Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0025838, Sun, 23 Nov 2014 02:26:16 +0300

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Bras d'Or, Raduga & Nirvana in Ada
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Van's maternal grandmother Daria ('Dolly') Durmanov was the daughter of Prince Peter Zemski, Governor of Bras d'Or, an American province in the Northeast of our great and variegated country, who had married, in 1824, Mary O'Reilly, an Irish woman of fashion. (1.1)

Prince Pyotr Vyazemski (1792-1878) was "an Irishman on his mother's side (O'Reilly)." (EO Commentary, vol. II, p. 27)

At the beginning of his poem Tolstomu ("To Tolstoy," 1818) addressed to Count Tolstoy the American (1782-1846) Vyazemski mentions myatezhnykh sklonnostey durman (the drug of rebellious inclinations) hurling Tolstoy iz raya v ad, iz ada v ray (from paradise to hell, from hell to paradise):

Американец и цыган,
На свете нравственном загадка,
Которого, как лихорадка,
Мятежных склонностей дурман
Или страстей кипящих схватка
Всегда из края мечет в край,
Из рая в ад, из ада в рай!


In his poem Vyazemski writes:

Ты знаешь цену Кондильяку,
В Вольтере любишь шуток дар
И платишь сердцем дань Жан-Жаку
You know the worth of Condillac,
you love in Voltaire his gift of jokes
and with your heart you give Jean Jacques his due.

In his reply to these lines Tolstoy says that he is more familiar with cognac than with Condillac (a French philosopher, 1715-80):

Ценю Вольтера остроту:
Подобен ум его Протею;
Талант женевца — прямоту,
Подчас о бедняках жалею.
Благоговею духом я
Пред важным мужем Кондильяком…
Скажу, морочить не любя:
Я более знаком с коньяком!

Bras d'Or is a Hennessy cognac.

Ada begins with a "quotation" from Tolstoy's Anna Karenin:

‘All happy families are more or less dissimilar; all unhappy ones are more or less alike,’ says a great Russian writer in the beginning of a famous novel (Anna Arkadievitch Karenina, transfigured into English by R.G. Stonelower, Mount Tabor Ltd., 1880). That pronouncement has little if any relation to the story to be unfolded now, a family chronicle, the first part of which is, perhaps, closer to another Tolstoy work, Detstvo i Otrochestvo (Childhood and Fatherland, Pontius Press, 1858). (1.1)

Tolstoy the American was a first cousin of Leo Tolstoy's father. According to Leo Tolstoy (who as a boy met his father's first cousin), Tolstoy the American was an extraordinary person, criminal and - at the same time - attractive:

Много бы хотелось рассказать про этого необыкновенного, преступного и привлекательного человека. (P. I. Biryukov, "L. N. Tolstoy. The Biography," Berlin, 1921)

Leo Tolstoy's eldest son Sergey is the author of the biographical essay "Fyodor Tolstoy the American" (Moscow, 1926). At the beginning of its Foreword S. L. Tolstoy quotes his father's words:

Граф Фёдор Иванович Толстой, прозванный Американцем, был человек необыкновенный, преступный и привлекательный; так о нём выразился его двоюродный племянник Лев Толстой. Он прожил бурную жизнь, нередко преступая основы общечеловеческой нравственности и игнорируя уголовный кодекс. Вместе с тем он был человек храбрый, энергичный, неглупый, остроумный, образованный для своего времени и преданный друг своих друзей.

In his reply to Vyazemski (quoted above in full) Tolstoy the American compares Voltaire's mind to Proteus (a sea god, son of Oceanus and Thetys, noted for his ability to assume different forms and to prophesy). In his poem Zhelanie ("Desire," 1858) Vyazemski compares desire to ever diverse Proteus:

Протей, всегда разнообразный,
Во все приманки красоты,
Во все мечты, во все соблазны
Волшебно облекалось ты.

In the poem's closing lines Vyazemski says that all he wants is spend the rest of his life in absence of desire:

Бесплодны будут заклинанья;
Отстань, не искушай меня;
В одном отсутствии желанья
Хочу провесть остаток дня.

This brings to mind Ada's epilogue:

Nirvana, Nevada, Vaniada. By the way, should I not add, my Ada, that only at the very last interview with poor dummy-mummy, soon after my premature — I mean, premonitory — nightmare about, ‘You can, Sir,’ she employed mon petit nom, Vanya, Vanyusha — never had before, and it sounded so odd, so tend… (voice trailing off, radiators tinkling).
‘Dummy-mum’ — (laughing). ‘Angels, too, have brooms — to sweep one’s soul clear of horrible images. My black nurse was Swiss-laced with white whimsies.’
Sudden ice hurtling down the rain pipe: brokenhearted stalactite.
Recorded and replayed in their joint memory was their early preoccupation with the strange idea of death. There is one exchange that it would be nice to enact against the green moving backdrop of one of our Ardis sets. The talk about ‘double guarantee’ in eternity. Start just before that.
‘I know there’s a Van in Nirvana. I’ll be with him in the depths moego ada, of my Hades,’ said Ada.
‘True, true’ (bird-effects here, and acquiescing branches, and what you used to call ‘golden gouts’).
‘As lovers and siblings,’ she cried, ‘we have a double chance of being together in eternity, in terrarity. Four pairs of eyes in paradise!’
‘Neat, neat,’ said Van.
Something of the sort. One great difficulty. The strange mirage-shimmer standing in for death should not appear too soon in the chronicle and yet it should permeate the first amorous scenes. Hard but not insurmountable (I can do anything, I can tango and tap-dance on my fantastic hands). By the way, who dies first?
Ada. Van. Ada. Vaniada. Nobody. Each hoped to go first, so as to concede, by implication, a longer life to the other, and each wished to go last, in order to spare the other the anguish or worries, of widowhood. One solution would be for you to marry Violet. (5.6)

Aged ninety-seven and ninety-four and a half, Van and Ada die immediately after finishing their book. They suffer of cancer (as their mother did), and bid Dr Lagosse to make them the last merciful injection of morphine.

In his poem Ferney (1859) Vyazemski says that, a fallen exile of heavenly kingdom, Voltaire poured poison into his holy vessel:

Он, падший изгнанник небесного царства,
В сосуд свой священный отраву вливал.

The Durmanovs’ favorite domain, however, was Raduga near the burg of that name, beyond Estotiland proper, in the Atlantic panel of the continent between elegant Kaluga, New Cheshire, U.S.A., and no less elegant Ladoga, Mayne, where they had their town house and where their three children were born: a son, who died young and famous, and a pair of difficult female twins. (1.1)

In Ferney Vyazemski mentions raduga (a rainbow):

Великий художник и зодчий великий
Дал жизнь сей природе красивой и дикой.
Вот радуга пышно сквозь тучи блеснула,
Широко полнеба она обогнула
И в горы краями дуги уперлась.

Любуюсь красою воздушной сей арки:
Как свежие краски прозрачны и ярки!
Как резко и нежно слились их оттенки!
А горы и тучи, как зданья простенки,
За аркой чернеют в глубокой дали.

But nature meant nothing to Voltaire:

Страстей возжигатель, сам в рабстве у страсти,
Не мог покориться мирительной власти
Природы бесстрастной, разумно спокойной,
С такою любовью и роскошью стройной
Пред ним расточившей богатства свои.

Не слушал он гласа ее вдохновений;
И дня лучезарность, и сумрака тени,
Природы зерцала, природы престолы,
Озера и горы, дубравы и долы —
Всё мертвою буквой немело пред ним.

In the poem's closing line Vyazemski calls Voltaire greshnik slavy ("the sinner of fame"):

О нет, не укором, а скорбью глубокой,
О немощах наших и в доле высокой,
Я, грешника славы, тебя помяну!

These lines echo the last paragraph of Pushkin's article "Voltaire (Correspondance inedite de Voltaire avec le president de Brosses, etc. Paris, 1836)" that appeared in the 3rd issue (the 4th issue was the last edited by Pushkin) of Sovremennik (The Contemporary):

Что из этого заключить? что гений имеет свои слабости, которые утешают посредственность, но печалят благородные сердца, напоминая им о несовершенстве человечества; что настоящее место писателя есть его учёный кабинет и что, наконец, независимость и самоуважение одни могут нас возвысить над мелочами жизни и над бурями судьбы.
A genius has his weaknesses that comfort mediocrity but sadden noble hearts reminding them of mankind's imperfection. A writer's ture place is his study. Independence and self-respect alone can raise us above the trifles of life and storms of Fate.

Alexey Sklyarenko

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