Describing his departure from Manhattan, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) calls his father's mistress "a temporary Tamara" and mentions her Caucasian perfume, Granial Maza:
In mid-July, 1886, while Van was winning the table-tennis tournament on board a ‘luxury’ liner (that now took a whole week to reach in white dignity Manhattan from Dover!), Marina, both her daughters, their governess, and two maids were shivering more or less simultaneous stages of Russian influentsa at various stops on their way by train from Los Angeles to Ladore. A hydrogram from Chicago awaiting Van at his father’s house on July 21 (her dear birthday!) said: ‘dadaist impatient patient arriving between twenty-fourth and seventh call doris can meet regards vicinity.’
‘Which reminds me painfully of the golubyanki (petits bleus) Aqua used to send me,’ remarked Demon with a sigh (having mechanically opened the message). ‘Is tender Vicinity some girl I know? Because you may glare as much as you like, but this is not a wire from doctor to doctor.’
Van raised his eyes to the Boucher plafond of the breakfast room, and shaking his head in derisive admiration, commented on Demon’s acumen. Yes, that was right. He had to travel incontinently to Garders (anagram of ‘regards,’ see?) to a hamlet the opposite way from Letham (see?) to see a mad girl artist called Doris or Odris who drew only gee-gees and sugar daddies.
Van rented a room under a false name (Boucher) at the only inn of Malahar, a miserable village on Ladore River, some twenty miles from Ardis. He spent the night fighting the celebrated mosquito, or its cousin, that liked him more than the Ardis beast had. The toilet on the landing was a black hole, with the traces of a fecal explosion, between a squatter’s two giant soles. At 7 a.m. on July 25 he called Ardis Hall from. the Malahar post office and got connected with Bout who was connected with Blanche and mistook Van’s voice for the butler’s.
‘Dammit, Pa,’ he said into his bedside dorophone, ‘I’m busy!’
‘I want Blanche, you idiot,’ growled Van.
‘Oh, pardon,’ cried Bout, ‘un moment, Monsieur.’
A bottle was audibly uncorked (drinking hock at seven in the morning!) and Blanche took over, but scarcely had Van begun to deliver a carefully worded message to be transmitted to Ada, when Ada herself who had been on the qui vive all night answered from the nursery, where the clearest instrument in the house quivered and bubbled under a dead barometer.
‘Forest Fork in Forty-Five minutes. Sorry to spit.’
‘Tower!’ replied her sweet ringing voice, as an airman in heaven blue might say ‘Roger.’
He rented a motorcycle, a venerable machine, with a saddle upholstered in billiard cloth and pretentious false mother-of-pearl handlebars, and drove, bouncing on tree roots along a narrow ‘forest ride.’ The first thing he saw was the star gleam of her dismissed bike: she stood by it, arms akimbo, the black-haired white angel, looking away in a daze of shyness, wearing a terrycloth robe and bedroom slippers. As he carried her into the nearest thicket he felt the fever of her body, but only realized how ill she was when after two passionate spasms she got up full of tiny brown ants and tottered, and almost collapsed, muttering about gipsies stealing their jeeps.
It was a beastly, but beautiful, tryst. He could not remember —
(That’s right, I can’t either. Ada.)
— one word they said, one question, one answer, he rushed her back as close to the house as he dared (having kicked her bike into the bracken) — and that evening when he rang up Blanche, she dramatically whispered that Mademoiselle had une belle pneumonie, mon pauvre Monsieur.
Ada was much better three days later, but he had to return to Man to catch the same boat back to England — and join a circus tour which involved people he could not let down.
His father saw him off. Demon had dyed his hair a blacker black. He wore a diamond ring blazing like a Caucasian ridge. His long, black, blue-ocellated wings trailed and quivered in the ocean breeze. Lyudi oglyadïvalis’ (people turned to look). A temporary Tamara, all kohl, kasbek rouge, and flamingo-boa, could not decide what would please her daemon lover more — just moaning and ignoring his handsome son or acknowledging bluebeard’s virility as reflected in morose Van, who could not stand her Caucasian perfume, Granial Maza, seven dollars a bottle.
(You know, that’s my favorite chapter up to now, Van, I don’t know why, but I love it. And you can keep your Blanche in her young man’s embrace, even that does not matter. In Ada’s fondest hand.) (1.29)
Darkbloom ('Notes to Ada'): golubyanka: Russ., small blue butterfly.
petit bleu: Parisian slang for pneumatic post (an express message on blue paper).
cousin: mosquito.
mademoiselle etc.: the young lady has a pretty bad pneumonia, I regret to say, Sir.
Granial Maza: a perfume named after Mt Kazbek’s ‘gran’ almuza’ (diamond’s facet) of Lermontov’s The Demon.
In Lermontov's poem The Demon (1829-40) the Demon (with whom Demon Veen, Van's and Ada's father, is associated) falls in love with Tamara, an innocent Georgian girl. On the contrary, the heroine of Lermontov's short poem Tamara (1841), Queen Tamara, prekrasna, kak angel nebesnyi, kak demon, kovarna i zla (is beautiful, as a heavenly angel, cunning and evil, as a demon):
В глубокой теснине Дарьяла,
Где роется Терек во мгле,
Старинная башня стояла,
Чернея на чёрной скале.
В той башне высокой и тесной
Царица Тамара жила:
Прекрасна, как ангел небесный,
Как демон, коварна и зла.
И там сквозь туман полуночи
Блистал огонёк золотой,
Кидался он путнику в очи,
Манил он на отдых ночной.
И слышался голос Тамары:
Он весь был желанье и страсть,
В нём были всесильные чары,
Была непонятная власть.
На голос невидимой пери
Шёл воин, купец и пастух;
Пред ним отворялися двери,
Встречал его мрачный евнух.
На мягкой пуховой постели,
В парчу и жемчуг убрана,
Ждала она гостя... Шипели
Пред нею два кубка вина.
Сплетались горячие руки,
Уста прилипали к устам,
И странные, дикие звуки
Всю ночь раздавалися там.
Как будто в ту башню пустую
Сто юношей пылких и жён
Сошлися на свадьбу ночную,
На тризну больших похорон.
Но только что утра сиянье
Кидало свой луч по горам,
Мгновенно и мрак и молчанье
Опять воцарялися там.
Лишь Терек в теснине Дарьяла,
Гремя, нарушал тишину;
Волна на волну набегала,
Волна погоняла волну;
И с плачем безгласное тело
Спешили они унести;
В окне тогда что-то белело,
Звучало оттуда: прости.
И было так нежно прощанье,
Так сладко тот голос звучал,
Как будто восторги свиданья
И ласки любви обещал.
In the deep canyon of the Daryal,
Where the Terek burrows in the darkness,
An ancient tower stood,
Showing black against the black cliff.
In that tower tall and narrow,
The Princese Tamara lived:
Beautiful as a heavenly angel,
Sly and evil as a demon.
There through the midnightght fog ,
A golden light gleamed,
It threw itself into a traveler's eyes,
Beckoned him for a night's rest.
And the voice of Tamara was heard:
It was all desire sad passion,
In it were all-powerful charms,
Its power was incomprehensible,
To the voice of the invisible peri,
Went the warrior, the merchant, and the shepherd;
Before him the doors opened,
He was met by a gloomy eunuch.
On a soft down bed
Bedecked in brocade and pearls,
She awaited her guest. There fizzed
Before her two goblets of wine.
The burning hands intertwined,
Lips stuck to lips,
And strange, wild sounds
Resounded there all night.
As if at that empty tower
One hundred fiery youths and young women
Gathered at a nocturnal wedding,
At the feast of a great funeral.
But as soon as the glow of the morning
Threw its ray on the mountains,
Suddenly both darkness and si lence
Again reigned there.
Only the Terek in the Daryal canyon,
Thundering, broke the silence;
Wave dashed upon wave,
Wave chased wave;
And with a lament the voiceless body
They hurried to carry away;
At that moment something showed white in the window,
Thence sounded: farewell.
And the farewell was so tender,
So sweetly sounded that voice,
As if it promised the raptures
Of meeting and the caresses of love.
A line in Lermontov's poem, Kak demon, kovarna i zla (As a demon, sly and evil), brings to mind Tsvety zla, the Russian title of Baudelaire's Fleurs du mal ("Flowers of Evil," 1857). The poems in Les Fleurs du mal include Parfum exotique ("Exotic Perfume"), a sonnet:
Quand, les deux yeux fermés, en un soir chaud d'automne,
Je respire l'odeur de ton sein chaleureux,
Je vois se dérouler des rivages heureux
Qu'éblouissent les feux d'un soleil monotone;
Une île paresseuse où la nature donne
Des arbres singuliers et des fruits savoureux;
Des hommes dont le corps est mince et vigoureux,
Et des femmes dont l'oeil par sa franchise étonne.
Guidé par ton odeur vers de charmants climats,
Je vois un port rempli de voiles et de mâts
Encor tout fatigués par la vague marine,
Pendant que le parfum des verts tamariniers,
Qui circule dans l'air et m'enfle la narine,
Se mêle dans mon âme au chant des mariniers.
When, with both my eyes closed, on a hot autumn night,
I inhale the fragrance of your warm breast
I see happy shores spread out before me,
On which shines a dazzling and monotonous sun;
A lazy isle to which nature has given
Singular trees, savory fruits,
Men with bodies vigorous and slender,
And women in whose eyes shines a startling candor.
Guided by your fragrance to these charming countries,
I see a port filled with sails and rigging
Still utterly wearied by the waves of the sea,
While the perfume of the green tamarinds,
That permeates the air, and elates my nostrils,
Is mingled in my soul with the sailors' chanteys.
(transl. William Aggeler)
Btw., in his essay M. Yu. Lermontov - poet sverkhchelovtchestva ("Lermontov as a Poet of the Superhuman," 1911) Dmitri Merezhkovski says that Lermontov was the first Russian writer who raised the religious question about evil:
Лермонтов первый в русской литературе поднял религиозный вопрос о зле. (chapter VII)
Both Merezhkovski (in 1885) and VN (in 1924) translated into Russian Baudelaire's poem L'Albatros.