On Demonia (Earth’s twin planet, also known as Antiterra, on which VN’s novel Ada, 1969, is set) Charlotte Corday (the girl who stabbed Marat in his bath) is known as Cora Day, an opera singer:
The year 1880 (Aqua was still alive — somehow, somewhere!) was to prove to be the most retentive and talented one in his long, too long, never too long life. He was ten. His father had lingered in the West where the many-colored mountains acted upon Van as they had on all young Russians of genius. He could solve an Euler-type problem or learn by heart Pushkin’s ‘Headless Horseman’ poem in less than twenty minutes. With white-bloused, enthusiastically sweating Andrey Andreevich, he lolled for hours in the violet shade of pink cliffs, studying major and minor Russian writers — and puzzling out the exaggerated but, on the whole, complimentary allusions to his father’s volitations and loves in another life in Lermontov’s diamond-faceted tetrameters. He struggled to keep back his tears, while AAA blew his fat red nose, when shown the peasant-bare footprint of Tolstoy preserved in the clay of a motor court in Utah where he had written the tale of Murat, the Navajo chieftain, a French general’s bastard, shot by Cora Day in his swimming pool. What a soprano Cora had been! Demon took Van to the world-famous Opera House in Telluride in West Colorado and there he enjoyed (and sometimes detested) the greatest international shows — English blank-verse plays, French tragedies in rhymed couplets, thunderous German musical dramas with giants and magicians and a defecating white horse. He passed through various little passions — parlor magic, chess, fluff-weight boxing matches at fairs, stunt-riding — and of course those unforgettable, much too early initiations when his lovely young English governess expertly petted him between milkshake and bed, she, petticoated, petititted, half-dressed for some party with her sister and Demon and Demon’s casino-touring companion, bodyguard and guardian angel, monitor and adviser, Mr Plunkett, a reformed card-sharper. (1.28)
Darkbloom (‘Notes to Ada’): The Headless Horseman: Mayn Reid’s title is ascribed here to Pushkin, author of The Bronze Horseman.
Lermontov: author of The Demon.
Tolstoy etc.: Tolstoy’s hero, Haji Murad, (a Caucasian chieftain) is blended here with General Murat, Napoleon’s brother-in-law, and with the French revolutionary leader Marat assassinated in his bath by Charlotte Corday.
Cora = caro ("dear" or "beloved" in Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese). After the dinner in 'Ursus' and debauch à trois with Lucette (Van's and Ada's half-sister) in Van's Manhattan flat Ada is wearing her diamond necklace in sign of at least one more caro Van and a Camel before her morning bath:
After a while he adored [sic! Ed.] the pancakes. No Lucette, however, turned up, and when Ada, still wearing her diamonds (in sign of at least one more caro Van and a Camel before her morning bath) looked into the guest room, she found the white valise and blue furs gone. A note scrawled in Arlen Eyelid Green was pinned to the pillow.
Would go mad if remained one more night shall ski at Verma with other poor woolly worms for three weeks or so miserable
Pour Elle
Van walked over to a monastic lectern that he had acquired for writing in the vertical position of vertebrate thought and wrote what follows:
Poor L.
We are sorry you left so soon. We are even sorrier to have inveigled our Esmeralda and mermaid in a naughty prank. That sort of game will never be played again with you, darling firebird. We apollo [apologize]. Remembrance, embers and membranes of beauty make artists and morons lose all self-control. Pilots of tremendous airships and even coarse, smelly coachmen are known to have been driven insane by a pair of green eyes and a copper curl. We wished to admire and amuse you, BOP (bird of paradise). We went too far. I, Van, went too far. We regret that shameful, though basically innocent scene. These are times of emotional stress and reconditioning. Destroy and forget.
Tenderly yours A & V.
(in alphabetic order).
‘I call this pompous, puritanical rot,’ said Ada upon scanning Van’s letter. ‘Why should we apollo for her having experienced a delicious spazmochka? I love her and would never allow you to harm her. It’s curious — you know, something in the tone of your note makes me really jealous for the first time in my fire [thus in the manuscript, for "life." Ed.] Van, Van, somewhere, some day, after a sunbath or dance, you will sleep with her, Van!’
‘Unless you run out of love potions. Do you allow me to send her these lines?’
‘I do, but want to add a few words.’
Her P.S. read:
The above declaration is Van’s composition which I sign reluctantly. It is pompous and puritanical. I adore you, mon petit, and would never allow him to hurt you, no matter how gently or madly. When you’re sick of Queen, why not fly over to Holland or Italy?
A. (2.8)
Darkbloom ('Notes to Ada'): spazmochka: Russ., little spasm.
"One more caro Van" brings to mind "Caro D Basilio," as in a tletter of May 17, 1856, to Vasiliy Botkin Turgenev calls Botkin (who was nicknamed by friends Don Basilio, after a character in Rossini's opera The Barber of Seville and Mozart's opera The Marriage of Figaro):
Caro D Basilio, не сердись на меня. При всем моем желании, не могу, едва только приехавши и кое-как устроившись -- не могу опять оторваться от места и тащиться 300 верст - тем более, что в июле мы, если будем живы и здоровы - непременно увидимся. Я уже послал отсюда недостававшую бумагу (свидетельство губернского предводителя) - и буду теперь ждать известия о выдаче мне заграничного паспорта. На дороге в Петербург я к тебе заеду и поживу у тебя несколько дней. С тех пор как я уехал из Петербурга - я никакого известия ни о ком не имею. Пожалуйста, извини меня перед теми из приятелей, которые к тебе приедут. Дружинин, наверное, будет - он не то, что наш брат: держит, коли обещает. Что Некрасов - получил ли паспорт и будет ли у тебя? Напиши мне два слова, пожалуйста.
А между тем я здесь ничего не делаю - à la lettre ничего. Видно такова судьба моя, чтобы ничего не дать в "Русский вестник". Ем ужасно (что я масла истребляю, уму непостижимо!). Сплю очень хорошо - читаю историю Греции Грота - и, поверишь ли, мысли - так называемой творческой (хотя между нами сказать, это слово непозволительно дерзко - кто осмелится сказать не в шутку, что он - творец!?), одним словом, никакого сочинения в голове не имеется. Я начал было одну главу следующими (столь новыми) словами: "В один прекрасный день" - потом вымарал "прекрасный" - потом вымарал "один" - потом вымарал всё и написал крупными буквами: ЕБЁНА МАТЬ! да на том и покончил. Но я думаю, "Русский вестник" этим не удовлетворится. Вот третий день, как погода поправилась - а то черт знает что за мокрые кислые тряпки висели на небе! Графиню я видел - она не совсем здорова.
Душа моя, обнимаю тебя - и всех друзей из Петербурга. Будьте все здоровы и веселы - а я остаюсь навсегда
твой
Ив. Тургенев.
P. S. Напиши мне хоть несколько строчек - да кстати - не знаешь ли ты, отправил ли дядя Петр Николаевич ко мне моего человека? Его до сих пор нету.
A Russian novelist, Ivan Turgenev (1818-83) was in love with Pauline Viardot-Garcia (a Hispano-French dramatic mezzo-soprano, 1821-1910) with whose family he lived ("at the edge of other people's nest"). Cora Day brings to mind Kogda zhe pridyot nastoyashchiy den'? ("When the Real Day Will Come at Last?"), Dobrolyubov's article (snake hiss) on Turgenev's novel Nakanune ("On the Eve," 1860). Turgenev's letter of March 9, 1874, either to Paul Bourget (a French writer, 1852-1935) or - less likely - to Paul Segond (a French surgeon, 1851-1912) ends with Salut et fraternité! (“Farewell and fraternity!”), a formula used by the leaders of the French Revolution (1789-99) in place of the deferential “your most obedient and humble servant:"
Mon cher Paul,
Si vous voulez assister à la répétition générale du "Candidat" qui a lieu demain mardi, soyez à midi et demi très précis à la porte du Vaudeville (ou au café idem) et attendez-moi. Salut et fraternité!
Turgenev invites Paul (whoever he was) to a general rehearsal of Le Candidat ("The Candidate"), a satirical comedy in four acts, exploring themes of political ambition and social hypocrisy, by Gustave Flaubert. It premiered on March 11, 1874, in the théâtre du Vaudeville in Paris. On Demonia Flaubert's novel Madame Bovary (1857) is known as Floeberg's Ursula, a title that brings to mind 'Ursus' (the best Franco-Estotian retaurant in Manhattan Major to which Van takes Ada and Lucette).
Describing a weekday lunch at Ardis, Van mentions Paul Bourget’s ‘monologue intérieur’ borrowed from old Leo:
Weekday lunch at Ardis Hall. Lucette between Marina and the governess; Van between Marina and Ada; Dack, the golden-brown stoat, under the table, either between Ada and Mlle Larivière, or between Lucette and Marina (Van secretly disliked dogs, especially at meals, and especially that smallish longish freak with a gamey breath). Arch and grandiloquent, Ada would be describing a dream, a natural history wonder, a special belletristic device — Paul Bourget’s ‘monologue intérieur’ borrowed from old Leo — or some ludicrous blunder in the current column of Elsie de Nord, a vulgar literary demimondaine who thought that Lyovin went about Moscow in a nagol’nïy tulup, ‘a muzhik’s sheepskin coat, bare side out, bloom side in,’ as defined in a dictionary our commentator produced like a conjurer, never to be procurable by Elsies. Her spectacular handling of subordinate clauses, her parenthetic asides, her sensual stressing of adjacent monosyllables (‘Idiot Elsie simply can’t read’) — all this somehow finished by acting upon Van, as artificial excitements and exotic torture-caresses might have done, in an aphrodisiac sinistral direction that he both resented and perversely enjoyed. (1.10)
Darkbloom (‘Notes to Ada’): monologue intérieur: the so-called ‘stream-of-consciousness’ device, used by Leo Tolstoy (in describing, for instance, Anna’s last impressions whilst her carriage rolls through the streets of Moscow).
The critic's name, Elsie de Nord hints at Elsinore, the royal castle in Shakespeare's Hamlet. Hamlet and Don Quixote (1860) is an essay by Turgenev. According to Ada, at Marina's funeral Demon Veen (Van's and Ada's father who grew leaner and leaner) looked positively Quixotic.
A play on caravan, caro Van also brings to mind 'cart de van' demanded by Andrey Vinelander (Ada's husband):
Chance looked after the seating arrangement.
Lemorio’s agents, an elderly couple, unwed but having lived as man and man for a sufficiently long period to warrant a silver-screen anniversary, remained unsplit at table between Yuzlik, who never once spoke to them, and Van, who was being tortured by Dorothy. As to Andrey (who made a thready ‘sign of the cross’ over his un-unbuttonable abdomen before necking in his napkin), he found himself seated between sister and wife. He demanded the ‘cart de van’ (affording the real Van mild amusement), but, being a hard-liquor man, cast only a stunned look at the ‘Swiss White’ page of the wine list before ‘passing the buck’ to Ada who promptly ordered champagne. He was to inform her early next morning that her ‘Kuzen proizvodit (produces) udivitel’no simpatichnoe vpechatlenie (a remarkably sympathetic, in the sense of "fetching," impression),’ The dear fellow’s verbal apparatus consisted almost exclusively of remarkably sympathetic Russian common-places of language, but — not liking to speak of himself — he spoke little, especially since his sister’s sonorous soliloquy (lapping at Van’s rock) mesmerized and childishly engrossed him. Dorothy preambled her long-delayed report on her pet nightmare with a humble complaint (‘Of course, I know that for your patients to have bad dreams is a zhidovskaya prerogativa’), but her reluctant analyst’s attention every time it returned to her from his plate fixed itself so insistently on the Greek cross of almost ecclesiastical size shining on her otherwise unremarkable chest that she thought fit to interrupt her narrative (which had to do with the eruption of a dream volcano) to say: ‘I gather from your writings that you are a terrible cynic. Oh, I quite agree with Simone Traser that a dash of cynicism adorns a real man; yet I’d like to warn you that I object to anti-Orthodox jokes in case you intend making one.’ (3.8)
Darkbloom (‘Notes to Ada’): cart de van: Amer., mispronunciation of carte des vins.
zhidovskaya: Russ. (vulg.), Jewish.
Andrey's 'cart de van' makes one think of Pushkin's poem The Cart of Life (Telega zhizni, 1823):
Хоть тяжело подчас в ней бремя,
Телега на ходу легка;
Ямщик лихой, седое время,
Везет, не слезет с облучка.
С утра садимся мы в телегу;
Мы рады голову сломать
И, презирая лень и негу,
Кричим: пошел! ........
Но в полдень нет уж той отваги;
Порастрясло нас; нам страшней
И косогоры и овраги;
Кричим: полегче, дуралей!
Катит по-прежнему телега;
Под вечер мы привыкли к ней
И дремля едем до ночлега,
А время гонит лошадей.
Though hard is a burden in it sometime,
The cart is light at fair speed;
The driver is dashing, grey-haired Time,
Drives on, not getting off the seat.
At dawn we spring up on the cart;
We gladly risk our own neck
And, having scorned sloth and delight,
Call: off you go! For God's sake.*
At noon there are no former nerves;
Having been jolted, more we dread
All those slopes and steeps, and curves;
We shout: not so fast, blockhead!
Same as before the cart is on its way;
We do get used to it when evening closes,
And dozing off we come to the night’s stay,
While Time drives on the sturdy horses.
(tr. Emil Sharafutdinov)
In his poem Pushkin uses the unprintable Russian oath. In a tletter of May 17, 1856, to Vasiliy Botkin ("Caro D Basilio, etc.") Turgenev says that he wrote the same oath in large characters at the beginning of a new chapter.
In Garshin’s story Nadezhda Nikolaevna (1885) Lopatin (the narrator and main character) paints a portrait of Charlotte Corday (Nadezhda Nikolaevna is a prostitute in whom Lopatin finds a model for his portrait). Vsevolod Garshin (1855-88) is the author of Chetyre dnya (“Four Days,” 1877). In March 1888 Garshin committed suicide by throwing himself over the banisters. Van’s patients at the Kingston Clinic include Mr. Arshin, an acrophobe (a person who fears heights):
The matter of that important discussion was a comparison of notes regarding a problem that Van was to try to resolve in another way many years later. Several cases of acrophobia had been closely examined at the Kingston Clinic to determine if they were combined with any traces or aspects of time-terror. Tests had yielded completely negative results, but what seemed particularly curious was that the only available case of acute chronophobia differed by its very nature — metaphysical flavor, psychological stamp and so forth — from that of space-fear. True, one patient maddened by the touch of time’s texture presented too small a sample to compete with a great group of garrulous acrophobes, and readers who have been accusing Van of rashness and folly (in young Rattner’s polite terminology) will have a higher opinion of him when they learn that our young investigator did his best not to let Mr T.T. (the chronophobe) be cured too hastily of his rare and important sickness. Van had satisfied himself that it had nothing to do with clocks or calendars, or any measurements or contents of time, while he suspected and hoped (as only a discoverer, pure and passionate and profoundly inhuman, can hope) that the dread of heights would be found by his colleagues to depend mainly on the misestimation of distances and that Mr Arshin, their best acrophobe, who could not step down from a footstool, could be made to step down into space from the top of a tower if persuaded by some optical trick that the fire net spread fifty yards below was a mat one inch beneath him. (2.6)
Cora = caro = acro (the prefix acro- generally means height, tip, end, or extremity; cf. acrobat, acrostic, acronym, acropolis, etc.)