In VN’s novel Transparent Things (1972) Mr. R.’s publisher receives Mr. R.’s last letter on the day of Mr. R.’s death:
Dear Phil,
This, no doubt, is my last letter to you. I am leaving you. I am leaving you for another even greater Publisher. In that House I shall be proofread by cherubim - or misprinted by devils, depending on the department my poor soul is assigned to. So adieu, dear friend, and may your heir auction this off most profitably.
Its holographical nature is explained by the fact that I prefer it not to be read by Tom Tam or one of his boy typists. I am mortally sick after a botched operation in the only private room of a Bolognese hospital. The kind young nurse who will mail it has told me with dreadful carving gestures something I paid her for as generously as I would her favors if I still were a man. Actually the favors of death knowledge are infinitely more precious than those of love. According to my almond-eyed little spy, the great surgeon, may his own liver rot, lied to me when he declared yesterday with a "deathhead's grin that the operazione had been perfetta. Well, it had been so in the sense Euler called zero the perfect number. Actually, they ripped me open, cast one horrified look at my decayed fegato, and without touching it sewed me up again. I shall not bother you with the Tamworth problem. You should have seen the smug expression of the oblong fellow's bearded lips when he visited me this morning. As you know - as everybody, even Marion, knows - he gnawed his way into all my affairs, crawling into every cranny, collecting every German-accented word of mine, so that now he can boswell the dead man just as he had bossed very well the living one. I am also writing my and your lawyer about the measures I would like to be taken after my departure in order to thwart Tamworth at every turn of his labyrinthian plans.
The only child I have ever loved is the ravishing, silly, treacherous little Julia Moore. Every cent and centime I possess as well as all literary remains that can be twisted out of Tamworth's clutches must go to her, whatever the ambiguous obscurities contained in my will: Sam knows what I am hinting at and will act accordingly.
The last two parts of my Opus are in your hands. I am very sorry that Hugh Person is not there to look after its publication. When you acknowledge this letter do not say a word of having received it, but instead, in a kind of code that would tell me you bear in mind this letter, give me, as a good old gossip, some information about him - why, for example, was he jailed, for a year - or more? - if he was found to have acted in a purely epileptic trance; why was he transferred to an asylum for the criminal insane after his case was reviewed and no crime found? And why was he shuttled between prison and madhouse for the next five or six years before ending up as a privately treated patient? How can one treat dreams, unless one is a quack? Please tell me all this because Person was one of the nicest persons I knew and also because you can smuggle all kinds of secret information for this poor soul in your letter about him.
Poor soul is right, you know. My wretched liver is as heavy as a rejected manuscript; they manage to keep the hideous hyena pain at bay by means of frequent injections but somehow or other it remains always present behind the wall of my flesh like the muffled thunder of a permanent avalanche which obliterates there, beyond me, all the structures of my imagination, all the landmarks of my conscious self. It is comic - but I used to believe that dying persons saw the vanity of things, the futility of fame, passion, art, and so forth. I believed that treasured memories in a dying man's mind dwindled to rainbow wisps; but now I feel just the contrary: my most trivial sentiments and those of all men have acquired gigantic proportions. The entire solar system is but a reflection in the crystal of my (or your) wrist watch. The more I shrivel the bigger I grow. I suppose this is an uncommon phenomenon. Total rejection of all religions ever dreamt up by man and total composure in the face of total death! If I could explain this triple totality in one big book, that book would become no doubt a new bible and its author the founder of a new creed. Fortunately for my self-esteem that book will not be written - not merely because a dying man cannot write books but because that particular one would never express in one flash what can only be understood immediately.
Note added by the recipient:
Received on the day of the writer's death. File under Repos - R. (Chapter 21)
“File under Repos” brings to mind Vladimir Solovyov’s poem Monrepos (1894):
Серое небо и серое море
Сквозь золотых и пурпурных листов,
Словно тяжелое старое горе
Смолкло в последнем прощальном уборе
Светлых, прозрачных и радужных снов.
Mon Repos or Monrepos (Russian: Монрепо́, from the French for "my rest") is an extensive English landscape park in the northern part of the rocky island of Linnasaari (Tverdysh, Slottsholmen) outside Vyborg, Russia. The last line of Solovyov’s poem, Svetlykh, prozrachnykh i raduzhnykh snov (“Of the bright, transparent and iridescent dreams”), reminds one of the title of VN’s novel and of rainbow wisps mentioned by Mr. R. in his last letter’s last paragraph. The poem’s first line, Seroe nebo i seroe more (Gray sky and gray sea), reminds one of the bottom of an immemorial more (sea) mentioned by the spectral narrators of Transparent Things:
His memory, in the meantime, kept following its private path. Again he was panting in her merciless wake. Again she was teasing Jacques, the handsome Swiss boy with fox-red body hair and dreamy eyes. Again she flirted with the eclectic English twins, who called gullies Cool Wars and ridges Ah Rates. Hugh, despite his tremendous physique, had neither the legs nor the lungs to keep up with them even in memory. And when the foursome had accelerated their climbing pace and vanished with their cruel ice axes and coils of rope and other instruments of torture (equipment exaggerated by ignorance), he rested on a rock, and, looking down, seemed to see through the moving mists the making of the very mountains that his tormentors trod, the crystalline crust heaving up with his heart from the bottom of an immemorial more (sea). Generally, however, he would be urged not to straggle after them even before they were out of the forest, a dismal group of old firs, with steep muddy paths and thickets of wet willow herb. (Chapter 23)
Judging by the gross mistake in the novel's last sentence ("Easy, you know, does it, son"), after his death Mr. R. went straight to Hell (and became a devil himself) where he is misprinted by devils. Although he writes in English, Mr. R. is German. Solovyov’s poem Das Ewig-Weibliche (“The Eternal Feminine,” 1898) subtitled “A Word of Admonition to the Sea Devils” has a German title and is addressed to the devils:
Черти морские меня полюбили,
Рыщут за мною они по следам:
В Финском поморье недавно ловили,
В Архипелаг я — они уже там!
Ясно, что черти хотят моей смерти,
Как и по чину прилично чертям.
Бог с вами, черти! Однако, поверьте,
Вам я себя на съеденье не дам.
Лучше вы сами послушайтесь слова,—
Доброе слово для вас я припас:
Божьей скотинкою сделаться снова,
Милые черти, зависит от вас.
Помните ль вы, как у этого моря,
Там, где стоял Амафунт и Пафос,
Первое в жизни нежданное горе
Некогда вам испытать довелось?
Помните ль розы над пеною белой,
Пурпурный отблеск в лазурных волнах?
Помните ль образ прекрасного тела,
Ваше смятенье, и трепет, и страх?
Та красота своей первою силой,
Черти, не долго была вам страшна;
Дикую злобу на миг укротила,
Но покорить не умела она.
В ту красоту, о коварные черти,
Путь себе тайный вы скоро нашли,
Адское семя растленья и смерти
В образ прекрасный вы сеять могли.
Знайте же: вечная женственность ныне
В теле нетленном на землю идет.
В свете немеркнущем новой богини
Небо слилося с пучиною вод.
Всё, чем красна Афродита мирская,
Радость домов, и лесов, и морей,—
Всё совместит красота неземная
Чище, сильней, и живей, и полней.
К ней не ищите напрасно подхода!
Умные черти, зачем же шуметь?
То, чего ждет и томится природа,
Вам не замедлить и не одолеть.
Гордые черти, вы всё же мужчины,—
С женщиной спорить не честь для мужей.
Ну, хоть бы только для этой причины,
Милые черти, сдавайтесь скорей!
The sea-devils grew fond of me;
Everywhere they traced my steps.
Yesterday in the Bay of Finland,
Today in the Aegean they lie in wait.
Clearly the devils seek my death,
As becomes them, befitting their nature;
God be with you, O devilish ones,
But I’ll not let you devour me!...
Vladimir Solovyov died on July 31, 1900. In his essay Pervoe avgusta (“August the First”) included in his collection Kruglyi god (“The Whole Year,” 1879) Saltykov-Shchedrin quotes the saying bylo by boloto, a cherti budut (if there is a bog, there would be the devils in it):
Я очень хорошо помню пословицу: было бы болото, а черти будут, и признаю ее настолько правильною, что никаких вариантов в обратном смысле не допускаю. Воистину болото родит чертей, а не черти созидают болото. Жалкие черти! как им очиститься, просветлеть, перестать быть чертями, коль скоро их насквозь пронизывают испарения болота! Жалкие и смешные черти! как не смеяться над ними, коль скоро они сами принимают свое болото всурьез и устроивают там целый нелепый мир отношений, в котором бесцельно кружатся и мятутся, совершенно искренно веря, что делают какое-то прочное дело! Да, смешны и жалки эти кинутые в болото черти, но само болото — не жалко и не смешно...
Saltykov-Shchedrin is the author of Ubezhishche Monrepo (“Mon Repos Haven,” 1879), a novel. In his essay on Saltykov-Shchedrin in "The Silhouettes of Russian Writers" the critic Yuli Ayhenvald quotes the saying about the bog and the devils:
Пословицу «Было бы болото, а черти будут» он признавал «настолько правильной, что никаких вариантов в обратном смысле не допускал». «Воистину болото родит чертей, а не черти созидают болото» – вот его заветное убеждение.
In his essay on Turgenev (the Russian writer who appears in Transparent Things) in "The Silhouettes of Russian Writers" Ayhenvald mentions the beautiful madness of Princess R. (a character in Turgenev's novel "Fathers and Sons," 1862):
Наш романист облекал любовь в изысканные формы, пренебрегал её великой простотою и естественностью, в противоположность Толстому, и, придумывая разные комбинации любви, искал её магии вне жизни, в каком-нибудь красивом безумии княгини Р. из "Отцов и детей"; он всегда интересовался, любят ли его герои художество, искусство, читают ли они стихи и романы или нет (как не читала их Вера Николаевна из "Фауста"), и это внешне эстетическое мерило играет у него большую роль - большую, чем внутренняя, прирожденная, не книжная красота людей.
Turgenev is the author of Pozhar na more ("A Fire in the Sea," 1883), an autobiographical story. At the end of VN's novel Hugh Person dies in a hotel fire.