Describing his meeting with Lucette (Van’s and Ada’s half-sister) in 1901 in Paris, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) mentions the optical mist and calls it "Space's recent revenge:"
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. (3.3)
Darkbloom (‘Notes to Ada’): affalés etc.: sprawling in their armchairs.
bouffant: puffed up.
gueule etc.: simian facial angle.
In his essay The Texture of Time (Part Four of Ada) Van quotes one and a half line from Canto Two of John Shade's poem in VN's novel Pale Fire (1962): "Space is a swarming in the eyes, and Time a singing in the ears." In Canto One of his poem Shade mentions some quirk in space that "has caused a fold or furrow to displace the fragile vista, the frame house between Goldsworth and Wordsmith on its square of green." Space's recent revenge mentioned by Van brings to mind Robert Browning's poem Time's Revenges. In Browning's poem (Dramatic Romance) The Patriot the speaker mentions a mist:
The air broke into a mist with bells,
The old walls rocked with the crowds and cries.
Had I said, ‘Good folks, mere noise repels -
But give me your sun from yonder skies!’
They had answered, ‘And afterward, what else?’ (II)
In Alexander Blok's dialogue O lyubvi, poezii i gosudarstvennoy sluzhbe ("On Love, Poetry and Civil Service," 1906) the Clown says that he is an optimist, idealist and patriot:
Шут (восторженно). О, да, я оптимист. Смело, положа руку на сердце, скажу вам и еще: я идеалист. Я патриот. Я участвую в культурном строительстве. Всякий, кто последует за мной, будет пользоваться равенством, довольством и здоровьем, ибо на знамени моем начертано: здравый смысл. Я и прогресс -- одно.
A play on "optimist," the optical mist mentioned by Van also makes one think of Dysha dukhami i tumanami (Exhaling perfumes and mists), a line in Blok's poem Neznakomka ("The Unknown Woman," 1906):
И каждый вечер, в час назначенный
(Иль это только снится мне?),
Девичий стан, шелками схваченный,
В туманном движется окне.
И медленно, пройдя меж пьяными,
Всегда без спутников, одна
Дыша духами и туманами,
Она садится у окна.
И веют древними поверьями
Ее упругие шелка,
И шляпа с траурными перьями,
И в кольцах узкая рука.
And each night at a certain hour
(Or am I only dreaming it?),
A girl's figure, swathed in silk,
Moves across the misty window.
And slowly passing among the drunks,
Always alone and unescorted,
Wafting a breath of perfume and mist,
She takes a table by the window.
And an air of ancient legend
Wreaths her resilient silks,
Her hat with its funereal plumes,
And her slender ringed hand.
Van compares the girl whose silhouette he recalled having seen now and then (much more distinctly!) ever since his pubescence, passing alone, drinking alone, always alone, to Blok’s Incognita. Describing his visit to Brownhill (Ada’s school for girls), Van mentions a slender lady in black velvet, wearing a beautiful black velvet picture hat:
The railway station had a semi-private tearoom supervised by the stationmaster’s wife under the school’s idiotic auspices. It was empty, save for a slender lady in black velvet, wearing a beautiful black velvet picture hat, who sat with her back to them at a ‘tonic bar’ and never once turned her head, but the thought brushed him that she was a cocotte from Toulouse. Our damp trio found a nice corner table and with sighs of banal relief undid their raincoats. He hoped Ada would discard her heavy-seas hat but she did not, because she had cut her hair because of dreadful migraines, because she did not want him to see her in the role of a moribund Romeo.
(On fait son grand Joyce after doing one’s petit Proust. In Ada’s lovely hand.)
(But read on; it is pure V.V. Note that lady! In Van’s bed-buvard scrawl.)
As Ada reached for the cream, he caught and inspected her dead-shamming hand. We remember the Camberwell Beauty that lay tightly closed for an instant upon our palm, and suddenly our hand was empty. He saw, with satisfaction, that her fingernails were now long and sharp.
‘Not too sharp, are they, my dear,’ he asked for the benefit of dura Cordula, who should have gone to the ‘powder room’ — a forlorn hope.
‘Why, no,’ said Ada.
‘You don’t,’ he went on, unable to stop, ‘you don’t scratch little people when you stroke little people? Look at your little girl friend’s hand’ (taking it), ‘look at those dainty short nails (cold innocent, docile little paw!). She could not catch them in the fanciest satin, oh, no, could you, Ardula — I mean, Cordula?’
Both girls giggled, and Cordula kissed Ada’s cheek. Van hardly knew what reaction he had expected, but found that simple kiss disarming and disappointing. The sound of the rain was lost in a growing rumble of wheels. He glanced at his watch; glanced up at the clock on the wall. He said he was sorry — that was his train.
‘Not at all,’ wrote Ada (paraphrased here) in reply to his abject apologies, ‘we just thought you were drunk; but I’ll never invite you to Brownhill again, my love.’ (1.27)
Like Riverlane (Van's school for boys), Brownhill has erotic connotations; but it also brings to mind Robert Brown, the Poet Laureate whose poem "Peter and Margaret" Van makes Lucette learn by heart:
They tried all sorts of other tricks.
Once, for example, when Lucette had made of herself a particular nuisance, her nose running, her hand clutching at Van’s all the time, her whimpering attachment to his company turning into a veritable obsession, Van mustered all his persuasive skill, charm, eloquence, and said with conspiratory undertones: ‘Look, my dear. This brown book is one of my most treasured possessions. I had a special pocket made for it in my school jacket. Numberless fights have been fought over it with wicked boys who wanted to steal it. What we have here’ (turning the pages reverently) ‘is no less than a collection of the most beautiful and famous short poems in the English language. This tiny one, for example, was composed in tears forty years ago by the Poet Laureate Robert Brown, the old gentleman whom my father once pointed out to me up in the air on a cliff under a cypress, looking down on the foaming turquoise surf near Nice, an unforgettable sight for all concerned. It is called "Peter and Margaret." Now you have, say’ (turning to Ada in solemn consultation), ‘forty minutes’ (‘Give her a full hour, she can’t even memorize Mironton, mirontaine’) — ‘all right, a full hour to learn these eight lines by heart. You and I’ (whispering) ‘are going to prove to your nasty arrogant sister that stupid little Lucette can do anything. If’ (lightly brushing her bobbed hair with his lips), ‘if, my sweet, you can recite it and confound Ada by not making one single slip — you must be careful about the "here-there" and the "this-that", and every other detail — if you can do it then I shall give you this valuable book for keeps.’ (‘Let her try the one about finding a feather and seeing Peacock plain,’ said Ada drily — ‘it’s a bit harder.’) ‘No, no, she and I have already chosen that little ballad. All right. Now go in here’ (opening a door) ‘and don’t come out until I call you. Otherwise, you’ll forfeit the reward, and will regret the loss all your life.’
‘Oh, Van, how lovely of you,’ said Lucette, slowly entering her room, with her bemused eyes scanning the fascinating flyleaf, his name on it, his bold flourish, and his own wonderful drawings in ink — a black aster (evolved from a blot), a doric column (disguising a more ribald design), a delicate leafless tree (as seen from a classroom window), and several profiles of boys (Cheshcat, Zogdog, Fancytart, and Ada-like Van himself).
Van hastened to join Ada in the attic. At that moment he felt quite proud of his stratagem. He was to recall it with a fatidic shiver seventeen years later when Lucette, in her last note to him, mailed from Paris to his Kingston address on June 2, 1901, ‘just in case,’ wrote:
‘I kept for years — it must be in my Ardis nursery — the anthology you once gave me; and the little poem you wanted me to learn by heart is still word-perfect in a safe place of my jumbled mind, with the packers trampling on my things, and upsetting crates, and voices calling, time to go, time to go. Find it in Brown and praise me again for my eight-year-old intelligence as you and happy Ada did that distant day, that day somewhere tinkling on its shelf like an empty little bottle. Now read on:
‘Here, said the guide, was the field,
There, he said, was the wood.
This is where Peter kneeled,
That’s where the Princess stood.
No, the visitor said,
You are the ghost, old guide.
Oats and oaks may be dead,
But she is by my side.’ (1.23)
The diaries and notebooks of Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-89) are filled with rigorous, exhaustive detail. He recalls his numerous walks in nature: of the uniqueness of a leaf, the flesh-like quality of the sky “blushing” in its “turquoise-like” splendor. (At one point, he even free associates a connection between “oats” and “oaks” simply because the words sound so similar. He then proceeds to list every possible detail imaginable he can connect with these two things). Hopkins’s poem Pied Beauty brings to mind Browning’s poem The Pied Piper of Hamelin. When they cross the Atlantic on Admiral Tobakoff, Lucette tells Van that she does not want to be a pied cheat:
She returned after a brief swim to the sun terrace where Van lay and said:
‘You can’t imagine’ — (‘I can imagine anything,’ he insisted) — ‘you can imagine, okay, what oceans of lotions and streams of creams I am compelled to use — in the privacy of my balconies or in desolate sea caves — before I can exhibit myself to the elements. I always teeter on the tender border between sunburn and suntan — or between lobster and Obst as writes Herb, my beloved painter — I’m reading his diary published by his last duchess, it’s in three mixed languages and lovely, I’ll lend it to you. You see, darling, I’d consider myself a pied cheat if the small parts I conceal in public were not of the same color as those on show.’
‘You looked to me kind of sandy allover when you were inspected in 1892,’ said Van.
‘I’m a brand-new girl now,’ she whispered. ‘A happy new girl. Alone with you on an abandoned ship, with ten days at least till my next flow. I sent you a silly note to Kingston, just in case you didn’t turn up.’ (3.5)
Darkbloom ('Notes to Ada'): Obst: Germ., fruit.
Lucette's beloved painter, Herb reminds one of herb mentioned by Robert Browning in his poem With Gerard de Lairesse:
Noon is the conqueror, — not a spray, nor leaf,
Nor herb, nor blossom but has rendered up
Its morning dew: the valley seemed one cup
Of cloud-smoke, but the vapour's reign was brief,
Sun-smitten, see, it hangs — the filmy haze —
Grey-garmenting the herbless mountain-side,
To soothe the day's sharp glare: while far and wide
Above unclouded burns the sky, one blaze
With fierce immitigable blue, no bird
Ventures to spot by passage [...] (X; ll. 262-71)
In his poem Browning imagines himself taking one of the imaginary 'Walks' which Gerard de Lairesse (a Dutch painter and theorist, 1641-1711, who went blind as a result of congenitive syphilis) took through the Dutch landscape, turning Holland into Dreamland.
Herb's last Duchess hints at Browning's poem My Last Duchess (1842). In Lucette's Tobakoff suit there is a steeplechase picture "Pale Fire with Tom Cox Up." In his poem in blank verse O smerti ("On Death") from the cycle Vol'nye mysli ("Free Thoughts," 1907) Alexander Blok describes horse races.