On Demonia (aka Antiterra, Earth's twin planet on which VN's novel Ada, 1969, is set) Ilemna (a subarctic monastery town) was renamed Novostabia:
So she did write as she had promised? Oh, yes, yes! In seventeen years he received from her around a hundred brief notes, each containing around one hundred words, making around thirty printed pages of insignificant stuff — mainly about her husband’s health and the local fauna. After helping her to nurse Andrey at Agavia Ranch through a couple of acrimonious years (she begrudged Ada every poor little hour devoted to collecting, mounting, and rearing!), and then taking exception to Ada’s choosing the famous and excellent Grotonovich Clinic (for her husband’s endless periods of treatment) instead of Princess Alashin’s select sanatorium, Dorothy Vinelander retired to a subarctic monastery town (Ilemna, now Novostabia) where eventually she married a Mr Brod or Bred, tender and passionate, dark and handsome, who traveled in eucharistials and other sacramental objects throughout the Severnïya Territorii and who subsequently was to direct, and still may be directing half a century later, archeological reconstructions at Goreloe (the ‘Lyaskan Herculanum’); what treasures he dug up in matrimony is another question. (3.8)
Iliamna Lake is the largest lake in Alaska (known on Demonia as Lyaska). There is Lyaska in plyaska (dance), a word used by Lermontov in the penultimate line of his poem Rodina ("Motherland," 1841):
Люблю отчизну я, но странною любовью!
Не победит её рассудок мой.
Ни слава, купленная кровью,
Ни полный гордого доверия покой,
Ни тёмной старины заветные преданья
Не шевелят во мне отрадного мечтанья.
Но я люблю — за что, не знаю сам —
Её степей холодное молчанье,
Её лесов безбрежных колыханье,
Разливы рек её, подобные морям;
Просёлочным путём люблю скакать в телеге
И, взором медленным пронзая ночи тень,
Встречать по сторонам, вздыхая о ночлеге,
Дрожащие огни печальных деревень;
Люблю дымок спалённой жнивы,
В степи ночующий обоз
И на холме средь жёлтой нивы
Чету белеющих берёз.
С отрадой, многим незнакомой,
Я вижу полное гумно,
Избу, покрытую соломой,
С резными ставнями окно;
И в праздник, вечером росистым,
Смотреть до полночи готов
На пляску с топаньем и свистом
Под говор пьяных мужичков.
I love my homeland, but in the strangest way;
My intellect could never conquer it.
The fame, earned with my blood and pain,
The peace, full of the proud fit,
The dark old age and its devoted tales
Won't stir in me the blithe inspiring gales.
But I do love, what for I do not know,
Its cold terrains' perpetuating quiet,
Its endless woodlands’ oscillation tired
The sea-like rivers' wild overflows.
Along the rural paths I favor taking rides,
And with a slow glance impaling morbid darks,
The trembling village lights discover on the side,
While thinking where this time for board I will park.
I like the smoke from garnered fields,
The sledges sleeping in the steppe,
The birches growing on the hill
That occupies the grassland gap.
With joy, that people fathom not,
I feel the rush of threshing scenes,
The covered with foliage huts,
The ornamented window screens.
And on the evening of the fete
I like to watch till the midnight
The dance with tapping and a chat
Of drunken fellows on the side.
(tr. B. Leyvi)
In his poem Posledniy syn vol'nosti ("The Last Son of Liberty," 1831) Lermontov twice mentions Lake Ilmen' (the largest lake in the Province of Novgorod):
Приходит осень, золотит
Венцы дубов. Трава полей
От продолжительных дождей
К земле прижалась, и бежит
Ловец напрасно по холмам:
Ему не встретить зверя там.
А если даже он найдет,
То ветер стрелы разнесет.
На льдинах ветер тот рожден,
Порывисто качает он
Сухой шиповник на брегах
Ильменя.
Всегда с поникшей головой,
Стыдом томима и тоской,
На отуманенный Ильмень
Смотрела Леда целый день
С береговых высоких скал.
Никто ее не узнавал:
Надеждой не дышала грудь,
Улыбки гордой больше нет,
На щеки страшно и взглянуть:
Бледны, как утра первый свет.
Она увяла в цвете лет!..
The title of Lermontov's poem brings to mind Bryullov's painting Posledniy den' Pompei ("The Last Day of Pompeii," 1833) and Pushkin's ode Vol'nost' ("To Liberty," 1817). Bryullov's painting is described by Pushkin in his poem Vezuviy zev otkryl ("Mount Vesuvius opened its mouth," 1834):
Везувий зев открыл — дым хлынул клубом — пламя
Широко развилось, как боевое знамя.
Земля волнуется — с шатнувшихся колонн
Кумиры падают! Народ, гонимый страхом,
Под каменным дождём, под воспалённым прахом,
Толпами, стар и млад, бежит из града вон.
Like Pompeii and Herculaneum, Stabiae was destroyed by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD. Ilemna's new name, Novostabia seems to combine Stabiae with Novorzhev, a town in the Province of Pskov mentioned by Pushkin in the last line of his poem Est' v Rossii gorod Luga ("There is in Russia the town Luga," 1817):
Есть в России город Луга
Петербургского округа;
Хуже не было б сего
Городишки на примете,
Если б не было на свете
Новоржева моего.
There is in Russia the town Luga
of the St. Petersburg district.
One would never find
a worse town on the map,
if there were not in the world
my Novorzhev.
On the other hand, Novostabia brings to mind Lermontov's poem Poslednee novosel'ye ("The Last Housewarming," 1841), in which Lermontov (the author of Borodino, 1837) protests against the transfer of Napoleon's body from St. Helena to the Invalides, and Frau Stoboy ("Mme Withyou"), in VN's novel Dar ("The Gift," 1937) Fyodor's landlady in the Agamemnon Strasse. In his poem Ne ver' sebe ("Don't Trust Yourself," 1839) Lermontov famously calls inspiration tyazhyolyi bred dushi tvoey bol'noy il' plennoy mysli razdrazhen'ye (the heavy ravings of your sick soul or the irriation of captive thought):
Не верь, не верь себе, мечтатель молодой,
Как язвы, бойся вдохновенья...
Оно — тяжелый бред души твоей больной
Иль пленной мысли раздраженье.
В нём признака небес напрасно не ищи:
То кровь кипит, то сил избыток!
Скорее жизнь свою в заботах истощи,
Разлей отравленный напиток!
Don't trust, don’t trust yourself, young dreamer,
Fear inspiration like the pest…
It is the heavy ravings of your sick soul
or the irritation of captive thought.
Don't seek in vain for heavenly reflections in it:
Either it's the blood seething or excess strength!
Rather drain your life in worries,
Pour out the poisoned drink!
Mr Brod or Bred whom Dorothy Vinelander (Ada's sister-in-law) eventually marries makes one think of Krymskiy Brod (the Crimean Ford Bridge across the Moskva river) mentioned by Leo Tolstoy in his novel Voina i mir (“War and Peace,” 1869):
Войска Даву, к которым принадлежали пленные, шли через Крымский брод и уже отчасти вступали в Калужскую улицу. Но обозы так растянулись, что последние обозы Богарне ещё не вышли из Москвы в Калужскую улицу, а голова войск Нея уже выходила из Большой Ордынки.
Davoust's troops, in whose charge the prisoners were, had crossed the Krymskyi Brod, or Crimean Ford Bridge, and already some of the divisions were debouching into Kaluga Street. But the teams stretched out so endlessly that the last ones belonging to Beauharnais's division had not yet left Moscow to enter Kaluga Street, while the head of Ney's troops had already left Bolshaya Ordynka. (Part IV, chapter XIV)
After Demon forced him to stop his affair with Ada, Van blinds Kim Beauharnais (a kitchen boy and photographer at Ardis) for spying on him and Ada and attempting to blackmail Ada. The characters in Lermontov's story Taman' (the third novella in "A Hero of Our Time," 1840) include a blind boy. In Lermontov's story Pechorin has a narrow escape of being drowned in the sea by the smugglers (a Crimean Tartar and his Russian girlfriend). Demon Veen (Van's and Ada's father) was blackmailed by Norbert von Miller, amateur poet, Russian translator at the Italian Consulate in Geneva, and professional smuggler of neonegrine (2.11). Neonegrine seems to hint at Ada Negri (1870-1945), an Italian poet and writer. Twenty-five poems of Ada Negri were translated into Russian by Innokentiy Annenski. In his essay Yumor Lermontova ("Lermontov's Humor") included in Vtoraya kniga otrazheniy ("The Second Book of Reflections," 1909) Annenski says that Taman' was Chekhov's favorite story and that Chekhov vainly hoped to write a story that would resemble Lermontov's Taman' in every detail:
То ли обещала нам, кажется, эта крошечная "Тамань"? Недаром же Чехов так любил именно "Тамань" и так бесплодно мечтал написать вторую такую же. Сколько надо было иметь ума и сколько настоящей силы, чтобы так глубоко, как Лермонтов, чувствуя чары лунно-синих волн и черной паутины снастей на светлой полосе горизонта, оставить их жить, светиться, играть, как они хотят и могут, не заслоняя их собою, не оскорбляя их красоты ни эмфазом слов, ни словами жалости, — оставить им все целомудренное обаяние их безучастия, их особой и свободной жизни, до которой мне, в сущности, нет решительно никакого дела. Или в последней сцене покинуть на берегу слепого мальчика, так и покинуть его тихо и безутешно плачущим и не обмолвиться напоследок ни словом о родстве своем с этим одиноким, этим бесполезно-чутким, мистически-лишним созданием насмешливого бога гениев.
Annenski mentions the weeping blind boy whom, at the end of the story, Pechorin leaves on the shore. The husband of Ada's sister-in-law, Mr Brod or Bred directs archeological reconstructions at Goreloe (the ‘Lyaskan Herculanum’). In Chekhov’s one-act play Predlozhenie (“A Marriage Proposal,” 1888) Lomov and Natalia Stepanovna mention Goreloe boloto (the Burnt Marsh):
Наталья Степановна. Виновата, я вас перебью. Вы говорите «мои Воловьи Лужки»… Да разве они ваши?
Ломов. Мои-с…
Наталья Степановна. Ну, вот еще! Воловьи Лужки наши, а не ваши!
Ломов. Нет-с, мои, уважаемая Наталья Степановна.
Наталья Степановна. Это для меня новость. Откуда же они ваши?
Ломов. Как откуда? Я говорю про те Воловьи Лужки, что входят клином между вашим березняком и Горелым болотом.
Наталья Степановна. Ну, да, да… Они наши…
Ломов. Нет, вы ошибаетесь, уважаемая Наталья Степановна, — они мои.
Наталья Степановна. Опомнитесь, Иван Васильевич! Давно ли они стали вашими?
Ломов. Как давно? Насколько я себя помню, они всегда были нашими.
Наталья Степановна. Ну, это, положим, извините!
Ломов. Из бумаг это видно, уважаемая Наталья Степановна. Воловьи Лужки были когда-то спорными, это — правда; но теперь всем известно, что они мои. И спорить тут нечего. Изволите ли видеть, бабушка моей тетушки отдала эти Лужки в бессрочное и в безвозмездное пользование крестьянам дедушки вашего батюшки за то, что они жгли для неё кирпич. Крестьяне дедушки вашего батюшки пользовались безвозмездно Лужками лет сорок и привыкли считать их как бы своими, потом же, когда вышло положение…
Наталья Степановна. И совсем не так, как вы рассказываете! И мой дедушка, и прадедушка считали, что ихняя земля доходила до Горелого болота — значит, Воловьи Лужки были наши. Что ж тут спорить? — не понимаю. Даже досадно!
NATALYA STEPANOVNA: Excuse my interrupting you. You say, "my Oxen Meadows. ..." But are they yours?
LOMOV: Yes, mine.
NATALYA STEPANOVNA: What are you talking about? Oxen Meadows are ours, not yours!
LOMOV: No, mine, honoured Natalya Stepanovna.
NATALYA STEPANOVNA: Well, I never knew that before. How do you make that out?
LOMOV: How? I'm speaking of those Oxen Meadows which are wedged in between your birchwoods and the Burnt Marsh.
NATALYA STEPANOVNA: Yes, yes. ... They're ours.
LOMOV: No, you're mistaken, honoured Natalya Stepanovna, they're mine.
NATALYA STEPANOVNA: Just think, Ivan Vasilevich! How long have they been yours?
LOMOV: How long? As long as I can remember.
NATALYA STEPANOVNA: Really, you won't get me to believe that!
LOMOV: But you can see from the documents, honoured Natalya Stepanovna. Oxen Meadows, it's true, were once the subject of dispute, but now everybody knows that they are mine. There's nothing to argue about. You see, my aunt's grandmother gave the free use of these Meadows in perpetuity to the peasants of your father's grandfather, in return for which they were to make bricks for her. The peasants belonging to your father's grandfather had the free use of the Meadows for forty years, and had got into the habit of regarding them as their own, when it happened that ...
NATALYA STEPANOVNA: No, it isn't at all like that! Both my grandfather and great-grandfather reckoned that their land extended to Burnt Marsh--which means that Oxen Meadows were ours. I don't see what there is to argue about. It's simply silly!
In a letter of April 7-19, 1887, to his sister Chekhov describes his visit to Taganrog and compares his home town to Herculaneum and Pompeii:
Я в Таганроге. Меня встричаить Егорушка, здоровеннейший парень, одетый франтом: шляпа, перчатки в 1 р. 50 к., тросточка и проч. Я его не узнаю, но он меня узнает. Нанимает извозчика и едем. Впечатления Геркуланума и Помпеи: людей нет, а вместо мумий — сонные дришпаки и головы дынькой. Все дома приплюснуты, давно не штукатурены, крыши не крашены, ставни затворены...
I arrive at Taganrog. . . . It gives one the impression of Herculaneum and Pompeii; there are no people, and instead of mummies there are sleepy drishpaks [uneducated young men in the jargon of Taganrog] and melon-shaped heads. All the houses look flattened out, and as though they had long needed replastering, the roofs want painting, the shutters are closed. . . .
Taganrog is a port city on the north shore of Taganrog Bay in the Sea of Azov. In a conversation with Van in her bedroom Marina (Van's, Ada's and Lucette's mother) mentions Azov, a Russian humorist:
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 Tolstoy’s “War and Peace,” the cousinage-dangereux-voisinage adage is cited at least twice (by Princess Anna Mikhaylovna Drubetskoy and by Vera Berg, née Rostov). In his essay Ob Annenskom (“On Annenski,” 1921) Vladislav Hodasevich compares Annenski (1855-1909) to Ivan Ilyich Golovin (the main character in Tolstoy’s story “The Death of Ivan Ilyich,” 1886) and points out that Annenski regarded his penname Nik. T-o (“Mr. Nobody”) as a translation of Greek Outis, the pseudonym under which Odysseus conceals his identity from Polyphemus (the Cyclops in Homer’s Odyssey):
Чего не додумал Иван Ильич, то знал Анненский. Знал, что никаким директорством, никаким бытом и даже никакой филологией от смерти по-настоящему не загородиться. Она у ничтожит и директора, и барина, и филолога. Только над истинным его "я", над тем, что отображается в "чувствах и мыслях", над личностью -- у неё как будто нет власти. И он находил реальное, осязаемое отражение и утверждение личности -- в поэзии. Тот, чьё лицо он видел, подходя к зеркалу, был директор гимназии, смертный никто. Тот, чьё лицо отражалось в поэзии, был бессмертный некто. Ник. Т-о -- никто -- есть безличный действительный статский советник, которым, как видимой оболочкой, прикрыт невидимый некто. Этот свой псевдоним, под которым он печатал стихи, Анненский рассматривал как перевод греческого "утис", никто, -- того самого псевдонима, под которым Одиссей скрыл от циклопа Полифема своё истинное имя, свою подлинную личность, своего некто. Поэзия была для него заклятием страшного Полифема -- смерти. Но психологически это не только не мешало, а даже способствовало тому, чтобы его вдохновительницей, его Музой была смерть.
When Ada refuses to leave her sick husband, Van compares her to Helen of Troy (a character in Homer's Iliad):
She led him around the hotel to an ugly rotunda, out of the miserable drizzle, and there she attempted to embrace him but he evaded her lips. She was leaving in a few minutes. Heroic, helpless Andrey had been brought back to the hotel in an ambulance. Dorothy had managed to obtain three seats on the Geneva-Phoenix plane. The two cars were taking him, her and the heroic sister straight to the helpless airport.
She asked for a handkerchief, and he pulled out a blue one from his windjacket pocket, but her tears had started to roll and she shaded her eyes, while he stood before her with outstretched hand.
‘Part of the act?’ he inquired coldly.
She shook her head, took the handkerchief with a childish ‘merci,’ blew her nose and gasped, and swallowed, and spoke, and next moment all, all was lost.
She could not tell her husband while he was ill. Van would have to wait until Andrey was sufficiently well to bear the news and that might take some time. Of course, she would have to do everything to have him completely cured, there was a wondermaker in Arizona —
‘Sort of patching up a bloke before hanging him,’ said Van.
‘And to think,’ cried Ada with a kind of square shake of stiff hands as if dropping a lid or a tray, ‘to think that he dutifully concealed everything! Oh, of course, I can’t leave him now!’
‘Yes, the old story — the flute player whose impotence has to be treated, the reckless ensign who may never return from a distant war!’
‘Ne ricane pas!’ exclaimed Ada. ‘The poor, poor little man! How dare you sneer?’
As had been peculiar to his nature even in the days of his youth, Van was apt to relieve a passion of anger and disappointment by means of bombastic and arcane utterances which hurt like a jagged fingernail caught in satin, the lining of Hell.
‘Castle True, Castle Bright!’ he now cried, ‘Helen of Troy, Ada of Ardis! You have betrayed the Tree and the Moth!’
‘Perestagne (stop, cesse)!’
‘Ardis the First, Ardis the Second, Tanned Man in a Hat, and now Mount Russet —’
‘Perestagne!’ repeated Ada (like a fool dealing with an epileptic).
‘Oh! Qui me rendra mon Hélène —’
‘Ach, perestagne!’
‘— et le phalène.’
‘Je t’emplie ("prie" and "supplie"), stop, Van. Tu sais que j’en vais mourir.’
‘But, but, but’ — (slapping every time his forehead) — ‘to be on the very brink of, of, of — and then have that idiot turn Keats!’
‘Bozhe moy, I must be going. Say something to me, my darling, my only one, something that might help!’
There was a narrow chasm of silence broken only by the rain drumming on the eaves.
‘Stay with me, girl,’ said Van, forgetting everything — pride, rage, the convention of everyday pity.
For an instant she seemed to waver — or at least to consider wavering; but a resonant voice reached them from the drive and there stood Dorothy, gray-caped and mannish-hatted, energetically beckoning with her unfurled umbrella.
‘I can’t, I can’t, I’ll write you,’ murmured my poor love in tears.
Van kissed her leaf-cold hand and, letting the Bellevue worry about his car, letting all Swans worry about his effects and Mme Scarlet worry about Eveline’s skin trouble, he walked some ten kilometers along soggy roads to Rennaz and thence flew to Nice, Biskra, the Cape, Nairobi, the Basset range —
And o'er the summits of the Basset —
Would she write? Oh, she did! Oh, every old thing turned out superfine! Fancy raced fact in never-ending rivalry and girl giggles. Andrey lived only a few months longer, po pal’tzam (finger counting) one, two, three, four — say, five. Andrey was doing fine by the spring of nineteen six or seven, with a comfortably collapsed lung and a straw-colored beard (nothing like facial vegetation to keep a patient busy). Life forked and reforked. Yes, she told him. He insulted Van on the mauve-painted porch of a Douglas hotel where van was awaiting his Ada in a final version of Les Enfants Maudits. Monsieur de Tobak (an earlier cuckold) and Lord Erminin (a second-time second) witnessed the duel in the company of a few tall yuccas and short cactuses. Vinelander wore a cutaway (he would); Van, a white suit. Neither man wished to take any chances, and both fired simultaneously. Both fell. Mr Cutaway’s bullet struck the outsole of Van’s left shoe (white, black-heeled), tripping him and causing a slight fourmillement (excited ants) in his foot — that was all. Van got his adversary plunk in the underbelly — a serious wound from which he recovered in due time, if at all (here the forking swims in the mist). Actually it was all much duller. (3.8)
Darkbloom (‘Notes to Ada’): phalène: moth (see also p.111).
tu sais etc.: you know it will kill me.
Bozhe moy: Russ., oh, my God.
The Basset range does not exist. The basset horn is a member of the clarinet family of musical instruments and brings to mind zurna, a Caucasian woodwind instrument mentioned by Lermontov in The Demon. According to Bernard Shaw (who wrote under the pseudonym Corno di Bassetto), the basset horn is a "wretched instrument," which would have long since been snuffed out had Mozart not used it in his Requiem. "Its peculiar watery melancholy... is just the thing for a funeral... the devil himself could not make a basset horn sparkle."
And o'er the summits of the Basset brings to mind And o’er the summits of the Tacit (Van's earlier paraphrase of a line in The Demon):
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.
It would seem indeed that continued ignorance of each other’s existence might have looked more suspicious than the following sort of note:
Agavia Ranch
February 5, 1905
I have just read Reflections in Sidra, by Ivan Veen, and I regard it as a grand piece, dear Professor. The ‘lost shafts of destiny’ and other poetical touches reminded me of the two or three times you had tea and muffins at our place in the country about twenty years ago. I was, you remember (presumptuous phrase!), a petite fille modèle practicing archery near a vase and a parapet and you were a shy schoolboy (with whom, as my mother guessed, I may have been a wee bit in love!), who dutifully picked up the arrows I lost in the lost shrubbery of the lost castle of poor Lucette’s and happy, happy Adette’s childhood, now a ‘Home for Blind Blacks’ — both my mother and L., I’m sure, would have backed Dasha’s advice to turn it over to her Sect. Dasha, my sister-in-law (you must meet her soon, yes, yes, yes, she’s dreamy and lovely, and lots more intelligent than I), who showed me your piece, asks me to add she hopes to ‘renew’ your acquaintance — maybe in Switzerland, at the Bellevue in Mont Roux, in October. I think you once met pretty Miss ‘Kim’ Blackrent, well, that’s exactly dear Dasha’s type. She is very good at perceiving and pursuing originality and all kinds of studies which I can’t even name! She finished Chose (where she read History — our Lucette used to call it ‘Sale Histoire,’ so sad and funny!). For her you’re le beau ténébreux, because once upon a time, once upon libellula wings, not long before my marriage, she attended — I mean at that time, I’m stuck in my ‘turnstyle’ — one of your public lectures on dreams, after which she went up to you with her latest little nightmare all typed out and neatly clipped together, and you scowled darkly and refused to take it. Well, she’s been after Uncle Dementiy to have him admonish le beau ténébreux to come to Mont Roux Bellevue Hotel, in October, around the seventeenth, I guess, and he only laughs and says it’s up to Dashenka and me to arrange matters.
So ‘congs’ again, dear Ivan! You are, we both think, a marvelous, inimitable artist who should also ‘only laugh,’ if cretinic critics, especially lower-upper-middle-class Englishmen, accuse his turnstyle of being ‘coy’ and ‘arch,’ much as an American farmer finds the parson ‘peculiar’ because he knows Greek.
P.S.
Dushevno klanyayus’ (‘am souledly bowing’, an incorrect and vulgar construction evoking the image of a ‘bowing soul’) nashemu zaochno dorogomu professoru (‘to our "unsight-unseen" dear professor’), o kotorom mnogo slïshal (about whom have heard much) ot dobrago Dementiya Dedalovicha i sestritsï (from good Demon and my sister).
S uvazheniem (with respect),
Andrey Vaynlender (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).
le beau ténébreux: wrapt in Byronic gloom.