According to Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969), all the hundred floramors (palatial brothels built by David van Veen, a wealthy architect of Flemish extraction, all over the world in memory of his grandson Eric) opened simultaneously on September 20, 1875:
His nephew and heir, an honest but astoundingly stuffy clothier in Ruinen (somewhere near Zwolle, I’m told), with a large family and a small trade, was not cheated out of the millions of guldens, about the apparent squandering of which he had been consulting mental specialists during the last ten years or so. All the hundred floramors opened simultaneously on September 20, 1875 (and by a delicious coincidence the old Russian word for September, ‘ryuen’,’ which might have spelled ‘ruin,’ also echoed the name of the ecstatic Neverlander’s hometown). (2.3).
According to Vladimir Dahl (Ada’s beloved lexicographer), ryuen’ (also spelled ruven’, the old Russian word for “September”) comes from ryov oleney (the roar of deer). In his essay on Chekhov, Tvorchestvo iz nichego (“Creation from Nothing,” 1905), the philosopher Lev Shestov mentions stado oleney (a herd of deer) that the doctor sees at the end of Chekhov’s story Palata No. 6 (“Ward Six,” 1892):
И, кажется, “Палату № 6” в своё время очень сочувственно приняли. Кстати прибавим, что доктор умирает очень красиво: в последние минуты видит стадо оленей и т. п.
I believe, Ward No. 6 met with a sympathetic reception at the time. In passing I would say that the doctor dies very beautifully: in his last moments he sees a herd of deer... (VI)
On the other hand, ryuen’ brings to mind reven’ (rhubarb, a vegetable derived from cultivated plants in the genus Rheum). In Chekhov’s story “Ward Six” Khobotov brings to Andrey Yefimych (the doctor) pilyuli iz revenya (rhubarb pills):
Он сердился на себя за то, что истратил на путешествие тысячу рублей, которая у него была скоплена. Как бы теперь пригодилась эта тысяча! Ему было досадно, что его не оставляют в покое люди. Хоботов считал своим долгом изредка навещать больного коллегу. Всё было в нем противно Андрею Ефимычу: и сытое лицо, и дурной, снисходительный той, и слово "коллега", и высокие сапоги; самое же противное было то, что он считал своею обязанностью лечить Андрея Ефимыча и думал, что в самом деле лечит. В каждое своё посещение он приносил склянку с бромистым калием и пилюли из ревеня.
He was angry with himself for having wasted on travelling the thousand roubles he had saved up. How useful that thousand roubles would have been now! He was vexed that people would not leave him in peace. Khobotov thought it his duty to look in on his sick colleague from time to time. Everything about him was revolting to Andrey Yefimych -- his well-fed face and vulgar, condescending tone, and his use of the word "colleague," and his high top-boots; the most revolting thing was that he thought it was his duty to treat Andrey Yefimych, and thought that he really was treating him. On every visit he brought a bottle of bromide and rhubarb pills. (Chapter XV)
Ada + rabarbar (a vernacular name of reven’, rhubarb) = radabarbara. In VN’s novel Bend Sinister (1947) Krug’s wife Olga is a regular radabarbára (full-blown handsome woman):
“Landscapes as yet unpolluted with conventional poetry, and life, that self-conscious stranger, being slapped on the back and told to relax.” He had written this upon his return, and Olga, with devilish relish, had pasted into a shagreen album indigenous allusions to the most original thinker of our times. Ember evoked her ample being, her thirty-seven resplendent years, the bright hair, the full lips, the heavy chin which went so well with the cooing undertones of her voice—something ventriloquial about her, a continuous soliloquy following in willowed shade the meanderings of her actual speech. He saw Krug, the ponderous dandruffed maestro, sitting there with a satisfied and sly smile on his big swarthy face (recalling that of Beethoven in the general correlation of its rugged features)—yes, lolling in that old rose armchair while Olga buoyantly took charge of the conversation—and how vividly one remembered the way she had of letting a sentence bounce and ripple over the three quick bites she took at the raisin cake she held, and the brisk triple splash of her plump hand over the sudden stretch of her lap as she brushed the crumbs away and went on with her story. Almost extravagantly healthy, a regular radabarbára [full-blown handsome woman]: those wide radiant eyes, that flaming cheek to which she would press the cool back of her hand, that shining white forehead with a whiter scar—the consequence of an automobile accident in the gloomy Lagodan mountains of legendary fame. Ember could not see how one might dispose of the recollection of such a life, the insurrection of such a widowhood. With her small feet and large hips, with her girlish speech and her matronly bosom, with her bright wits and the torrents of tears she shed that night, while dripping with blood herself, over the crippled crying doe that had rushed into the blinding lights of the car, with all this and with many other things that Ember knew he could not know, she would lie now, a pinch of blue dust in her cold columbarium. (Chapter 3)
The philosopher Adam Krug (the main character in Bend Sinister) brings to mind Robert Adam, the architect mentioned by Van in the floramor chapter:
It must have been a moving and magnificent sight — that of the old but still vigorous Dutchman with his rugged reptilian face and white hair, designing with the assistance of Leftist decorators the thousand and one memorial floramors he resolved to erect all over the world — perhaps even in brutal Tartary, which he thought was ruled by ‘Americanized Jews,’ but then ‘Art redeemed Politics’ — profoundly original concepts that we must condone in a lovable old crank. He began with rural England and coastal America, and was engaged in a Robert Adam-like composition (cruelly referred to by local wags as the Madam-I’m-Adam House), not far from Newport, Rodos Island, in a somewhat senile style, with marble columns dredged from classical seas and still encrusted with Etruscan oyster shells — when he died from a stroke while helping to prop up a propylon. It was only his hundredth house! (2.3)
Adam Krug's nickname in the spying department is Madamka. The grandfather of Eric Veen (the young author of an essay entitled “Villa Venus: an Organized Dream”), David van Veen has the same first name as Krug’s little son.
According to Van, all the hundred floramors opened simultaneously on September 20, 1875. In a letter of 7/19 September, 1875, to N. V. Khanykov Turgenev says that on the next day (September 20, 1875, NS) he will move to the new-built chalet at his and Viardot's villa Les frênes ("The Ash Trees") in Bougival:
Я Вас приму в новом своём доме, куда завтра переселяюсь, а г-н и г-жа Виардо будут очень довольны, если Вы при сей оказии останетесь у них обедать, и просят меня пригласить Вас, так же как Салтыкова и Соллогуба.
In Turgenev’s epistolary novel Perepiska (“The Correspondence,” 1856) Alexey Petrovich says that in one German town he was nicknamed der Kunst-Barbar (the art barbarian):
Я не ожидал, что получу, наконец, в одном немецком городишке затейливое прозванье: der Kunst-Barbar... И всё это даром, в самом полном смысле слова - даром! Вот то-то и есть... Помните, как мы с вами словесно и письменно рассуждали о любви, в какие тонкости вдавались; а на поверку выходит, что настоящая любовь - чувство, вовсе не похожее на то, каким мы ее себе представляли. Любовь даже вовсе не чувство; она - болезнь, известное состояние души и тела; она не развивается постепенно; в ней нельзя сомневаться, с ней нельзя хитрить, хотя она и проявляется не всегда одинаково; обыкновенно она овладевает человеком без спроса, внезапно, против его воли - ни дать ни взять холера или лихорадка... Подцепит его, голубчика, как коршун цыпленка, и понесет его куда угодно, как он там ни бейся и ни упирайся... В любви нет равенства, нет так называемого свободного соединения душ и прочих идеальностей, придуманных на досуге немецкими профессорами... Нет, в любви одно лицо - раб, а другое - властелин, и недаром толкуют поэты о цепях, налагаемых любовью. Да, любовь - цепь, и самая тяжелая. По крайней мере я дошел до этого убеждения, и дошел до него путем опыта, купил это убеждение ценою жизни, потому что умираю рабом. (letter of Sept., 1842)
Describing his first visit to Villa Venus, Van mentions Künstlerpostkarte Nr. 6034:
Three Egyptian squaws, dutifully keeping in profile (long ebony eye, lovely snub, braided black mane, honey-hued faro frock, thin amber arms, Negro bangles, doughnut earring of gold bisected by a pleat of the mane, Red Indian hairband, ornamental bib), lovingly borrowed by Eric Veen from a reproduction of a Theban fresco (no doubt pretty banal in 1420 B.C.), printed in Germany (Künstlerpostkarte Nr. 6034, says cynical Dr Lagosse), prepared me by means of what parched Eric called ‘exquisite manipulations of certain nerves whose position and power are known only to a few ancient sexologists,’ accompanied by the no less exquisite application of certain ointments, not too specifically mentioned in the pornolore of Eric’s Orientalia, for receiving a scared little virgin, the descendant of an Irish king, as Eric was told in his last dream in Ex, Switzerland, by a master of funerary rather than fornicatory ceremonies. (2.3)
In the name Lagosse there is lagos, Greek for “hare.” Chekhov is the author of Za dvumya zaytsami pogonish’sya, ni odnogo ne poymaesh’ (“If You Run after Two Hares, You will Catch Neither,” 1880).