To put it bluntly, the boy had
sought to solace his first sexual torments by imagining and detailing a project
(derived from reading too many erotic works found in a furnished house his
grandfather had bought near Vence from Count Tolstoy, a Russian or Pole):
namely, a chain of palatial brothels that his inheritance would allow him to
establish all over 'both hemispheres of our callipygian globe.'
(Ada, Part Two, 3)
The author of the essay 'Villa Venus: an
Organized Dream,' Eric Veen died at fifteen, so it was his grandfather
David van Veen, a wealthy architect of Flemish extraction, who built a
hundred memorial "floramors" frequented by Van Veen, Ada's hero and
narrator.
Tolstoy's letter of February, 1888, to his future
biographer, P. I. Biryukov ("Posha"), begins with apologies that imitate
stammer: "Виноват... винов... вино... вин... ви... в...
в..."* Виноват
(mea culpa) means in Russian "guilty," Винов, "belonging to Veen" or "of the Veens," вино, "wine" or "vodka", вин,
"of the wines" (вiн is Ukrainian for "he") but, if capitalized
(Вин), becomes Russian spelling of the name
"Veen."
"Нет в мире виноватых" ("There are no Guilty
People in the World," begun in 1908) is the title of Tolstoy's last
unfinished novella. On the other hand, the phrase архитектор виноват ("the
architect is to blame") became proverbial in the Tolstoy family. Here is another
excerpt (apologies, I don't translate it) from the chapter of Ilya Lvovich
Tolstoy's memoirs in which skeletiki (little skeletons),
Adol'fik, etc., are mentioned:
Перебегая из залы в гостиную, я
зацепился ногой за порог, упал, и от моей чашки остались одни
осколочки.
Конечно, я заревел во весь голос и
сделал вид, что расшибся гораздо больше, чем на самом деле.
Мамá кинулась меня
утешать и сказала мне, что я сам виноват, потому что был
неосторожен.
Это меня рассердило ужасно, и я начал
кричать, что виноват не я, а противный архитектор, который сделал в двери порог,
и если бы порога не было, я бы не упал.
Папá это услыхал и начал смеяться:
"Архитектор виноват, архитектор виноват," - и мне от этого стало ещё обиднее, и
я не мог ему простить, что он надо мной смеётся.
С этих пор поговорка "архитектор
виноват" так и осталась в нашей семье, и папá часто любил её повторять, когда
кто-нибудь старался свалить свою вину на другого.
There is also виноват in the title of
Herzen's novel "Кто виноват?" ("Who is to Blame?" 1847). In the first months of
1888 Tolstoy was reading Herzen (whose works was banned in Russian), the fact
mentioned by Biryukov who quotes Tolstoy's letters to
Strakhov:
"Всё последнее время читал и
читаю Герцена. Что за удивительный писатель. И наша жизнь русская за последние
20 лет была бы не та, если бы этот писатель не был скрыт от молодого поколения.
А то из организма русского общества вынут насильственно очень важный
орган."
"A very important organ was forcibly taken out from
the organism of Russian society." Is not it also true in regard
to Nabokov (whose works were banned in Russia for
seventy years)?
and to Chertkov: "Доказывать
несостоятельность революционных теорий - нужно только читать Герцена, как
казнится всякое насилие самим делом, для которого оно делается. Если бы не было
запрещения Герцена, не было бы динамита и убийства, и виселиц, и всех расходов,
усилий тайной полиции, и всего того ужаса, и всего того зла правительства и
консерваторов...
Очень поучительно читать его
теперь. И хороший, искренний человек. Человек - выдающийся по силе, уму,
искренности, - случайно мог без помехи дойти по ложному пути до болота и
увязнуть и закричать: не ходите!"**
Note the mention of boloto, "bog, marsh."
Veen means in Dutch "peatbog" (torfyanoe boloto).
History playing strange tricks, the Bolshaya
Morskaya street in St. Petersburg where VN was born was renamed Herzen street by
the Bolsheviks. This fact is mentioned in Speak, Memory. The Russian
title of VN's autobiography, Drugie berega, is an allusion to a line in
Pushkin ("Other shores, other waves") but it also echoes the title of Herzen's
book S togo berega ("From the Other Shore," 1850).
The architect's name, David van Veen, reminds one
of Baron Klim Avidov (who dropped, according to Walter C. Keyway, Esq., the
first letter of his last name in order to use it as a particule: 1.36).
Baron Klim Avidov = Vladimir Nabokov; David van Veen = dva + divan + even
(dva = 2); Vence + i = Venice (cf. Venezia Rossa, where Klim Avidov
knocked down Keyway); incidentally, many buildings in St. Petersburg,
including the General Staff with a Triumphal Arch and the Public
Library, were built by the Venice-born architect Carlo Rossi (1775-1849).
All the hundred floramors
opened simultaneously on September 20, 1875 (2.3). As I pointed out before, on this very day (I believe, it was
Monday on Terra) Turgenev moved to a new built chalet in his and Viardot's villa
Les Frênes ("The Ash Trees") in Bougival. Fifteen years earlier,
on September 20, 1860, Tolstoy's brother Nikolay (b. 1823) died in
Hyères (South France), in Leo's presence.*** Leo Tolstoy's grave in Yasnaya
Polyana (note that yasen' is Russian for "ash tree") is on the spot
where his brother Nikolen'ka buried the green little stick (zelyonaya
palochka) with a secret (that should make all people happy) carved on
it.
*The Biography of L. N. Tolstoy, Vol. III, chapter
8.
**Ibid.
***Ibid., vol. I, chapter 12.
Alexey Sklyarenko