After a long journey down corridors where
pretty little things tripped by, shaking thermometers, and first an ascent and
then a descent in two different lifts, the second of which was very capacious
with a metal-handled black lid propped against its wall and bits of holly or
laurel here and there on the soap-smelling floor, Dorofey, like Onegin's
coachman, said priehali ('we have arrived') and gently propelled Van,
past two screened beds, toward a third one near the window. There he left Van,
while he seated himself at a small table in the door corner and leisurely
unfolded the Russian-language newspaper Golos (Logos).
(1.42)
Golos means "voice" and brings to mind Pushkin's poem
Noch' ("The Night," 1823) beginning Moy golos dlya tebya i laskovyi
i tomnyi... (For you my voice both tender and languid):
Мой голос для тебя и ласковый и томный
Тревожит позднее молчанье ночи тёмной.
Близ ложа моего печальная свеча
Горит; мои стихи, сливаясь и журча,
Текут, ручьи любви, текут, полны
тобою.
Во тьме твои глаза блистают предо мною,
Мне улыбаются, и звуки
слышу я:
Мой друг, мой нежный друг... люблю... твоя... твоя!..
For you my voice both tender and languid
Disturbs the late silence
of a dark night.
Near my bed a sad candle
Burns; my verses, merging and
murmuring,
Flow, the streams of love, flow, full of you.
In the
darkness, your eyes shine before me,
Smile to me, and I hear
the sounds:
My friend, my gentle friend... I love... Thine...
Thine!..
Like Pushkin's poem, Ada's letter in which she informs
Van that an Arizonian Russian proposed to her ends in the repeated word
tvoya (thine):
'O dear Van, this is the last attempt I am
making. You may call it a document in madness or the herb of repentance, but I
wish to come and live with you, wherever you are, for ever and ever. If you
scorn the maid at your window I will aerogram my immediate acceptance of a
proposal of marriage that has been made to your poor Ada a month ago in
Valentine State. He is an Arizonian Russian, decent and gentle, not overbright
and not fashionable. The only thing we have in common is a keen interest in many
military-looking desert plants especially various species of agave, hosts of the
larvae of the most noble animals in America, the Giant Skippers (Krolik, you
see, is burrowing again). He owns horses, and Cubistic pictures, and "oil wells"
(whatever they are-our father in hell who has some too, does not tell me,
getting away with off-color allusions as is his wont). I have told my patient
Valentinian that I shall give him a definite answer after consulting the only
man I have ever loved or shall ever love. Try to ring me up tonight. Something
is very wrong with the Ladore line, but I am assured that the trouble will be
grappled with and eliminated before rivertide. Tvoya, tvoya, tvoya
(thine). A.' (2.5)
Pushkin is the author of Ty i vy ("Thou and You,"
1828):
Пустое вы
сердечным ты
Она, обмолвясь, заменила
И все счастливые мечты
В душе влюбленной возбудила.
Пред ней задумчиво
стою,
Свести очей с неё нет
силы;
И
говорю ей: как вы милы!
И мыслю: как тебя люблю!
Ona (she) of the poem is
Anna Olenin, whom in May, 1828, the poet courted in Priyutino (the Olenins'
estate near St. Petersburg). Besieged by mosquitoes, Pushkin
exclaimed: Sladko! ("Sweet!") 'Sladko!
(Sweet!)' Pushkin used to exclaim in relation to a different species [of mosquitoes] in Yukon.
(1.17)
Pushkin's poem Sozhzhyonnoe
pis'mo ("A Burnt Letter," 1825) begins:
Прощай, письмо
любви, прощай! Она велела...
(Goodbye, a letter of
love, goodbye! It was her command...)
[Как долго медлил я, как долго не хотела
Рука предать
огню все радости мои!..
Но полно, час настал: гори, письмо любви.
Готов я;
ничему душа моя не внемлет.
Уж пламя жадное листы твои
приемлет...
Минуту!.. вспыхнули... пылают... лёгкий дым,
Виясь, теряется с
молением моим.
Уж перстня верного утратя впечатленье,
Растопленный сургуч
кипит... О провиденье!
Свершилось! Тёмные свернулися листы;
На лёгком
пепле их заветные черты
Белеют... Грудь моя стеснилась. Пепел
милый,
Отрада бедная в судьбе моей унылой,
Останься век со мной на
горестной груди...]
It is Lucette
who brings to Van Ada's letter and who tells him the name of Ada's future
husband (2.8). When Andrey Vinelander (Ada's husband) falls ill, his
sister Dorothy (cf. male nurse Dorofey) reads to him old issues of
the Golos Feniksa:
Dorothy, a born nurser, considerably surpassed Ada (who, never
being ill herself, could not stand the sight of an ailing stranger) in readiness
of sickbed attendance, such as reading to the sweating and suffocating patient
old issues of the Golos Feniksa; but on Friday the hotel doctor bundled
him off to the nearby American Hospital, where even his sister was not allowed
to Visit him 'because of the constant necessity of routine tests' - or rather
because the poor fellow wished to confront disaster in manly solitude.
(3.8)
Darkbloom
('Notes to Ada'): Golos etc.: Russ.,
The Phoenix Voice, Russian language newspaper in
Arizona.
Phoenix is a
city in and the capital of Arizona. On the other hand, phoenix is a mythical
bird of great beauty that burns itself on a funeral pyre and rises from its
ashes in the freshness of youth. It brings to mind Sirin, VN's Russian nom de
plume (see in Zembla my article "Ada as a Russian Fairy Tale
Spun by the Phonix and Sung by the Sirin"). VN mentions his
old pen-name in a footnote to his poem Slava ("Fame,"
1942) and in "To Prince S. M. Kachurin" (1947):
Я божком себя вижу, волшебником с птичьей
головой, в изумрудных
перчатках, в чулках
из лазурных чешуй. Прохожу. Перечтите
и остановитесь
на этих строках. (Slava)
Но как я сяду в поезд дачный
в таком пальто, в таких
очках
(и, в сущности, совсем прозрачный,
с романом Сирина в
руках)?
But how shall I take the local train
wearing this coat,
these glasses wearing
(and in fact completely plain,
holding a fictional
work by Sirin)
In the original, dachnyi (local) rhymes with
prozrachnyi (transparent). Roman Sirina ("a
fictional work" by Sirin) in the author's hands is certainly Priglashenie na
kazn' (Invitation to a Beheading, 1935). According to Van, Ada
wants "to patch up" her sick husband before hanging
him:
She [Ada] could
not tell her husband while he was ill. Van would have to wait until Andrey was
sufficiently well to bear the news and that might take some time. Of course, she
would have to do everything to have him completely cured, there was a
wondermaker in Arizona -
'Sort of patching up a bloke before
hanging him,' said Van. (3.8)
Princess Kachurin is a maidservant in Van's last floramor
(2.3).
Speaking of
slava, Pushkin is the author of Zhelanie slavy ("The
Desire of Fame," 1825):
Когда, любовию и негой упоенный,
Безмолвно пред тобой
коленопреклоненный,
Я на тебя глядел и думал: ты моя;
Ты знаешь, милая, желал ли славы я;
Ты знаешь: удалён от ветреного света,
Скучая суетным прозванием поэта,
Устав от долгих бурь, я вовсе не
внимал
Жужжанью дальнему упреков и похвал.
Могли ль меня молвы тревожить
приговоры,
Когда, склонив ко мне томительные
взоры
И руку на главу мне тихо наложив,
Шептала ты: скажи, ты любишь, ты
счастлив?
Другую, как меня, скажи, любить не
будешь?
Ты никогда, мой друг, меня не
позабудешь?
А я стесненное молчание хранил.
Я наслаждением весь полон был, я
мнил,
Что нет грядущего, что грозный день
разлуки
Не придет никогда... И что же? Слёзы,
муки,
Измены, клевета, всё на главу мою
Обрушилося вдруг... Что я, где я?
Стою,
Как путник, молнией постигнутый в
пустыне,
И всё передо мной затмилося! И ныне
Я новым для меня желанием томим:
Желаю славы я, чтоб именем моим
Твой слух был поражен всечасно, чтоб ты мною
Окружена была, чтоб громкою молвою
Всё, всё вокруг тебя звучало обо мне,
Чтоб, гласу верному
внимая в тишине,
Ты помнила мои последние моленья
В саду, во тьме ночной, в минуту
разлученья.
Note glas (in the Russian text marked by
bold type), the obsolete form of golos (voice). It brings to mind the
phrase glas vopiyushchego v pustyne (the voice of one crying in
the wilderness). Boga glas (God's voice) can be heard in Pushkin's
great poem Prorok ("The Prophet," 1826).
slava + kolos/sokol = slovo/volos +
laska/skala
slava + golos/logos = golova +
lass
slava - fame; glory
kolos - ear (of a
plant)
sokol -
falcon
slovo -
word
volos
- hair
laska - caress;
weasel
skala -
rock
golova -
head
According to Pushkin, slava (fame) is a
bright patch upon a shabby singer's rags. Slava also brings to mind Prince Vseslav Zemski (1699-1797),
Ada's favorite ancestor who married Princess Sofia Temnosiniy
(1.6).
The most famous love letter in Russian literature
was written by Tatiana in Pushkin's Eugene Onegin. A remarkably pretty
and proud young nurse in the Kalugano hospital, Tatiana wrote Van a
charming and melancholy letter in red ink on pink paper:
His new quarters, where
heartbroken kings had tossed in transit, proved to be a replica in white of his
hotel apartment - white furniture, white carpet, white sparver. Inset, so to
speak, was Tatiana, a remarkably pretty and proud young nurse, with black hair
and diaphanous skin (some of her attitudes and gestures, and that harmony
between neck and eyes which is the special, scarcely yet investigated secret of
feminine grace fantastically and agonizingly reminded him of Ada, and he sought
escape from that image in a powerful response to the charms of Tatiana, a
torturing angel in her own right. Enforced immobility forbade the chase and grab
of common cartoons. He begged her to massage his legs but she tested him with
one glance of her grave, dark eyes - and delegated the task to Dorofey, a
beefy-handed male nurse, strong enough to lift him bodily out of bed, with the
sick child clasping the massive nape. When Van managed once to twiddle her
breasts, she warned him she would complain if he ever repeated what she dubbed
more aptly than she thought 'that soft dangle.' An exhibition of his state with
a humble appeal for a healing caress resulted in her drily remarking that
distinguished gentlemen in public parks got quite lengthy prison terms for that
sort of thing. However, much later, she wrote him a charming and melancholy
letter in red ink on pink paper; but other emotions and events had intervened,
and he never met her again). (1.42)
Some of Mme Avilov's letters to Chekhov were
written in red ink on pink paper. When in March, 1897 (soon after the flop
of The Seagull in the Alexandrine Theater in St. Petersburg), Chekhov
was hospitalized with hemorrhage, Lidiya Avilov visited him in Dr Ostroumov's
clinic in Moscow.
Alexey Sklyarenko