Tak, vdol' naklonnogo luchа
Ya vyshel iz paralichа.
Along a slanting ray, like this
I slipped out of paralysis. (LATH, 7.3)
In Pushkin's Dubrovski (1833) paralysis hits Andrey Gavrilovich
Dubrovski (the father of Vladimir) the moment he sees in the window
his neighbor and rival (former friend) Kirila Petrovich Troekurov:
Больной указывал пальцем на двор с
видом ужаса и гнева. Он торопливо подбирал полы своего халата, собираясь
встать с кресел, приподнялся - и вдруг упал. - Сын бросился к нему, старик
лежал без чувств и без дыхания - паралич его ударил. (Chapter
Four)
When he feels an unusual agitation of thoughts, Kirila Petrovich whistles
the tune of Grom pobedy razdavaysya! ("Thunder of Victory, Ring out!"
1791), the hymn composed by Derzhavin and set to music by
Kozlovski after Suvorov took Izmail, the impregnable Turkish
fortress in the Danube's estuary:
А Кирила Петрович, оставшись наедине, стал
расхаживать взад и вперёд, насвистывая: Гром победы
раздавайся, что всегда означало в нём необыкновенное волнение
мыслей. (ibid.)
Luch sveta v tyomnom tsarstve ("A Ray of Light in the
Dark Kingdom") is Dobrolyubov's famous article on Ostrovski's play
Groza ("The Thunderstorm", 1859). Dobrolyubov is a character in
VN's Dar (The Gift). Annette Blagovo (Vadim's typist who
types for him the text of his novel The
Dare) spoonerizes his name as Dobroshevski: The only real shock I experienced was when I overheard her
informing some idiot woman friend that my Dare included biographies of
"Chernolyubov and Dobroshevski"! She actually started to argue when I retorted
that only a lunatic would have chosen a pair of third-rate publicists to write
about--spoonerizing their names in addition! ( 2.5)
Ostrovski comes from ostrov ("island"). LATH ends in
the sentence: I had been promised some rum with my
tea--Ceylon and Jamaica, the sibling islands (mumbling comfortably, dropping
off, mumble dying away)--" (7.4)
Note also a Formosan copy of
Vadim's novel A Kingdom by the Sea that he finds in the Orly
airport: With a hovering grin, I noticed and
picked up a paperback somebody had left on a seat next to mine in the transit
lounge of the Orly airport. I was the mouse of fate on that pleasant June
afternoon between a shop of wines and a shop of perfumes.
I held in my hands a copy of a Formosan
(!) paperback reproduced from the American edition of A Kingdom by the
Sea. (5.3)
Formosa is the Portuguese name of Taiwan, a Chinese island
separated from the SE coast of China by Taiwan Strait.
Ryumka roma, poutru chai (a wine-glass of
rum, [a cup of] tea in the morning) are mentioned by Pushkin in the last
stanza of Dorozhnye zhaloby ("Road Complaints", 1830):
То ли дело рюмка
рома,
Ночью сон, поутру чай;
То ли дело, братцы, дома!..
Ну, пошёл же, погоняй!..
The middle part of
Vadim's novel The Dare is a
concise biography and critical appraisal of Fyodor Dostoevski, whose politics my
author finds hateful and whose novels he condemns as absurd with their
black-bearded killers presented as mere negatives of Jesus Christ's conventional
image, and weepy whores borrowed from maudlin romances of an earlier age.
(2.5) Dostoevski's second wife, Anna Snitkin, worked for him as a
stenographer. Vadim meets his second wife, Annette Blagovo, when she comes to
work for him as a typist. The characters of Dostoevski's Brothers
Karamazov (1880) include the paralyzed girl Liza Khokhlakov (who is later
cured by an expensive doctor).
Alexey Sklyarenko