Describing the beginning of his life-long romance with Ada, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) mentions Pig Pigment (as Ada calls Paul G. Gigment, a painter):
Two other phenomena that she had observed even earlier proved ridiculously misleading. She must have been about nine when that elderly gentleman, an eminent painter whom she could not and would not name, came several times to dinner at Ardis Hall. Her drawing teacher, Miss Wintergreen, respected him greatly, though actually her natures mortes were considered (in 1888 and again 1958) incomparably superior to the works of the celebrated old rascal who drew his diminutive nudes invariably from behind ― fig-picking, peach-buttocked nymphets straining upward, or else rock-climbing girl scouts in bursting shorts ―
‘I know exactly,’ interrupted Van angrily, ‘whom you mean, and would like to place on record that even if his delicious talent is in disfavor today, Paul J. Gigment had every right to paint schoolgirls and poolgirls from any side he pleased. Proceed.’
Every time (said unruffled Ada) Pig Pigment came, she cowered when hearing him trudge and snort and pant upstairs, ever nearer like the Marmoreal Guest, that immemorial ghost, seeking her, crying for her in a thin, querulous voice not in keeping with marble.
‘Poor old chap,’ murmured Van.
His method of contact, she said, ‘puisqu’on aborde ce thème-là, and I’m certainly not making offensive comparisons,’ was to insist, with maniacal force, that he help her reach for something — anything, a little gift he had brought, bonbons, or simply some old toy that he’d picked up from the floor of the nursery and hung up high on the wall, or a pink candle burning blue that he commanded her to blowout on an arbre de Noël, and despite her gentle protests he would raise the child by her elbows, taking his time, pushing, grunting, saying: ah, how heavy and pretty she was — this went on and on until the dinner gong boomed or Nurse entered with a glass of fruit juice and what a relief it was, for everybody concerned, when in the course of that fraudulent ascension her poor little bottom made it at last to the crackling snow of his shirtfront, and he dropped her, and buttoned his dinner jacket. And she remembered —
‘Stupidly exaggerated,’ commented Van. ‘Also, I suppose, artificially recolored in the lamplight of later events as revealed still later.’
And she remembered blushing painfully when somebody said poor Pig had a very sick mind and ‘a hardening of the artery,’ that is how she heard it, or perhaps ‘heartery’; but she also knew, even then, that the artery could become awfully long, for she had seen Drongo, a black horse, looking, she must confess, most dejected and embarrassed by what was happening to it right in the middle of a rough field with all the daisies watching. She thought, arch Ada said (how truthfully, was another question), that a foal was dangling, with one black rubber leg free, out of Drongo’s belly because she did not understand that Drongo was not a mare at all and had not got a pouch as the kangaroo had in an illustration she worshipped, but then her English nurse explained that Drongo was a very sick horse and everything fell into place. (1.18)
Darkbloom ('Notes to Ada'): puisqu’on etc.: since we broach this subject.
In his poem Nikogda ya ne poveryu ("Never will I believe," 1901) Fyodor Sologub says that he will never believe that his sweetheart would give herself to such an animal as a pig (domashnyaya svin'ya, Sus domesticus):
Никогда я не поверю,
Чтобы милая моя
Отдалась такому зверю,
Как домашняя свинья.
Полюби собаку, волка,
Есть фазаны, соловьи,
Но какого ждать ей толка
От прожорливой свиньи?
Чтоб забыла эти бредни,
Не мечтала про свинью,
Для острастки я намедни
Высек милую мою.
Это было ей полезно:
Убедилася она,
Что свинья не так любезна,
Как свиная ветчина.
In the Night of the Burning Barn (when they make love for the first time) Van does not realize that Ada is not a virgin. Ada's first lover was Dr Krolik's brother, Karol, or Karapars, Krolik, whose photograph Van can see in Kim Beauharnais's album:
Well,’ said Van, when the mind took over again, ‘let’s go back to our defaced childhood. I’m anxious’ — (picking up the album from the bedside rug) — ‘to get rid of this burden. Ah, a new character, the inscription says: Dr Krolik.’
‘Wait a sec. It may be the best Vanishing Van but it’s terribly messy all the same. Okay. Yes, that’s my poor nature teacher.’
Knickerbockered, panama-hatted, lusting for his babochka (Russian for ‘lepidopteron’). A passion, a sickness. What could Diana know about that chase?
‘How curious — in the state Kim mounted him here, he looks much less furry and fat than I imagined. In fact, darling, he’s a big, strong, handsome old March Hare! Explain!’
‘There’s nothing to explain. I asked Kim one day to help me carry some boxes there and back, and here’s the visual proof. Besides, that’s not my Krolik but his brother, Karol, or Karapars, Krolik. A doctor of philosophy, born in Turkey.’
‘I love the way your eyes narrow when you tell a lie. The remote mirage in Effrontery Minor.’
‘I’m not lying!’ — (with lovely dignity): ‘He is a doctor of philosophy.’
‘Van ist auch one,’ murmured Van, sounding the last word as ‘wann.’ (2.7)
Darkbloom ('Notes to Ada'): vanishing etc.: allusion to ‘vanishing cream’.
auch: Germ., also.
Diana is the ancient Roman goddess of hunting. Describing his first tea party at Ardis, Van mentions Marina’s portrait, a rather good oil by Tresham, hanging above her on the wall, that showed her wearing the picture hat she had used for the rehearsal of a Hunting Scene ten years ago:
Marina’s portrait, a rather good oil by Tresham, hanging above her on the wall, showed her wearing the picture hat she had used for the rehearsal of a Hunting Scene ten years ago, romantically brimmed, with a rainbow wing and a great drooping plume of black-banded silver; and Van, as he recalled the cage in the park and his mother somewhere in a cage of her own, experienced an odd sense of mystery as if the commentators of his destiny had gone into a huddle. Marina’s face was now made up to imitate her former looks, but fashions had changed, her cotton dress was a rustic print, her auburn locks were bleached and no longer tumbled down her temples, and nothing in her attire or adornments echoed the dash of her riding crop in the picture and the regular pattern of her brilliant plumage which Tresham had rendered with ornithological skill. (1.5)
Marina is Van's, Ada's and Lucette's mother (but, officially, Van is the son of poor mad Aqua, Marina's twin sister who married Demon Veen, Van's and Ada's father). Earlier in the same chapter Van mentions his meeting with 'Aunt' Marina in a public park:
Some ten years ago, not long before or after his fourth birthday, and toward the end of his mother’s long stay in a sanatorium, ‘Aunt’ Marina had swooped upon him in a public park where there were pheasants in a big cage. She advised his nurse to mind her own business and took him to a booth near the band shell where she bought him an emerald stick of peppermint candy and told him that if his father wished she would replace his mother and that you could not feed the birds without Lady Amherst’s permission, or so he understood. (ibid.)
Darkbloom (‘Notes to Ada’): Lady Amherst: confused in the child’s mind with the learned lady after whom a popular pheasant is named.
The artist's name, Tresham is an anagram of Amherst. Lady Amherst's pheasant (Chrysolophus amherstiae) is a bird in the order Galliformes and the family Phasianidae. In his poem Nikogda ya ne poveryu ("Never will I believe") Sologub mentions, among other animals and birds, fazany (pheasants). Krolik means in Russian "rabbit." Udav i krolik ("Boa Constrictor and Rabbit," 1887) is a humorous story by Chekhov. In her memoir essay Fyodor Sologub (1949) Teffi (the author of Beloe boa, "The White Boa," a very short story, 1911) compares Sologub to udav and Professor Anichkov (who used to fall asleep, when Sologub read his new stuff, and slept standing, like a horse) to krolik:
На этих вечерах Сологуб и сам читал какой-нибудь отрывок из своего нового романа. Чаще переводы Верлена, Рембо. Переводил он неудачно, тяжело, неуклюже. Читал вяло, сонно, и всем хотелось спать. Профессор Аничков, очень быстро засыпавший и знавший за собой эту слабость, обыкновенно слушал стоя, прислонясь к стене или к печке, но и это не помогало. Он засыпал стоя, как лошадь. Изредка, очнувшись, чтобы показать, что он слушает, начинал совершенно некстати громко хохотать. Тогда Сологуб на минуту прерывал чтение и медленно поворачивал к виновному свои мертвые глаза. И тот стихал и сжимался, как кролик под взглядом удава.
Chtob zabyla eti bredni (To make her forget this nonsense), a line in Sologub's poem "Never will I believe," brings to mind a Mr Brod or Bred whom Dorothy Vinelander (Ada's sister-in-law who, like Sologub, has a big wart near her nostril) eventually marries:
After helping her to nurse Andrey at Agavia Ranch through a couple of acrimonious years (she begrudged Ada every poor little hour devoted to collecting, mounting, and rearing!), and then taking exception to Ada's choosing the famous and excellent Grotonovich Clinic (for her husband's endless periods of treatment) instead of Princess Alashin's select sanatorium, Dorothy Vinelander retired to a subarctic monastery town (Ilemna, now Novostabia) where eventually she married a Mr Brod or Bred, tender and passionate, dark and handsome, who traveled in eucharistials and other sacramental objects throughout the Severnïya Territorii and who subsequently was to direct, and still may be directing half a century later, archeological reconstructions at Goreloe (the 'Lyaskan Herculanum'); what treasures he dug up in matrimony is another question. (3.8)
In Sologub's poem, bredni rhymes with namedni (the other day). The same rhyme occurs in Pushkin's "Fragments of Onegin's Journey" ([XIX: 1-4):
Порой дождливою намедни
Я, завернув на скотный двор…
Тьфу! прозаические бредни,
Фламандской школы пестрый сор!
Таков ли был я, расцветая?
Скажи, фонтан Бахчисарая!
Такие ль мысли мне на ум
Навел твой бесконечный шум,
Когда безмолвно пред тобою
Зарему я воображал
Средь пышных, опустелых зал…
Спустя три года, вслед за мною,
Скитаясь в той же стороне,
Онегин вспомнил обо мне.
The other day, during a rainy spell,
as I had dropped into the cattle yard —
Fie! Prosy divagations,
the Flemish School's variegated dross!
Was I like that when I was blooming?
Say, Fountain of Bahchisaray!
Were such the thoughts that to my mind
your endless purl suggested
when silently in front of you
Zaréma I imagined?...
Midst the sumptuous deserted halls
after the lapse of three years, in my tracks
in the same region wandering, Onegin
remembered me.
On the other hand, a Mr Brod or Bred makes one think of Perebrodov, the pauper (Ardalion's friend) who visits Hermann Karlovich, the narrator and main character in VN's novel Otchayanie ("Despair," 1934). In a letter to Hermann Ardalion (Lydia's cousin, the painter) calls Hermann kaban (wild boar):
Теперь – что я думаю о Вас. Первое известие мне попалось в городе, где я застрял. До Италии не доехал, и слава Богу. И вот, прочтя это известие, я знаете что? не удивился! Я всегда ведь знал, что Вы грубое и злое животное, и не скрыл от следователя всего, что сам видел. Особенно что касается Вашего с ней обращения, этого Вашего высокомерного презрения, и вечных насмешек, и мелочной жестокости, и всех нас угнетавшего холода. Вы очень похожи на большого страшного кабана с гнилыми клыками, напрасно не нарядили такого в свой костюм. И еще в одном должен признаться Вам: я, слабовольный, я, пьяный, я, ради искусства готовый продать свою честь, я Вам говорю: мне стыдно, что я от Вас принимал подачки, и этот стыд я готов обнародовать, кричать о нем на улице, только бы отделаться от него.
Вот что, кабан! Такое положение длиться не может. Я желаю Вашей гибели не потому, что Вы убийца, а потому, что вы подлейший подлец, воспользовавшийся наивностью доверчивой молодой женщины, и так истерзанной и оглушенной десятилетним адом жизни с Вами. Но если в Вас еще не все померкло: объявитесь!»
"Next point: what I think of you. The first news reached me in a town where owing to meeting some fellow artists I happened to be stranded. You see, I never got as far as Italy--and I thank my stars I never did. Well, when I read that news, do you know what I felt? No surprise whatever! I have always known you to be a blackguard and a bully, and believe me, I did not keep back at the inquest all I had seen myself. So I described at length the treatment you gave her--your sneers and gibes and haughty contempt and nagging cruelty, and that chill of your presence which we all found so oppressive. You are wonderfully like a great grisly wild boar with putrid tusks--pity you did not put a roasted one into that suit of yours. And there is something else I want to get off my chest: whatever I may be--a weak-willed drunkard, or a chap ever ready to sell his honor for the sake of his art--let me tell you that I am ashamed of having accepted the morsels you flung me, and gladly would I publish my shame abroad, cry it out in the streets--if that might help to deliver me of its burden.
See here, wild boar! This is a state of things that cannot endure. I want you to perish not because you are a killer, but because you are the meanest of mean scoundrels, using for your mean ends the innocence of a credulous young woman, whom, as it is, ten years of dwelling in your private hell have dazed and torn to pieces. If, nevertheless, there is still a chink in your blackness: give yourself up!" (Chapter Eleven)
Ardalion and his friend Perebrodov bring to mind Ardalion Borisovich Peredonov, the main character of Sologub's novel Melkiy bes ("The Petty Demon," 1907). As pointed out by Mlle Larivière (Lucette's governess), Ardis (the family estate of Daniel Veen) means in Greek "point of an arrow." A the end of his essay Tvorchestvo Fyodora Sologuba ("The Oeuvre of Fyodor Sologub," 1907) Alexander Blok compares Sologub's poems in prose to the light poisoned arrows with brief inscriptions on them about how the soul pines or rejoices:
Всему творчеству Сологуба свойствен трагический юмор, который вылился с особенной яркостью в том роде произведений, который создан самим поэтом. Это — «сказочки» — краткие, красивые стихотворения в прозе, почти всегда — с моралью в шутливом тоне. В них поэт говорит и о вечном, и о злобе дня. Это — удачный опыт сатиры, как бы легкие ядовитые стрелы с краткими надписями о том, как тоскует или радуется душа.
Sologub called his poems in prose skazochki (little fairy tales). Van calls Mlle Larivière's story La Rivière de Diamants that she reads on the picnic at Ada's twelfth birthday "a good fairy tale:"
‘I can never get used (m’y faire)’ said Mlle Laparure, ‘to the contrast between the opulence of nature and the squalor of human life. See that old moujik décharné with that rent in his shirt, see his miserable cabane. And see that agile swallow! How happy, nature, how unhappy, man! Neither of you told me how you liked my new story? Van?’
‘It’s a good fairy tale,’ said Van.
‘It’s a fairy tale,’ said careful Ada.
‘Allons donc!’ cried Mlle Larivière, ‘On the contrary — every detail is realistic. We have here the drama of the petty bourgeois, with all his class cares and class dreams and class pride.’
(True; that might have been the intent — apart from the pointe assassine; but the story lacked ‘realism’ within its own terms, since a punctilious, penny-counting employee would have found out, first of all, no matter how, quitte à tout dire à la veuve, what exactly the lost necklace had cost. That was the fatal flaw in the Larivière pathos-piece, but at the time young Van and younger Ada could not quite grope for that point although they felt instinctively the falsity of the whole affair.)
A slight commotion took place on the box. Lucette turned around and spoke to Ada.
‘I want to sit with you. Mne tut neudobno, i ot nego nehorosho pakhnet (I’m uncomfortable here, and he does not smell good).’
‘We’ll be there in a moment,’ retorted Ada, ‘poterpi (have a little patience).’
‘What’s the matter?’ asked Mlle Larivière.
‘Nothing, Il pue.’
Darkbloom (‘Notes to Ada’): décharné: emaciated.
cabane: hut.
allons donc: oh, come.
pointe assassine: the point (of a story or poem) that murders artistic merit.
quitte à tout dire etc.: even telling it all to the widow if need be.
il pue: he stinks.
‘Oh dear! I doubt strongly he ever was in that Rajah’s service.’
La Parure ("The Necklace," 1884) is a story by Guy de Maupassant (the writer who did not exist on Demonia, Earth's twin planet also known as Antiterra). Sologub translated into Russian (as Sil'na kak smert', 1909) Maupassant's novel Fort comme la mort ("Strong as Death," 1889). Its main character, Olivier Bertin, is a painter.