In his first foramor
Van chooses three girls:
After considerable examination, after much
flattering of haunches and necks, I chose a golden Gretchen, a pale Andalusian,
and a black belle from New Orleans. (2.3)
Gretchen (Margarete) is a character in Goethe's
Faust (1808). Pushkin's Lenski studied in Germany, "under the sky
of Schiller and Goehte" (Eugene Onegin, Two: IX: 6).
America + Flora + skin = Africa + Amor +
Lenski
Pushkin wanted to leave Russia in order "beneath the sky of my
Africa to sigh for somber Russia" (EO, One: L:
11-12).
In VN's
Lolita (1955) Mrs. Richard F. Schiller is Lolita's married name. On
Antiterra Lolita is a Gipsy girl in Osberg's novel The Gitanilla
(1.13). According to Osberg, the gitanilla sequence in Don Juan's Last
Fling, the movie that Van and Lucette watch in the Tobakoff
cinema hall (the gitanilla is played
by Ada), was
stolen from his novel. According to Hool (the actor who played Don Juan in
Yuzlik's movie), he was made to play an impossible cross between two Dons:
initially the director had meant to base his 'fantasy' on Cervantes's crude
romance (3.6). Alonso Quijano (Don Quixote's real name) brings to mind Alonso,
the architect whose daughter ("a pale Andalusian") Van meets in his first
floramor. Van mentions her as he and Ada look through Kim Beauharnais's
album:
'The Twilight before the Lumières. Hey,
and here's Alonso, the swimming-pool expert. I met his sweet sad daughter at a
Cyprian party - she felt and smelt and melted like you. The strong charm of
coincidence.' (2.7)
The floramors are also known as Villa Venus. In Pushkin's
Egyptian Nights (1835) Cleopatra calls Venus moshchnaya
Kiprida ("powerful Cyprida").
Three Egyptian squaws, dutifully keeping in profile (long ebony
eye, lovely snub, braided black mane, honey-hued faro frock, thin amber arms,
Negro bangles, doughnut earring of gold bisected by a pleat of the mane, Red
Indian hairband, ornamental bib), lovingly borrowed by Eric Veen from a
reproduction of a Theban fresco (no doubt pretty banal in 1420 B.C.), printed in
Germany (Künstlerpostkarte Nr. 6034, says cynical Dr Lagosse), prepared
me by means of what parched Eric called 'exquisite manipulations of certain
nerves whose position and power are known only to a few ancient sexologists,'
accompanied by the no less exquisite application of certain ointments, not too
specifically mentioned in the pornolore of Eric's Orientalia, for receiving a
scared little virgin, the descendant of an Irish king, as Eric was told in his
last dream in Ex, Switzerland, by a master of funerary rather than fornicatory
ceremonies. (2.3)
Künstlerpostkarte: art picture postcard.
(Darkbloom, 'Notes to
Ada')
Looking
through Kim Beauharnais's album, Van mentions the first indecent
postcard:
Sunrise at Ardis. Congs: naked Van still
cocooned in his hammock under the 'lidderons' as they called in Ladore the
liriodendrons, not exactly a lit d'édredon, though worth an auroral pun
and certainly conducive to the physical expression of a young dreamer's fancy
undisguised by the network.
'Congratulations,' repeated Van in male
language. 'The first indecent postcard. Bewhorny, no doubt, has a blown-up copy
in his private stock.' (2.7)
According to Ada, in Kim's album there is
an istoshnïy ston ('visceral moan') of crippled art:
In an equally casual tone of voice Van said:
'Darling, you smoke too much, my belly is covered with your ashes. I suppose
Bouteillan knows Professor Beauharnais's exact address in the Athens of Graphic
Arts.'
'You shall not slaughter him,' said Ada. 'He is
subnormal, he is, perhaps, blackmailerish, but in his sordidity, there is an
istoshnïy ston ('visceral moan') of crippled art. Furthermore, this page is
the only really naughty one. And let's not forget that a copperhead of eight was
also ambushed in the brush'.
'Art my foute. This is the hearse of
ars, a toilet roll of the Carte du Tendre! I'm sorry you showed it to
me. That ape has vulgarized our own mind-pictures. I will either horsewhip his
eyes out or redeem our childhood by making a book of it: Ardis, a
family chronicle.' (ibid.)
Pushkin's
Lenski did not disgrace the exalted Muses of the art (EO, Two: IX:
9-10).
Alexey
Sklyarenko