>Mayakovsky (who used to refer to himself, in
his poems, as Vladim Vladimych) is the author of the famous "Стихи о советском
паспорте" (Verses about the Soviet Passport).
Re "colored":
It belatedly occurred to me that Mayakovsky was
also the author of the anti-racist poem "Блек энд Уайт" (Black and
White, 1925). It is about a negro dustman in Vedado (a district
in Havana) whose dull spectrum of joys is small ("мал его
радостей тусклый спектр"). One day he
approaches with an improper question a fat sugar magnate, a white
American, who, instead of replying, slaps the unfortunate fellow in
the face.* The author suggests that, rather than asking Mr
Breggs, Willie should have addressed his question to Komintern [Communist
International], in Moscow.
Note the "black-and-white" name of one of
LATH's characters: Ivor Black. The name of Ivor's sister (who was
the first of Vadim's three or four successive wives),
Iris, suggests a rainbow of colors. "V. Irisin"
(Irisin means "belonging to Iris" in Russian), Vadim's pen-name,
reminds one of Sirin, VN's own Russian nom de plume. Indeed,
compared to Mayakovsky's black-and-white placard poetry,** Sirin's prose,
like Fyodor's poems in The Gift, "iridesces with harlequin colors."
The setting of Mayakovsky's poem is Havana, Cuba.
Note the two islands mentioned in LATH's last sentence: "I had been promised
some rum with my tea - Ceylon and Jamaica, the sibling islands (mumbling
comfortably, dropping off, mumble dying away) - " I shall presently evoke two
more islands with warm climate.
Mayakovsky's best-known poem is Хорошо
("Good," 1927, written to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the
October Revolution; it is parodied by VN in his Tyrants
Destroyed). This may look far-fetched, but, pronounced with a Chinese or
Japanese accent, the Russian word khorosho sounds rather like
koroso (or, in a different
spelling, coroso). COROSO*** + SIRIN =
CORSO ORSINI**** (a street at Gandora, in the Tessin, that Vadim
crosses a few moments before he gets paralized). As to Far
Eastern allusions in LATH, remember the copy of a Formosan (!) paperback edition
of Vadim's A Kingdom by the Sea that he picks up in the Paris Orly
airport after his return from the USSR. Formosa is the old name of
Taiwan.
*Cf. Vadim's violent reaction to Oleg Orlov's
words of reproof in LATH: "The swing I dealt old Oleg with the back of my
left fist was of quite presentable power... 'Ну дали в морду. Ну, так что ж?' he
muttered."
**btw., in the 1920s Mayakovsky starred in a silent
movie (black-and-white, of course), Baryshnya i khuligan ("A Girl and a
Hooligan"), in which he played the part of a hooligan. Ivor
Black in LATH is a fine actor who played female roles on stage
and later becomes a film director in Hollywood.
***This imaginary word reminds one of
corazon, Spanish for "heart," but also of Curaçao, an island in
the Antilles, after which a liqueur was called. Btw., the poor negro in
Mayakovsky's Black and White mentions coffee (black) and
sugar (white), but there are no liquors to lace it.
****Corso, a street in Rome, is mentioned in
Kuzmin's "Крылья" (The Wings, 1908). Orsini, a musical critic, is a
character in the same tale (its hero is a youngster named Vanya Smurov). Kuzmin
(1875-1936), a poet, prose writer and composer (who was "sexually
left-handed"), dedicated to Mayakovsky his ode The Hostile Sea
(1917).
Alexey Sklyarenko