The author of Uedinyonnyi domik na Vasilievskom ("The
Secluded Small House in the Vasilievski Island," 1829), V. Titov visited Pushkin
at Demut's Hotel:
Не желая, однако, быть ослушником
ветхозаветной заповеди "не укради", [Titov] пошёл с
тетрадью к Пушкину в гостиницу "Демут", убедил его прослушать от начала до
конца, воспользовался многими, поныне очень памятными его поправками и потом, по
настоятельному желанию Дельвига, отдал [the
story] в "Северные Цветы". (Hodasevich, "Pushkin's St.
Petersburg Tales")
In 1829, staying at Demut's Hotel, Pushkin wrote
Poltava (cf. Byron's Mazeppa) and began Chapter Eight of
Eugene Onegin. From VN's EO Commentary (III, p. 269):
The oldest hotel in St. Petersburg was the Hotel
Demut, on the Moyka Canal, near Nevski Avenue. It had been established in the
1760's by the merchant Philip Jacob Demuth or Demouth (d.1802). Moreover,
Demuth acquired a large house at the corner of Nevski and Admiralty Square,
where he established another hotel, London, also known as the Hôtel de Londres.
It is not far from Morskaya Street (which crosses Nevski at a slightly more
southern point), but Pushkin erred in situating it specifically
there.
In the draft of Onegin's Journey (V: 3-4) Pushkin's
hero "awoke a patriot in the Hôtel de Londres in
Morskaya Street (prosnulsya raz on patriotom / v Hôtel de
Londres chto na Morskoy). During his trip to Leningrad Vadim Vadimovich
puts up at Astoria, a luxurious hotel at the corner of Morskaya ("Herzen")
Street and Isaac Square (LATH, 5.2). Further west on the same Northern side of
Morskaya Street is the Nabokov house (No. 47). It looks familiar to Vadim
Vadimovich who must have visited it as a child:
To be quite honest, only the dogs,
the pigeons, the horses, and the very old, very meek cloakroom
attendants seemed familiar to me. They, and perhaps the façade of a house on
Gertsen Street. I may have gone there to some children's fête ages ago. The
floral design running above the row of its
upper windows caused an eerie shiver to pass through the root of
wings that we all grow at such moments of dream-like recollection.
(ibid.)
Btw., Demut* is a four-line poem
by Goethe:
Seh' ich die Werke der Meister
an,
So seh' ich das, was sie
getan;
Betracht' ich meine
Siebensachen,
Seh' ich, was ich hätt sollen
machen.
Demut + on = Demon + tu (on - Russ., he; tu - Fr.,
you)
Demon is the society nickname of Vadim's father:
My father was a gambler and a rake. His
society nickname was Demon. Vrubel has portrayed him with his vampire-pale
cheeks, his diamond eyes, his
black hair. (2.5)
Demon Seated and Demon Downcast are
Vrubel's most famous paintings. They depict Demon, the eponymous
hero of a poem by Lermontov. Lermontov's Demon falls in love with the
Georgian girl Tamara. On the other hand, Tamara is a character in
VN's memoirs Speak, Memory and the title of Vadim's
first novel.
Lermontov is the author of The Hero of Our Time
(1840), a novel that consists of five novellas. The first of them is
entitled Bella ("Бэла"). Charlie Everette (the future Karl
Ivanovich Vetrov) calls Vadim's daughter Bel (Isabel), who is soon to elope
with him to Soviet Russia, "Bella:"
We had coffee and kirsch in the
lounge, and Charlie Everett showed us pictures of the summer Camp for Blind
Children (who were spared the sight of its drab locust trees and rings
of ashed refuse amidst the riverside burdocks) which he and
Bella (Bella!) were supervising. (4.7)
Describing his life in Paris in the 1930s Vadim
mentions Suknovalov, the author of The Hero of Our
Era:
I recognized the critic Basilevski, his
sycophants Hristov and Boyarski, my friend Morozov, the novelists Shipogradov
and Sokolovski, the honest nonentity Suknovalov, author of the popular social
satire Geroy nashey ery ("Hero of Our Era") and two young poets, Lazarev
(collection Serenity) and Fartuk (collection Silence).
(2.4)
Does Suknovalov hint at the English poet Roy Fuller (1912-91)?
(Suknoval means "fuller," a person who fulls cloth.)
Incidentally, Lermontov translated to Russian ("made a
miserable hash of") Wanderers Nachtlied, one of Goethe's most famous
poems:
Über allen Gipfeln
Ist Ruh,
In allen Wipfeln
Spürest
du
Kaum einen Hauch;
Die Vögelein schweigen im Walde.
Warte nur,
balde
Ruhest du auch.
Горные вершины
Спят во тьме ночной;
Тихие долины
Полны свежей
мглой;
Не пылит дорога,
Не дрожат листы…
Подожди немного,
Отдохнешь
и ты.
Nebo Shillera i Gete (the sky of Schiller and of
Goethe) is mentioned in Pushkin's EO (Two: IX: 6). According to "you" (who
apologized for the "aphorism"), everything is beautiful na fone
neba (against the sky). (LATH, 7.4) Cf. also Nebesnyy, one of
the names Vadim tries on striving to remember his surname:
Yes, I definitely felt my family name
began with an N and bore an odious resemblance to the surname or
pseudonym of a presumably notorious (Notorov? No) Bulgarian, or
Babylonian, or, maybe, Betelgeusian writer with whom scatterbrained émigrés from some other galaxy constantly
confused me; but whether it was something on the lines of Nebesnyy or
Nabedrin or Nablidze (Nablidze? Funny) I simply could not
tell. (7.3)
Lermontov's Queen Tamara (the heroine of a 1841 poem
Tamara who should not be confused with a character in Demon)
is
Прекрасна, как ангел небесный,
Как
демон, коварна и зла.
Beautiful, like a heavenly
[nebesnyi] angel,
Insidious and evil, like a demon.
Iris Black's surname brings to mind the black old tower on a
black rock where Queen Tamara lives:
В глубокой теснине Дарьяла,
Где роется Терек
во мгле,
Старинная башня стояла,
Чернея на чёрной скале.
Btw., one of young Lermontov's poems
(1832) begins:
Нет, я не Байрон, я другой...
No, I'm not Byron, I'm another...
*Meekness; Humbleness
Alexey Sklyarenko