Бальмонт + Серов + дурман + вода = Лермонтов + судьба + роман + два

роман = норма = Марон

Бальмонт – Balmont

Серов – Serov (the artist who painted Balmont’s portrait)

дурман - thorn-apple; drug, intoxicant

вода – water (cf. Aqua Durmanov, Marina’s poor twin sister, Demon Veen’s mad wife who imagines that she can understand the language of her namesake, water)

Лермонтов - Lermontov

судьба - fate, fortune, destiny, lot; according to the Captain (Grushnitski's second in Lermontov's "A Hero of Our Time"), натура - дура, судьба - индейка, а жизнь - копейка (nature is a fool, fate is a fowl, and life is worth a penny); in his article “Судьба Пушкина” (“The Destiny of Pushkin,” 1899) the philosopher and poet Vladimir Solovyov compares human fate to water and mentions Lavoisier* (the French scientist who discovered that water was a compound of oxygen): До конца XVIII столетия все люди, даже учёные, имели неверное понятие о воде, - её считали простым телом, однородным элементом или стихией, пока знаменитый Лавуазье не разложил её состава на два элементарные газа: кислород и водород. Но всё-таки мы, наверно, найдём и в Неве, и в Нарзане, и во всякой другой воде основные вещества - водород и кислород, - без них никакой воды не бывает. (…And yet in the Neva, as well as in the Narzan and in any other water, we will find two main components: hydrogen and oxygen, no water can exist without them.) Neve = Veen = even = Venera/Erevan + rod/odr - ardor (Neve – the Neva in prepositional case; Veen – the family name of most of Ada’s characters; Venera – the Russian name of Venus; Erevan – the capital of Armenia; rod – family; origin; genus; gender; cf. na rodu napisano, pre-ordained; odr – obs., bed; cf. na smertnom odre, on the deathbed; ardor – cf. Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle)

роман - novel; romance; love affair

два - 2

норма - norm

Марон - Vergil (Publius Vergilius Maro, 70-19 B.C., Roman poet, Dante’s guide in The Inferno)

Van and Ada are the children of Demon Veen and Marina Durmanov. Van's and Ada's father married Marina's twin sister Aqua (1.3). Balmont's poem "Lish' demony, da genii, da lyudi..." (“Only the demons, and geniuses and people...") from the cycle I da, i net ("Both Yes and No," 1899) ends in the line: Zemlya, Ogon', i Vozdukh, i Voda ("Earth, Fire, and Air, and Water):

Лишь демоны, да гении, да люди,

Со временем заполнят все миры,

И выразят в неизречённом чуде

Весь блеск ещё не снившейся игры,—

Когда, уразумев себя впервые,

С душой соприкоснутся навсегда

Четыре полновластные стихии: —

Земля, Огонь, и Воздух, и Вода.

Three elements and Terra (Demonia's twin planet) are mentioned in Ada:

Three elements, fire, water, and air, destroyed, in that sequence, Marina, Lucette, and Demon. Terra waited. (3.1)

Demon (1829-40) is a long poem by Lermontov. In the old Russian alphabet the letter L (Lavoisier’s, Lermontov's and Lucette's initial) was called lyudi. In the draft of Pushkin's Eugene Onegin (Chapter Three) Tatiana's letter to Onegin ended in the lines:

Podumala, chto skazhut lyudi?

I podpisala: Tvyordo, Lyudi.

She wondered what people would say,

and signed T. L.

T is Terra's initial. The phenomenon of Terra appeared on Demonia (aka Antiterra, Earth’s twin planet) after the so-called L disaster:

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. (1.3)

Demon Veen perishes in a mysterious airplane disaster above the Pacific (3.7). Like Terra, Tikhiy Okean (the Pacific Ocean) begins with T (tvyordo, “hard”). Tverd’ (obs., sky) rhymes with smert’ (death). Van’s and Ada’s father is the son of Dedalus Veen. Daedalus was an Athenian architect who built the labyrinth for Minos and made wings for himself and his son Icarus to escape from Crete. Icarus flew so high that his wings of wax melted from the heat of the sun and he plunged to his death in the sea. Budem kak solntse (“Let’s be like the Sun,” 1902) is Balmont’s most famous collection of poetry.

*Lavoisier perished in the Reign of Terror. He was fifty years old. After his execution the mathematician Lagrange said: "Il ne leur a fallu qu’un moment pour faire tomber cette tête, et cent années peut-être ne suffiront pas pour en reproduire une semblable." ("It took them only an instant to cut off this head, and one hundred years might not suffice to reproduce its like.")

Lucette + fire = Lucifer + tête

Lucifer – a proud, rebellious archangel, identified with Satan, who fell from heaven, character in Milton’s Paradise Lost (1667); the planet Venus when appearing as the morning star

tête – Fr., head