The unmentionable magnetic power denounced by
evil lawmakers in this our shabby country — oh, everywhere, in Estoty and
Canady, in ‘German’ Mark Kennensie, as well as in ‘Swedish’ Manitobogan, in the
workshop of the red-shirted Yukonets as well as in the kitchen of the
red-kerchiefed Lyaskanka, and in ‘French’ Estoty, from Bras d’Or to Ladore — and
very soon throughout both our Americas, and all over the other stunned
continents — was used on Terra as freely as water and air, as bibles and
brooms.
(1.3)
Yukonets means "a Yukonian, citizen of Yukon." Aqua’s and Marina’s father, General Ivan Durmanov was a
Commander of Yukon Fortress (1.1). On Antiterra Pushkin lived
in Yukon: 'Sladko!
(Sweet!)’ Pushkin used to exclaim in relation to a different species [of mosquitoes] in Yukon.
(1.17)
According to Lapin (a local tradesman whose name brings
to mind Ada's Dr Lapiner), in Mihaylovskoe (Pushkin's country place in
the Province of Pskov) Pushkin wore "a peasant shirt of red calico,
with a sky-blue ribbon for sash. He carried an iron club."
In his EO Commentary (vol. II, p. 458) VN explains: Pushkin carried an iron club to strengthen and steady his
pistol hand in view of a duel he intended to have with Fyodor Tolstoy at
the first opportunity (see n. to Four: XIX: 5).
Count Fyodor Tolstoy who took part in the first lap
of Admiral Krusenstern's famous voyage around the world and who was dumped for
insubordination on Rat Island, in the Aleutians, was nicknamed
Amerikanets, "the American." In a poem addressed to
Chaadaev Pushkin calls Tolstoy "that philosopher who in past days / amazed
four continents with his lewd ways" (EO Commentary, vol. II, p. 429,
note).
In Chapter Eight of EO sila magnetizma (the power of
magnetism) almost makes Onegin, who is in love with Princess N., grasp
the mechanism of Russian verses:
À òî÷íî: ñèëîé ìàãíåòèçìà
Ñòèõîâ ðîññèéñêèõ
ìåõàíèçìà
Åäâà â òî âðåìÿ íå ïîñòèã
Ìîé áåñòîëêîâûé
ó÷åíèê.
And true: by dint of magnetism,
the mechanism of Russian verses
at that time all but grasped
my addleheaded pupil. (XXXVIII: 5-8)
Lyaskanka means "a female inhabitant of Lyaska."
The Antiterran name of Alaska, Lyaska rhymes with plyaska (Russ.,
dance; folk-dancing).
At an invisible sign of Dionysian origin, they all
plunged into the violent dance called kurva or ‘ribbon boule’ in the
hilarious program whose howlers almost caused Veen (tingling, and light-loined,
and with Prince N.’s rose-red banknote in his pocket) to fall from his
seat.
His heart missed a beat and never regretted the lovely
loss, as she [Marina] ran, flushed and
flustered, in a pink dress into the orchard, earning a claque third of the
sitting ovation that greeted the instant dispersal of the imbecile but colorful
transfigurants from Lyaska — or Iveria. (1.2)
"The red-kerchiefed Lyaskanka" reminds me of the girl in Rodchenko's famous
poster (
http://affiliates.allposters.com/link/redirect.asp?item=2885523&AID=36616835&PSTID=1<ID=2&lang=1). It
depicts Mayakovski's muse Lilya Brik (Elsa Triolet's sister). In Ilf and
Petrov's
The Twelve Chairs (Chapter IXXX "The Author of the
Gavriliad") she seems to be satirized as Hina Chlek (
chelovek,
"human being," compressed to four letters; or
chlen, "member,"
badly disfigured), Lapis-Trubetskoy's mistress. The poet "Lapsus"
Trubetskoy is an ignoramus who believes, for instance, that
pen'yuar (peignoir) is a ball-dress:
"Honestly, Lapis, why do you write about things you've
never seen and haven't the first idea about? Why is the peignoir in your
poem Canton a ball-dress?"
As she speaks by dorophone with Demon Marina mentions
penyuar:
Your voice was remote but sweet; you said you were in
Eve’s state, hold the line, let me put on a penyuar. Instead, blocking
my ear, you spoke, I suppose, to the man with whom you had spent the night (and
whom I would have dispatched, had I not been overeager to castrate him).
(1.2)
The name of Marina's lover, d'Onsky, and his nickname Skonky (anagram of
konsky, "of a horse") seem to hint at Onegin's Don stallion (EO,
Two: V: 4).
Hodasevich's article on Mayakovski (VN's
"late namesake who used to write verse, in rank and in file, at the very
dawn of the Soviet Small-Bourgeois order"*) is entitled
Dekol'tirovannaya Loshad' (The Décolleté Horse,
1927).
Demon had a sword duel with
d'Onsky:
The challenge was
accepted; two native seconds were chosen; the Baron plumped for swords; and
after a certain amount of good blood (Polish and Irish — a kind of American
‘Gory Mary’ in barroom parlance) had bespattered two hairy torsoes, the
whitewashed terrace, the flight of steps leading backward to the walled garden
in an amusing Douglas d’Artagnan arrangement, the apron of a quite accidental
milkmaid, and the shirtsleeves of both seconds, charming Monsieur de Pastrouil
and Colonel St Alin, a scoundrel, the latter gentlemen separated the panting
combatants, and Skonky died, not ‘of his wounds’ (as it was viciously rumored)
but of a gangrenous afterthought on the part of the least of them, possibly
self-inflicted, a sting in the groin... (1.2)
Lapis-Trubetskoy is author of The Ballad
of the Gangrene:
"Gavrila took to bed with gangrene.
The
gangrene made Gavrila sick..."
The fat samovar face of Douglas Fairbanks (a Hollywood actor
who played d'Artagnan in The Three
Musketeers) is mentioned in Ilf and Petrov's The
Golden Calf (Chapter Five "The Underground Kingdom"). Pushkin and Dumas
(the author of The Three Musketeers) are paired by Van's Russian
tutor:
AAA explained, he
remembered, to a Negro lad with whom Van had scrapped, that Pushkin and Dumas
had African blood, upon which the lad showed AAA his tongue, a new interesting
trick which Van emulated at the earliest occasion and was slapped by the younger
of the Misses Fortune, put it back in your face, sir, she said.
(1.24)
For many years Demon was blackmailed by
Norbert von Miller, a professional smuggler of
neonegrine:
Dr Lapiner's wife, born
Countess Alp,** not only left him, in 1871, to live with Norbert von Miller,
amateur poet, Russian translator at the Italian Consulate in Geneva, and
professional smuggler of neonegrine — found only in the Valais — but had
imparted to her lover the melodramatic details of the subterfuge which the
kindhearted physician had considered would prove a boon to one lady and a
blessing to the other. Versatile Norbert spoke English with an extravagant
accent, hugely admired wealthy people and, when name-dropping, always qualified
such a person as ‘enawmously rich’ with awed amorous gusto, throwing himself
back in his chair and spreading tensely curved arms to enfold an invisible
fortune. He had a round head as bare as a knee, a corpse’s button nose, and very
white, very limp, very damp hands adorned with rutilant gems. His mistress soon
left him. Dr Lapiner died in 1872. About the same time, the Baron married an
innkeeper’s innocent daughter and began to blackmail Demon Veen; this went on
for almost twenty years, when aging Miller was shot dead by an Italian policeman
on a little-known border trail, which had seemed to get steeper and muddier
every year. (2.11)
In The Golden Calf Ostap Bender
successfully blackmails Koreiko (a secret Soviet millionaire). The
novel ends in Ostap's attempt to cross the
Rumanian border.
An amateur smuggler, he is robbed by
frontier-guards.
Valais (Wallis) is a Canton in SW
Switzerland. Canton is a poem by "Lapsus" Trubetskoy.
Now, one of the six bastions of the
Peter-and-Paul Fortress in St. Petersburg is the Trubetskoy bastion. General
Ivan Nabokov (brother of VN's great-grandfather) was the Fortress's commander.
In 1849 one of his prisoners was the writer Dostoevski,
author of The Double, etc., to whom the kind general lent books
(Speak, Memory, Chapter Three, 1). It seems to me that the
Antiterran L disaster in the beau milieu of the 19th century that
caused the ban of electricity ("the unmentionable magnetic power") corresponds
to the mock execution of Dostoevski and the Petrashevskians on January 3, 1850
(NS). January 3, 1876, is Lucette's birthday (1.1).
Speaking of Pushkin and Lyaska: according to
a fat little Russian encyclopedia consulted by Van and Ada, guba means “a district court in ancient
Lyaska” and “Arctic gulf" (1.17). But, first of all, guba is Russian for lip, "either of the
two fleshy parts or folds forming the margins of the mouth." Van's and
Ada’s lips are
“absurdly similar in style, tint and tissue.” Van describes Ada’s lips as “practically
Moorish.”
In his poem “Ya rodilsya v Moskve. Ya dyma…” (“I was
born in Moscow.
I [never saw] the smoke…” 1923) Hodasevich speaks of Pushkin's saintly Moorish
lips:
A ya gde b ni byl – shepchut
mne
Arapskie svyatye
guby
O nebyvaloy storone.
And wherever I might
be,
The saintly Moorish lips whisper me
Of a fabulous
land.
*On Rulers.
**Alp may hint at Anna Livia Plurabelle, a character in James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake
(1939).
Alexey Sklyarenko