'That's very black of you, Dad,' said
pleased Van, using a slang phrase he had learned from his tender young nurse,
Ruby, who was born in the Mississippi region where most magistrates, public
benefactors, high priests of various so-called' denominations,' and other
honorable and generous men, had the dark or darkish skin of their West-African
ancestors, who had been the first navigators to reach the Gulf of Mexico.
(Ada, 1.38)
Pushkin liked to stress the fact that his maternal
great-grandfather Abram Petrovich Gannibal ("the Blackamoor of Peter the
Great") was "of African descent."* In Chapter One (L: 8-14)
of Eugene Onegin the poet says that 'tis time to leave the
dreary shore and to sigh for somber Russia beneath the sky of
his Africa:
Пора покинуть скучный брег
Мне
неприязненной стихии,
И средь полуденных зыбей,
Под небом Африки
моей,11
Вздыхать о сумрачной России,
Где я страдал, где я
любил,
Где сердце я похоронил.
'Tis time to leave the dreary shore
of the element inimical to me,
and 'mid meridian ripples
beneath the sky of my Africa,
to sigh for somber Russia,
where I suffered, where I loved,
where I buried my heart.
The element inimical to Pushkin (who wrote these lines in
Odessa) is (sea) water. In her suicide note poor mad Aqua (Marina's twin
sister whose name means "water") mentions Ruby Black:
Similarly, chelovek (human being)
must know where he stands and let others know, otherwise he is not even a
klok (piece) of a chelovek, neither a he, nor she, but 'a tit
of it' as poor Ruby, my little Van, used to say of her scanty right
breast. (1.3)
In Pushkin's poem Anchar (The Upas Tree, 1828)
chelovek sends chelovek with an imperious look towards
the upas tree:
Но человека человек
Послал к анчару властным
взглядом,
И тот послушно в путь потек
И к утру возвратился с
ядом.
But man sent man with one
proud look
towards the tree, and he was gone,
the humble one, and there he took
the poison
and returned at dawn.
Line 5 of "The Upas Tree," Природа
жаждущих степей (the nature of the thirsting plane),
in Pushkin's draft was Природа Африки моей (the nature of my Africa).**
Pushkin's upas tree
grows В пустыне чахлой и
скупой ("Deep in the
desert's mysery" as paraphrased by VN). Aqua's last
luxurious "sanastoria" at Centaur, Arizona, had a nice desertic
view: The astorium in St Taurus, or whatever it was
called (who cares - one forgets little things very fast, when afloat in infinite
non-thingness) was, perhaps, more modem, with a more refined desertic view, than
the Mondefroid bleakhouse horsepittle... (1.3)
In Post Scriptum to My Pedigree (1830)
Pushkin again mentions his "black grandfather Gannibal". Ruby's
surname is Black: After her first battle with
insanity at Ex en Valais she [Aqua] returned to
America, and suffered a bad defeat, in the days when Van was still being suckled
by a very young wet nurse, almost a child, Ruby Black, born Black, who was to go
mad too: for no sooner did all the fond, all the frail, come into close contact
with him (as later Lucette did, to give another example) than they were bound to
know anguish and calamity, unless strengthened by a strain of his father's demon
blood. (1.3)
Antiaris + Terra + Demon = Antiterra +
Ardis + Nemo/omen (Antiaris - upas tree; Terra -
Antiterra's mysterious twin planet; Demon - Demon
Veen, Van's and Ada's father, Aqua's husband; Antiterra - Earth's twin planet also known as Demonia;
Ardis - Daniel Veen's magnificent manor near
Ladore; Nemo - Captain Nemo, a Jules Verne
character)
In Speak, Memory (Chapter Three, 5) VN paraphrases
the lines from EO:
And finally: I reserve for myself the right to
yearn after an ecological niche:
...Beneath the sky
Of my America to sigh
For one locality in
Russia.
In my previous post (Pushkin & Russian America) I
mentioned Pushkin's "American" correspondent K. T. Khlebnikov and the gifted
(but mentally not quite normal) poet Velimir Khlebnikov. Their surname
comes from khlebnik (obs., baker). Khlebnik is mentioned in
Canto One (XXXV: 12-14) of Eugene Onegin:
и хлебник, немец аккуратный,
в бумажном колпаке, не раз
уж отворял свой васисдас.
and the baker, a punctual German
in cotton cap, has more than once
already opened his vasisdas.
vasisdas + r = Vass + Ardis (vasisdas - small spy-window or transom with a mobile screen
or grate; Vass - a couturier mentioned in
Ada; Three young ladies in yellow-blue Vass frocks
with fashionable rainbow sashes surrounded a stoutish, foppish, baldish young
man who stood, a flute of champagne in his hand, glancing down from the
drawing-room terrace at a girl in black with bare arms: an old runabout,
shivering at every jerk, was being cranked up by a hoary chauffeur in front of
the porch, and those bare arms, stretched wide, were holding outspread the white
cape of Baroness von Skull, a grand-aunt of hers. 1.31)
Like Philip Rack (Lucette's teacher of music, one of Ada's
lovers), Ada's grand-aunt Baroness von Skull must be a German. Pushkin's
Poslanie Delvigu (An Epistle to Delvig, 1827) begins:
Прими сей череп, Дельвиг, он
Принадлежит тебе по праву.
Тебе поведаю, барон,
Его готическую славу.
Delvig, accept this skull,
it belongs to you by rights.
I shall tell you, Baron,
About it's Gothic glory.
According to Pushkin, the skull (in which Pushkin's and
Delvig's mutual friend Aleksei Vulf used to keep his tobacco) once belonged
to Delvig's ancestor, a Baron Delvig who lived in
Riga.
In his poem Pushkinu (To Pushkin, ca. 1815) Delvig
mentions America:
Флот, с несчётным богатством Америки,
С
тяжким золотом, купленным кровию,
Не взмущает двукраты экватора
Для него
кораблями бегущими
Fleets with treasures untold from
America,
weighty gold that with blood has been purchased
- not for him do those ships in their wanderings
twice disturb the equator.***
"Yellow-blue Vass" is a pun on ya lyublyu Vas (Russ.,
I love you). In EO Chapter Four (XVI: 3-4) Onegin tells
Tatiana:
Я вас люблю любовью брата
И, может быть, ещё нежней.
I love you with a brother's love
and maybe still more tenderly.
A few hours before Lucette's suicide, Van quotes these
lines to her onboard Tobakoff:
'Your father,' added Lucette, 'paid a man
from Belladonna to take pictures - but of course, real fame begins only
when one's name appears in that cine-magazine's crossword puzzle. We all know it
will never happen, never! Do you hate me now?'
'I don't,' he said, passing his hand over her sun-hot
back and rubbing her coccyx to make pussy purr. 'Alas, I don't! I love you with
a brother's love and maybe still more tenderly. Would you like me to order
drinks?' (3.5)
*see Pushkin's Note 11 to Eugene Onegin and VN's EO
Commentary, App. I, "Abram Gannibal"
**see EO Commentary, note to One: L:
11
***for the full text of VN's translation of Delvig's poem
see EO Commentary, note to Six: XX: 12-14.
Alexey Sklyarenko