One of the Russian songs that Van, Ada and
Lucette listen in Ursus, the restaurant in Manhattan Major (Ada, Part
Two, 8), is the romance Сияла ночь ("A radiant night, a moon-filled garden.
Beams / lay at our feet"). The words are by Afanasiy Fet who wrote
this poem on August 2, 1877, after listening to T. A. Kuzminski (née
Baehrs) who had a beautiful contralto. Tatiana Kuzminski was the youngest of the
three Baehrs sisters (her sister Sophia was married to Leo Tolstoy, who, as a
boy, was a playmate of the mother of the Baehrs sisters; incidentally, as a
young girl Tanya Baehrs had an affair with Leo's brother Sergei). Fet mentions
them in his memoirs:
Воспользовавшись предложением
графа представить меня семейству Б-а, я нашёл любезного и светски обходительного
старика доктора и красивую, величавую брюнетку жену его, которая, очевидно,
главенствовала в доме. Воздерживаюсь от описания трёх молодых девушек, из
которых младшая обладала прекрасным контральто. Все они, невзирая на бдительный
надзор матери и безукоризненную скромность, обладали тем привлекательным
оттенком, который французы обозначают словом du
chien.
Chien (French for "dog;" cf. "a lawnside circular sign,
rimmed with red, saying: Chiens interdits and depicting an
impossible black mongrel with a white ribbon around its neck: Why, she [Ada] wondered, should the Swiss magistrates forbid one to
cross highland terriers with poodles?" and, in the same chapter, "Lucien, something of a wit, soon learned to recognize
Dorothy's contralto: 'La voix cuivrée a
téléphoné':" 3.8) reminds one of
Shenshin (i. e. Fet, the illegitimate son of
Afanasiy Neofitovich Shenshin) but also brings to mind Бродячая собака
("Stray Dog"), the famous art cabaret in St. Petersburg/Petrograd. Introducing
his wife to Paul Fort, Pronin (the cabaret's owner) said: "Voilà la
maîtresse du Chien."* One wonders if VN ever visited Бродячая собака, as he
did Медведь ("The Bear"), the fashionable St. Petersburg restaurant in the
Bolshaya Konyushennaya** street. Note that the name Baehrs*** echoes (if
not comes from) Baer (German for "bear"), reminding one of
Germany's capital.
Since Ursus
("bear") is a character in Hugo's L'homme qui rit, one is reminded
of Homo ("man"), the tame wolf (lupus) in the same novel.
Its characters also include Dea (Ursus' adopted daughter, a blind
girl). Dea ("goddess") is an anagram of eda (Russian for
"food").
Like Andrey Baehrs (the father of the Baehrs
sisters), A. P. Chekhov, the author of "The Three Sisters"**** (1901) and the
comic sketch Медведь ("The Bear," 1888), was a doctor. The favorite
word of Belikov, the hero of Chekhov's story "Человек в футляре" ("The Man in a
Case," 1898), is anthropos (Greek for "man"). Kashtanka, the eponymous fox-like dog in Chekhov's
story (1887), is a cross between a dachshund and a mongrel. Chekhov is the
author of Belolobyi ("Whitebrow," 1895), a story
about the wolf-cub. Finally, the zoologist von Koren, a character in
Chekhov's novella "The Duel" (1891), says of Laevsky: "as
soon as you speak of male and female - for instance, of the fact that the female
spider, after fertilisation, devours the male***** -
his eyes glow with curiosity, his face brightens and the man revives, in
fact. All his thoughts, however noble,
lofty or neutral they may be, they all have one point of resemblance. You walk
along the street with him and meet a donkey, for instance... 'Tell me,
please,' he asks, 'what would happen if you mated a donkey with a
camel?'"
The conversation Van has with the Vinelanders
at dinner in the restaurant of the Bellevue hotel (3.8) parodies Chekhov's
mannerisms. Like Andrey Vinelander (Ada's husband), Chekhov was married to an
actress. In his letters to his wife (who was German), Chekhov sometimes
affectionately addresses her "собака моя" ("my dog").
*see G. Ivanov, "The St. Petersburg
Winters"
**the street's name comes from конюшня,
"stable"
*** Берс (Baehrs) = серб (Serbian) = ребус
(rebus) - у; Берс + or ("gold") = сребро (obs., "silver")
****the play known on Antiterra as "The Four
Sisters"
*****similar phenomena are also discussed in
Ada (1.21)
Alexey Sklyarenko