According to Ada (the title character in a novel, 1969, by VN), at Marina's funeral Demon and d'Onsky's son, a person with only one arm, wept comme des fontaines:
‘My upper-lip space feels indecently naked.’ (He had shaved his mustache off with howls of pain in her presence). ‘And I cannot keep sucking in my belly all the time.’
‘Oh, I like you better with that nice overweight — there’s more of you. It’s the maternal gene, I suppose, because Demon grew leaner and leaner. He looked positively Quixotic when I saw him at Mother’s funeral. It was all very strange. He wore blue mourning. D’Onsky’s son, a person with only one arm, threw his remaining one around Demon and both wept comme des fontaines. Then a robed person who looked like an extra in a technicolor incarnation of Vishnu made an incomprehensible sermon. Then she went up in smoke. He said to me, sobbing: "I will not cheat the poor grubs!" Practically a couple of hours after he broke that promise we had sudden visitors at the ranch — an incredibly graceful moppet of eight, black-veiled, and a kind of duenna, also in black, with two bodyguards. The hag demanded certain fantastic sums — which Demon, she said, had not had time to pay, for "popping the hymen" — whereupon I had one of our strongest boys throw out vsyu (the entire) kompaniyu.’
‘Extraordinary,’ said Van, ‘they had been growing younger and younger — I mean the girls, not the strong silent boys. His old Rosalind had a ten-year-old niece, a primed chickabiddy. Soon he would have been poaching them from the hatching chamber.’
‘You never loved your father,’ said Ada sadly.
‘Oh, I did and do — tenderly, reverently, understandingly, because, after all, that minor poetry of the flesh is something not unfamiliar to me. But as far as we are concerned, I mean you and I, he was buried on the same day as our uncle Dan.’
‘I know, I know. It’s pitiful! And what use was it? Perhaps I oughtn’t to tell you, but his visits to Agavia kept getting rarer and shorter every year. Yes, it was pitiful to hear him and Andrey talking. I mean, Andrey n’a pas le verbe facile, though he greatly appreciated — without quite understanding it — Demon’s wild flow of fancy and fantastic fact, and would often exclaim, with his Russian "tssk-tssk" and a shake of the head — complimentary and all that — "what a balagur (wag) you are!" — And then, one day, Demon warned me that he would not come any more if he heard again poor Andrey’s poor joke (Nu i balagur-zhe vï, Dementiy Labirintovich) or what Dorothy, l’impayable ("priceless for impudence and absurdity") Dorothy, thought of my camping out in the mountains with only Mayo, a cowhand, to protect me from lions.’
‘Could one hear more about that?’ asked Van.
‘Well, nobody did. All this happened at a time when I was not on speaking terms with my husband and sister-in-law, and so could not control the situation. Anyhow, Demon did not come even when he was only two hundred miles away and simply mailed instead, from some gaming house, your lovely, lovely letter about Lucette and my picture.’
‘One would also like to know some details of the actual coverture — frequence of intercourse, pet names for secret warts, favorite smells —’
‘Platok momental’no (handkerchief quick)! Your right nostril is full of damp jade,’ said Ada, and then pointed to a lawnside circular sign, rimmed with red, saying: Chiens interdits and depicting an impossible black mongrel with a white ribbon around its neck: Why, she wondered, should the Swiss magistrates forbid one to cross highland terriers with poodles? (3.8)
Darkbloom (‘Notes to Ada’): comme etc.: shedding floods of tears.
N’a pas le verbe etc.: lacks the gift of the gab.
chiens etc.: dogs not allowed.
Demon's adversary in a sword duel, Baron d'Onsky (nicknamed Skonky, the father of one-armed d'Onsky) seems to be a cross between Dmitri Donskoy (the Moscow Prince who defeated Khan Mamay in the battle of Kulikovo, 1380) and Onegin's donskoy zherebets (Don stallion) in Pushkin Eugene Onegin (Two: V: 4):
Сначала все к нему езжали;
Но так как с заднего крыльца
Обыкновенно подавали
Ему донского жеребца,
Лишь только вдоль большой дороги
Заслышат их домашни дроги, —
Поступком оскорбясь таким,
Все дружбу прекратили с ним.
«Сосед наш неуч; сумасбродит;
Он фармазон; он пьет одно
Стаканом красное вино;
Он дамам к ручке не подходит;
Все да да нет; не скажет да-с
Иль нет-с». Таков был общий глас.
At first they all would call on him,
but since to the back porch
habitually a Don stallion
for him was brought
as soon as one made out along the highway
the sound of their domestic runabouts —
outraged by such behavior,
they all ceased to be friends with him.
“Our neighbor is a boor; acts like a crackbrain;
he's a Freemason; he
drinks only red wine, by the tumbler;
he won't go up to kiss a lady's hand;
'tis all ‘yes,’ ‘no’ — he'll not say ‘yes, sir,’
or ‘no, sir.’ ” This was the general voice.
In his poem Fontanu Bakhchisarayskogo dvortsa ("To the Fountain of the Palace of Bakhchisaray," 1824) Pushkin says that he loves the fountain's poeticheskie slyozy (poetical tears):
Фонтан любви, фонтан живой!
Принёс я в дар тебе две розы.
Люблю немолчный говор твой
И поэтические слёзы.
Van's and Ada's father, Demon Veen perishes in a mysterious airplane disaster above the Pacific in March, 1905. Julius Caesar was assassinated on March 15 (the Ides of March), 44 BC. In a discarded variant of EO (Six: XXXIV: 10-11) Pushkin says that Caesar, too, shed tears when he learned of a friend's death:
В сраженьи [смелым] быть похвально
Но кто не смел в наш храбрый век —
Все дерзко бьется, лжет нахально
Герой, будь прежде человек —
Чувствительность бывала в моде
И в нашей северной природе.
Когда горящая картечь
Главу сорвет у друга с плеч —
Плачь, воин, не стыдись, плачь вольно
И Кесарь слезы проливал —
[Когда он] друга [смерть узнал]
И сам был ранен очень больно
(Не помню где, не помню как)
Он был конечно <не> дурак.
It is a praisworthy to be <brave> in battle,
but who's not brave in our courageous age?
One and all boldly fight, lie brazenly.
Hero, be first a human being!
At one time sensibility was current
even in our Northern nature.
When burning grapeshot
tears off the head from a friend's shoulders,
weep, warrior, do not be ashamed, weep freely!
Caesar, too, shed tears,
<when he learned> of a friend's <death>
and was himself most badly wounded
(I don't remember where, I don't remember how);
he was, of course, <no> fool.
According to Van, he is no fool in amorous strategy:
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. (3.8)
On the other hand, On byl konechno <ne> durak (he was, of course, <no> fool) brings to mind Durak Walter (as Daniel Veen is known in society):
On April 23, 1869, in drizzly and warm, gauzy and green Kaluga, Aqua, aged twenty-five and afflicted with her usual vernal migraine, married Walter D. Veen, a Manhattan banker of ancient Anglo-Irish ancestry who had long conducted, and was soon to resume intermittently, a passionate affair with Marina. The latter, some time in 1871, married her first lover’s first cousin, also Walter D. Veen, a quite as opulent, but much duller, chap.
The ‘D’ in the name of Aqua’s husband stood for Demon (a form of Demian or Dementius), and thus was he called by his kin. In society he was generally known as Raven Veen or simply Dark Walter to distinguish him from Marina’s husband, Durak Walter or simply Red Veen. Demon’s twofold hobby was collecting old masters and young mistresses. He also liked middle-aged puns. (1.1)
Darkbloom (‘Notes to Ada’): Durak: 'fool' in Russian.
In his EO Commentary (vol. III, pp. 55-56) VN writes:
10-14 Here, Pushkin vaguely recollects a passage from Plutarch' Lives (read in Jacques Amyot's French), in which Caesar in Alexandria, on being presented with Pompey's head, "ne put retenir ses larmes" (Vies des hommes illustres: "César," LIII). It was near the statue of Pompey that, at the meeting of the Senate, Caesar received a first gash in the neck (dealt by Caska) before being killed (ibid. LXXI) - hence the mention here of his being wounded.
Works 1949, p. 612, adds a draft where Cassius and Brutus replace Caesar and his friend (ll. 10-11):
I Kassiy slyozy prolival,
kogda on Bruta smert' uznal...
And Cassius also tears did shed
when he found out that Brut was dead...
It was the other way round. This vagueness of classical knowledge is curious.
One of Caesar's murderers, Brut committed suicide in October 44 BC, after he and Cassius had been defeated in the battle of Philippi. After the thirteen-year-long separation, Van and Ada (now married to Andrey Vinelander) meet in Mont Roux in October 1905, six months after Demon's death.
In his opera Eugene Onegin Tchaykovsky made a weepy weakling out of virile Lenski. Similarly, in his Pushkin speech Dostoevski said that Tatiana's husband was an old general (actually, Prince N. can not be older than thirty-four when he marries Tatiana Larin). Just as he does not realize that his father died, because Ada (who could not pardon Demon his forcing Van to give her up) managed to persuade the pilot to destroy his machine in midair, Van fails to see that Andrey Vinelander (Ada's husband) and Ada have at least two children and that Ronald Oranger (old Van's secretary, the editor of Ada) and Violet Knox (old Van's typist whom Ada calls Fialochka, "little Violet," and who marries Ronald Oranger after Van's and Ada's death) are Ada's grandchildren.