Dolly Durmanov, Van's and Ada's grandmother, gave
her daughters, the twin sisters, the names Aqua and Marina. 'Why not
Tofana?' wondered Dolly's husband.
The poisonous aqua tofana is mentioned in
Heine's Denkschrift "Ludwig Boerne" (1840): "Wer mit Rom Krieg fuehren
will, muss alle moeglichen Gifte vertragen koennen, nicht bloss plumpen Arsenik,
sondern auch einschlaeferndes phantastisches Opium, und gar das schleichende
Aquatofana der Verleumdung!" (Book One)
Verleumdung is German for "slander". In
Book Four of "Ludwig Boerne" Heine mentions Wolfrum, a
young Bavarian who became a victim of slander. During his stay in
Belgium Wolfrum read in a newspaper that he was an agent of Bavarian
Jesuits, returned to Paris penniless and ill and died in
Hôtel de Dieu (a hospital in Paris). The
hospital's name reminded me of the Signy-Mondieu doctors and Aqua's
"sanastoria" (Astoria is a luxurious hotel in St. Petersburg) in
Ada. On the other hand,
Hôtel de Dieu + t = deuil + Odette +
h = hôte + diet + duel
Wolfrum + a = Wolfram + u = wolf +
Raum
deuil - Fr., mourning;
cf. in Ada (2.3): "In his London studio her
husband, an unbalanced, unsuccessful painter (ten years older than his
father-in-law whom he envied and despised) shot himself upon receiving the news
by cablegram from a village in Normandy called, dreadfully,
Deuil."
Odette - female given
name; cf. Odette Swann, a character in Proust's "A la recherche du temps
perdu"
hôte - Fr.,
host
Wolfram
- tungsten
Raum - Germ., space;
Raum = Amur = mura = arum = muar
(Amur is a river and the Russian name of Amor; mura is
one of Russian words for "nonsense"; великая мура, great nonsense, is mentioned
by Mandelshtam in the same poem as курва Москва, Moscow the whore; arum
is a plant mentioned by Pasternak in a poem included in "My Sister
Life"; muar is Russian for moire, watered silk)
Alexey Sklyarenko