Describing his dialogues with Ada in "Ardis the First," Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) mentions ‘minirechi’ (‘talking minarets’) of a secret make that they had evolved in Tartary:
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families (in the British and Brazilian sense) to which the Veens and Durmanovs happened to belong, and had been replaced by elaborate surrogates only in those very important ‘utilities’ — telephones, motors — what else?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.
Minirechi of a secret make seem to hint at Lermontov’s poem Est’ rechi – znachen’ye / temno il’ nichtozhno (“There are talks whose meaning / is obscure or insignificant,” 1840):
Есть речи — значенье
Темно иль ничтожно,
Но им без волненья
Внимать невозможно.
Как полны их звуки
Безумством желанья!
В них слёзы разлуки,
В них трепет свиданья.
Не встретит ответа
Средь шума мирского
Из пламя и света
Рождённое слово;
Но в храме, средь боя
И где я ни буду,
Услышав, его я
Узнаю повсюду.
Не кончив молитвы,
На звук тот отвечу,
И брошусь из битвы
Ему я навстречу.
In his story Ashik-Kerib (1837) subtitled "A Turkish Fairy Tale" Lermontov mentions the walls and minarets of Erzurum:
Смотрит Ашик: перед ним белеют стены и блещут минареты Арзрума.
In Puteshestvie v Arzrum (“A Journey to Erzurum,” 1835) Pushkin says that, when he took a walk in Erzurum, the Turks (who mistook the poet for a doctor) in the streets beckoned him and showed him their tongues. According to Pushkin, he was tempted to respond with the same gesture:
Когда гулял я по городу, турки подзывали меня и показывали мне язык. (Они принимают всякого франка за лекаря.) Это мне надоело, я готов был отвечать им тем же. (chapter 5)
Describing his childhood travels, Van mentions a Negro lad who showed to Aksakov (Van's Russian tutor) his tongue:
In 1880, Van, aged ten, had traveled in silver trains with showerbaths, accompanied by his father, his father’s beautiful secretary, the secretary’s eighteen-year-old white-gloved sister (with a bit part as Van’s English governess and milkmaid), and his chaste, angelic Russian tutor, Andrey Andreevich Aksakov (‘AAA’), to gay resorts in Louisiana and Nevada. AAA explained, he remembered, to a Negro lad with whom Van had scrapped, that Pushkin and Dumas had African blood, upon which the lad showed AAA his tongue, a new interesting trick which Van emulated at the earliest occasion and was slapped by the younger of the Misses Fortune, put it back in your face, sir, she said. (1.24)
At the family dinner in "Ardis the Second" Ada shows to Van the tip of her tongue:
The roast hazel-hen (or rather its New World representative, locally called ‘mountain grouse’) was accompanied by preserved lingonberries (locally called ‘mountain cranberries’). An especially succulent morsel of one of those brown little fowls yielded a globule of birdshot between Demon’s red tongue and strong canine: ‘La fève de Diane,’ he remarked, placing it carefully on the edge of his plate. ‘How is the car situation, Van?’
‘Vague. I ordered a Roseley like yours but it won’t be delivered before Christmas. I tried to find a Silentium with a side car and could not, because of the war, though what connection exists between wars and motorcycles is a mystery. But we manage, Ada and I, we manage, we ride, we bike, we even jikker.’
‘I wonder,’ said sly Demon, ‘why I’m reminded all at once of our great Canadian’s lovely lines about blushing Irène:
‘Le feu si délicat de la virginité
Qui something sur son front...
‘All right. You can ship mine to England, provided —’
‘By the way, Demon,’ interrupted Marina, ‘where and how can I obtain the kind of old roomy limousine with an old professional chauffeur that Praskovia, for instance, has had for years?’
‘Impossible, my dear, they are all in heaven or on Terra. But what would Ada like, what would my silent love like for her birthday? It’s next Saturday, po razschyotu po moemu (by my reckoning), isn’t it? Une rivière de diamants?’
‘Protestuyu!’ cried Marina. ‘Yes, I’m speaking seriozno. I object to your giving her kvaka sesva (quoi que ce soit), Dan and I will take care of all that.’
‘Besides you’ll forget,’ said Ada laughing, and very deftly showed the tip of her tongue to Van who had been on the lookout for her conditional reaction to ‘diamonds.’
Van asked: ‘Provided what?’
‘Provided you don’t have one waiting already for you in George’s Garage, Ranta Road.’
‘Ada, you’ll be jikkering alone soon,’ he continued, ‘I’m going to have Mascodagama round out his vacation in Paris. Qui something sur son front, en accuse la beauté!’
So the trivial patter went. Who does not harbor in the darkest gulf of his mind such bright recollections? Who has not squirmed and covered his face with his hands as the dazzling past leered at him? Who, in the terror and solitude of a long night — (1.38)
Darkbloom (‘Notes to Ada’): le feu etc.: the so delicate fire of virginity
that on her brow...
po razschyotu po moemu: an allusion to Famusov (in Griboedov’s Gore ot uma), calculating the pregnancy of a lady friend.
protestuyu: Russ., I protest.
seriozno: Russ., seriously.
quoi que ce soit: whatever it might be.
en accuse etc.: ...brings out its beauty.
In "A Journey to Erzurum" Pushkin tells how at a turn of the road he met the cart drawn by two bullocks carrying Griboedov’s body from Teheran to Tiflis:
Я переехал через реку. Два вола, впряженные в арбу, подымались по крутой дороге. Несколько грузин сопровождали арбу. «Откуда вы?» — спросил я их. «Из Тегерана». — «Что вы везете?» — «Грибоеда». Это было тело убитого Грибоедова, которое препровождали в Тифлис.
Не думал я встретить уже когда-нибудь нашего Грибоедова! Я расстался с ним в прошлом году в Петербурге пред отъездом его в Персию. Он был печален и имел странные предчувствия. Я было хотел его успокоить; он мне сказал: «Vous ne connaissez pas ces gens-là: vous verrez qu’il faudra jouer des couteaux». Он полагал, что причиною кровопролития будет смерть шаха и междуусобица его семидесяти сыновей. Но престарелый шах еще жив, а пророческие слова Грибоедова сбылись. Он погиб под кинжалами персиян, жертвой невежества и вероломства. Обезображенный труп его, бывший три дня игралищем тегеранской черни, узнан был только по руке, некогда простреленной пистолетною пулею.
Я познакомился с Грибоедовым в 1817 году. Его меланхолический характер, его озлобленный ум, его добродушие, самые слабости и пороки, неизбежные спутники человечества, все в нем было необыкновенно привлекательно. Рожденный с честолюбием, равным его дарованиям, долго был он опутан сетями мелочных нужд и неизвестности. Способности человека государственного оставались без употребления; талант поэта был не признан; даже его холодная и блестящая храбрость оставалась некоторое время в подозрении. Несколько друзей знали ему цену и видели улыбку недоверчивости, эту глупую несносную улыбку, когда случалось им говорить о нем, как о человеке необыкновенном. Люди верят только славе, и не понимают, что между ними может находиться какой-нибудь Наполеон, не предводительствовавший ни одною егерскою ротою, или другой Декарт, не напечатавший ни одной строчки в «Московском Телеграфе».
Впрочем, уважение наше к славе происходит, может быть, от самолюбия: в состав славы входит и наш голос.
Жизнь Грибоедова была затемнена некоторыми облаками: следствие пылких страстей и могучих обстоятельств. Он почувствовал необходимость расчесться единожды навсегда с своею молодостью и круто поворотить свою жизнь. Он простился с Петербургом и с праздной рассеянностью, уехал в Грузию, где пробыл восемь лет в уединенных неусыпных занятиях. Возвращение его в Москву в 1824 году было переворотом в его судьбе и началом беспрерывных успехов. Его рукописная комедия «Горе от ума» произвела неописанное действие и вдруг поставила его на ряду с первыми нашими поэтами. Через несколько времени потом совершенное знание того края, где начиналась война, открыло ему новое поприще; он назначен был посланником. Приехав в Грузию, женился он на той, которую любил... Не знаю ничего завиднее последних годов бурной его жизни. Самая смерть, постигшая его посреди смелого, неравного боя, не имела для Грибоедова ничего ужасного, ничего томительного. Она была мгновенна и прекрасна.
Как жаль, что Грибоедов не оставил своих записок! Написать его биографию было бы делом его друзей; но замечательные люди исчезают у нас, не оставляя по себе следов. Мы ленивы и нелюбопытны. (chapter 2)
In a conversation with Van in her bedroom Marina (Van's, Ada's and Lucette's mother) mentions Griboedov's play:
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.
The dog came in, turned up a brimming brown eye Vanward, toddled up to the window, looked at the rain like a little person, and returned to his filthy cushion in the next room.
‘I could never stand that breed,’ remarked Van. ‘Dackelophobia.’
‘But girls — do you like girls, Van, do you have many girls? You are not a pederast, like your poor uncle, are you? We have had some dreadful perverts in our ancestry but — Why do you laugh?’
‘Nothing,’ said Van. ‘I just want to put on record that I adore girls. I had my first one when I was fourteen. Mais qui me rendra mon Hélène? She had raven black hair and a skin like skimmed milk. I had lots of much creamier ones later. I kazhetsya chto v etom?’
‘How strange, how sad! Sad, because I know hardly anything about your life, my darling (moy dushka). The Zemskis were terrible rakes (razvratniki), one of them loved small girls, and another raffolait d’une de ses juments and had her tied up in a special way-don’t ask me how’ (double hand gesture of horrified ignorance ‘— when he dated her in her stall. Kstati (à propos), I could never understand how heredity is transmitted by bachelors, unless genes can jump like chess knights. I almost beat you, last time we played, we must play again, not today, though — I’m too sad today. I would have liked so much to know everything, everything, about you, but now it’s too late. Recollections are always a little "stylized" (stilizovanï), as your father used to say, an irrisistible and hateful man, and now, even if you showed me your old diaries, I could no longer whip up any real emotional reaction to them, though all actresses can shed tears, as I’m doing now. You see (rummaging for her handkerchief under her pillow), when children are still quite tiny (takie malyutki), we cannot imagine that we can go without them, for even a couple of days, and later we do, and it’s a couple of weeks, and later it’s months, gray years, black decades, and then the opéra bouffe of the Christians’ eternity. I think even the shortest separation is a kind of training for the Elysian Games — who said that? I said that. And your costume, though very becoming, is, in a sense, traurnïy (funerary). I’m spouting drivel. Forgive me these idiotic tears... Tell me, is there anything I could do for you? Do think up something! Would you like a beautiful, practically new Peruvian scarf, which he left behind, that crazy boy? No? It’s not your style? Now go. And remember — not a word to poor Mlle Larivière, who means well!’ (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.
raffolait etc.: was crazy about one of his mares.
In her old age Ada translates Griboedov into French and English:
Ada, who amused herself by translating (for the Oranger editions en regard) Griboyedov into French and English, Baudelaire into English and Russian, and John Shade into Russian and French, often read to Van, in a deep mediumesque voice, the published versions made by other workers in that field of semiconsciousness. The verse translations in English were especially liable to distend Van’s face in a grotesque grin which made him look, when he was not wearing his dental plates, exactly like a Greek comedial mask. He could not tell who disgusted him more: the well-meaning mediocrity, whose attempts at fidelity were thwarted by lack of artistic insight as well as by hilarious errors of textual interpretation, or the professional poet who embellished with his own inventions the dead and helpless author (whiskers here, private parts there) — a method that nicely camouflaged the paraphrast’s ignorance of the From language by having the bloomers of inept scholarship blend with the whims of flowery imitation. (5.4)
The characters in Griboedov's play in verse Gore ot uma ("Woe from Wit," 1824) include grafinya babushka (Countess Grandmother) and grafinya vnuchka (Countess Granddaughter). Because love is blind, 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.
Btw., one is also reminded of chows' blue tongues mentioned by Van when he describes Lucette's visit to Kingston (Van's American University):
She unclicked her black-silk handbag, fished out a handkerchief and, leaving the gaping bag on the edge of the sideboard, went to the farthest window and stood there, her fragile shoulders shaking unbearably.
Van noticed a long, blue, violet-sealed envelope protruding from the bag.
‘Lucette, don’t cry. That’s too easy.’
She walked back, dabbing her nose, curbing her childishly humid sniffs, still hoping for the decisive embrace.
‘Here’s some brandy,’ he said. ‘Sit down. Where’s the rest of the family?’
She returned the balled handkerchief of many an old romance to her bag, which, however, remained unclosed. Chows, too, have blue tongues.
‘Mamma dwells in her private Samsara. Dad has had another stroke. Sis is revisiting Ardis.’
‘Sis! Cesse, Lucette! We don’t want any baby serpents around.’
‘This baby serpent does not quite know what tone to take with Dr V.V. Sector. You have not changed one bit, my pale darling, except that you look like a ghost in need of a shave without your summer Glanz.’
And summer Mädel. He noticed that the letter, in its long blue envelope, lay now on the mahogany sideboard. He stood in the middle of the parlor, rubbing his forehead, not daring, not daring, because it was Ada’s notepaper.
‘Like some tea?’
She shook her head. ‘I can’t stay long. Besides, you said something about a busy day over the phone. One can’t help being dreadfully busy after four absolutely blank years’ (he would start sobbing too if she did not stop).
‘Yes. I don’t know. I have an appointment around six.’
Two ideas were locked up in a slow dance, a mechanical menuet, with bows and curtseys: one was’ We-have-so-much-to say’; the other was ‘We have absolutely nothing to say.’ But that sort of thing can change in one instant.
‘Yes, I have to see Rattner at six-thirty,’ murmured Van, consulting a calendar he did not see.
‘Rattner on Terra!’ ejaculated Lucette. ‘Van is reading Rattner on Terra. Pet must never, never disturb him and me when we are reading Rattner!’
‘I implore, my dear, no impersonations. Let us not transform a pleasant reunion into mutual torture.’
What was she doing at Queenston? She had told him before. Of course. Tough course? No. Oh. From time to time both kept glancing askance at the letter to see if it was behaving itself — not dangling its legs, not picking its nose.
Return it sealed?
‘Tell Rattner,’ she said, gulping down her third brandy as simply as if it were technicolored water. ‘Tell him’ (the liquor was loosening her pretty viper tongue) —
(Viper? Lucette? My dead dear darling?)
— ‘Tell him that when in the old days you and Ada —’
The name yawned like a black doorway, then the door banged.
‘— left me for him, and then came back, I knew every time that you vsyo sdelali (had appeased your lust, had allayed your fire).’
‘One remembers those little things much too clearly, Lucette. Please, stop.’
‘One remembers, Van, those little things much more clearly than the big fatal ones. As for example the clothes you wore at any given moment, at a generously given moment, with the sun on the chairs and the floor. I was practically naked, of course, being a neutral pure little child. But she wore a boy’s shirt and a short skirt, and all you had on were those wrinkled, soiled shorts, shorter because wrinkled, and they smelled as they always did after you’d been on Terra with Ada, with Rattner on Ada, with Ada on Antiterra in Ardis Forest — oh, they positively stank, you know, your little shorts of lavendered Ada, and her catfood, and your caked algarroba!’
Should that letter, now next to the brandy, listen to all this? Was it from Ada after all (there was no address)? Because it was Lucette’s mad, shocking letter of love that was doing the talking. (2.5)
Darkbloom (‘Notes to Ada’): cesse: cease.
Glanz: Germ., luster.
Mädel: Germ., girl.
vsyo sdelali: Russ., had done everything.