Vladimir Nabokov

avournine & muirninochka in Ada

By Alexey Sklyarenko, 3 March, 2021

According to Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969), Blanche (the French handmaid at Ardis) called Ada “Van’s avournine:”

 

Their first free and frantic caresses had been preceded by a brief period of strange craftiness, of cringing stealth. The masked offender was Van, but her passive acceptance of the poor boy’s behavior seemed tacitly to acknowledge its disreputable and even monstrous nature. A few weeks later both were to regard that phase of his courtship with amused condescension; at the time, however, its implicit cowardice puzzled her and distressed him — mainly because he was keenly conscious of her being puzzled.

Although Van had never had the occasion to witness anything close to virginal revolt on the part of Ada — not an easily frightened or overfastidious little girl (‘Je raffole de tout ce qui rampe’), he could rely on two or three dreadful dreams to imagine her, in real, or at least responsible, life, recoiling with a wild look as she left his lust in the lurch to summon her governess or mother, or a gigantic footman (not existing in the house but killable in the dream — punchable with sharp-ringed knuckles, puncturable like a bladder of blood), after which he knew he would be expelled from Ardis —

(In Ada’s hand: I vehemently object to that ‘not overfastidious.’ It is unfair in fact, and fuzzy in fancy. Van’s marginal note: Sorry, puss; that must stay.)

— but even if he were to will himself to mock that image so as to blast it out of all consciousness, he could not feel proud of his conduct: in those actual undercover dealings of his with Ada, by doing what he did and the way he did it, with that unpublished relish, he seemed to himself to be either taking advantage of her innocence or else inducing her to conceal from him, the concealer, her awareness of what he concealed.

After the first contact, so light, so mute, between his soft lips and her softer skin had been established — high up in that dappled tree, with only that stray ardilla daintily leavesdropping — nothing seemed changed in one sense, all was lost in another. Such-contacts evolve their own texture; a tactile sensation is a blind spot; we touch in silhouette. Henceforth, at certain moments of their otherwise indolent days, in certain recurrent circumstances of controlled madness, a secret sign was erected, a veil drawn between him and her —

(Ada: They are now practically extinct at Ardis. Van: Who? Oh, I see.)

— not to be removed until he got rid of what the necessity of dissimulation kept degrading to the level of a wretched itch.

(Och, Van!)

He could not say afterwards, when discussing with her that rather pathetic nastiness, whether he really feared that his avournine (as Blanche was to refer later, in her bastard French, to Ada) might react with an outburst of real or well-feigned resentment to a stark display of desire, or whether a glum, cunning approach was dictated to him by considerations of pity and decency toward a chaste child, whose charm was too compelling not to be tasted in secret and too sacred to be openly violated; but something went wrong — that much was clear. The vague commonplaces of vague modesty so dreadfully in vogue eighty years ago, the unsufferable banalities of shy wooing buried in old romances as arch as Arcady, those moods, those modes, lurked no doubt behind the hush of his ambuscades, and that of her toleration. No record has remained of the exact summer day when his wary and elaborate coddlings began; but simultaneously with her sensing that at certain moments he stood indecently close behind her, with his burning breath and gliding lips, she was aware that those silent, exotic approximations must have started long ago in some indefinite and infinite past, and could no longer be stopped by her, without her acknowledging a tacit acceptance of their routine repetition in that past. (1.16)

 

Avournine seems to hint at avourneen, Irish for “darling, sweetheart.” Etymology of avourneen: Irish Gaelic a mhuirnīn oh, darling!, from a oh + muirnīn darling, from Middle Irish mūirnīn, diminutive of mūirn affection, joy. According to Dorothy Vinelander (Ada’s sister-in-law), Ada is “a real muirninochka:”

 

‘How did you like my brother?’ asked Dorothy. ‘On redchayshiy chelovek (he’s a most rare human being). I can’t tell you how profoundly affected he was by the terrible death of your father, and, of course, by Lucette’s bizarre end. Even he, the kindest of men, could not help disapproving of her Parisian sans-gêne, but he greatly admired her looks — as I think you also did — no, no, do not negate it! — because, as I have always said, her prettiness seemed to complement Ada’s, the two halves forming together something like perfect beauty, in the Platonic sense’ (that cheerless smile again). ‘Ada is certainly a "perfect beauty," a real muirninochka — even when she winces like that — but she is beautiful only in our little human terms, within the quotes of our social esthetics — right, Professor? — in the way a meal or a marriage or a little French tramp can be called perfect.’

‘Drop her a curtsey,’ gloomily remarked Van to Ada.

‘Oh, my Adochka knows how devoted I am to her’ — (opening her palm in the wake of Ada’s retreating hand). ‘I’ve shared all her troubles. How many podzharïh (tight-crotched) cowboys we’ve had to fire because they delali ey glazki (ogled her)! And how many bereavements we’ve gone through since the new century started! Her mother and my mother; the Archbishop of Ivankover and Dr Swissair of Lumbago (where mother and I reverently visited him in 1888); three distinguished uncles (whom, fortunately, I hardly knew); and your father, who, I’ve always maintained, resembled a Russian aristocrat much more than he did an Irish Baron. Incidentally, in her deathbed delirium — you don’t mind, Ada, if I divulge to him ces potins de famille? — our splendid Marina was obsessed by two delusions, which mutually excluded each other — that you were married to Ada and that you and she were brother and sister, and the clash between those two ideas caused her intense mental anguish. How does your school of psychiatry explain that kind of conflict?’

‘I don’t attend school any longer,’ said Van, stifling a yawn; ‘and, furthermore, in my works, I try not to "explain" anything, I merely describe.’

‘Still, you cannot deny that certain insights —’

It went on and on like that for more than an hour and Van’s clenched jaws began to ache. Finally, Ada got up, and Dorothy followed suit but continued to speak standing:

‘Tomorrow dear Aunt Beloskunski-Belokonski is coming to dinner, a delightful old spinster, who lives in a villa above Valvey. Terriblement grande dame et tout ça. Elle aime taquiner Andryusha en disant qu’un simple cultivateur comme lui n’aurait pas dû épouser la fille d’une actrice et d’un marchand de tableaux. Would you care to join us — Jean?’

Jean replied: ‘Alas, no, dear Daria Andrevna: Je dois "surveiller les kilos." Besides, I have a business dinner tomorrow.’

‘At least’ — (smiling) — ‘you could call me Dasha.’

‘I do it for Andrey,’ explained Ada, ‘actually the grande dame in question is a vulgar old skunk.’

‘Ada!’ uttered Dasha with a look of gentle reproof.

Before the two ladies proceeded toward the lift, Ada glanced at Van — and he — no fool in amorous strategy — refrained to comment on her ‘forgetting’ her tiny black silk handbag on the seat of her chair. He did not accompany them beyond the passage leading liftward and, clutching the token, awaited her planned return behind a pillar of hotel-hall mongrel design, knowing that in a moment she would say to her accursed companion (by now revising, no doubt, her views on the ‘beau ténébreux’) as the lift’s eye turned red under a quick thumb: ‘Akh, sumochku zabïla (forgot my bag)!’ — and instantly flitting back, like Vere’s Ninon, she would be in his arms.

Their open mouths met in tender fury, and then he pounced upon her new, young, divine, Japanese neck which he had been coveting like a veritable Jupiter Olorinus throughout the evening.

‘We’ll vroom straight to my place as soon as you wake up, don’t bother to bathe, jump into your lenclose —’ and, with the burning sap brimming, he again devoured her, until (Dorothy must have reached the sky!) she danced three fingers on his wet lips — and escaped.

‘Wipe your neck!’ he called after her in a rapid whisper (who, and wherein this tale, in this life, had also attempted a whispered cry?) (3.8)

 

Darkbloom (‘Notes to Ada’): muirninochka: Hiberno-Russian caressive term.

potins de famille: family gossip.

terriblement etc.: terribly grand and all that, she likes to tease him by saying that a simple farmer like him should not have married the daughter of an actress and an art dealer.

je dois etc.: I must watch my weight.

Olorinus: from Lat. olor, swan (Leda’s lover).

lenclose: distorted ‘clothes’ (influenced by ‘Ninon de Lenclos’), the courtesan in Vere de Vere’s novel mentioned above.

 

Podzharye (tight-crotched) cowboys who were fired because they ogled Ada bring to mind Podzharov, the actror in Chekhov's story Pervyi lyubovnik ("The Jeune Premier," 1886). In Chekhov’s story Podzharov exclaims: Mon Dieu, chto za zhenshchiny! ("Mon Dieu, what women!"):

 

— Да-с, сеньор! — часто говорил он, грациозно болтая ногой и показывая свои красные чулки. — Артист должен действовать на массы посредственно и непосредственно; первое достигается служением на сцене, второе — знакомством с обывателями. Честное слово, parole d’honneur, не понимаю, отчего это наш брат актёр избегает знакомств с семейными домами? Отчего? Не говоря уж об обедах, именинах, пирогах, суарэфиксах, не говоря уж о развлечениях, какое нравственное влияние он может иметь на общество! Разве не приятно сознание, что ты заронил искру в какую-нибудь толстокожую башку? А типы! А женщины! Mon Dieu, что за женщины! Голова кружится! Заберёшься в какой-нибудь купеческий домище, в заветные терема, выберешь апельсинчик посвежее и румянее и — блаженство. Parole d’honneur!

 

"Yes, signor," he would often say, gracefully swinging his foot and displaying his red socks, "an artist ought to act upon the masses, both directly and indirectly; the first aim is attained by his work on the stage, the second by an acquaintance with the local inhabitants. On my honour, parole d'honneur, I don't understand why it is we actors avoid making acquaintance with local families. Why is it? To say nothing of dinners, name-day parties, feasts, soirees fixes, to say nothing of these entertainments, think of the moral influence we may have on society! Is it not agreeable to feel one has dropped a spark in some thick skull? The types one meets! The women! Mon Dieu, what women! they turn one's head! One penetrates into some huge merchant's house, into the sacred retreats, and picks out some fresh and rosy little peach-- it's heaven, parole d'honneur!"

 

In the epilogue of Ada Van mentions Dr. Lagosse’s exclamation ‘Quel livre, mon Dieu, mon Dieu’ (what a book, good God):

 

Their recently built castle in Ex was inset in a crystal winter. In the latest Who’s Who the list of his main papers included by some bizarre mistake the title of a work he had never written, though planned to write many pains: Unconsciousness and the Unconscious. There was no pain to do it now — and it was high pain for Ada to be completed. ‘Quel livre, mon Dieu, mon Dieu,’ Dr [Professor. Ed.] Lagosse exclaimed, weighing the master copy which the flat pale parents of the future Babes, in the brown-leaf Woods, a little book in the Ardis Hall nursery, could no longer prop up in the mysterious first picture: two people in one bed. (5.6)

 

Describing the torments of poor mad Aqua (the twin sister of Van’s, Ada’s and Lucette’s mother Marina), Van mentions the Dr Froit of Signy-Mondieu-Mondieu in the Ardennes:

 

Being unwilling to suffer another relapse after this blessed state of perfect mental repose, but knowing it could not last, she did what another patient had done in distant France, at a much less radiant and easygoing ‘home.’ A Dr Froid, one of the administerial centaurs, who may have been an émigré brother with a passport-changed name of the Dr Froit of Signy-Mondieu-Mondieu in the Ardennes or, more likely, the same man, because they both came from Vienne, Isère, and were only sons (as her son was), evolved, or rather revived, the therapistic device, aimed at establishing a ‘group’ feeling, of having the finest patients help the staff if ‘thusly inclined.’ Aqua, in her turn, repeated exactly clever Eleonore Bonvard’s trick, namely, opting for the making of beds and the cleaning of glass shelves. The astorium in St Taurus, or whatever it was called (who cares — one forgets little things very fast, when afloat in infinite non-thingness) was, perhaps, more modem, with a more refined desertic view, than the Mondefroid bleakhouse horsepittle, but in both places a demented patient could outwit in one snap an imbecile pedant. (1.3)

 

In his poem On peut très bien, mademoiselle…” (1816) Pushkin compares Princess Volkonski (a lady-in-waiting whom the young poet mistook for a chambermaid and kissed in the dark corridor; the name Volkonski brings to mind dear Aunt Beloskunski-Belokonski) to une vieille guenon (an old female monkey) and uses the phrase mon Dieu:

 

On peut très bien, mademoiselle,
Vous prendre pour une maquerelle,
Ou pour une vieille guenon,
Mais pour une grâce, — oh, mon Dieu, non.

 

One may very well mistake you, mademoiselle,
for a procuress,
or for an old female monkey,
but for a grace – oh, my God, no.

 

Une vieille guenon reminds one of the girl’s Parisian gueule de guenon (simian facial angle) mentioned by Van when he describes his meeting with Lucette (Van’s and Ada’s half-sister) in Paris:

 

The Bourbonian-chinned, dark, sleek-haired, ageless concierge, dubbed by Van in his blazer days ‘Alphonse Cinq,’ believed he had just seen Mlle Veen in the Récamier room where Vivian Vale’s golden veils were on show. With a flick of coattail and a swing-gate click, Alphonse dashed out of his lodge and went to see. Van’s eye over his umbrella crook traveled around a carousel of Sapsucker paperbacks (with that wee striped woodpecker on every spine): The Gitanilla, Salzman, Salzman, Salzman, Invitation to a Climax, Squirt, The Go-go Gang, The Threshold of Pain, The Chimes of Chose, The Gitanilla — here a Wall Street, very ‘patrician’ colleague of Demon’s, old Kithar K.L. Sween, who wrote verse, and the still older real-estate magnate Milton Eliot, went by without recognizing grateful Van, despite his being betrayed by several mirrors.

The concierge returned shaking his head. Out of the goodness of his heart Van gave him a Goal guinea and said he’d call again at one-thirty. He walked through the lobby (where the author of Agonic Lines and Mr Eliot, affalés, with a great amount of jacket over their shoulders, dans des fauteuils, were comparing cigars) and, leaving the hotel by a side exit, crossed the rue des Jeunes Martyres for a drink at Ovenman’s.

Upon entering, he stopped for a moment to surrender his coat; but he kept his black fedora and stick-slim umbrella as he had seen his father do in that sort of bawdy, albeit smart, place which decent women did not frequent — at least, unescorted. He headed for the bar, and as he was in the act of wiping the lenses of his black-framed spectacles, made out, through the optical mist (Space’s recent revenge!), the girl whose silhouette he recalled having seen now and then (much more distinctly!) ever since his pubescence, passing alone, drinking alone, always alone, like Blok’s Incognita. It was a queer feeling — as of something replayed by mistake, part of a sentence misplaced on the proof sheet, a scene run prematurely, a repeated blemish, a wrong turn of time. He hastened to reequip his ears with the thick black bows of his glasses and went up to her in silence. For a minute he stood behind her, sideways to remembrance and reader (as she, too, was in regard to us and the bar), the crook of his silk-swathed cane lifted in profile almost up to his mouth. There she was, against the aureate backcloth of a sakarama screen next to the bar, toward which she was sliding, still upright, about to be seated, having already placed one white-gloved hand on the counter. She wore a high-necked, long-sleeved romantic black dress with an ample skirt, fitted bodice and ruffy collar, from the black soft corolla of which her long neck gracefully rose. With a rake’s morose gaze we follow the pure proud line of that throat, of that tilted chin. The glossy red lips are parted, avid and fey, offering a side gleam of large upper teeth. We know, we love that high cheekbone (with an atom of powder puff sticking to the hot pink skin), and the forward upsweep of black lashes and the painted feline eye — all this in profile, we softly repeat. From under the wavy wide brim of her floppy hat of black faille, with a great black bow surmounting it, a spiral of intentionally disarranged, expertly curled bright copper descends her flaming cheek, and the light of the bar’s ‘gem bulbs’ plays on her bouffant front hair, which, as seen laterally, convexes from beneath the extravagant brim of the picture hat right down to her long thin eyebrow. Her Irish profile sweetened by a touch of Russian softness, which adds a look of mysterious expectancy and wistful surprise to her beauty, must be seen, I hope, by the friends and admirers of my memories, as a natural masterpiece incomparably finer and younger than the portrait of the similarily postured lousy jade with her Parisian gueule de guenon on the vile poster painted by that wreck of an artist for Ovenman.

‘Hullo there, Ed,’ said Van to the barman, and she turned at the sound of his dear rasping voice.

‘I didn’t expect you to wear glasses. You almost got le paquet, which I was preparing for the man supposedly "goggling" my hat. Darling Van! Dushka moy!’

‘Your hat,’ he said, ‘is positively lautrémontesque — I mean, lautrecaquesque — no, I can’t form the adjective.’

Ed Barton served Lucette what she called a Chambéryzette.

‘Gin and bitter for me.’

‘I’m so happy and sad,’ she murmured in Russian. ‘Moyo grustnoe schastie! How long will you be in old Lute?’

Van answered he was leaving next day for England, and then on June 3 (this was May 31) would be taking the Admiral Tobakoff back to the States. She would sail with him, she cried, it was a marvelous idea, she didn’t mind whither to drift, really, West, East, Toulouse, Los Teques. He pointed out that it was far too late to obtain a cabin (on that not very grand ship so much shorter than Queen Guinevere), and changed the subject. (3.3)

 

“That wreck of an artist,” Henri Toulouse-Lautrec is the author of La Blanchisseuse (1886), a painting that makes one think of Blanche.

 

In the last stanza of his poem Mon Portrait (1814) Pushkin describes himself as vrai démon pour l’espièglerie (a veritable demon in pranks) and vrai singe par sa mine (a veritable monkey in his appearance):

 

Vrai démon pour l’espièglerie,
Vrai singe par sa mine,
Beaucoup et trop d’étourderie.
Ma foi, voila Pouchkine.

 

In muirninochka there is a Ninochka (a diminutive of Nina). In his poem Zimnyaya doroga ("The Winter Road," 1826) Pushkin addresses Nina:

 

Скучно, грустно... завтра, Нина,
Завтра к милой возвратясь,
Я забудусь у камина,

Загляжусь не наглядясь.

Звучно стрелка часовая
Мерный круг свой совершит,
И, докучных удаляя,
Полночь нас не разлучит.

Грустно, Нина: путь мой скучен,
Дремля смолкнул мой ямщик,
Колокольчик однозвучен,
Отуманен лунный лик.

 

At Tatiana's nameday party (Eugene Onegin, Five: XXVII: 5-14) Triquet, a resourceful poet, boldly in the place of "belle Niná" puts "belle Tatianá." Tatiana must drop the bard a curtsy (EO, Five: XXXIII: 10-11). At the dinner with the Vinelanders Van gloomily remarks to Ada: "Drop her a curtsey."

 

In a letter of October 30, 1833, from Boldino to his wife Natalie in St. Petersburg Pushkin calls Ninon de Lenclos staraya kurva (old whore):

 

Мочи нет, хочется мне увидать тебя причёсанную a la Ninon; ты должна быть чудо как мила. Как ты прежде об этой старой курве не подумала и не переняла у ней её причёску?

 

I can't wait to see your hair dressed a la Ninon; you must look marvelously pretty. Why didn't you think of that old whore earlier and didn't copy her hair-do?

 

After her usual visit to the Three Swans (Van's hotel in Mont Roux) Ada spends a couple of profitable hours at Paphia’s ‘Hair and Beauty’ Salon:

 

On Wednesday, October 22, in the early afternoon, Dorothy, ‘frantically’ trying to ‘locate’ Ada (who after her usual visit to the Three Swans was spending a couple of profitable hours at Paphia’s ‘Hair and Beauty’ Salon) left a message for Van, who got it only late at night when he returned from a trip to Sorcière, in the Valais, about one hundred miles east, where he bought a villa for himself et ma cousine, and had supper with the former owner, a banker’s widow, amiable Mme Scarlet and her blond, pimply but pretty, daughter Eveline, both of whom seemed erotically moved by the rapidity of the deal. (3.8)