Vladimir Nabokov

Giorgio Vanvitelli, Lettrocalamity, Vanda Broom & minirechi in Ada

By Alexey Sklyarenko, 4 April, 2021

Describing his dialogues with Ada in "Ardis the First," Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) mentions Giorgio Vanvitelli (an opera singer):

 

Van regretted that because Lettrocalamity (Vanvitelli’s old joke!) was banned all over the world, its very name having become a ‘dirty word’ among upper-upper-class families (in the British and Brazilian sense) to which the Veens and Durmanovs happened to belong, and had been replaced by elaborate surrogates only in those very important ‘utilities’ — telephones, motors — what else? — well a number of gadgets for which plain folks hanker with lolling tongues, breathing faster than gundogs (for it’s quite a long sentence), such trifles as tape recorders, the favorite toys of his and Ada’s grandsires (Prince Zemski had one for every bed of his harem of schoolgirls) were not manufactured any more, except in Tartary where they had evolved ‘minirechi’ (‘talking minarets’) of a secret make. Had our erudite lovers been allowed by common propriety and common law to knock into working order the mysterious box they had once discovered in their magic attic, they might have recorded (so as to replay, eight decades later) Giorgio Vanvitelli’s arias as well as Van Veen’s conversations with his sweetheart. Here, for example, is what they might have heard today — with amusement, embarrassment, sorrow, wonder.

(Narrator: on that summer day soon after they had entered the kissing phase of their much too premature and in many ways fatal romance, Van and Ada were on their way to the Gun Pavilion alias Shooting Gallery, where they had located, on its upper stage, a tiny, Oriental-style room with bleary glass cases that had once lodged pistols and daggers — judging by the shape of dark imprints on the faded velvet — a pretty and melancholy recess, rather musty, with a cushioned window seat and a stuffed Parluggian Owl on a side shelf, next to an empty beer bottle left by some dead old gardener, the year of the obsolete brand being 1842.)

‘Don’t jingle them,’ she said, ‘we are watched by Lucette, whom I’ll strangle some day.’

They walked through a grove and past a grotto.

Ada said: ‘Officially we are maternal cousins, and cousins can marry by special decree, if they promise to sterilize their first five children. But, moreover, the father-in-law of my mother was the brother of your grandfather. Right?’

‘That’s what I’m told,’ said Van serenely.

‘Not sufficiently distant,’ she mused, ‘or is it?’

‘Far enough, fair enough.’

‘Funny — I saw that verse in small violet letters before you put it into orange ones — just one second before you spoke. Spoke, smoke. Like the puff preceding a distant cannon shot.’

‘Physically,’ she continued, ‘we are more like twins than cousins, and twins or even siblings can’t marry, of course, or will be jailed and "altered," if they persevere.’

‘Unless,’ said Van, ‘they are specially decreed cousins.’

(Van was already unlocking the door — the green door against which they were to bang so often with boneless fists in their later separate dreams.) (1.24)

 

Darkbloom (‘Notes to Ada’): Lettrocalamity: a play on Ital. elettrocalamita, electromagnet.

 

Van’s and Ada’s great-great-grandfather who had a harem of schoolgirls, Prince Vseslav Zemski (1699-1797) lived in the 18th century. In Obrazy Italii (“Images of Italy,” 1923) Pavel Muratov (1881-1950) says that Rome of the 18th century is still alive in the gouaches of the Italianized Dutchman Vanvitelli:

 

Руины, украшавшие картины Пуссэна и Клода, сделались в XVIII веке темой особого искусства, - пейзажа с развалинами. Живописная традиция классического пейзажа к тому времени несколько ослабела, и руины Паннини отражают больше манеру венецианских пейзажистов. В конце века последовал новый прилив к Риму иностранцев. Удивительные рисунки Фрагонара изображают какие-то сны о римской вилле. Для Юбер Робера Кампанья и развалины Рима стали неиссякаемыми источниками благороднейшей и живописной фантазии. Целый ряд более скромных, сухих и точных немцев заносил в свои альбомы и переводил на медные доски гравюр классические линии римских видов. Рим XVIII века сохранился ещё в гуашах итальянизированного голландца Ванвителли, в галереях Корсини и Капитолия. (Roman Campania, 5)

 

Caspar van Wittel (1652 or 1653 – 1736), known in Italian as Gaspare Vanvitelli (father of the architect Luigi Vanvitelli, 1700-73), was a Dutch painter and draughtsman who had a long career in Rome and who played a pivotal role in the development of the genre of topographical painting known as veduta.

 

A friend of Linnaeus (the author of Flora Lapponica, 1737), Prince Vseslav Zemski is the author of Flora Ladorica:

 

 They went back to the corridor, she tossing her hair, he clearing his throat. Further down, a door of some playroom or nursery stood ajar and stirred to and fro as little Lucette peeped out, one russet knee showing. Then the doorleaf flew open — but she darted inside and away. Cobalt sailing boats adorned the white tiles of a stove, and as her sister and he passed by that open door a toy barrel organ invitingly went into action with a stumbling little minuet. Ada and Van returned to the ground floor — this time all the way down the sumptuous staircase. Of the many ancestors along the wall, she pointed out her favorite, old Prince Vseslav Zemski (1699-1797), friend of Linnaeus and author of Flora Ladorica, who was portrayed in rich oil holding his barely pubescent bride and her blond doll in his satin lap. An enlarged photograph, soberly framed, hung (rather incongruously, Van thought) next to the rose-bud-lover in his embroidered coat. The late Sumerechnikov, American precursor of the Lumière brothers, had taken Ada’s maternal uncle in profile with upcheeked violin, a doomed youth, after his farewell concert. (1.6)

 

In his essay Iskusstvo i narod (“Art and People,” 1925) Muratov describes narodnyi chelovek (“a man of the people,” a term offered by Muratov) as “an organic phenomenon, parallel, as it were, to the ‘flora and fauna’ of a certain zone:”

 

Но что за категория -- народный человек! Не правда ли, совершенно ненаучная категория. Согласимся, что ненаучная, пусть это будет категория художественная. И оттого точные определения трудны, как всякие точные определения художественных категорий. Можно сказать так: народный человек -- явление органическое, как бы параллельное "флоре и фауне" некой определенной зоны. Это фигура в пейзаже, но фигура необходимая в данном пейзаже, без которой пейзаж перестает быть и верным и полным пейзажем. И оттого народный человек, так сказать, прежде всего и проще всего, крестьянин, человек, живущий на земле и вместе с землей,-- участник пейзажа неисключимый. Но разумеется не только крестьянин, а и ремесленник и житель вообще иных, даже больших городов, так как и некоторые города органичны, и пейзаж есть не только пейзаж деревни, но и пейзаж города. (II)

 

In his essay Muratov speaks of an abyss between artist and "a man of the people" and says: "try to talk about modern art with your neighbor in a tram or with the man who comes to your flat to put electricity (banned on Demonia, aka Antiterra, Earth’s twin planet on which Ada is set, after the L disaster in the beau milieu of the 19th century) or fix the plumbing:"

 

В области искусства это отчуждение народного человека так велико, как ни в какой другой. Мы часто не отдаем себе отчета в том, какая пропасть отделяет нас, то есть людей, для которых как будто бы еще существует искусство, от тех, с кем живем мы бок о бок и для кого искусство -- вне поля зрения. Попробуйте поговорить с вашим соседом в трамвае или с монтером, который приходит в вашу квартиру проводить электричество и чинить водопровод,-- попробуйте поговорить с ним о Скрябине, о Дебюсси, о рисунках Пикассо или новых залах Лувра, о романах Пруста или даже достоинствах прозы только что умершего Анатоля Франса. "Нас" и "их" разделяет здесь пропасть, нисколько не меньшая той, которая отделяет нас от бедуина, от сингалеза. Не меньшая той, которая отделяла римлянина конца империи от галла или лигурийца, служившего на его вилле садовником. (I)

 

Electricity is a ‘dirty word’ among upper-upper-class families to which the Veens and Durmanovs happened to belong. According to Muratov, in his essay Antiiskusstvo (“Anti-Art,” a title that brings to mind Antiterra) that appeared in Sovremennye zapiski (Contemporary Notes, No. 19) he attempted to explain why art is nowadays absent from the life of the middle and upper classes of the society:

 

В том быте социальных счастливцев, которому начинает подражать относительно менее несчастный социальный несчастливец, он не встречает, конечно, искусства. Искусство ушло из жизни средних и высших слоев общества. Почему и как это случилось, пишущий эти строки пытался объяснить в очерке "Антиискусство" {См.: Современные записки. No 19.}. За искусством осталась как будто бы лишь очень скромная социальная роль -- оно сделалось лишь одним (и далеко не единственным!) из видов рекреации. Как ни скромна эта роль, все же именно здесь находится весьма важный пункт сцепления искусства с народным человеком. Часть рекреации -- часть праздника. И, умалившись в своей исторической роли, искусство осталось, по существу, верным себе. Оно и есть часть той субботы, ради которой жив человек. В своей жажде жизни, в своем добывании праздника народный человек придет к искусству. Неважно, каким путем сделает он это. Несущественно, что придет он к этому сквозь пошлости кинематографа или скверного, купленного на лотке романа, а не по указанию компетентного лектора в народном университете. И может быть, даже лучше, что придет он именно так, руководимый своим собственным, а не чужим опытом. А если придет, в своем бурно возрастающем участии в жизни, в своем все сильнее и сильнее ощущаемом давлении на жизнь, то будет это не безразлично и для самого искусства. Во всякое суждение о судьбах искусства этот неизбежный, по-видимому, приход к нему народного человека вносит очень существенную поправку. (ibid.)

 

The Veens and Durmanovs are Russo-Irish families. During World War II Muratov was in Ireland, working as a military journalist (he wrote with W. E. D. Allen two volumes on the Russian campaign for Penguin Books). In 1950 Muratov died at Whitechurch House, W. E. D. Allen’s estate in Ireland. The surname Muratov brings to mind Tolstoy's tale of Murat, the Navajo chieftain, a French general’s bastard, shot by Cora Day in his swimming pool:

 

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. With white-bloused, enthusiastically sweating Andrey Andreevich, he lolled for hours in the violet shade of pink cliffs, studying major and minor Russian writers — and puzzling out the exaggerated but, on the whole, complimentary allusions to his father’s volitations and loves in another life in Lermontov’s diamond-faceted tetrameters. He struggled to keep back his tears, while AAA blew his fat red nose, when shown the peasant-bare footprint of Tolstoy preserved in the clay of a motor court in Utah where he had written the tale of Murat, the Navajo chieftain, a French general’s bastard, shot by Cora Day in his swimming pool. What a soprano Cora had been! Demon took Van to the world-famous Opera House in Telluride in West Colorado and there he enjoyed (and sometimes detested) the greatest international shows — English blank-verse plays, French tragedies in rhymed couplets, thunderous German musical dramas with giants and magicians and a defecating white horse. He passed through various little passions — parlor magic, chess, fluff-weight boxing matches at fairs, stunt-riding — and of course those unforgettable, much too early initiations when his lovely young English governess expertly petted him between milkshake and bed, she, petticoated, petititted, half-dressed for some party with her sister and Demon and Demon’s casino-touring companion, bodyguard and guardian angel, monitor and adviser, Mr Plunkett, a reformed card-sharper. (1.28)

 

Darkbloom (‘Notes to Ada’): The Headless Horseman: Mayn Reid’s title is ascribed here to Pushkin, author of The Bronze Horseman.

Lermontov: author of The Demon.

Tolstoy etc.: Tolstoy’s hero, Haji Murad, (a Caucasian chieftain) is blended here with General Murat, Napoleon’s brother-in-law, and with the French revolutionary leader Marat assassinated in his bath by Charlotte Corday.

 

A soprano, Cora Day is a colleague of Maria Kuznetzova (see below) and of Giorgio Vanvitelli.

 

On the other hand, the surname Muratov reminds one of muirninochka, as Dorothy Vinelander (Ada’s sister-in-law) calls Ada:

 

‘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.

 

In muirninochka there is Ninochka (a diminutive of Nina). The author of a book on Tchaikovsky (according to Van, with braided hair Ada resembles the young soprano Maria Kuznetsova in the letter scene in Tschchaikow's opera Onegin and Olga, 1.25), Nina Berberova was the third wife of the poet Vladislav Hodasevich. After Marina Ryndin (Hodasevich's first wife) left him, Hodasevich had a romance with Pavel Muratov's wife Evgenia (whom Hodasevich calls tsarevna in his poems). In his essay on Venice (where Hodasevich parted with Evgenia Muratov) Gorod razluk ("The City of Separations," 1911) Hodasevich mentions the narrow tower San Giorgio:

 

Нигде так легко не расстаешься с надеждами и людьми, как в Венеции. Там одиночество не только наименее тягостно, но наиболее желанно. И вовсе не для того, чтобы сосредоточиться, уйти в себя, но напротив: чтобы забыть себя, потерять былое, сделаться одним из тех, кто часами сидит на набережной, глядя в туманную даль лагуны или на узкую башню San Giorgio. (III)

 

The tower of the Church San Giorgio Maggiore is red. Describing Flavita (the Russian Scrabble), Van mentions Venezia Rossa (It., Red Venice):

 

The set [of Flavita] our three children received in 1884 from an old friend of the family (as Marina’s former lovers were known), Baron Klim Avidov, consisted of a large folding board of saffian and a boxful of weighty rectangles of ebony inlaid with platinum letters, only one of which was a Roman one, namely the letter J on the two joker blocks (as thrilling to get as a blank check signed by Jupiter or Jurojin). It was, incidentally, the same kindly but touchy Avidov (mentioned in many racy memoirs of the time) who once catapulted with an uppercut an unfortunate English tourist into the porter’s lodge for his jokingly remarking how clever it was to drop the first letter of one’s name in order to use it as a particule, at the Gritz, in Venezia Rossa. (1.36)

 

Baron Klim Avidov = Vladimir Nabokov 

 

At the end his memoir essay Vospominaniya o Bloke ("Reminiscences of Blok," 1927) Muratov quotes the lines from Blok's poem Venetsiya ("Venice," 1911):

 

Он начал читать несколько "скупо" и утомленно. Но аудитория наша состояла из людей, которые знали и любили его стихи19. Блок это угадал, услышал -- иной раз замедленное им слово произносилось полушепотом сразу на нескольких скамьях. Блок остановился, радость мелькнула в его лице, озаренном внутренним огнем былых вдохновений, голос его зазвучал иначе...

    
   Я в эту ночь -- больной и юный --
   Простёрт у львиного столба.

 

In his poem Pod zemlyoy (“In the Underground,” 1927) Hodasevich describes a man who, like Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Lolita, 1955), Prince Vseslav Zemski and Baron Demon Veen (Van’s and Ada’s father), loves little girls:

 

Где пахнет чёрною карболкой

И провонявшею землёй,

Стоит, склоняя профиль колкий,

Пред изразцовою стеной.

 

Не отойдёт, не обернётся,

Лишь весь качается слегка,

Да как-то судорожно бьётся

Потёртый локоть сюртука.

 

Заходят школьники, солдаты,

Рабочий в блузе голубой -

Он всё стоит, к стене прижатый

Своею дикою мечтой.

 

Здесь создаёт и разрушает

Он сладострастные миры,

А из соседней конуры

За ним старуха наблюдает.

 

Потом в открывшуюся дверь

Видны подушки, стулья, стклянки.

Вошла - и слышатся теперь

Обрывки злобной перебранки.

Потом вонючая метла

Безумца гонит из угла.

 

И вот, из полутьмы глубокой

Старик сутулый, но высокий,

В таком почтенном сюртуке,

В когда-то модном котелке,

Идёт по лестнице широкой,

Как тень Аида, - в белый свет,

В берлинский день, в блестящий бред.

А солнце ясно, небо сине,

А сверху синяя пустыня...

И злость, и скорбь моя кипит,

И трость моя в чужой гранит

Неумолкаемо стучит.

 

Vonyuchaya metla (a stinking broom) that drives out the madman from his corner brings to mind Vanda Broom, Ada’s lesbian schoolmate at Brownhill. According to Ada, Vanda Broom was shot dead by the girlfriend of a girlfriend on a starry night, in Ragusa of all places:

 

What laughs, what tears, what sticky kisses, what a tumult of multitudinous plans! And what safety, what freedom of love! Two unrelated gypsy courtesans, a wild girl in a gaudy lolita, poppy-mouthed and black-downed, picked up in a café between Grasse and Nice, and another, a part-time model (you have seen her fondling a virile lipstick in Fellata ads), aptly nicknamed Swallowtail by the patrons of a Norfolk Broads floramor, had both given our hero exactly the same reason, unmentionable in a family chronicle, for considering him absolutely sterile despite his prowesses. Amused by the Hecatean diagnose, Van underwent certain tests, and although pooh-poohing the symptom as coincidental, all the doctors agreed that Van Veen might be a doughty and durable lover but could never hope for an offspring. How merrily little Ada clapped her hands!

Would she like to stay in this apartment till Spring Term (he thought in terms of Terms now) and then accompany him to Kingston, or would she prefer to go abroad for a couple of months — anywhere, Patagonia, Angola, Gululu in the New Zealand mountains? Stay in this apartment? So, she liked it? Except some of Cordula’s stuff which should be ejected — as, for example, that conspicuous Brown Hill Alma Mater of Almehs left open on poor Vanda’s portrait. She had been shot dead by the girlfriend of a girlfriend on a starry night, in Ragusa of all places. It was, Van said, sad. Little Lucette no doubt had told him about a later escapade? Punning in an Ophelian frenzy on the feminine glans? Raving about the delectations of clitorism? ‘N’exagérons pas, tu sais,’ said Ada, patting the air down with both palms. ‘Lucette affirmed,’ he said, ‘that she (Ada) imitated mountain lions.’

He was omniscient. Better say, omni-incest.

‘That’s right,’ said the other total-recaller.

And, by the way, Grace — yes, Grace — was Vanda’s real favorite, pas petite moi and my little crest. She (Ada) had, hadn’t she, a way of always smoothing out the folds of the past — making the flutist practically impotent (except with his wife) and allowing the gentleman farmer only one embrace, with a premature eyakulyatsiya, one of those hideous Russian loanwords? Yes, wasn’t it hideous, but she’d love to play Scrabble again when they’d settled down for good. But where, how? Wouldn’t Mr and Mrs Ivan Veen do quite nicely anywhere? What about the ‘single’ in each passport? They’d go to the nearest Consulate and with roars of indignation and/or a fabulous bribe have it corrected to married, for ever and ever. (2.6)

 

Ragusa is the Italian name of Dubrovnik (a seaport in S Croatia, on the Adriatic). On the other hand, Ragusa is a city in southern Italy, on the island of Sicily. On Antiterra Sicily is a part of Palermontovia, a country that blends Palermo (the biggest city in and the capital of Sicily) with Lermontov. Lermontov’s poem Est’ rechi – znachen’ye / temno il’ nichtozhno (“There are talks – their meaning / is dark or insignificant,” 1840) brings to mind minirechi (talking minarets) of secret make that they had evolved in Tartary. In Lermontov's poem Vykhozhu odin ya na dorogu ("I go out on the road alone," 1841) a star talks to a star. The murder of Vanda Broom on a starry night, in Ragusa of all places, is foreshadowed by the parenthetical mention of the Gun Pavilion alias Shooting Gallery (one of the places at Ardis where Van and Ada make love). The girlfriend of a girlfriend who shot poor Vanda dead seems to be Ada herself. Btw., in Dickens' Bleak House (1853) the murder of Tulkinghorn is signaled by the earlier mention of the shooting gallery.

 

Van is sterile but, because love is blind, he does not realize that Andrey Vinelander (Ada’s husband) and Ada have at least two children and that Mr. Ronald Oranger (old Van’s secretary, the editor of Ada) and Violet Knox (old Van’s typist whom Ada calls Fialochka and who marries Mr. Ronald Oranger after Van’s and Ada’s death) are Ada’s grandchildren.

 

According to Ada, she saw the verse “far enough, fair enough” (in a dialogue that they might have heard today, eight decades later) in small violet letters before Van put it into orange ones – just one second before he spoke. Spoke, smoke. Like the puff preceding a distant cannon shot.

 

In his poem Peterburg ("St. Petersburg," 1923) written in blank verse VN mentions the cannon on a bastion of the Peter-and-Paul Fortress that shoots at noon:

 

Мне чудится в Рождественское утро

мой лёгкий, мой воздушный Петербург...

Я странствую по набережной... Солнце

взошло туманной розой. Пухлым слоем

снег тянется по выпуклым перилам.

И рысаки под сетками цветными

проносятся, как сказочные птицы;

а вдалеке, за ширью снежной, тают

в лазури сизой розовые струи

над кровлями; как призрак золотистый,

мерцает крепость (в полдень бухнет пушка:

сперва дымок, потом раскат звенящий);

и на снегу зелёной бирюзою

горят квадраты вырезанных льдин.

 

"At noon the cannon thunders:
First comes the smoke, then there's a ringing peal."

 

In his poem VN mentions prizemistyi vagonchik temno-siniy (the low dark-blue tram) that runs on toy rails across the ice-bound Neva:

 

Приземистый вагончик темно-синий,

пером скользя по проволоке тонкой,

через Неву пушистую по рельсам

игрушечным бежит себе, а рядом

расчищенная искрится дорожка

меж елочек, повоткнутых в сугробы:

бывало, сядешь в кресло на сосновых

полозьях,- парень в желтых рукавицах

за спинку хвать,- и вот по голубому

гудящему ледку толкает, крепко

отбрасывая ноги, косо ставя

ножи коньков, веревкой кое-как

прикрученные к валенкам, тупые,

такие же, как в пушкинские зимы.

 

Neva means in Finnish what veen means in Dutch: "peat bog." The dark-blue tram that runs across the Neva brings to mind Prince Ivan Temnosiniy, a former viceroy of Estoty: 

 

Re the ‘dark-blue’ allusion, left hanging:

A former viceroy of Estoty, Prince Ivan Temnosiniy, father of the children’s great-great-grandmother, Princess Sofia Zemski (1755-1809), and a direct descendant of the Yaroslav rulers of pre-Tartar times, had a millennium-old name that meant in Russian ‘dark blue.’ While happening to be immune to the sumptuous thrills of genealogic awareness, and indifferent to the fact that oafs attribute both the aloofness and the fervor to snobbishness, Van could not help feeling esthetically moved by the velvet background he was always able to distinguish as a comforting, omnipresent summer sky through the black foliage of the family tree. In later years he had never been able to reread Proust (as he had never been able to enjoy again the perfumed gum of Turkish paste) without a roll-wave of surfeit and a rasp of gravelly heartburn; yet his favorite purple passage remained the one concerning the name ‘Guermantes,’ with whose hue his adjacent ultramarine merged in the prism of his mind, pleasantly teasing Van’s artistic vanity.

Hue or who? Awkward. Reword! (marginal note in Ada Veen’s late hand). (1.1)

 

In 1770 Prince Vseslav Zemski married Princess Sofia Temnosiniy.