In a farewell letter
to Marina Demon wrote that he had been overeager to castrate d'Onsky
(Demon's adversary in a sword duel):
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)
In Pushkin's poem K kastratu raz prishyol skrypach...
("A Fiddler Once Came to a Eunuch..." 1835) the castrated singer
mentions izumrudy (emeralds):
"Смотри, сказал певец <безмудый>,
—
Мои алмазы,
изумруды —
Я
их от скуки разбирал."
Izumrud
is the eponymous horse in a story (1907) by Kuprin. The main
character in Kuprin's story Gambrinus (1906) is a Jewish fiddler
(skripach) Sashka. Sashka is a diminutive of
Alexander.
Van remembered that Mr Alexander Screepatch, the new president of
the United Americas, a plethoric Russian, had flown over to see King Victor; and
he correctly concluded that both were now sunk in mollitude.
(3.4)
Mr
Alexander Screepatch and King Victor are sunk in mollitude in the most
fashionable and efficient of all the Venus Villas in Europe. The floramors
(palatial brothels known as "Villa Venus") were built by David van Veen in
memory of his grandson Eric, the author of the essay entitled "Villa Venus:
An Organized Dream" (2.3). They are patronized by King
Victor:
In 1905 a glancing blow was dealt Villa Venus from another quarter. The
personage we have called Ritcov or Vrotic had been induced by the ailings of age
to withdraw his patronage. However, one night he suddenly arrived, looking again
as ruddy as the proverbial fiddle; but after the entire staff of his favorite
floramor near Bath had worked in vain on him till an ironic Hesperus rose in a
milkman's humdrum sky, the wretched sovereign of one-half of the globe called
for the Shell Pink Book, wrote in it a line that Seneca had once
composed:
subsidunt montes et juga celsa
ruunt,
- and departed, weeping. (2.3)
Kuprin is the author of Yama ("The Pit,"
1909-15), a novel about brothels. As he speaks of Aqua's madness, Van
mentions yamy (the soft black pits) in her
mind:
It was now the forming of soft black pits (yamï,
yamishchi) in her mind, between the dimming sculptures of thought and
recollection, that tormented her phenomenally; mental panic and physical pain
joined black-ruby hands, one making her pray for sanity, the other, plead for
death. (1.3) Marina's twin sister, poor mad Aqua is Demon Veen's
wife.
Alexander
Screepatch's predecessor, decrepit but
indestructible Gamaliel was said to be doing his best to forbid duels in the
Western Hemisphere - a canard or an idealistic President's instant-coffee
caprice (1.2). Kuprin is the author of Poedinok ("The Single
Combat," 1907), a short novel often compared to Chekhov's The Duel
(1892). The characters of The Duel include Aleksandr
Davidovich Samoylenko (a mutual friend of Laevski and von
Koren), whose patronymic brings to mind David van Veen and Baron Klim
Avidov (Marina's former lover who gave her children a set of Flavita). Flavita (Russian scrabble) =
alfavit (alphabet), Baron Klim Avidov = Vladimir
Nabokov.
Kuprin's
Izumrud is dedicated to the memory of Tolstoy's incomparable skewbald
trotter Kholostomer ("Strider"). One can not help recalling a
line in Apukhtin's poem Para gnedykh ("A Pair of Bay Horses"): Byli
kogda-to i my rysakami ("And we too were once
trotters").
In several
letters Tolstoy mentions Gamaliel (a character in the Bible). In a letter of
March 31, 1891, to L. P. Nikiforov Tolstoy wrote:
Скажу, как Гамалиил: "Если от бога это дело,
то как бы не быть врагом дела божья, а если не от бога, то оно само
погибнет".
"but if it
is of God, you will not be able to overthrow them. You might even be found
opposing God!” (Acts 5:39)
In a
letter of April 20, 1896, to Goremykin (the Minister of Internal
Affairs) Tolstoy repeats Gamaliel's words about the spread of
Christianity:
Сказанные Гамалиилом слова о
распространении христианского учения, что если дело это от человеков, то оно
разрушится, а если оно от бога, то не можете разрушить его; берегитесь поэтому,
чтобы нам не оказаться богопротивниками, остаются всегда уроком истинной
правительственной мудрости в её отношениях к проявлению деятельности
людей.
Btw.,
King Victor and King Charles is a tragedy (1842) by Robert
Browning (known on Antiterra as the Poet Laureate Robert Brown, 1.23). The
name of one of its four characters, minister D'Ormea, is shortened to
D'O. D'Onsky is at least once referred to as "d'O." King Charles brings to
mind Charles Kinbote, the self-exiled last king of Zembla. The characters of
Pale Fire include Izumrudov (whose name, according to Kinbote, means
iz umrudov, 'of the Umruds'). Robert Browning's Pippa Passes
and My Last Duchess are important in Pale
Fire.
Alexey
Sklyarenko
All private editorial
communications are read by both co-editors.