In his suicide note addressed to Ada Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Ada, 1969) mentions a vague kind of 'Victorian' era:
He judged it would take him as much time to find a taxi at this hour of the day as to walk, with his ordinary swift swing, the ten blocks to Alex Avenue. He was coatless, tieless, hatless; a strong sharp wind dimmed his sight with salty frost and played Medusaean havoc with his black locks. Upon letting himself in for the last time into his idiotically cheerful apartment, he forthwith sat down at that really magnificent desk and wrote the following note:
Do what he tells you. His logic sounds preposterous, prepsupposing [sic] a vague kind of ‘Victorian’ era, as they have on Terra according to ‘my mad’ [?], but in a paroxysm of [illegible] I suddenly realized he was right. Yes, right, here and there, not neither here, nor there, as most things are. You see, girl, how it is and must be. In the last window we shared we both saw a man painting [us?] but your second-floor level of vision probably prevented your seeing that he wore what looked like a butcher’s apron, badly smeared. Good-bye, girl.
Van sealed the letter, found his Thunderbolt pistol in the place he had visualized, introduced one cartridge into the magazine and translated it into its chamber. Then, standing before a closet mirror, he put the automatic to his head, at the point of the pterion, and pressed the comfortably concaved trigger. Nothing happened — or perhaps everything happened, and his destiny simply forked at that instant, as it probably does sometimes at night, especially in a strange bed, at stages of great happiness or great desolation, when we happen to die in our sleep, but continue our normal existence, with no perceptible break in the faked serialization, on the following, neatly prepared morning, with a spurious past discreetly but firmly attached behind. Anyway, what he held in his right hand was no longer a pistol but a pocket comb which he passed through his hair at the temples. It was to gray by the time that Ada, then in her thirties, said, when they spoke of their voluntary separation:
‘I would have killed myself too, had I found Rose wailing over your corpse. "Secondes pensées sont les bonnes," as your other, white, bonne used to say in her pretty patois. As to the apron, you are quite right. And what you did not make out was that the artist had about finished a large picture of your meek little palazzo standing between its two giant guards. Perhaps for the cover of a magazine, which rejected that picture. But, you know, there’s one thing I regret,’ she added: ‘Your use of an alpenstock to release a brute’s fury — not yours, not my Van’s. I should never have told you about the Ladore policeman. You should never have taken him into your confidence, never connived with him to burn those files — and most of Kalugano’s pine forest. Eto unizitel’no (it is humiliating).’
‘Amends have been made,’ replied fat Van with a fat man’s chuckle. ‘I’m keeping Kim safe and snug in a nice Home for Disabled Professional People, where he gets from me loads of nicely brailled books on new processes in chromophotography.’
There are other possible forkings and continuations that occur to the dream-mind, but these will do. (2.11)
Darkbloom ('Notes to Ada'): secondes pensées etc.: second thoughts are the good ones.
bonne: housemaid.
Van blinds with an alpenstock Kim Beauharnais (a kitchen boy and photographer at Ardis who spies on Van and Ada and attempts to blackmail Ada). In VN’s story Sovershenstvo (“Perfection,” 1932) Ivanov tells David "if, God forbid, you were someday to go blind:"
Иванов потёрся спиной,-- она нестерпимо горела и чесалась,-- о ствол дерева и задумчиво продолжал: "Любуясь природой данной местности, я всегда думаю о тех странах, которых не увижу никогда. Представь себе, Давид, что мы сейчас не в Померании, а в Малайском лесу. Смотри, сейчас пролетит редчайшая птица птеридофора с парой длинных из голубых фестонов состоящих, антенн на голове".
"Ах, кватч",-- уныло сказал Давид.
По-русски надо сказать "ерунда" или "чушь". Конечно, это ерунда. Но в том-то и дело, что при известном воображении... Если когда-нибудь ты, не дай Бог, ослепнешь или попадешь в тюрьму, или просто в страшной нищете будешь заниматься гнусной, беспросветной работой, ты вспомнишь об этой нашей прогулке в обыкновенном лесу, как -- знаешь -- о сказочном блаженстве".
Ivanov rubbed his unbearably burning and itching back against a tree trunk and continued pensively: “While admiring nature at a given locality, I cannot help thinking of countries that I shall never see. Try to imagine, David, that this is not Pomerania but a Malayan forest. Look about you: you’ll presently see the rarest of birds fly past, Prince Albert’s paradise bird, whose head is adorned with a pair of long plumes consisting of blue oriflammes.”
“Ach, quatsch,” responded David dejectedly.
“In Russian you ought to say ‘erundá.’ Of course, it’s nonsense, we are not in the mountains of New Guinea. But the point is that with a bit of imagination—if, God forbid, you were someday to go blind or be imprisoned, or were merely forced to perform, in appalling poverty, some hopeless, distasteful task, you might remember this walk we are taking today in an ordinary forest as if it had been—how shall I say?— fairy-tale ecstasy.”
According to Marina (Van's, Ada's and Lucette's mother), Azov, a Russian humorist, derives erunda from the German hier und da, which is neither here nor there:
Naked-faced, dull-haired, wrapped up in her oldest kimono (her Pedro had suddenly left for Rio), Marina reclined on her mahogany bed under a golden-yellow quilt, drinking tea with mare’s milk, one of her fads.
‘Sit down, have a spot of chayku,’ she said. ‘The cow is in the smaller jug, I think. Yes, it is.’ And when Van, having kissed her freckled hand, lowered himself on the ivanilich (a kind of sighing old hassock upholstered in leather): ‘Van, dear, I wish to say something to you, because I know I shall never have to repeat it again. Belle, with her usual flair for the right phrase, has cited to me the cousinage-dangereux-voisinage adage — I mean "adage," I always fluff that word — and complained qu’on s’embrassait dans tous les coins. Is that true?’
Van’s mind flashed in advance of his speech. It was, Marina, a fantastic exaggeration. The crazy governess had observed it once when he carried Ada across a brook and kissed her because she had hurt her toe. I’m the well-known beggar in the saddest of all stories.
‘Erunda (nonsense),’ said Van. ‘She once saw me carrying Ada across the brook and misconstrued our stumbling huddle (spotïkayushcheesya sliyanie).’
‘I do not mean Ada, silly,’ said Marina with a slight snort, as she fussed over the teapot. ‘Azov, a Russian humorist, derives erunda from the German hier und da, which is neither here nor there. Ada is a big girl, and big girls, alas, have their own worries. Mlle Larivière meant Lucette, of course. Van, those soft games must stop. Lucette is twelve, and naive, and I know it’s all clean fun, yet (odnako) one can never behave too delikatno in regard to a budding little woman. A propos de coins: in Griboedov’s Gore ot uma, "How stupid to be so clever," a play in verse, written, I think, in Pushkin’s time, the hero reminds Sophie of their childhood games, and says:
How oft we sat together in a corner
And what harm might there be in that?
but in Russian it is a little ambiguous, have another spot, Van?’ (he shook his head, simultaneously lifting his hand, like his father), ‘because, you see, — no, there is none left anyway — the second line, i kazhetsya chto v etom, can be also construed as "And in that one, meseems," pointing with his finger at a corner of the room. Imagine — when I was rehearsing that scene with Kachalov at the Seagull Theater, in Yukonsk, Stanislavski, Konstantin Sergeevich, actually wanted him to make that cosy little gesture (uyutnen’kiy zhest).’
‘How very amusing,’ said Van. (1.37)
Darkbloom (‘Notes to Ada’): chayku: Russ., tea (diminutive).
Ivanilich: a pouf plays a marvelous part in Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilyich, where it sighs deeply under a friend of the widow’s.
cousinage: cousinhood is dangerous neighborhood.
on s’embrassait: kissing went on in every corner.
erunda: Russ., nonsense.
hier und da: Germ., here and there.
In his suicide note Van uses the phrase "not neither here, nor there." The rarest of birds, Prince Albert’s paradise bird (Pteridophora alberti) mentioned by Ivanov (David's tutor) in VN's story Sovershenstvo, was named after Albert (1828-1902), the King of Saxony. His namesake, Prince Albert (1819-61) was the consort of Queen Victoria. According to Van's mad, they have on Terra (the twin planet of Demonia, aka Antiterra, Earth's twin planet on which Ada is set) a vague kind of 'Victorian' era.
Ivanilich and Azov (a Russian humorist mentioned by Marina) make one think of Mne otmshchenie i az vozdam ("Vengeance is mine; I will repay"), the epigraph to Tolstoy's Anna Karenin (1875-77). 'My mad' in Van's suicide note brings to mind Pushkin's poem Ne day mne Bog soyti s uma ("The Lord Forbid My Going Mad," 1833):
Не дай мне бог сойти с ума.
Нет, легче посох и сума;
Нет, легче труд и глад.
Не то, чтоб разумом моим
Я дорожил; не то, чтоб с ним
Расстаться был не рад:
Когда б оставили меня
На воле, как бы резво я
Пустился в темный лес!
Я пел бы в пламенном бреду,
Я забывался бы в чаду
Нестройных, чудных грез.
И я б заслушивался волн,
И я глядел бы, счастья полн,
В пустые небеса;
И силен, волен был бы я,
Как вихорь, роющий поля,
Ломающий леса.
Да вот беда: сойди с ума,
И страшен будешь как чума,
Как раз тебя запрут,
Посадят на цепь дурака
И сквозь решетку как зверка
Дразнить тебя придут.
А ночью слышать буду я
Не голос яркий соловья,
Не шум глухой дубров —
А крик товарищей моих,
Да брань смотрителей ночных,
Да визг, да звон оков.
The Lord forbid my going mad.
A beggar’s lot is not as bad.
No, better toil and hunger.
Though it’s not that I regard my reason
As a thing of value; nor that I would
Not gladly part with it:
If only they’d allow me to remain
In freedom, how playfully I’d
Rush into the forest dark!
I’d sing in a fiery delirium,
I’d forget myself in the intoxicating fumes
Of disorderly, wondrous dreams.
With what delight I’d listen to the waves,
And stare, full of joy,
Into the empty heavens;
And strong, free would I be,
Like a whirlwind plowing the fields,
Shredding the forests.
But here’s the thing: lose your mind,
And you’ll be fearsome as the plague;
They’ll lock you up, no doubt,
Dress the fool in chains
And, through the prison bars, like a caged beast,
They’ll come to taunt you.
And at night I’ll hear
Not the brilliant voice of the nightingale,
Nor the wild rustling of the groves —
Instead, the shouts of my fellow prisoners
And the curses of the night watchmen,
And shrieks, and the ringing of shackles.
Pushkin died on January 29, 1837 (OS), two days after his fatal duel with d'Anthès. Victoria became Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland on 20 June 1837. In Pushkin’s fragment My provodili vecher na dache… (“We were spending the evening at the dacha,” 1835) Aleksey Ivanych mentions Aurelius Victor, a Roman historian of the 4th century (the author of De Viris illustribus):
— Ей-богу, — сказал молодой человек, — я робею: я стал стыдлив, как ценсура. Ну, так и быть...
Надобно знать, что в числе латинских историков есть некто Аврелий Виктор, о котором, вероятно, вы никогда не слыхивали.
— Aurelius Victor? — прервал Вершнев, который учился некогда у езуитов, — Аврелий Виктор, писатель четвертого столетия. Сочинения его приписываются Корнелию Непоту и даже Светонию; он написал книгу de Viris illustribus — о знаменитых мужах города Рима, знаю...
— Точно так, — продолжал Алексей Иваныч, — книжонка его довольно ничтожна, но в ней находится то сказание о Клеопатре, которое так меня поразило. И, что замечательно, в этом месте сухой и скучный Аврелий Виктор силою выражения равняется Тациту: Наес tantae libidinis fuit ut saepe prostiterit; tantae pulchritudinis ut multi noctem illius morte emerint...
— Прекрасно! — воскликнул Вершнев. — Это напоминает мне Саллюстия — помните? Tantae...
— Что же это, господа? — сказала хозяйка, — уж вы изволите разговаривать по-латыни! Как это для нас весело! Скажите, что значит ваша латинская фраза?
— Дело в том, что Клеопатра торговала своею красотою, и что многие купили ее ночи ценою своей жизни...
According to Aurelius Victor, Cleopatra (the queen of Egypt) used to sell her beauty and many men bought her nights at the price of their lives. Aleksey Ivanych compares Aurelius Victor to Tacitus (a Roman historian and politician, c. AD 56 – c. 120). Describing Demon's death in an airplane disaster, Van mentions the summits of the Tacit:
He greeted the dawn of a placid and prosperous century (more than half of which Ada and I have now seen) with the beginning of his second philosophic fable, a ‘denunciation of space’ (never to be completed, but forming in rear vision, a preface to his Texture of Time). Part of that treatise, a rather mannered affair, but nasty and sound, appeared in the first issue (January, 1904) of a now famous American monthly, The Artisan, and a comment on the excerpt is preserved in one of the tragically formal letters (all destroyed save this one) that his sister sent him by public post now and then. Somehow, after the interchange occasioned by Lucette’s death such nonclandestine correspondence had been established with the tacit sanction of Demon:
And o’er the summits of the Tacit
He, banned from Paradise, flew on:
Beneath him, like a brilliant’s facet,
Mount Peck with snows eternal shone. (3.7)
Darkbloom ('Notes to Ada'): And o’er the summits of the Tacit etc.: parody of four lines in Lermontov’s The Demon (see also p.115).
Lermontov is the author of Geroy nashego vremeni ("A Hero of our Time," 1840). Describing his fellow writers in Paris, Vadim Vadimovich (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Look at the Harlequins! 1974) mentions the honest nonentity Suknovalov, author of the popular social satire Geroy nashey ery ("Hero of Our Era"):
I recognized the critic Basilevski, his sycophants Hristov and Boyarski, my friend Morozov, the novelists Shipogradov and Sokolovski, the honest nonentity Suknovalov, author of the popular social satire Geroy nashey ery ("Hero of Our Era") and two young poets, Lazarev (collection Serenity) and Fartuk (collection Silence) (Part Two, 4).
VN's Dar ("The Gift," 1937) corresponds to Vadim's novel The Dare (1950):
The reader must have noticed that I speak only in a very general way about my Russian fictions of the Nineteen-Twenties and Thirties, for I assume that he is familiar with them or can easily obtain them in their English versions. At this point, however, I must say a few words about The Dare (Podarok Otchizne was its original title, which can be translated as "a gift to the fatherland"). When in 1934 I started to dictate its beginning to Annette, I knew it would be my longest novel. I did not foresee however that it would be almost as long as General Pudov's vile and fatuous "historical" romance about the way the Zion Wisers usurped St. Rus. It took me about four years in all to write its four hundred pages, many of which Annette typed at least twice. Most of it had been serialized in émigré magazines by May, 1939, when she and I, still childless, left for America; but in book form, the Russian original appeared only in 1950 Turgenev Publishing House, New York), followed another decade later by an English translation, whose title neatly refers not only to the well-known device used to bewilder noddies but also to the daredevil nature of Victor, the hero and part-time narrator.
The novel begins with a nostalgic account of a Russian childhood (much happier, though not less opulent than mine). After that comes adolescence in England (not unlike my own Cambridge years); then life in émigré Paris, the writing of a first novel (Memoirs of a Parrot Fancier) and the tying of amusing knots in various literary intrigues. Inset in the middle part is a complete version of the book my Victor wrote "on a dare": this is a concise biography and critical appraisal of Fyodor Dostoyevski, whose politics my author finds hateful and whose novels he condemns as absurd with their black-bearded killers presented as mere negatives of Jesus Christ's conventional image, and weepy whores borrowed from maudlin romances of an earlier age. The next chapter deals with the rage and bewilderment of émigré reviewers, all of them priests of the Dostoyevskian persuasion; and in the last pages my young hero accepts a flirt's challenge and accomplishes a final gratuitous feat by walking through a perilous forest into Soviet territory and as casually strolling back.
I am giving this summary to exemplify what even the poorest reader of my Dare must surely retain, unless electrolysis destroys some essential cells soon after he closes the book. Now part of Annette's frail charm lay in her forgetfulness which veiled everything toward the evening of everything, like the kind of pastel haze that obliterates mountains, clouds, and even its own self as the summer day swoons. I know I have seen her many times, a copy of Patria in her languid lap, follow the printed lines with the pendulum swing of eyes suggestive of reading, and actually reach the "To be continued" at the end of the current installment of The Dare. I also know that she had typed every word of it and most of its commas. Yet the fact remains that she retained nothing--perhaps in result of her having decided once for all that my prose was not merely "difficult" but hermetic ("nastily hermetic," to repeat the compliment Basilevski paid me the moment he realized--a moment which came in due time--that his manner and mind were being ridiculed in Chapter Three by my gloriously happy Victor. I must say I forgave her readily her attitude to my work. At public readings, I admired her public smile, the "archaic" smile of Greek statues. When her rather dreadful parents asked to see my books (as a suspicious physician might ask for a sample of semen), she gave them to read by mistake another man's novel because of a silly similarity of titles. The only real shock I experienced was when I overheard her informing some idiot woman friend that my Dare included biographies of "Chernolyubov and Dobroshevski"! She actually started to argue when I retorted that only a lunatic would have chosen a pair of third-rate publicists to write about--spoonerizing their names in addition! (2.5)