Yes! Wasn't that a scream? Larivière
blossoming forth, bosoming forth as a great writer! A sensational Canadian
bestselling author! Her story 'The Necklace' (La rivière de diamants)
had become a classic in girls' schools and her gorgeous pseudonym 'Guillaume de
Monparnasse' (the leaving out of the 't' made it more intime) was
well-known from Quebec to Kaluga. (1.31)
In his Foreword to "Paul Verlaine. Poems Selected and
Translated by F. Sologub" (1908) Maximilian Voloshin says that he can
hear the sounds of intimnyi golos (the intimate voice) in Lermontov's
poetry, but does not hear them in Pushkin:
Я слышу, например, звуки интимного голоса у
Лермонтова, но не слышу их у Пушкина.
Like Montparnasse, the name Lermontov has
mont in it. In his Demon (1829-40) Lermontov compares Mount
Kazbek to gran' almaza (a diamond's facet):
И над вершинами Кавказа
Изгнанник рая
пролетал:
Под ним Казбек, как грань алмаза,
Снегами вечными
сиял...
In Ada Van mentions Granial Maza, the cheap Caucasian
perfume of his father's mistress:
His father saw him off. Demon had dyed his
hair a blacker black. He wore a diamond ring blazing like a Caucasian ridge. His
long, black, blue-ocellated wings trailed and quivered in the ocean breeze.
Lyudi oglyadïvalis' (people turned to look). A temporary Tamara, all
kohl, kasbek rouge, and flamingo-boa, could not decide what would please her
daemon lover more - just moaning and ignoring his handsome son or acknowledging
bluebeard's virility as reflected in morose Van, who could not stand her
Caucasian perfume, Granial Maza, seven dollars a bottle.
(1.29)
Darkbloom ('Notes to Ada'): Granial Maza: a perfume named after Mt Kazbek’s ‘gran’ almaza’ (diamond’s facet) of
Lermontov’s The
Demon.
In Part Three of Ada the corresponding lines from
Lermontov's Demon are paraphrased by Van:
Somehow, after the interchange occasioned by
Lucette's death such nonclandestine correspondence had been established with the
tacit sanction of Demon:
And o'er the summits of the Tacit
He, banned from Paradise, flew on:
Beneath him, like a brilliant's
facet,
Mount Peck with snows eternal shone. (3.7)
In a draft of his Gavriiliada ("The Gavriliad,"
1821) Pushkin mentions the secret flowers of Parnassus and arkhivy
ada (the archives of Hell):
О вы, которые любили
Парнаса тайные
цветы
И своевольные мечты
Вниманьем слабым наградили,
Спасите труд
небрежный мой
Под
сенью покрова
-
От рук невежества слепого,
От взоров зависти косой.
Картины, думы и
рассказы
Для вас я вновь перемешал,
Смешное с важным сочетал
И бешеной
любви проказы
В архивах ада отыскал...
I have mixed for you
again
the pictures, thoughts and tales,
combined the funny with the serious
and discovered the pranks of a frenzied love
in the archives of hell.
Van's and Ada's father,
Baron Demon Veen is "a Manhattan banker of ancient Anglo-Irish ancestry"
(1.1). In his poem Russkaya revolyutsiya ("The Russian Revolution,"
1920) Maximilian Voloshin says that in Russia we never knew that
"formidable demon, the Capital:"
А грозный демон — Капитал —
Властитель фабрик, Князь
заботы,
Сущность отстоенной работы,
Преображённая в
кристалл, —
Был нам
неведом...
Alexey Sklyarenko