In the Kalugano hospital Dr Fitzbishop (a character in VN's novel Ada, 1969) tells Van (who recovers from a wound received in a pistol duel with Captain Tapper, of Wild Violet Lodge) that Philip Rack (Lucette's music teacher who was poisoned by his jealous wife and who dies in Ward Five where hopeless cases are kept) was poisoned with the not always lethal 'arethusoides:'
Dr Fitzbishop had said, rubbing his hands, that the Luga laboratory said it was the not always lethal 'arethusoides' but it had no practical importance now, because the unfortunate music teacher, and composer, was not expected to spend another night on Demonia, and would be on Terra, ha-ha, in time for evensong. Doc Fitz was what Russians call a poshlyak ('pretentious vulgarian') and in some obscure counter-fashion Van was relieved not to be able to gloat over the wretched Rack's martyrdom. (1.42)
In Greek mythology Arethusa was a nymph and daughter of Nereus, who fled from her home in Arcadia beneath the sea and came up as a fresh water fountain on the island of Ortygia in Syracuse, Sicily. In his poem Names (1799), a translation from G. E. Lessing, S. T. Coleridge mentions, among other names, Arethusa:
I ask’d my fair one happy day,
What I should call her in my lay;
By what sweet name from Rome or Greece; Lalage, Nesera, Chloris,
Sappho, Lesbia, or Doris,
Arethusa or Lucrece.
“Ah!” replied my gentle fair,
“Beloved, what are names but air?
Choose thou whatever suits the line; Call me Sappho, call me Chloris,
Call me Lalage or Doris,
Only, only call me Thine.”
Lessing's wife died in childbirth, a fact mentioned by Fyodor Godunov-Cherdyntsev in VN's novel Dar (The Gift, 1937):
Еще в начале журнального поприща он писал о Лессинге, который родился ровно за сто лет до него, и сходство с которым он сам сознавал: "для таких натур существует служение более милое, нежели служение любимой науке, -- это служение развитию своего народа". Как и Лессинг он по привычке всегда начинал с частного случая развитие общих мыслей. Помня, что у Лессинга жена умерла от родов, он боялся за Ольгу Сократовну, о первой беременности которой писал отцу по латыни, точно так же, как Лессинг, сто лет перед тем, писал по латыни и своему батюшке.
In the beginning of his journalistic pursuits, writing on Lessing (who had been born exactly a hundred years before him, and a resemblance to whom he himself admitted), he said: “For such natures there exists a sweeter service than service to one’s favorite science—and that is service to the development of one’s people.” Like Lessing, he was accustomed to develop general ideas on the basis of particular cases. And remembering that Lessing’s wife had died in childbirth, he feared for Olga Sokratovna, about whose first pregnancy he wrote to his father in Latin, just as, a hundred years before, Lessing had done. (Chapter Four: The Life of Chernyshevski)
Rack's wife Elsie had just had a complicated miscarriage in the maternity ward:
For half a minute Van was sure that he still lay in the car, whereas actually he was in the general ward of Lakeview (Lakeview!) Hospital, between two series of variously bandaged, snoring, raving and moaning men. When he understood this, his first reaction was to demand indignantly that he be transferred to the best private palata in the place and that his suitcase and alpenstock be fetched from the Majestic. His next request was that he be told how seriously he was hurt and how long he was expected to remain incapacitated. His third action was to resume what constituted the sole reason of his having to visit Kalugano (visit Kalugano!). 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). His suitcase promptly arrived from the hotel; the stick, however, could not be located (it must be climbing nowadays Wellington Mountain, or perhaps, helping a lady to go ‘brambling’ in Oregon); so the hospital supplied him with the Third Cane, a rather nice, knotty, cherry-dark thing with a crook and a solid black-rubber heel. Dr Fitzbishop congratulated him on having escaped with a superficial muscle wound, the bullet having lightly grooved or, if he might say so, grazed the greater serratus. Doc Fitz commented on Van’s wonderful recuperational power which was already in evidence, and promised to have him out of disinfectants and bandages in ten days or so if for the first three he remained as motionless as a felled tree-trunk. Did Van like music? Sportsmen usually did, didn’t they? Would he care to have a Sonorola by his bed? No, he disliked music, but did the doctor, being a concert-goer, know perhaps where a musician called Rack could be found? ‘Ward Five,’ answered the doctor promptly. Van misunderstood this as the title of some piece of music and repeated his question. Would he find Rack’s address at Harper’s music shop? Well, they used to rent a cottage way down Dorofey Road, near the forest, but now some other people had moved in. Ward Five was where hopeless cases were kept. The poor guy had always had a bad liver and a very indifferent heart, but on top of that a poison had seeped into his system; the local ‘lab’ could not identify it and they were now waiting for a report, on those curiously frog-green faeces, from the Luga people. If Rack had administered it to himself by his own hand, he kept ‘mum’; it was more likely the work of his wife who dabbled in Hindu-Andean voodoo stuff and had just had a complicated miscarriage in the maternity ward. Yes, triplets — how did he guess? Anyway, if Van was so eager to visit his old pal it would have to be as soon as he could be rolled to Ward Five in a wheelchair by Dorofey, so he’d better apply a bit of voodoo, ha-ha, on his own flesh and blood. (1.42)
Darkbloom ('Notes to Ada'): palata: Russ., ward.
The phenomenon of Terra appeared on Demonia (Earth's twin planet also known as Antiterra) after the L disaster in the beau milieu of the 19th century:
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. (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.
L is a Roman numeral that corresponds to Arabic 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. Dostoevski appears in Chapter Four of The Gift:
Духов день (28 мая 1862 г.), дует сильный ветер; пожар начался на Лиговке, а затем мазурики подожгли Апраксин Двор. Бежит Достоевский, мчатся пожарные, "и на окнах аптек в разноцветных шарах вверх ногами на миг отразились". А там, густой дым повалил через Фонтанку по направлению к Чернышеву переулку, откуда вскоре поднялся новый черный столб... Между тем Достоевский прибежал. Прибежал к сердцу черноты, к Чернышевскому, и стал истерически его умолять приостановить всё это. Тут занятны два момента: вера в адское могущество Николая Гавриловича и слухи о том, что поджоги велись по тому самому плану, который был составлен еще в 1849 году петрашевцами.
Whit Monday (May 28, 1862), a strong wind is blowing; a conflagration has begun on the Ligovka and then the desperadoes set fire to the Apraxin Market. Dostoevski is running, firemen are galloping “and in pharmacy windows, in gaudy glass globes, upside down are in passing reflected” (as seen by Nekrasov). And over there, thick smoke billows over the Fontanka canal in the direction of Chernyshyov Street, where presently a new, black column arises…. Meanwhile Dostoevski has arrived. He has arrived at the heart of the blackness, at Chernyshevski’s place, and starts to beg him hysterically to put a stop to all this. Two aspects are interesting here: the belief in Nikolay Gavrilovich’s satanic powers, and the rumors that the arson was being carried out according to the same plan which the Petrashevskians had drawn up as early as 1849.
After the L disaster electricity was banned on Demonia. In The Gift, Fyodor compares Dostoevski to a room in which a lamp burns during the day:
Фёдор Константинович собрался было восвояси, когда его сзади окликнул шепелявый голос: он принадлежал Ширину, автору романа "Седина" (с эпиграфом из книги Иова), очень сочувственно встреченного эмигрантской критикой. ("Господи, отче -- --? По Бродвею, в лихорадочном шорохе долларов, гетеры и дельцы в гетрах, дерясь, падая, задыхаясь, бежали за золотым тельцом, который, шуршащими боками протискиваясь между небоскребами, обращал к электрическому небу изможденный лик свой и выл. В Париже, в низкопробном притоне, старик Лашез, бывший пионер авиации, а ныне дряхлый бродяга, топтал сапогами старуху-проститутку Буль-де-Сюиф. Господи отчего -- --? Из московского подвала вышел палач и, присев у конуры, стал тюлюкать мохнатого щенка: Махонький, приговаривал он, махонький... В Лондоне лорды и лэди танцевали джими и распивали коктейль, изредка посматривая на эстраду, где на исходе восемнадцатого ринга огромный негр кнок-оутом уложил на ковер своего белокурого противника. В арктических снегах, на пустом ящике из-под мыла, сидел путешественник Эриксен и мрачно думал: Полюс или не полюс?.. Иван Червяков бережно обстригал бахрому единственных брюк. Господи, отчего Вы дозволяете все это?"). Сам Ширин был плотный, коренастый человек, с рыжеватым бобриком, всегда плохо выбритый, в больших очках, за которыми, как в двух аквариумах, плавали два маленьких, прозрачных глаза, совершенно равнодушных к зрительным впечатлениям. Он был слеп как Мильтон, глух как Бетховен, и глуп как бетон. Святая ненаблюдательность (а отсюда – полная неосведомленность об окружающем мире -- и полная неспособность что-либо именовать) -- свойство, почему-то довольно часто встречающееся у русского литератора-середняка, словно тут действует некий благотворный рок, отказывающий безталанному в благодати чувственного познания, дабы он зря не изгадил материала. Бывает, конечно, что в таком темном человеке играет какой-то собственный фонарик, -- не говоря о том, что известны случаи, когда по прихоти находчивой природы, любящей неожиданные приспособления и подмены, такой внутренний свет поразительно ярок -- на зависть любому краснощекому таланту. Но даже Достоевский всегда как-то напоминает комнату, в которой днём горит лампа.
Fyodor was about to walk home when a lisping voice called him from behind: it belonged to Shirin, author of the novel The Hoary Abyss (with an Epigraph from the Book of Job) which had been received very sympathetically by the émigré critics. (“Oh Lord, our Father! Down Broadway in a feverish rustle of dollars, hetaeras and businessmen in spats, shoving, falling and out of breath, were running after the golden calf, which pushed its way, rubbing against walls between the skyscrapers, then turned its emaciated face to the electric sky and howled. In Paris, in a low-class dive, the old man Lachaise, who had once been an aviation pioneer but was now a decrepit vagabond, trampled under his boots an ancient prostitute, Boule de Suif. Oh Lord, why—? Out of a Moscow basement a killer came out, squatted by a kennel and began to coax a shaggy pup: little one, he repeated, little one… In London, lords and ladies danced the Jimmie and imbibed cocktails, glancing from time to time at a platform where at the end of the eighteenth ring a huge Negro had laid his fair-haired opponent on the carpet with a knockout. Amid arctic snows the explorer Ericson sat on an empty soapbox and thought gloomily: The pole or not the pole?… Ivan Chervyakov carefully trimmed the fringe of his only pair of pants. Oh Lord, why dost Thou permit all this?”) Shirin himself was a thickset man with a reddish crew cut, always badly shaved and wearing large spectacles behind which, as in two aquariums, swam two tiny, transparent eyes—which were completely impervious to visual impressions. He was blind like Milton, deaf like Beethoven, and a blockhead to boot. A blissful incapacity for observation (and hence complete uninformedness about the surrounding world—and a complete inability to put a name to anything) is a quality quite frequently met with among the average Russian literati, as if a beneficent fate were at work refusing the blessing of sensory cognition to the untalented so that they will not wantonly mess up the material. It happens, of course, that such a benighted person has some little lamp of his own glimmering inside him—not to speak of those known instances in which, through the caprice of resourceful nature that loves startling adjustments and substitutions, such an inner light is astonishingly bright—enough to make the envy of the ruddiest talent. But even Dostoevski always brings to mind somehow a room in which a lamp burns during the day. (Chapter Five)
Criticizing a reference book in the pages of The Contemporary (1854), Chernyshevski quoted a list of entries which in his opinion were too long and a list of entries which were too short (the words in both lists begin with L):
Николай Гаврилович казнил "чистую поэзию" где только ни отыскивал ее,-- в самых неожиданных закоулках. Критикуя на страницах "Отечественных Записок" (54 год) какой-то справочный словарь, он приводит список статей, по его мнению слишком длинных: Лабиринт, Лавр, Ланкло, -- и список статей, слишком кратких: Лаборатория, Лафайет, Лен, Лессинг. Красноречивое притязание! Эпиграф ко всей умственной жизни его! Из олеографических волн "поэзии" рождалось (как мы уже видели) пышногрудая "роскошь"; "фантастическое" принимало грозный экономический оборот. "Иллюминации... Конфеты, сыплющиеся на улицы с аэростатов, -- перечисляет он (речь идет о праздниках и подарках по случаю крестин сына Людовика Наполеона), - колоссальные бонбоньерки, спускающиеся на парашютах...". А какие вещи у богатых: "кровати из розового дерева... шкапы с пружинами и выдвижными зеркалами... штофные обои...! А там, бедный труженик...". Связь найдена, антитеза добыта: с большой обличительной силой и обилием предметов обстановки, Николай Гаврилович вскрывает всю их безнравственность. "Мудрено ли, что при хорошенькой наружности швея, ослабляя мало по малу свои нравственные правила... Мудрено ли, что, променяв дешевую, сто раз мытую кисею на алансонские кружева и бессонные ночи за тусклым огарком и работой на бессонные ночи в оперном маскараде или загородной оргии, она... несясь" ит. д. (и, подумавши, он разгромил поэта Никитина, но не потому, собственно, что тот слагал стихи дурно, а за то, что он, воронежский житель, не имел ровно никакого права писать о мраморах и парусах).
Nikolay Gavrilovich castigated “pure poetry” wherever he found it—in the most unexpected byways. Criticizing a reference book in the pages of The Contemporary (1854), he quoted a list of entries which in his opinion were too long: Labyrinth, Laurel, Lenclos (Ninon de)—and a list of entries which were too short: Laboratory, Lafayette, Linen, Lessing. An eloquent cavil! A motto that fits the whole of his intellectual life! The oleographic billows of “poetry” gave birth (as we have seen) to full-bosomed “luxury”; the “fantastic” took a grim economic turn. “Illuminations… Confetti fluttering down to the streets from balloons,” he enumerates (the subject is the festivities and gifts occasioned by the christening of Louis Napoleon’s son), “colossal bonbonnières descending on parachutes….” And what things the rich have: “Beds of rosewood… wardrobes with hinges and sliding mirrors… damask hangings… And over there the poor toiler….” The link has been found, the antithesis obtained; with tremendous accusatory force and an abundance of articles of furniture, Nikolay Gavrilovich exposes all their immorality. “Is it surprising that the seamstress endowed with good looks little by little slackens her moral principles… Is it surprising that, having changed her cheap muslin dress, washed a hundred times, for Alençon lace, and her sleepless nights of work by a bit of gutting candle for other sleepless nights at a public masquerade or at a suburban orgy she… whirling …” etc. (and, having thought it over, he demolished the poet Nikitin, not because the latter versified badly, but because being an inhabitant of the Voronezh backwoods he had no right whatever to be talking about marble colonnades and sails). (Chapter Four)
Andrey Vinelander (Ada's husband) calls Demon Veen (son of Dedalus Veen) Dementiy Labirintovich. Ninon de Lanclos (a French courtesan and writer, 1620-1705) brings to mind Ada's lenclose (ninon stockings). Laboratory makes one think of the Luga laboratory mentioned by Dr Fitzbishop.