The details of the L disaster (and I do
not mean Elevated) in the beau milieu of last century, which had the
singular effect of both causing and cursing the notion of 'Terra,' are too
well-known historically, and too obscene spiritually, to be treated at length in
a book addressed to young laymen and lemans - and not to grave men or
gravemen.
...It was owing, among other things, to this
'scientifically ungraspable' concourse of divergences that minds bien
rangés (not apt to unhobble hobgoblins) rejected Terra as a fad or a
fantom, and deranged minds (ready to plunge into any abyss) accepted it in
support and token of their own irrationality. (1.3)
Terra is the mysterious twin planet of Ada's world, Demonia
or Antiterra. Letters from Terra (1891) is Van Veen's first novel.
According to Van, Terra can be situated in outer or inner space:
Elaborating anew, in irrational fabrications, all that
Cyraniana and 'physics fiction' would have been not only a bore but an
absurdity, for nobody knew how far Terra, or other innumerable planets with
cottages and cows, might be situated in outer or inner space: 'inner,' because
why not assume their microcosmic presence in the golden globules ascending
quick-quick in this flute of Moët or in the corpuscles of my, Van Veen's
-
(or my, Ada Veen's)
- bloodstream, or in the pus of a Mr Nekto's ripe boil
newly lanced in Nektor or Neckton. (2.2)
According to Braun (the main character in Aldanov's trilogy "The Key," "The
Escape," "The Cave"), in the soul of most people there are two worlds: world A
and world B:
-- Я говорил о двух мирах, существующих в душе
большинства людей. Из учёного педантизма и для удобства изложения я обозначил их
буквами. Мир А есть мир видимый, наигранный; мир В более скрытый и хотя бы
поэтому более подлинный.
— Да ведь, кажется, обо всём таком говорится в
учебниках психологии? — спросил Федосьев. — Мне знакомый психиатр
объяснил, что теперь в большой моде учение о бессознательном, что
ли?
— Нет, нет, совсем не то, — ответил
Браун. — Ваш психиатр, верно, имел в виду венско-цюрихскую школу: Брейера,
Фрейда, Юнга. Это учение теперь действительно в большой моде, но меня оно не
интересует и многое в нём — гипертрофия сексуальной природы, эдипов комплекс,
цензура снов — кажется мне весьма сомнительным… Нет, благодарю вас, больше не
угощайте, я сыт… Я совершенно не занимаюсь областью бессознательного и
подсознательного. Точно так же не занимают меня и учебники психологии — Ich und
Es, the pure Ego, les personnalitès alternantes и так далее. Я не жду объяснения
человеческих действий от профессоров психологии. Некоторых из них — весьма
известных я знаю лично. Это беспомощные младенцы, ровно ничего не понимающие в
людях… ("The Key," Part One, chapter XXXI; Braun
rejects Freud's fashionable theory; he knows several distinguished
professors of psychiatry personally, they are helpless infants with
no knowledge of human nature whatsoever)
World A is the visible, assumed world; world B is more concealed and
therefore more genuine. All the irrational in man is from world
B:
Всё иррациональное в человеке из мира В, даже самое
будничное и пошлое, в иррациональном ведь есть и такое, скупость, например. Кто
из нас не знал истинно добрейшей души людей, которые, чтоб не расстаться с
ненужными им деньгами, дадут умереть от голода ближнему — ближнему не в
библейском, а в более тесном смысле слова. Душа у них рвется на части, но денег
они не дадут. Это мир В.
Федосьев смотрел на него задумчиво. «А как же ты мог
Фишера отравить, в мире A или в мире В?..». (ibid.)
There are people without world B, just as there are people without world A,
like Fyodor Karamazov:
Есть люди без мира В, как есть люди без мира А,
какой-нибудь Фёдор Карамазов, что ли… Не надо, впрочем, думать, будто мир В
всегда хуже мира А, бывает и обратное. Бывает и так, что они очень близки друг к
другу. Я бы сказал только, что мир В постояннее и устойчивее мира А. По
взаимоотношению этих двух миров и нужно, по-моему, изучать и классифицировать
людей. (ibid.)
In Dostoevski's Brothers Karamazov (1880) Fyodor Karamazov
is murdered by Smerdyakov. In Aldanov's novel Fedosiev (the head of secret
police whom Braun compares to Porfiriy Petrovich, the investigator in
Dostoevski's Crime and Punishment) wonders how Braun could
poison Fisher (a rich St. Petersburg banker) in world A or world
B.
The Antiterran L disaster in the middle of the 19th century seems to
correspond to the mock execution of Dostoevski and the Petrashevskians on
January 3, 1850 (NS). January 3 is Lucette's birthday. Lucette's initial is
also that of Lenin. In his review of "The Cave" (Contemporary Notes, 1936, # 61)
VN praises "the letter from Russia," particularly the description of Lenin and
his gang being photographed "for posterity:"
Всё "письмо из России" великолепно, и особенно
описaние, кaк Ленин с шaйкой "снимaлся для потомствa". "Зa его стулом стояли
Троцкий во френче и Зиновьев в кaкой-то блузе или толстовке". "...Кaкие
Люциферовы чувствa они должны испытывaть к нежно любимому Ильичу..." "А ведь,
если б в тaком-то году, нa тaком-то съезде, голосовaть не тaк, a инaче, дa нa
тaкую-то брошюру ответить вот тaк, то ведь не он, a я сидел бы "Дaвыдычем" нa
стуле, a он стоял бы у меня зa спиной с доброй, товaрищески-верноподдaнической
улыбкой!" Это звучит приговором окончaтельным, вечным, тем приговором, который
вынесут будущие временa.
While Zinoviev's tolstovka reminds one of Uncle Ivan's
bayronka (on a portrait in Marina's bedroom), Trotski's french
(service jacket) brings to mind French, "the hand-painted handmaid" at
Ardis who appears on the last photograph in Kim Beauharnais's album:
The entire staff stood in several rows on the steps of
the pillared porch behind the Bank President Baroness Veen and the Vice
President Ida Larivière. Those two were flanked by the two prettiest typists,
Blanche de la Tourberie (ethereal, tearstained, entirely adorable) and a black
girl who had been hired, a few days before Van's departure, to help French, who
towered rather sullenly above her in the second row, the focal point of which
was Bouteillan, still wearing the costume sport he had on when driving
off with Van (that picture had been muffed or omitted). (2.7)
Kim Beauharnais is the kitchen boy and photographer at Ardis.
His surname clearly hints at Napoleon's first wife. Aldanov is the
author of Saint Helena, a Small Island (1921). Napoleon's
second wife and widow, Marie Louise, Duchess of Parma, appears in Aldanov's
"A Soldier's Grave" (1938).
"Blanche de la Tourberie" is the cook's niece (1.19) or daughter (2.7), but
we know nothing about Kim's parentage. According to my theory, he is the
son of Arkadiy Dolgoruky (the main character and narrator in Dostoevski's
The Adolescent, 1875) and a French girl Alphonsine (a character in the
same novel) who was somehow brought from Terra to Antiterra by the
gipsies.* It is Kim whom in the Night of the Burning Barn (when Van and Ada
make love for the first time) Ada bribed to set the barn on
fire.
That multiple departure really presented a marvelous
sight against the pale star-dusted firmament of practically subtropical Ardis,
tinted between the black trees with a distant flamingo flush at the spot where
the Barn was Burning. To reach it one had to drive round a large reservoir which
I could make out breaking into scaly light here and there every time some
adventurous hostler or pantry boy crossed it on water skis or in a Rob Roy or by
means of a raft - typical raft ripples like fire snakes in Japan; and one could
now follow with an artist's eye the motorcar's lamps, fore and aft, progressing
east along the AB bank of that rectangular lake, then turning sharply upon
reaching its B corner, trailing away up the short side and creeping back west,
in a dim and diminished aspect, to a middle point on the far margin where they
swung north and disappeared.
...'Look, gipsies,' she
whispered, pointing at three shadowy forms - two men, one with a ladder, and a
child or dwarf - circumspectly moving across the gray lawn. They saw the
candlelit window and decamped, the smaller one walking à reculons as if
taking pictures. (1.19)
The AB bank of Tarn (or the New Reservoir) brings to mind Braun's world A
and world B.
The last photograph in Kim Beauharnais's album is "Kim's
apotheosis of Ardis" (2.7). Ada announces the Night of the Burning Barn with the
words zdravstvuyte: apofeoz ("lo and behold:
the apotheosis"):
'Fine,' said Van, 'that's certainly fascinating; but I
was thinking of the first time you might have suspected I was also a sick pig or
horse. I am recalling,' he continued, 'the round table in the round rosy glow
and you kneeling next to me on a chair. I was perched on the chair's swelling
arm and you were building a house of cards, and your every movement was
magnified, of course, as in a trance, dream-slow but also tremendously vigilant,
and I positively reveled in the girl odor of your bare arm and in that of your
hair which now is murdered by some popular perfume. I date the event around June
10 - a rainy evening less than a week after my first arrival at
Ardis.'
'I remember the cards,' she said, 'and the light and
the noise of the rain, and your blue cashmere pullover - but nothing else,
nothing odd or improper, that came later. Besides, only in French love stories
les messieurs hument young ladies.'
'Well, I did while you went on with your delicate work.
Tactile magic. Infinite patience. Fingertips stalking gravity. Badly bitten
nails, my sweet. Forgive these notes, I cannot really express the discomfort of
bulky, sticky desire. You see I was hoping that when your castle toppled you
would make a Russian splash gesture of surrender and sit down on my
hand.'
'It was not a castle. It was a Pompeian Villa with
mosaics and paintings inside, because I used only court cards from Grandpa's old
gambling packs. Did I sit down on your hot hard hand?'
'On my open palm, darling. A pucker of paradise. You
remained still for a moment, fitting my cup. Then you rearranged your limbs and
reknelt.'
'Quick, quick, quick, collecting the flat shining cards
again to build again, again slowly? We were abominably depraved, weren't
we?'
'All bright kids are depraved. I see you do recollect
-'
'Not that particular occasion, but the apple tree, and
when you kissed my neck, et tout le reste. And then - zdravstvuyte:
apofeoz, the Night of the Burning Barn!' (1.18)
Ada's Pompeian Villa brings to mind "Pompeianella" (as Van calls Ada in the
attic where they found Marina's old herbarium):
'I deduce,' said the boy, 'three main facts: that not
yet married Marina and her married sister hibernated in my lieu de
naissance; that Marina had her own Dr Krolik, pour ainsi dire; and
that the orchids came from Demon who preferred to stay by the sea, his dark-blue
great-grandmother.'
'I can add,' said the girl, 'that
the petal belongs to the common Butterfly Orchis; that my mother was even
crazier than her sister; and that the paper flower so cavalierly dismissed is a
perfectly recognizable reproduction of an early-spring sanicle that I saw in
profusion on hills in coastal California last February. Dr Krolik, our local naturalist, to whom you, Van, have referred,
as Jane Austen might have phrased it, for the sake of rapid narrative
information (you recall Brown, don't you, Smith?), has determined the example I
brought back from Sacramento to Ardis, as the Bear-Foot, B,E,A,R, my love, not
my foot or yours, or the Stabian flower girl's - an allusion, which your father,
who, according to Blanche, is also mine, would understand like this' (American
finger-snap). 'You will be grateful,' she continued, embracing him, 'for my not
mentioning its scientific name. Incidentally the other foot - the Pied de
Lion from that poor little Christmas larch, is by the same hand - possibly
belonging to a very sick Chinese boy who came all the way from Barkley
College.'
'Good for you, Pompeianella (whom you saw
scattering her flowers in one of Uncle Dan's picture books, but whom I
admired last summer in a Naples museum). Now don't you think we should
resume our shorts and shirts and go down, and bury or burn this album at once,
girl. Right?'
'Right,' answered Ada. 'Destroy and forget. But we
still have an hour before tea.' (1.1)
As he speaks to Yatsenko (the investigator), Fedosiev compares the victims
of Russian terrorists to kroliki (rabbits):
Из убийств дворников и городовых сделaли новый вид
охоты. Тысячи простых, неучёных, ни в чём не повинных людей перебили, кaк
кроликов… ("The Key," Part Two, chapter VII)
Ada's teacher of natural history, Dr Krolik brings to mind Dr Krotov,
a character in "The Key" and "The Escape" whose name comes from krot
(mole). Moles are practically blind; Van blinds Kim Beauharnais for spying on
him and Ada and blackmailing Ada (2.9).
Brother and sister, Van and Ada are dark-haired:
Twelve years and some eight months later, two naked
children, one dark-haired and tanned, the other dark-haired and milk-white,
bending in a shaft of hot sunlight that slanted through the dormer window under
which the dusty cartons stood, happened to collate that date (December 16, 1871)
with another (August 16, same year) anachronistically scrawled in Marina's hand
across the corner of a professional photograph (in a raspberry-plush frame on
her husband's kneehole library table) identical in every detail - including the
commonplace sweep of a bride's ectoplasmic veil, partly blown by a parvis breeze
athwart the groom's trousers - to the newspaper reproduction. (1.1)
To Fedosiev's agents Zagryatski (Mme Fisher's lover who is arrested as
a likely murderer of her husband) is known under the conspiratorial name
Bryunetka (Brunette):
А у меня он известен только под кличкой Брюнеткa,
которую я поэтому тaкже вынужден вaм открыть.
- Брюнеткa, - повторил Яценко. ("The Key," Part Two, chapter VII)
After the October coup of 1917 Yatsenko is imprisoned in the
Peter-and-Paul Fortress in St. Petersburg (where Dostoevski and the
Petrashevskians spent eight months before their mock execution) and Zagryatski
(who was released by the February Revolution) becomes a cheka man who
interrogates Yatsenko and does his best to pass him the death
sentence.
Petrashevski appears in Aldanov's Povest' o smerti ("The Tale
about Death," 1952).
*see my article "Grattez le Tartar..." in The Nabokovian ## 59,
60
Alexey Sklyarenko