amusing,’ said Van. (1.37)

 

Darkbloom ('Notes to Ada'): chayku: Russ., tea (diminutive).

Ivanilich: a pouf plays a marvelous part in Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilyich, where it sighs deeply under a friend of the widow’s.

cousinage: cousinhood is dangerous neighborhood.

on s’embrassait: kissing went on in every corner.

erunda: Russ., nonsense.

hier und da: Germ., here and there.

 

In Tolstoy’s “War and Peace” the cousinage-dangereux-voisinage adage is cited at least twice:

 

-- Как секреты-то этой всей молодежи шиты белыми нитками! -- сказала Анна Михайловна, указывая на выходящего Николая. -- Cousinage dangereux voisinage,  -- прибавила она.
-- Да, -- сказала графиня, после того как луч солнца, проникнувший в гостиную вместе с этим молодым поколением, исчез, и как будто отвечая на вопрос, которого никто ей не делал, но который постоянно занимал ее. -- Сколько страданий, сколько беспокойств перенесено за то, чтобы теперь на них радоваться! А и теперь, право, больше страха, чем радости. Все боишься, все боишься! Именно тот возраст, в котором так много опасностей и для девочек и для мальчиков.
-- Всё от воспитания зависит, -- сказала гостья.
-- Да, ваша правда, -- продолжала графиня. -- До сих пор я была, слава Богу, другом своих детей и пользуюсь полным их доверием, -- говорила графиня, повторяя заблуждение многих родителей, полагающих, что у детей их нет тайн от них. -- Я знаю, что я всегда буду первою confidente моих дочерей, и что Николенька, по своему пылкому характеру, ежели будет шалить (мальчику нельзя без этого), то все не так, как эти петербургские господа.
-- Да, славные, славные ребята, -- подтвердил граф, всегда разрешавший запутанные для него вопросы тем, что все находил славным. -- Вот подите, захотел в гусары! Да вот что вы хотите, ma chere!

-- Какое милое существо ваша меньшая, -- сказала гостья. -- Порох!
-- Да, порох, -- сказал граф. -- В меня пошла! И какой голос: хоть и  моя дочь, а я правду скажу, певица будет, Саломони другая. Мы взяли итальянца её учить.
-- Не рано ли? Говорят, вредно для голоса учиться в эту пору.
-- О, нет, какой рано! -- сказал граф. -- Как же наши матери выходили в двенадцать-тринадцать лет замуж?

 

"How plainly all these young people wear their hearts on their sleeves!" said Anna Mikhaylovna, pointing to Nicholas as he went out. "Cousinage-dangereux voisinage;" she added.

"Yes," said the countess when the brightness these young people had brought into the room had vanished; and as if answering a question no one had put but which was always in her mind, "and how much suffering, how much anxiety one has had to go through that we might rejoice in them now! And yet really the anxiety is greater now than the joy. One is always, always anxious! Especially just at this age, so dangerous both for girls and boys."

"It all depends on the bringing up," remarked the visitor.

"Yes, you're quite right," continued the countess. "Till now I have always, thank God, been my children's friend and had their full confidence," said she, repeating the mistake of so many parents who imagine that their children have no secrets from them. "I know I shall always be my daughters' first confidante, and that if Nicholas, with his impulsive nature, does get into mischief (a boy can't help it), he will all the same never be like those Petersburg young men."

"Yes, they are splendid, splendid youngsters," chimed in the count, who always solved questions that seemed to him perplexing by deciding that everything was splendid. "Just fancy: wants to be an hussar. What's one to do, my dear?"

"What a charming creature your younger girl is," said the visitor; "a little volcano!"

"Yes, a regular volcano," said the count. "Takes after me! And what a voice she has; though she's my daughter, I tell the truth when I say she'll be a singer, a second Salomoni! We have engaged an Italian to give her lessons."

"Isn't she too young? I have heard that it harms the voice to train it at that age."

"Oh no, not at all too young!" replied the count. "Why, our mothers used to be married at twelve or thirteen." (Volume One, Part I, chapter 12)

  

Когда Пьер подошёл к ним, он заметил, что Вера находилась в самодовольном увлечении разговора, князь Андрей (что с ним редко бывало) казался смущен.

- Как вы полагаете? - с тонкой улыбкой говорила Вера. - Вы, князь, так проницательны и так понимаете сразу характер людей. Что вы думаете о Натали, может ли она быть постоянна в своих привязанностях, может ли она так, как другие женщины (Вера разумела себя), один раз полюбить человека и навсегда остаться ему верною? Это я считаю настоящею любовью. Как вы думаете, князь?

- Я слишком мало знаю вашу сестру, - отвечал князь Андрей с насмешливой улыбкой, под которой он хотел скрыть свое смущение, - чтобы решить такой тонкий вопрос; и потом я замечал, что чем менее нравится женщина, тем она бывает постояннее, - прибавил он и посмотрел на Пьера, подошедшего в это время к ним.

- Да это правда, князь; в наше время, - продолжала Вера (упоминая о нашем времени, как вообще любят упоминать ограниченные люди, полагающие, что они нашли и оценили особенности нашего времени и что свойства людей изменяются со временем), в наше время девушка имеет столько свободы, что le plaisir d'etre courtisee часто заглушает в ней истинное чувство. Et Nathalie, il faut l'avouer, y est tres sensible.

Возвращение к Натали опять заставило неприятно поморщиться князя Андрея; он хотел встать, но Вера продолжала с еще более утонченной улыбкой.

- Я думаю, никто так не был courtisee, как она, - говорила Вера; - но никогда, до самого последнего времени никто серьезно ей не нравился. Вот вы знаете, граф, - обратилась она к Пьеру, - даже наш милый cousin Борис, который был, entre nous, очень и очень dans le pays du tendre...

Князь Андрей нахмурившись молчал.

- Вы ведь дружны с Борисом? - сказала ему Вера.

- Да, я его знаю...

- Он верно вам говорил про свою детскую любовь к Наташе?

- А была детская любовь? - вдруг неожиданно покраснев, спросил князь Андрей.

- Да. Vous savez entre cousin et cousine cette intimite mene quelquefois a l'amour: le cousinage est un dangereux voisinage, N'est ce pas?

- О, без сомнения, - сказал князь Андрей, и вдруг, неестественно оживившись, он стал шутить с Пьером о том, как он должен быть осторожным в своем обращении с своими 50-летними московскими кузинами, и в середине шутливого разговора встал и, взяв под руку Пьера, отвел его в сторону.

 

When Pierre went up to them he noticed that Vera was being carried away by her self-satisfied talk, but that Prince Andrew seemed embarrassed, a thing that rarely happened with him.

"What do you think?" Vera was saying with an arch smile. "You are so discerning, Prince, and understand people's characters so well at a glance. What do you think of Natalie? Could she be constant in her attachments? Could she, like other women" (Vera meant herself), "love a man once for all and remain true to him forever? That is what I consider true love. What do you think, Prince?"

"I know your sister too little," replied Prince Andrew, with a sarcastic smile under which he wished to hide his embarrassment, "to be able to solve so delicate a question, and then I have noticed that the less attractive a woman is the more constant she is likely to be," he added, and looked up Pierre who was just approaching them.

"Yes, that is true, Prince. In our days," continued Vera - mentioning "our days" as people of limited intelligence are fond of doing, imagining that they have discovered and appraised the peculiarities of "our days" and that human characteristics change with the times - "in our days a girl has so much freedom that the pleasure of being courted often stifles real feeling in her. And it must be confessed that Natalie is very susceptible." This return to the subject of Natalie caused Prince Andrew to knit his brows with discomfort: he was about to rise, but Vera continued with a still more subtle smile:

"I think no one has been more courted than she," she went on, "but till quite lately she never cared seriously for anyone. Now you know, Count," she said to Pierre, "even our dear cousin Boris, who, between ourselves, was very far gone dans le pays du tendre..." (alluding to a map of love much in vogue at that time).

Prince Andrew frowned and remained silent.

"You are friendly with Boris, aren't you?" asked Vera.

"Yes, I know him..."

"I expect he has told you of his childish love for Natasha?"

"Oh, there was childish love?" suddenly asked Prince Andrew, blushing unexpectedly.

"Yes, you know between cousins intimacy often leads to love. Le cousinage est un dangereux voisinage. Don't you think so?"

"Oh, undoubtedly!" said Prince Andrew, and with sudden and unnatural liveliness he began chaffing Pierre about the need to be very careful with his fifty-year-old Moscow cousins, and in the midst of these jesting remarks he rose, taking Pierre by the arm, and drew him aside. (Volume Two, Part III, chapter 21)

 

Dans le pays du tendre (“in the land of tenderness”), a phrase used by Vera Berg (Natasha Rostov's elder sister) in allusion to a map of love much in vogue at that time, brings to mind “a toilet roll of the Cart du Tendre” (as Van calls Kim Beauharnais’s album):

 

In an equally casual tone of voice Van said: ‘Darling, you smoke too much, my belly is covered with your ashes. I suppose Bouteillan knows Professor Beauharnais’s exact address in the Athens of Graphic Arts.’

‘You shall not slaughter him,’ said Ada. ‘He is subnormal, he is, perhaps, blackmailerish, but in his sordidity, there is an istoshnïy ston (‘visceral moan’) of crippled art. Furthermore, this page is the only really naughty one. And let’s not forget that a copperhead of eight was also ambushed in the brush’.

‘Art my foute. This is the hearse of ars, a toilet roll of the Carte du Tendre! I’m sorry you showed it to me. That ape has vulgarized our own mind-pictures. I will either horsewhip his eyes out or redeem our childhood by making a book of it: Ardis, a family chronicle.’ (2.7)

 

Darkbloom (‘Notes to Ada’): foute: French swear word made to sound ‘foot’.

ars: Lat., art.

Carte du Tendre: ‘Map of Tender Love’, sentimental allegory of the seventeenth century.

 

The surname of Kim Beauharnais (a kitchen boy and photographer at Ardis whom Van blinds for spying on him and Ada and attempting to blackmail Ada, 2.11) seems to hint at Josephine Beauharnais (Napoleon’s first wife, the Empress of France). During Van’s first tea party at Ardis Marina says that she used to love history and loved to identify herself with famous women, especially with famous beauties — Lincoln’s second wife or Queen Josephine:

 

They now had tea in a prettily furnished corner of the otherwise very austere central hall from which rose the grand staircase. They sat on chairs upholstered in silk around a pretty table. Ada’s black jacket and a pink-yellow-blue nosegay she had composed of anemones, celandines and columbines lay on a stool of oak. The dog got more bits of cake than it did ordinarily. Price, the mournful old footman who brought the cream for the strawberries, resembled Van’s teacher of history, ‘Jeejee’ Jones.

‘He resembles my teacher of history,’ said Van when the man had gone.

‘I used to love history,’ said Marina, ‘I loved to identify myself with famous women. There’s a ladybird on your plate, Ivan. Especially with famous beauties — Lincoln’s second wife or Queen Josephine.’

‘Yes, I’ve noticed — it’s beautifully done. We’ve got a similar set at home.’

‘Slivok (some cream)? I hope you speak Russian?’ Marina asked Van, as she poured him a cup of tea.

‘Neohotno no sovershenno svobodno (reluctantly but quite fluently),’ replied Vanslegka ulïbnuvshis’ (with a slight smile). ‘Yes, lots of cream and three lumps of sugar.’

‘Ada and I share your extravagant tastes. Dostoevski liked it with raspberry syrup.’

‘Pah,’ uttered Ada. (1.5)

 

Darkbloom (‘Notes to Ada’): with a slight smile: a pet formula of Tolstoy’s denoting cool superiority, if not smugness, in a character’s manner of speech.