Blok's most famous poem (directly alluded to
in Ada: 3.3) is "Незнакомка" (Incognita, 1906). Its final
stanza reads:
В моей душе лежит
сокровище,
И ключ поручен только
мне!
Ты право, пьяное
чудовище!
Я знаю: истина в
вине.
A treasure lies concealed in my
soul,
And the key is entrusted to me
alone!
You are right, drunken
monster!
I know: in wine is
truth.
The "drunken monster" mentioned in the poem's penultimate
line is one of those drunks with the eyes of rabbits (пьяницы с
глазами кроликов) who revel in a suburb tavern frequented by the
author and cry out: "In vino veritas!" Note that the phrase "с
глазами" occurs not only in Blok's poem but also in Ada, in a
close proximity to the name Krolik (which means "rabbit" in Russian),
of the local physician and entomologist, Ada's
late teacher of natural
history:
"'but my dear,' he [Demon] continued, switching
to Russian, 'the chelovek* who brought
me the pirozhki - the new man, the plumpish one with the eyes (s
glazami) -'
'Everybody has eyes,' remarked Marina
drily.
'Well, his look as if they were about
to octopus the food he serves. But that's not the point. He pants, Marina! He
suffers from some kind of odyshka (shortness of breath). He should see
Dr Krolik.'"
(1.38)
If we capitalize the terminal word of Blok's poem
and accent it on the first, rather than second, syllable, the phrase
истина в вине ("in wine is truth") will become истина в Вине, "in Veen is
truth". Van Veen is Ada's protagonist, and there are many other Veens
in VN's Family
Chronicle.
Veen [even] = Venera [Erevan] + gentian -
Argentina
Log + vino [ovin, voin, Vion] = Golovin
[Nivolog]
Blok + klitor + ho-ho + Aa = Krolik + boloto +
ha-ha
Venera - Russian name of Venus; cf. Eric
Veen's "Villa Venus: an Organized Dream" in
Ada
Erevan - capital of Armenia
gentian - Gentiana verna and Gentiane
de Koch, two plants in Marina's herbarium
(1.1)
Argentina - country in South America; cf.
'Neath sultry sky of Argentina, the tango Van dances on his hands in
Ada (1.30) and Ostap Bender, solo, in The Golden
Calf
Log - Supreme Being on Antiterra
vino - Russian for
"wine"
ovin - Russian for
"barn"
voin - Russian for "warrior"
Vion - Bion, Greek poet (2nd century B.C.) mentioned as
"Vion" by Batyushkov
klitor - clitoris; cf. Lucette's words to Van about
a Flavita game they once played (2.5): "You examined and fingered my groove
and quickly redistributed the haphazard sequence which made, say, LIKROT or
ROTIKL and Ada flooded us both with her raven silks as she looked over our
heads, and when you had completed the rearrangement, you and she came
simultaneously, si je puis le mettre comme ça (Canady French), came falling on the
black carpet in a paroxysm of incomprohensible merriment; so finally I quitely
composed ROTIK ('little mouth') and was left with my own cheap
initial".
ho-ho - in Ilf and Petrov's "The 12 chairs", one of the
30 words in the vocabulary of Ellochka Shchukin (who used it to express various
emotions)
Aa - river in
Kurland
boloto - Russian for "bog"; the name Veen means "peat
bog" in
Duch
ha-ha - sunk fence; cf. "Russia... was on Terra the name
of a country, transferred as if by some sleight of land across the
ha-ha of a doubled ocean to the opposite hemisphere where it sprawled over all
of today's Tartary, from Kurland to the Kuriles!"
(1.3)
*waiter; the word chelovek also occurs in
Aqua's last note (1.3): "Similarly, chelovek (human being) must
know where he stands and let others know, otherwise he is not even a
klok (piece) of a chelovek". Chelovek = Vekchelo (the Yukonsk acrobat who, like Van,
could dance on his hands).
Jones,
the chelovek who serves food at the family dinner in Ardis the Second,
later becomes a policeman and helps Van to put out the eyes of Kim Beauharnais,
a kitchen boy and photographer at Ardis who spied upon Van's and Ada's
lovemakings and attempted to blackmail
Ada.
Alexey
Sklyarenko