The name of the Dreyers's dog in VN’s novel Korol’, dama, valet (“King, Queen, Knave,” 1928), Tom seems to hint at Tomski, a character in Pushkin’s story Pikovaya dama (“The Queen of Spades,” 1833). At the end of Pushkin’s story Chekalinski tells Hermann (the mad gambler): Dama vasha ubita (“your queen has lost”). Literally, Chekalinski’s words mean: “your lady is killed.” VN’s novel ends in Martha’s death. At the end of Pushkin's Stseny iz rytsarskikh vremyon ("Scenes from Knightly Times," 1830) Franz (a namesake of the knave in KQK) exclaims: Odnako zh ya ey obyazan zhizniyu! ("Still, it is she to whom I owe my life!"). In KQK Dreyer (the king) does not suspect that he owes his life to his wife's death. A writing desk in the parlor of the Dreyers's house supports, in place of a lamp, bronzovyi rytsar' (a bronze knight) holding a lantern:
В бидермайеровской гостиной мебель походила на выставку в хорошем магазине. На письменном столе, которому Драйер предпочитал стол в конторе, стоял, вместо лампы, бронзовый рыцарь (прекрасной, впрочем, работы) с фонарём в руке.
The chairs in the parlor resembled a display in a good store. A writing desk with an unnecessary upper stage, consisting of unnecessary little drawers, supported, in place of a lamp, a bronze knight holding a lantern. (Chapter II)
The characters in KQK include the inventor with a cosmopolitan name and no determinable origin. One of the characters in Pushkin's "Scenes from Knightly Times" is Berthold Schwarz, a legendary German alchemist of the 14th century who is credited with the invention of the gunpowder.
The surname Dreyer seems to hint at drei ("three" in German). Describing a party in “Ardis the Second,” Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) mentions Doc Ecksreher who thought that Rack’s wife Elsie ‘would present him with driplets in dry weeks:’
The melancholy young German was in a philosophical mood shading into the suicidal. He had to return to Kalugano with his Elsie, who Doc Ecksreher thought ‘would present him with driplets in dry weeks.’ He hated Kalugano, his and her home town, where in a moment of ‘mutual aberration’ stupid Elsie had given him her all on a park bench after a wonderful office party at Muzakovski’s Organs where the oversexed pitiful oaf had a good job.
‘When are you leaving?’ asked Ada.
‘Forestday — after tomorrow.’
‘Fine. That’s fine. Adieu, Mr Rack.’
Poor Philip drooped, fingerpainting sad nothings on wet stone, shaking his heavy head, gulping visibly.
‘One feels… One feels,’ he said, ‘that one is merely playing a role and has forgotten the next speech.’
‘I’m told many feel that,’ said Ada; ‘it must be a furchtbar feeling.’
‘Cannot be helped? No hope any more at all? I am dying, yes?’
‘You are dead, Mr Rack,’ said Ada. (1.32)
Doc Ecksreher is a play on the X rays (discovered by Wilhelm Roentgen in 1895). In his preface to Marcel Proust’s Les Plaisirs et les Jours (“Pleasures and Days,” 1896) Anatole France mentions a bright and shining arrow, a flash of lightning which, like the ray of the German doctor, can go right through bodies:
Il nous attire, il nous retient dans une atmosphère de serre chaude, parmi des orchidées savantes qui ne nourrissent pas en terre leur étrange et maladive beauté. Soudain, dans l'air lourd et délicieux, passe une flèche lumineuse, un éclair qui, comme le rayon du docteur allemand, traverse les corps. D'un trait le poète a pénétré la pensée secrète, le désir inavoué.
He lures us into a greenhouse atmosphere and detains us there, amid wild orchids that do not draw the nourishment for their strange and unhealthy beauty from this earth. Suddenly there passes, through the heavy and languid air, a bright and shining arrow, a flash of lightning which, like the ray of the German doctor, can go right through bodies. At a stroke the poet has penetrated secret thoughts and hidden desires.
In Les regrets, rêveries couleur du temps (“Regrets, Reveries the Color of Time”), the penultimate story in Les Plaisirs et les Jours, Proust speaks of novels and playing cards and mentions dames, rois ou valets (queens, kings or knaves) who were the still guests at her wildest parties:
Cartes, romans, pour avoir tenu si souvent dans sa main, être restés si longtemps sur sa table; dames, rois ou valets, qui furent les immobiles convives de ses fêtes les plus folles; héros de romans et héroïnes qui songiez auprès de son lit sous les feux croisés de sa lampe et de ses yeux votre songe silencieux et plein de voix pourtant, vous n’avez pu laisser évaporer tout le parfum dont l’air de sa chambre, le tissu de ses robes, le toucher de ses mains ou de ses genoux vous imprégna.
Cards, novels, you were so often in her hands, or remained for so long on her table; queens, kings or knaves, who were the still guests at her wildest parties; heroes of novels and heroines who, at her bedside, caught in the cross-beam of her lamp and her eyes, dreamt your silent dream, a dream that was nonetheless filled with voices: you cannot have simply let it evaporate – all the perfume with which the air of her bedroom, the fabric of her dresses and the touch of her hands or her knees imbued you. (chapter VIII “Reliques”)
At a Mad Tea-Party the Dormouse (a character in Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland) tells a story about three little sisters whose names were Elsie, Lacie and Tillie and who lived at the bottom of a well and drew everything that begins with an M:
'They were learning to draw,' the Dormouse went on, yawning and rubbing its eyes, for it was getting very sleepy; 'and they drew all manner of things — everything that begins with an M — '
'Why with an M?' said Alice.
'Why not?' said the March Hare.
Alice was silent.
The Dormouse had closed its eyes by this time, and was going off into a doze; but, on being pinched by the Hatter, it woke up again with a little shriek, and went on: ' — that begins with an M, such as mouse-traps, and the moon, and memory, and muchness — you know you say things are "much of a muchness" — did you ever see such a thing as a drawing of a muchness?' (chapter 7: “A Mad Tea-Party”)
The names Martha (of the Queen in KQK) and Marcel (of the narrator in Proust's In Search of Lost Time) begin with M. Some characters (for instance, the Queen) in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (translated into Russian by VN as Anya v strane chudes, 1923) are the playing cards.
Poisoned by his jealous wife Elsie, Rack dies in Ward Five of the Kalugano hospital (1.42). Palata No. 6 ("Ward Six," 1892) is a story by Chekhov (whose play "The Three Sisters" is known on Demonia, aka Antiterra, Earth's twin planet on which Ada is set, as "Four Sisters"). In Chekhov’s story Dama s sobachkoy (“The Lady with the Lapdog,” 1899) the action begins in Yalta. The place names Yalta and Altyn Tagh sounded strangely attractive to poor mad Aqua (the twin sister of Van’s, Ada’s and Lucette’s mother Marina in Ada):
Actually, Aqua was less pretty, and far more dotty, than Marina. During her fourteen years of miserable marriage she spent a broken series of steadily increasing sojourns in sanatoriums. A small map of the European part of the British Commonwealth — say, from Scoto-Scandinavia to the Riviera, Altar and Palermontovia — as well as most of the U.S.A., from Estoty and Canady to Argentina, might be quite thickly prickled with enameled red-cross-flag pins, marking, in her War of the Worlds, Aqua’s bivouacs. She had plans at one time to seek a modicum of health (‘just a little grayishness, please, instead of the solid black’) in such Anglo-American protectorates as the Balkans and Indias, and might even have tried the two Southern Continents that thrive under our joint dominion. Of course, Tartary, an independent inferno, which at the time spread from the Baltic and Black seas to the Pacific Ocean, was touristically unavailable, though Yalta and Altyn Tagh sounded strangely attractive… But her real destination was Terra the Fair and thither she trusted she would fly on libellula long wings when she died. Her poor little letters from the homes of madness to her husband were sometimes signed: Madame Shchemyashchikh-Zvukov (‘Heart rending-Sounds’). (1.3)
Aqua's pseudonym hints at shchemyashchiy zvuk (a heart-rending sound), a phrase that occurs in several poems of Alexander Blok. In a letter of Jan. 31, 1906, to Pyotr Pertsov Blok mentions Lermontov (cf. Palermontovia) and quotes Tomski's ballad from Tchaikovsky's opera "The Queen of Spades:"
Граф Сэн-Жермэн и «Московская Венера» совсем не у Лермонтова. Очевидно, я написал так туманно об этом, потому что тут для меня многое разумелось само собой. Это — «Пиковая дама», и даже почти уж не пушкинская, а Чайковского (либретто Модеста Чайковского):
Однажды в Версале aux jeux de la reine
Venus Moscovite проигралась дотла…
В числе приглашённых был граф Сэн-Жермэн.
Следя за игрой… И ей прошептал
Слова, слаще звуков Моцарта…
(Три карты, три карты, три карты)…
Once in Versailles aux jeux de la reine
La Vénus Moscovite lost all her money...
Among the guests was Count Saint-Germain.
Watching the game... and he whispered to her
the words sweeter than the sounds of Mozart...
(Three cards, three cards, three cards)...
и т. д. — Но ведь это пункт «маскарадный» («Маскарад» Лермонтова), магический пункт, в котором уже нет «Пушкинского и Лермонтовского», как «двух начал петербургского периода», но Пушкин «аполлонический» полетел в бездну, столкнутый туда рукой Чайковского — мага и музыканта, а Лермонтов, сам когда-то побывавший в бездне, встал над ней и окостенел в магизме, и кричит Пушкину вниз: «Добро, строитель!» Это — «всё, кружась, исчезает во мгле». Конечно, если это туманно написано, просто можно вычеркнуть. Я путаюсь в этом страшноватом для меня пункте. — Спасибо, спасибо!
So much for the strong counter-counter arguments (see also the updated version of my previous post, “Tom in King, Queen, Knave; Ferdinand & Segur in Spring in Fialta”).