Offering Ada a ride in the park, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) mentions two horses, Pardus and Peg:
‘Now let’s go out for a breath of crisp air,’ suggested Van. ‘I’ll order Pardus and Peg to be saddled.’
‘Last night two men recognized me,’ she said. ‘Two separate Californians, but they didn’t dare bow — with that silk-tuxedoed bretteur of mine glaring around. One was Anskar, the producer, and the other, with a cocotte, Paul Whinnier, one of your father’s London pals. I sort of hoped we’d go back to bed.’
‘We shall now go for a ride in the park,’ said Van firmly, and rang, first of all, for a Sunday messenger to take the letter to Lucette’s hotel — or to the Verma resort, if she had already left.
‘I suppose you know what you’re doing?’ observed Ada.
‘Yes,’ he answered.
‘You are breaking her heart,’ said Ada.
‘Ada girl, adored girl,’ cried Van, ‘I’m a radiant void. I’m convalescing after a long and dreadful illness. You cried over my unseemly scar, but now life is going to be nothing but love and laughter, and corn in cans. I cannot brood over broken hearts, mine is too recently mended. You shall wear a blue veil, and I the false mustache that makes me look like Pierre Legrand, my fencing master.’
‘Au fond,’ said Ada, ‘first cousins have a perfect right to ride together. And even dance or skate, if they want. After all, first cousins are almost brother and sister. It’s a blue, icy, breathless day,’
She was soon ready, and they kissed tenderly in their hallway, between lift and stairs, before separating for a few minutes.
‘Tower,’ she murmured in reply to his questioning glance, just as she used to do on those honeyed mornings in the past, when checking up on happiness: ‘And you?’
‘A regular ziggurat.’ (2.8)
Peg seems to hint at Pegasus (the winged horse of inspiration). In his imaginary dialogue with Koncheyev (the rival poet) Fyodor Godunov-Cherdyntsev, the narrator and main character in VN's novel Dar ("The Gift," 1937), says that our Pegasus is peg (piebald):
"Да, я мечтаю когда-нибудь произвести такую прозу, где бы "мысль и музыка сошлись, как во сне складки жизни".
"Благодарю за учтивую цитату. Вы как - по-настоящему любите литературу?"
"Полагаю, что да. Видите-ли, по-моему, есть только два рода книг: настольный и подстольный. Либо я люблю писателя истово, либо выбрасываю его целиком".
"Э, да вы строги. Не опасно ли это? Не забудьте, что как-никак вся русская литература, литература одного века, занимает - после самого снисходительного отбора - не более трёх-трёх с половиной тысяч печатных листов, а из этого числа едва ли половина достойна не только полки, но и стола. При такой количественной скудости, нужно мириться с тем, что наш Пегас пег, что не всё в дурном писателе дурно, а в добром не всё добро".
“Yes, some day I’m going to produce prose in which ‘thought and music are conjoined as are the folds of life in sleep.’“
“Thanks for the courteous quotation. You have a genuine love of literature, don’t you?”
“I believe so. You see, the way I look at it, there are only two kinds of books: bedside and wastebasket. Either I love a writer fervently, or throw him out entirely.”
“A bit severe, isn’t it? And a bit dangerous. Don’t forget that the whole of Russian literature is the literature of one century and, after the most lenient eliminations, takes up no more than three to three and a half thousand printed sheets, and scarcely one-half of this is worthy of the bookshelf, to say nothing of the bedside table. With such quantitative scantiness we must resign ourselves to the fact that our Pegasus is piebald, that not everything about a bad writer is bad, and not all about a good one good.” (Chapter One)
In the same dialogue with Koncheyev Fyodor mentions Chekhov’s hamper:
"Ну, а все-таки. Галилейский призрак, прохладный и тихий, в длинной одежде цвета зреющей сливы? Или пасть пса с синеватым, точно напомаженным, зевом? Или молния, ночью освещающая подробно комнату, - вплоть до магнезии, осевшей на серебряной ложке?"
"Отмечаю, что у него латинское чувство синевы: lividus. Лев Толстой, тот, был больше насчет лиловаго, - и какое блаженство пройтись с грачами по пашне босиком! Я, конечно, не должен был их покупать".
"Вы правы, жмут нестерпимо. Но мы перешли в первый ряд. Разве там вы не найдете слабостей? "Русалка" - - "
"Не трогайте Пушкина: это золотой фонд нашей литературы. А вон там, в Чеховской корзине, провиант на много лет вперед, да щенок, который делает "уюм, уюм, уюм", да бутылка крымского".
“And yet… how about his image of Jesus ‘the ghostly Galilean, cool and gentle, in a robe the color of ripening plum’? Or his description of a yawning dog’s mouth with ‘its bluish palate as if smeared with pomade’? Or that lightning of his that at night illumines the room in detail, even to the magnesium oxide left on a silver spoon?”
“Yes, I grant you he has a Latin feeling for blueness: lividus. Lyov Tolstoy, on the other hand, preferred violet shades and the bliss of stepping barefoot with the rooks upon the rich dark soil of plowed fields! Of course, I should never have bought them.”
“You’re right, they pinch unbearably. But we have moved up to the first rank. Don’t tell me you can’t find weak spots there too? In such stories as ‘The Blizzard’—
“Leave Pushkin alone: he is the gold reserve of our literature. And over there is Chekhov’s hamper, which contains enough food for years to come, and a whimpering puppy, and a bottle of Crimean wine.” (Chapter One)
In Chekhov's story Uchitel' slovesnosti ("The Teacher of Literature," 1889) the dog growls "Rrr . . . nga-nga-nga!" from under Nikitin's chair:
Когда Никитину приходилось оспаривать то, что казалось ему рутиной, узостью или чем-нибудь вроде этого, то обыкновенно он вскакивал с места, хватал себя обеими руками за голову и начинал со стоном бегать из угла в угол. И теперь то же самое: он вскочил, схватил себя за голову и со стоном прошелся вокруг стола, потом сел поодаль.
За него вступились офицеры. Штабс-капитан Полянский стал уверять Варю, что Пушкин в самом деле психолог, и в доказательство привел два стиха из Лермонтова; поручик Гернет сказал, что если бы Пушкин не был психологом, то ему не поставили бы в Москве памятника.
— Это хамство! — доносилось с другого конца стола. — Я так и губернатору сказал: это, ваше превосходительство, хамство!
— Я больше не спорю! — крикнул Никитин. — Это его же царствию не будет конца! Баста! Ах, да поди ты прочь, поганая собака! — крикнул он на Сома, который положил ему на колени голову и лапу.
«Ррр... нга-нга-нга»... — послышалось из-под стула.
When Nikitin had to argue against anything that seemed to him narrow, conventional, or something of that kind, he usually leaped up from his seat, clutched at his head with both hands, and began with a moan, running from one end of the room to another. And it was the same now: he jumped up, clutched his head in his hands, and with a moan walked round the table, then he sat down a little way off.
The officers took his part. Captain Polyansky began assuring Varya that Pushkin really was a psychologist, and to prove it quoted two lines from Lermontov; Lieutenant Gernet said that if Pushkin had not been a psychologist they would not have erected a monument to him in Moscow.
"That's loutishness!" was heard from the other end of the table. "I said as much to the governor: 'It's loutishness, your Excellency,' I said."
"I won't argue any more," cried Nikitin. "It's unending. . . . Enough! Ach, get away, you nasty dog!" he cried to Som, who laid his head and paw on his knee.
"Rrr . . . nga-nga-nga!" came from under the table. (Chapter One)
At the beginning of Chekhov's story three horses are mentioned:
Послышался стук лошадиных копыт о бревенчатый пол; вывели из конюшни сначала вороного Графа Нулина, потом белого Великана, потом сестру его Майку. Всё это были превосходные и дорогие лошади. Старик Шелестов оседлал Великана и сказал, обращаясь к своей дочери Маше:
— Ну, Мария Годфруа, иди садись. Опля!
Маша Шелестова была самой младшей в семье; ей было уже 18 лет, но в семье еще не отвыкли считать ее маленькой и потому все звали ее Маней и Манюсей; а после того, как в городе побывал цирк, который она усердно посещала, ее все стали звать Марией Годфруа.
— Опля! — крикнула она, садясь на Великана.
Сестра ее Варя села на Майку, Никитин — на Графа Нулина, офицеры — на своих лошадей, и длинная красивая кавалькада, пестрея белыми офицерскими кителями и черными амазонками, шагом потянулась со двора.
THERE was the thud of horses' hoofs on the wooden floor; they brought out of the stable the black horse, Count Nulin; then the white, Giant; then his sister Maika. They were all magnificent, expensive horses. Old Shelestov saddled Giant and said, addressing his daughter Masha:
"Well, Marie Godefroid, come, get on! Hopla!"
Masha Shelestov was the youngest of the family; she was eighteen, but her family could not get used to thinking that she was not a little girl, and so they still called her Manya and Manyusa; and after there had been a circus in the town which she had eagerly visited, every one began to call her Marie Godefroid.
"Hop-la!" she cried, mounting Giant.
Her sister Varya got on Maika, Nikitin on Count Nulin, the officers on their horses, and the long picturesque cavalcade, with the officers in white tunics and the ladies in their riding habits, moved at a walking pace out of the yard. (ibid.)
Count Nulin (1825) is a narrative poem by Pushkin. In his poem Domik v Kolomne ("A Small Cottage in Kolomna," 1830), a mock epic in octaves, Pushkin says that Pegasus is old, has no teeth left:
Скажу, рысак! Парнасский иноходец
Его не обогнал бы. Но Пегас
Стар, зуб уж нет. Им вырытый колодец
Иссох. Порос крапивою Парнас;
В отставке Феб живет, а хороводец
Старушек муз уж не прельщает нас.
И табор свой с классических вершинок
Перенесли мы на толкучий рынок. (VIII)
Masha Shelestov's nickname, Marie Godefroid, brings to mind Godefroid de Beaudenord, a character in Balzac's novel The Wrong Side of Paris (the final novel of The Human Comedy). The French name Godefroid corresponds to the German name Gottfried. In H. G. Wells's The Plattner Story (1896) Gottfried Plattner is a schoolteacher who recounts his experiences in a parallel world, which he speculates is some form of Afterlife. Plattner brings to mind old Rattner, the author of a book on Terra (the twin planet of Demonia, aka Antiterra, Earth's twin planet on which Ada is set):
Van spent the fall term of 1892 at Kingston University, Mayne, where there was a first-rate madhouse, as well as a famous Department of Terrapy, and where he now went back to one of his old projects, which turned on the Idea of Dimension & Dementia (‘You will "sturb," Van, with an alliteration on your lips,’ jested old Rattner, resident pessimist of genius, for whom life was only a ‘disturbance’ in the rattnerterological order of things — from ‘nertoros,’ not ‘terra’).
Van Veen [as also, in his small way, the editor of Ada] liked to change his abode at the end of a section or chapter or even paragraph, and he had almost finished a difficult bit dealing with the divorce between time and the contents of time (such as action on matter, in space, and the nature of space itself) and was contemplating moving to Manhattan (that kind of switch being a reflection of mental rubrication rather than a concession to some farcical ‘influence of environment’ endorsed by Marx père, the popular author of ‘historical’ plays), when he received an unexpected dorophone call which for a moment affected violently his entire pulmonary and systemic circulation. (2.5)
Darkbloom (‘Notes to Ada’): sturb: pun on Germ. sterben, to die.
The popular author of ‘historical’ plays, Marx père brings to mind Balzac's novel Le père Goriot (1835). Describing the death of Demon Veen (Van's and Ada's father) in a mysterious airplane disaster, Van mentions the Rattner Chair of Philosophy:
Van pursued his studies in private until his election (at thirty-five!) to the Rattner Chair of Philosophy in the University of Kingston. The Council’s choice had been a consequence of disaster and desperation; the two other candidates, solid scholars much older and altogether better than he, esteemed even in Tartary where they often traveled, starry-eyed, hand-in-hand, had mysteriously vanished (perhaps dying under false names in the never-explained accident above the smiling ocean) at the ‘eleventh hour,’ for the Chair was to be dismantled if it remained vacant for a legally limited length of time, so as to give another, less-coveted but perfectly good seat the chance to be brought in from the back parlor. Van neither needed nor appreciated the thing, but accepted it in a spirit of good-natured perversity or perverse gratitude, or simply in memory of his father who had been somehow involved in the whole affair. He did not take his task too seriously, reducing to a strict minimum, ten or so per year, the lectures he delivered in a nasal drone mainly produced by a new and hard to get ‘voice recorder’ concealed in his waistcoat pocket, among anti-infection Venus pills, while he moved his lips silently and thought of the lamplit page of his sprawling script left unfinished in his study. He spent in Kingston a score of dull years (variegated by trips abroad), an obscure figure around which no legends collected in the university or the city. Unbeloved by his austere colleagues, unknown in local pubs, unregretted by male students, he retired in 1922, after which he resided in Europe. (3.7)
Van 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. In his apologetic note to Lucette (written after the dinner in 'Ursus' and debauch à trois in Van's Manhattan flat) Van mentions the pilots of tremendous airships:
Van walked over to a monastic lectern that he had acquired for writing in the vertical position of vertebrate thought and wrote what follows:
Poor L.
We are sorry you left so soon. We are even sorrier to have inveigled our Esmeralda and mermaid in a naughty prank. That sort of game will never be played again with you, darling firebird. We apollo [apologize]. Remembrance, embers and membranes of beauty make artists and morons lose all self-control. Pilots of tremendous airships and even coarse, smelly coachmen are known to have been driven insane by a pair of green eyes and a copper curl. We wished to admire and amuse you, BOP (bird of paradise). We went too far. I, Van, went too far. We regret that shameful, though basically innocent scene. These are times of emotional stress and reconditioning. Destroy and forget.
Tenderly yours A & V.
(in alphabetic order).
‘I call this pompous, puritanical rot,’ said Ada upon scanning Van’s letter. ‘Why should we apollo for her having experienced a delicious spazmochka? I love her and would never allow you to harm her. It’s curious — you know, something in the tone of your note makes me really jealous for the first time in my fire [thus in the manuscript, for "life." Ed.] Van, Van, somewhere, some day, after a sunbath or dance, you will sleep with her, Van!’
‘Unless you run out of love potions. Do you allow me to send her these lines?’
‘I do, but want to add a few words.’
Her P.S. read:
The above declaration is Van’s composition which I sign reluctantly. It is pompous and puritanical. I adore you, mon petit, and would never allow him to hurt you, no matter how gently or madly. When you’re sick of Queen, why not fly over to Holland or Italy?
A. (2.8)