Describing the difference between Terra and Antiterra (Earth's twin planet also known as Demonia), Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Ada, 1969) mentions the Arctic no longer vicious Circle:
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.
Of course, today, after great anti-L years of reactionary delusion have gone by (more or less!) and our sleek little machines, Faragod bless them, hum again after a fashion, as they did in the first half of the nineteenth century, the mere geographic aspect of the affair possesses its redeeming comic side, like those patterns of brass marquetry, and bric-à-Braques, and the ormolu horrors that meant ‘art’ to our humorless forefathers. For, indeed, none can deny the presence of something highly ludicrous in the very configurations that were solemnly purported to represent a varicolored map of Terra. Ved’ (‘it is, isn’t it’) sidesplitting to imagine that ‘Russia,’ instead of being a quaint synonym of Estoty, the American province extending from the Arctic no longer vicious Circle to the United States proper, was on Terra the name of a country, transferred as if by some sleight of land across the ha-ha of a doubled ocean to the opposite hemisphere where it sprawled over all of today’s Tartary, from Kurland to the Kuriles! But (even more absurdly), if, in Terrestrial spatial terms, the Amerussia of Abraham Milton was split into its components, with tangible water and ice separating the political, rather than poetical, notions of ‘America’ and ‘Russia,’ a more complicated and even more preposterous discrepancy arose in regard to time — not only because the history of each part of the amalgam did not quite match the history of each counterpart in its discrete condition, but because a gap of up to a hundred years one way or another existed between the two earths; a gap marked by a bizarre confusion of directional signs at the crossroads of passing time with not all the no-longers of one world corresponding to the not-yets of the other. 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.
As Van Veen himself was to find out, at the time of his passionate research in terrology (then a branch of psychiatry) even the deepest thinkers, the purest philosophers, Paar of Chose and Zapater of Aardvark, were emotionally divided in their attitude toward the possibility that there existed’ a distortive glass of our distorted glebe’ as a scholar who desires to remain unnamed has put it with such euphonic wit. (Hm! Kveree-kveree, as poor Mlle L. used to say to Gavronsky. In Ada’s hand.)
There were those who maintained that the discrepancies and ‘false overlappings’ between the two worlds were too numerous, and too deeply woven into the skein of successive events, not to taint with trite fancy the theory of essential sameness; and there were those who retorted that the dissimilarities only confirmed the live organic reality pertaining to the other world; that a perfect likeness would rather suggest a specular, and hence speculatory, phenomenon; and that two chess games with identical openings and identical end moves might ramify in an infinite number of variations, on one board and in two brains, at any middle stage of their irrevocably converging development.
The modest narrator has to remind the rereader of all this, because in April (my favorite month), 1869 (by no means a mirabilic year), on St George’s Day (according to Mlle Larivière’s maudlin memoirs) Demon Veen married Aqua Veen — out of spite and pity, a not unusual blend.
Was there some additional spice? Marina, with perverse vainglory, used to affirm in bed that Demon’s senses must have been influenced by a queer sort of ‘incestuous’ (whatever that term means) pleasure (in the sense of the French plaisir, which works up a lot of supplementary spinal vibrato), when he fondled, and savored, and delicately parted and defiled, in unmentionable but fascinating ways, flesh (une chair) that was both that of his wife and that of his mistress, the blended and brightened charms of twin peris, an Aquamarina both single and double, a mirage in an emirate, a germinate gem, an orgy of epithelial alliterations.
Actually, Aqua was less pretty, and far more dotty, than Marina. During her fourteen years of miserable marriage she spent a broken series of steadily increasing sojourns in sanatoriums. A small map of the European part of the British Commonwealth — say, from Scoto-Scandinavia to the Riviera, Altar and Palermontovia — as well as most of the U.S.A., from Estoty and Canady to Argentina, might be quite thickly prickled with enameled red-cross-flag pins, marking, in her War of the Worlds, Aqua’s bivouacs. She had plans at one time to seek a modicum of health (‘just a little grayishness, please, instead of the solid black’) in such Anglo-American protectorates as the Balkans and Indias, and might even have tried the two Southern Continents that thrive under our joint dominion. Of course, Tartary, an independent inferno, which at the time spread from the Baltic and Black seas to the Pacific Ocean, was touristically unavailable, though Yalta and Altyn Tagh sounded strangely attractive... But her real destination was Terra the Fair and thither she trusted she would fly on libellula long wings when she died. Her poor little letters from the homes of madness to her husband were sometimes signed: Madame Shchemyashchikh-Zvukov (‘Heart rending-Sounds’). (1.3)
Darkbloom (‘Notes to Ada’): beau milieu: right in the middle.
Faragod: apparently, the god of electricity.
braques: allusion to a bric-à-brac painter.
Roman numeral L is equal to 50. Chronologically, the Antiterran L disaster in the beau milieu of the 19th century seems to correspond to the mock execution of Dostoevski and the Petrashevskians on Jan. 3, 1850 (NS), in our world. Van's and Ada's half-sister Lucette was born on January 3, 1876. On the other hand, L is Lermontov's and Lenin's initial. Lermontov is the author of the prophetic Predskazanie ("Prediction," 1830) and The Demon (1829-40). Porochnyi krug ("The Vicious Circle") is a poem by Vyacheslav Ivanov written on December 19, 1917 (less than two months after the Lenin coup):
Пес возвращается на свою блевотину, и
вымытая свинья идет валяться в грязи.
Петр. Посл. II. 2, 22
Ругаясь над старою славой,
Одно сберегли мы — бесславье;
Покончив с родимой державой,
Оставили — самодержавье.
Позор! Выступает писатель,
Как встарь, за свободное слово.
Так водит нас демон-каратель
В безвыходном круге былого.
Все ново; да тот же в нас норов!
Мы песенку тянем все ту же!
Так дочиста вымытый боров
В зловоннейшей хлюпает луже.
Demon-karatel' (the punishing demon) in the poem's second stanza brings to mind Demonia (aka Antiterra) and Demon Veen (Van's and Ada's father). On the other hand, the Arctic no longer vicious Circle seems to hint at kholodnyi i polyarnyi krug (the cold and arctic circle) in Alexander Blok's poem Vsyo na zemle umryot - i mat', i mladost' ("All on the Earth will die - mother and youth," 1909):
Всё на земле умрет — и мать, и младость,
Жена изменит, и покинет друг.
Но ты учись вкушать иную сладость,
Глядясь в холодный и полярный круг.
Бери свой челн, плыви на дальний полюс
В стенах из льда — и тихо забывай,
Как там любили, гибли и боролись…
И забывай страстей бывалый край.
И к вздрагиваньям медленного хлада
Усталую ты душу приучи,
Чтоб было здесь ей ничего не надо,
Когда оттуда ринутся лучи.
All on the earth will die — youth and mother,
Wife will betray you, leave once faithful friend,
But you learn to enjoy the bliss another —
Look in a mirror of the polar land.
Get on your bark, sail to the distant Pole
In walls of ice — and bit by bit forget
How they loved there, perished, fought, gained goal…
Forget your passions’ ever painful set.
And let your soul, tiered all to bear,
Come used to shudder of the slow colds —
Such that it will not crave for something here,
When once from there the dazzling lighting bolts.
(tr. Bonver)
Blok is the author of Novaya Amerika ("The New America," 1913). By the new America Blok means Russia. Madame Shchemyashchikh-Zvukov (as Aqua signed her poor little letters to Demon from the homes of madness) hints at shchemyashchiy zvuk (a heart-rending sound), a phrase used by Blok in the first line of his poem Priblizhaetsya zvuk... (“A sound approaches...” 1912):
Приближается звук. И, покорна щемящему звуку,
Молодеет душа.
И во сне прижимаю к губам твою прежнюю руку,
Не дыша.
Снится - снова я мальчик, и снова любовник,
И овраг, и бурьян,
И в бурьяне - колючий шиповник,
И вечерний туман.
Сквозь цветы, и листы, и колючие ветки, я знаю,
Старый дом глянет в сердце моё,
Глянет небо опять, розовея от краю до краю,
И окошко твоё.
Этот голос - он твой, и его непонятному звуку
Жизнь и горе отдам,
Хоть во сне твою прежнюю милую руку
Прижимая к губам...
Two chess games with identical openings and identical end moves bring to mind para partishek (a couple of little games) mentioned by Luzhin in VN's novel Zashchita Luzhina ("The Luzhin Defense," 1930):
И когда, наконец, он добился своего и оказался с ней наедине, правда, не у нее в комнате, а в цветистой гостиной, он привлек ее к себе, грузно сел, держа ее за кисти, но она молча вывернулась и, закружившись, опустилась на пуф. «Я вовсе еще не решила, выйду ли я за вас замуж, — сказала она. — Помните это». «Все решено, — сказал Лужин. — Если они не захотят, мы их заставим силой, чтоб они подписали». «Подписали что?» — спросила она удивленно. «А я не знаю… Ведь нужны, кажется, какие-то подписи». «Глупый, глупый, — несколько раз повторила она. — Непроницаемая и неисправимая глупость. Ну что мне с вами делать, как мне с вами быть… И какой у вас усталый вид. Я уверена, что вам вредно так много играть». «Ach wo, — сказал Лужин, — пара партишек». «А по ночам думаете. Нельзя так. Уже поздно, знаете. Идите домой. Спать вам нужно, вот что».
And when finally he got his own way and found himself alone with her, not, it is true, in her room, but in the gaudy drawing room, he drew her to him and sat down heavily, holding her by the wrists, but she silently freed herself, circled and sat down on a hassock. "I have not at all made up my mind yet whether to marry you," she said. "Remember that." "Everything's decided," said Luzhin. "If they won't let you, we’ll use force to make them sign." “Sign what?" she asked with surprise. "I don’t know . . . But it seems we need some kind oi signature or other." "Stupid, stupid," she repeated several times. "Impenetrable and incorrigible stupidity. What am I to do with you, what course of action shall I take with you? And how tired you look. I’m sure it’s bad for you to play so much." ''Ach wo,” said Luzhin, "a couple of little games." "And at night you keep thinking. You mustn’t do it. It’s already late you know. Go home. You need sleep, that’s what." (Chapter 8)
The surname Luzhin comes from luzha (puddle). V. Ivanov's poem The Vicious Circle ends in the line V zlovonneyshey khlyupaet luzhe (Splashes in the most fetid puddle). Dostoevski and the Novel-Tragedy (1911) is an essay by Vyacheslav Ivanov. In The Luzhin Defense the professor in the sanatorium forbids Luzhin to be given anything by Dostoevski:
Путешествие Фогга и мемуары Холмса Лужин прочел в два дня и, прочитав, сказал, что это не то, что он хотел,- неполное, что ли, издание. Из других книг ему понравилась "Анна Каренина" - особенно страницы о земских выборах и обед, заказанный Облонским. Некоторое впечатление произвели на него и "Мертвые души", причем он в одном месте неожиданно узнал целый кусок, однажды в детстве долго и мучительно писанный им под диктовку. Кроме так называемых классиков, невеста ему приносила и всякие случайные книжонки легкого поведения - труды галльских новеллистов. Все, что только могло развлечь Лужина, было хорошо - даже эти сомнительные новеллы, которые он со смущением, но с интересом читал. Зато стихи (например, томик Рильке, который она купила по совету приказчика) приводили его в состояние тяжелого недоумения и печали. Соответственно с этим профессор запретил давать Лужину читать Достоевского, который, по словам профессора, производит гнетущее действие на психику современного человека, ибо, как в страшном зеркале...
"Ах, господин Лужин не задумывается над книгой,- весело сказала она.- - А стихи он плохо понимает из-за рифм, рифмы ему в тягость".
Luzhin read Fogg's journey and Holmes' memoirs in two days, and when he had read them he said they were not what he wanted--this was an incomplete edition. Of the other books, he liked Anna Karenin--particularly the pages on the zemstvo elections and the dinner ordered by Oblonski. Dead Souls also made a certain impression on him, moreover in one place he unexpectedly recognized a whole section that he had once taken down in childhood as a long and painful dictation. Besides the so-called classics his fiancée brought him all sorts of frivolous French novels. Everything that could divert Luzhin was good--even these doubtful stories, which he read, though embarrassed, with interest. Poetry, on the other hand (for instance a small volume of Rilke's that she had bought on the recommendation of a salesman) threw him into a state of severe perplexity and sorrow. Correspondingly, the professor forbade Luzhin to be given anything by Dostoevski, who, in the professor's words, had an oppressive effect on the psyche of contemporary man, for as in a terrible mirror--
"Oh, Mr. Luzhin doesn't brood over books," she said cheerfully. "And he understands poetry badly because of the rhymes, the rhymes put him off." (Chapter 10)
The name of Alexander Blok's family estate in the Province of Moscow, Shakhmatovo comes from shakhmaty (chess).