Subject
Headless Horseman, Texture of Time,
Captain Tapper & Ward Five in Ada
Captain Tapper & Ward Five in Ada
From
Date
Body
On Antiterra (aka Demonia, Earth’s twin planet on which Ada is set)
Pushkin’s poem Mednyi vsadnik (“The Bronze Horseman,” 1833) is known as
Headless Horseman:
The year 1880 (Aqua was still alive ― somehow, somewhere!) was to prove to
be the most retentive and talented one in his long, too long, never too long
life. He was ten. His father had lingered in the West where the many-colored
mountains acted upon Van as they had on all young Russians of genius. He
could solve an Euler-type problem or learn by heart Pushkin’s ‘Headless
Horseman’ poem in less than twenty minutes.
In his poem Zabludivshiysya tramvay (“The Lost Tram,” 1921) Gumilyov
mentions the chopped-off heads and Falconet's equestrian statue of Peter I
(the Bronze Horseman of Pushkin's poem):
Вывеска... кровью налитые буквы
Гласят: "Зеленная", - знаю, тут
Вместо капусты и вместо брюквы
Мёртвые головы продают.
В красной рубашке, с лицом как вымя,
Голову срезал палач и мне,
Она лежала вместе с другими
Здесь, в ящике скользком, на самом дне.
A sign...Blood-filled letters
Announce: "Zelennaya,"-I know that here
Instead of cabbages and rutabagas
The heads of the dead are for sale.
In a red shirt, with a face like an udder,
The executioner cuts my head off, too,
It lies together with the others
Here, in a slippery box, at the very bottom.
....
И сразу ветер знакомый и сладкий,
И за мостом летит на меня
Всадника длань в железной перчатке
И два копыта его коня.
And a sudden, familiar, sweet wind blows,
A horseman's hand in an iron glove
And two hooves of his horse
Fly at me over the bridge.
In his poem Kantsona vtoraya (“Second Canzone,” 1920) Gumilyov calls
mayatnik (the pendulum) vremeni nepriznannyi zhenikh (“Time’s unrecognized
fiancé”) that chops off the pretty heads of plotting seconds:
Маятник старательный и грубый,
Времени непризнанный жених,
Заговорщицам секундам рубит
Головы хорошенькие их.
The assiduous and rude pendulum,
Time's unrecognized bridegroom,
chops off the pretty heads
of plotting seconds.
In Chekhov’s story Duel’ (“The Duel,” 1891) von Koren asks Dr Ustimovich
to stop moving to and fro like a pendulum:
- Доктор, - сказал зоолог, - будьте добры, не
ходите как маятник. У меня от вас мелькает
в глазах.
Доктор остановился. Фон Корен стал прицел
иваться в Лаевского.
"Doctor," said the zoologist, "be so good as not to move to and fro like a
pendulum. You make me dizzy."
The doctor stood still. Von Koren began to take aim at Laevski. (chapter
XIX)
In his essay Texture of Time Van says that he was wounded in his duel with
the Imposter:
Here they are, the two rocky ruin-crowned hills that I have retained for
seventeen years in my mind with decalcomaniac romantic vividness ― though
not quite exactly, I confess; memory likes the otsebyatina (‘what one
contributes oneself’); but the slight discrepancy is now corrected and the
act of artistic correction enhances the pang of the Present. The sharpest
feeling of nowness, in visual terms, is the deliberate possession of a
segment of Space collected by the eye. This is Time’s only contact with
Space, but it has a far-reaching reverberation. To be eternal the Present
must depend on the conscious spanning of an infinite expansure. Then, and
only then, is the Present equatable with Timeless Space. I have been wounded
in my duel with the Imposter. (Part Four)
In the Kalugano forest Van fights a pistol duel with Captain Tapper, of Wild
Violet Lodge (1.42). The name of Van’s adversary hints at Chekhov’s story
Tapyor (“The Ballroom Pianist,” 1885). In the Kalugano hospital where he
recovers from the wound received in his duel with Tapper Van visits Philip
Rack, the composer (and one of Ada’s lovers) who was poisoned by his
jealous wife Elsie and who dies in Ward Five (where hopeless cases are
kept). In his essay on Chekhov, Tvorchestvo iz nichego (“Creation from
Nothing,” 1905), Lev Shestov (the philosopher whose penname comes from
shest’, “six”) calls Chekhov pevets beznadyozhnosti (the bard of
hopelessness). In a letter of Nov. 25, 1892, to Suvorin Chekhov complains
that modern art, and literature in particular, lacks the alcohol that would
intoxicate the reader and modestly compares his story Palata №. 6 (“Ward
No. 6,” 1892) to lemonade:
Вас нетрудно понять, и Вы напрасно бранит
е себя за то, что неясно выражаетесь. Вы го
рький пьяница, а я угостил Вас сладким лим
онадом, и Вы, отдавая должное лимонаду, сп
раведливо замечаете, что в нём нет спирта.
В наших произведениях нет именно алкогол
я, который бы пьянил и порабощал, и это Вы
хорошо даёте понять. Отчего нет? Оставляя
в стороне ?Палату № 6? и меня самого, будем
говорить вообще, ибо это интересней. Буде
м говорить об общих причинах, коли Вам не
скучно, и давайте захватим целую эпоху. Ск
ажите по совести, кто из моих сверстников,
т. е. людей в возрасте 30―45 лет дал миру хот
я одну каплю алкоголя? Разве Короленко, На
дсон и все нынешние драматурги не лимона
д? Разве картины Репина или Шишкина кружи
ли Вам голову? Мило, талантливо, Вы восхищ
аетесь и в то же время никак не можете заб
ыть, что Вам хочется курить. Наука и техни
ка переживают теперь великое время, для н
ашего же брата это время рыхлое, кислое, с
кучное, сами мы кислы и скучны, умеем рожд
ать только гуттаперчевых мальчиков, и не
видит этого только Стасов, которому приро
да дала редкую способность пьянеть даже о
т помоев. Причины тут не в глупости нашей,
не в бездарности и не в наглости, как дума
ет Буренин, а в болезни, которая для худож
ника хуже сифилиса и полового истощения.
У нас нет ?чего-то?, это справедливо, и это
значит, что поднимите подол нашей музе, и
Вы увидите там плоское место. Вспомните, ч
то писатели, которых мы называем вечными
или просто хорошими и которые пьянят нас,
имеют один общий и весьма важный признак:
они куда-то идут и Вас зовут туда же, и Вы ч
увствуете не умом, а всем своим существом,
что у них есть какая-то цель, как у тени от
ца Гамлета, которая недаром приходила и т
ревожила воображение. У одних, смотря по к
алибру, цели ближайшие ― крепостное прав
о, освобождение родины, политика, красота
или просто водка, как у Дениса Давыдова, у
других цели отдалённые ― бог, загробная ж
изнь, счастье человечества и т. п. Лучшие и
з них реальны и пишут жизнь такою, какая о
на есть, но оттого, что каждая строчка про
питана, как соком, сознанием цели, Вы, кром
е жизни, какая есть, чувствуете еще ту жиз
нь, какая должна быть, и это пленяет Вас.
It is easy to understand you, and there is no need for you to abuse yourself
for obscurity of expression. You are a hard drinker, and I have regaled you
with sweet lemonade, and you, after giving the lemonade its due, justly
observe that there is no spirit in it. That is just what is lacking in our
productions―the alcohol which could intoxicate and subjugate, and you state
that very well. Why not? Putting aside "Ward No. 6" and myself, let us
discuss the matter in general, for that is more interesting. Let us discuss
the general causes, if that won't bore you, and let us include the whole
age. Tell me honestly, who of my contemporaries―that is, men between thirty
and forty-five―have given the world one single drop of alcohol? Are not
Korolenko, Nadson, and all the playwrights of to-day, lemonade? Have Repin's
or Shishkin's pictures turned your head? ...We are stale and dull ourselves,
we can only beget gutta-percha boys, and the only person who does not see
that is Stasov, to whom nature has given a rare faculty for getting drunk on
slops. The causes of this are not to be found in our stupidity, our lack of
talent, or our insolence, as Burenin imagines, but in a disease which for
the artist is worse than syphilis or sexual exhaustion. We lack "something,"
that is true, and that means that, lift the robe of our muse, and you will
find within an empty void. Let me remind you that the writers, who we say
are for all time or are simply good, and who intoxicate us, have one common
and very important characteristic; they are going towards something and are
summoning you towards it, too, and you feel not with your mind, but with
your whole being, that they have some object, just like the ghost of
Hamlet's father, who did not come and disturb the imagination for nothing.
Some have more immediate objects―the abolition of serfdom, the liberation
of their country, politics, beauty, or simply vodka, like Denis Davydov;
others have remote objects―God, life beyond the grave, the happiness of
humanity, and so on.
Chekhov calls Suvorin gor'kiy p'yanitsa (“a hard drinker”). In Blok's poem
Neznakomka (Incognita, 1906) p'yanitsy s glazami krolikov (the drunks with
the eyes of rabbits) cry out: "In vino veritas!" The characters of Ada
include Dr Krolik, Ada’s beloved lepidopterist and teacher of natural
history (who never appears but is often mentioned in the novel). Alexander
Blok is the author of Nochnaya fialka (“The Night Violet,” 1906), a poem
subtitled Son (a Dream). The manuscript of Ada is typed out by Violet Knox,
old Van’s secretary whose surname sounds like nox, the Latin word for
“night.” After Van’s and Ada’s death Violet Knox marries Ronald Oranger,
the editor of Ada (5.4). In his poem V etot moy blagoslovennyi vecher…
(“In this Blessed Evening of Mine…” 1917) Gumilyov compares the stars to
voskovye apel’siny (the oranges of wax) that are served at Christmas:
И светились звёзды золотые,
Приглашённые на торжество,
Словно апельсины восковые,
Те, что подают на Рождество.
Van and Ada (whom Dr Lagosse makes the last merciful injection of morphine)
die on the same day in winter of 1967. The two poets who could not stand
each other, Blok and Gumilyov died almost simultaneously in August of 1921.
Alexey Sklyarenko
Search archive with Google:
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Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,dana.dragunoiu@gmail.com,shvabrin@humnet.ucla.edu
Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
AdaOnline: "http://www.ada.auckland.ac.nz/
The Nabokov Society of Japan's Annotations to Ada: http://vnjapan.org/main/ada/index.html
The VN Bibliography Blog: http://vnbiblio.com/
Search the archive with L-Soft: https://listserv.ucsb.edu/lsv-cgi-bin/wa?A0=NABOKV-L
Manage subscription options :http://listserv.ucsb.edu/lsv-cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=NABOKV-L
Pushkin’s poem Mednyi vsadnik (“The Bronze Horseman,” 1833) is known as
Headless Horseman:
The year 1880 (Aqua was still alive ― somehow, somewhere!) was to prove to
be the most retentive and talented one in his long, too long, never too long
life. He was ten. His father had lingered in the West where the many-colored
mountains acted upon Van as they had on all young Russians of genius. He
could solve an Euler-type problem or learn by heart Pushkin’s ‘Headless
Horseman’ poem in less than twenty minutes.
In his poem Zabludivshiysya tramvay (“The Lost Tram,” 1921) Gumilyov
mentions the chopped-off heads and Falconet's equestrian statue of Peter I
(the Bronze Horseman of Pushkin's poem):
Вывеска... кровью налитые буквы
Гласят: "Зеленная", - знаю, тут
Вместо капусты и вместо брюквы
Мёртвые головы продают.
В красной рубашке, с лицом как вымя,
Голову срезал палач и мне,
Она лежала вместе с другими
Здесь, в ящике скользком, на самом дне.
A sign...Blood-filled letters
Announce: "Zelennaya,"-I know that here
Instead of cabbages and rutabagas
The heads of the dead are for sale.
In a red shirt, with a face like an udder,
The executioner cuts my head off, too,
It lies together with the others
Here, in a slippery box, at the very bottom.
....
И сразу ветер знакомый и сладкий,
И за мостом летит на меня
Всадника длань в железной перчатке
И два копыта его коня.
And a sudden, familiar, sweet wind blows,
A horseman's hand in an iron glove
And two hooves of his horse
Fly at me over the bridge.
In his poem Kantsona vtoraya (“Second Canzone,” 1920) Gumilyov calls
mayatnik (the pendulum) vremeni nepriznannyi zhenikh (“Time’s unrecognized
fiancé”) that chops off the pretty heads of plotting seconds:
Маятник старательный и грубый,
Времени непризнанный жених,
Заговорщицам секундам рубит
Головы хорошенькие их.
The assiduous and rude pendulum,
Time's unrecognized bridegroom,
chops off the pretty heads
of plotting seconds.
In Chekhov’s story Duel’ (“The Duel,” 1891) von Koren asks Dr Ustimovich
to stop moving to and fro like a pendulum:
- Доктор, - сказал зоолог, - будьте добры, не
ходите как маятник. У меня от вас мелькает
в глазах.
Доктор остановился. Фон Корен стал прицел
иваться в Лаевского.
"Doctor," said the zoologist, "be so good as not to move to and fro like a
pendulum. You make me dizzy."
The doctor stood still. Von Koren began to take aim at Laevski. (chapter
XIX)
In his essay Texture of Time Van says that he was wounded in his duel with
the Imposter:
Here they are, the two rocky ruin-crowned hills that I have retained for
seventeen years in my mind with decalcomaniac romantic vividness ― though
not quite exactly, I confess; memory likes the otsebyatina (‘what one
contributes oneself’); but the slight discrepancy is now corrected and the
act of artistic correction enhances the pang of the Present. The sharpest
feeling of nowness, in visual terms, is the deliberate possession of a
segment of Space collected by the eye. This is Time’s only contact with
Space, but it has a far-reaching reverberation. To be eternal the Present
must depend on the conscious spanning of an infinite expansure. Then, and
only then, is the Present equatable with Timeless Space. I have been wounded
in my duel with the Imposter. (Part Four)
In the Kalugano forest Van fights a pistol duel with Captain Tapper, of Wild
Violet Lodge (1.42). The name of Van’s adversary hints at Chekhov’s story
Tapyor (“The Ballroom Pianist,” 1885). In the Kalugano hospital where he
recovers from the wound received in his duel with Tapper Van visits Philip
Rack, the composer (and one of Ada’s lovers) who was poisoned by his
jealous wife Elsie and who dies in Ward Five (where hopeless cases are
kept). In his essay on Chekhov, Tvorchestvo iz nichego (“Creation from
Nothing,” 1905), Lev Shestov (the philosopher whose penname comes from
shest’, “six”) calls Chekhov pevets beznadyozhnosti (the bard of
hopelessness). In a letter of Nov. 25, 1892, to Suvorin Chekhov complains
that modern art, and literature in particular, lacks the alcohol that would
intoxicate the reader and modestly compares his story Palata №. 6 (“Ward
No. 6,” 1892) to lemonade:
Вас нетрудно понять, и Вы напрасно бранит
е себя за то, что неясно выражаетесь. Вы го
рький пьяница, а я угостил Вас сладким лим
онадом, и Вы, отдавая должное лимонаду, сп
раведливо замечаете, что в нём нет спирта.
В наших произведениях нет именно алкогол
я, который бы пьянил и порабощал, и это Вы
хорошо даёте понять. Отчего нет? Оставляя
в стороне ?Палату № 6? и меня самого, будем
говорить вообще, ибо это интересней. Буде
м говорить об общих причинах, коли Вам не
скучно, и давайте захватим целую эпоху. Ск
ажите по совести, кто из моих сверстников,
т. е. людей в возрасте 30―45 лет дал миру хот
я одну каплю алкоголя? Разве Короленко, На
дсон и все нынешние драматурги не лимона
д? Разве картины Репина или Шишкина кружи
ли Вам голову? Мило, талантливо, Вы восхищ
аетесь и в то же время никак не можете заб
ыть, что Вам хочется курить. Наука и техни
ка переживают теперь великое время, для н
ашего же брата это время рыхлое, кислое, с
кучное, сами мы кислы и скучны, умеем рожд
ать только гуттаперчевых мальчиков, и не
видит этого только Стасов, которому приро
да дала редкую способность пьянеть даже о
т помоев. Причины тут не в глупости нашей,
не в бездарности и не в наглости, как дума
ет Буренин, а в болезни, которая для худож
ника хуже сифилиса и полового истощения.
У нас нет ?чего-то?, это справедливо, и это
значит, что поднимите подол нашей музе, и
Вы увидите там плоское место. Вспомните, ч
то писатели, которых мы называем вечными
или просто хорошими и которые пьянят нас,
имеют один общий и весьма важный признак:
они куда-то идут и Вас зовут туда же, и Вы ч
увствуете не умом, а всем своим существом,
что у них есть какая-то цель, как у тени от
ца Гамлета, которая недаром приходила и т
ревожила воображение. У одних, смотря по к
алибру, цели ближайшие ― крепостное прав
о, освобождение родины, политика, красота
или просто водка, как у Дениса Давыдова, у
других цели отдалённые ― бог, загробная ж
изнь, счастье человечества и т. п. Лучшие и
з них реальны и пишут жизнь такою, какая о
на есть, но оттого, что каждая строчка про
питана, как соком, сознанием цели, Вы, кром
е жизни, какая есть, чувствуете еще ту жиз
нь, какая должна быть, и это пленяет Вас.
It is easy to understand you, and there is no need for you to abuse yourself
for obscurity of expression. You are a hard drinker, and I have regaled you
with sweet lemonade, and you, after giving the lemonade its due, justly
observe that there is no spirit in it. That is just what is lacking in our
productions―the alcohol which could intoxicate and subjugate, and you state
that very well. Why not? Putting aside "Ward No. 6" and myself, let us
discuss the matter in general, for that is more interesting. Let us discuss
the general causes, if that won't bore you, and let us include the whole
age. Tell me honestly, who of my contemporaries―that is, men between thirty
and forty-five―have given the world one single drop of alcohol? Are not
Korolenko, Nadson, and all the playwrights of to-day, lemonade? Have Repin's
or Shishkin's pictures turned your head? ...We are stale and dull ourselves,
we can only beget gutta-percha boys, and the only person who does not see
that is Stasov, to whom nature has given a rare faculty for getting drunk on
slops. The causes of this are not to be found in our stupidity, our lack of
talent, or our insolence, as Burenin imagines, but in a disease which for
the artist is worse than syphilis or sexual exhaustion. We lack "something,"
that is true, and that means that, lift the robe of our muse, and you will
find within an empty void. Let me remind you that the writers, who we say
are for all time or are simply good, and who intoxicate us, have one common
and very important characteristic; they are going towards something and are
summoning you towards it, too, and you feel not with your mind, but with
your whole being, that they have some object, just like the ghost of
Hamlet's father, who did not come and disturb the imagination for nothing.
Some have more immediate objects―the abolition of serfdom, the liberation
of their country, politics, beauty, or simply vodka, like Denis Davydov;
others have remote objects―God, life beyond the grave, the happiness of
humanity, and so on.
Chekhov calls Suvorin gor'kiy p'yanitsa (“a hard drinker”). In Blok's poem
Neznakomka (Incognita, 1906) p'yanitsy s glazami krolikov (the drunks with
the eyes of rabbits) cry out: "In vino veritas!" The characters of Ada
include Dr Krolik, Ada’s beloved lepidopterist and teacher of natural
history (who never appears but is often mentioned in the novel). Alexander
Blok is the author of Nochnaya fialka (“The Night Violet,” 1906), a poem
subtitled Son (a Dream). The manuscript of Ada is typed out by Violet Knox,
old Van’s secretary whose surname sounds like nox, the Latin word for
“night.” After Van’s and Ada’s death Violet Knox marries Ronald Oranger,
the editor of Ada (5.4). In his poem V etot moy blagoslovennyi vecher…
(“In this Blessed Evening of Mine…” 1917) Gumilyov compares the stars to
voskovye apel’siny (the oranges of wax) that are served at Christmas:
И светились звёзды золотые,
Приглашённые на торжество,
Словно апельсины восковые,
Те, что подают на Рождество.
Van and Ada (whom Dr Lagosse makes the last merciful injection of morphine)
die on the same day in winter of 1967. The two poets who could not stand
each other, Blok and Gumilyov died almost simultaneously in August of 1921.
Alexey Sklyarenko
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,dana.dragunoiu@gmail.com,shvabrin@humnet.ucla.edu
Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
AdaOnline: "http://www.ada.auckland.ac.nz/
The Nabokov Society of Japan's Annotations to Ada: http://vnjapan.org/main/ada/index.html
The VN Bibliography Blog: http://vnbiblio.com/
Search the archive with L-Soft: https://listserv.ucsb.edu/lsv-cgi-bin/wa?A0=NABOKV-L
Manage subscription options :http://listserv.ucsb.edu/lsv-cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=NABOKV-L