To return to Herzen (the author of "Who is to
Blame?") and the architects (according to little Ilya Tolstoy, the architect is
to blame): in Byloe i dumy ("Bygones and Meditations," Part Two,
chapter 14), Herzen speaks of Alexander Witberg (1787-1855), a gifted Russian
architect of Swedish stock who was Herzen's fellow-exile in Vyatka.*
Witberg (like Alexander I, a mystic whom Herzen compares to Swedenborg;
Witberg = wit + Berg**) was the author of the neoclassical Cathedral of
Christ the Saviour, a monument to the Russian resistance in the 1812
War. Its construction was commenced in 1826 on Vorob'yovy gory
("the Sparrow Hills" famous for the oath young Herzen and Ogaryov swore on them;
one also remembers Vorobyaninov, a character in Ilf and Petrov's "The 12
chairs") in Moscow, but later the tsar Nicolas I abandoned Witberg's
"Masonic" plan for the neo-Byzantine project of Konstantin Ton (or "Thon,"
1794-1881), the "official" Imperial architect during the reign of Nicolas I. The
Cathedral was completed only after Ton's death and, like almost all of his
churches, destroyed by the Bolsheviks (but built again in the post-Soviet
years). Among Ton's major works are also the Grand Kremlin Palace and
Kremlin Armoury in Moscow. There is Ton
in ston ("moan, groan"), ston in stone, and
stone in Elphinstone. Cf. Russian Lolita (Part
Two, 22):
Двухкомнатный коттедж,
задержанный нами, под знаком Серебряной Шпоры, в Эльфинстоне (не дай Бог никому
услышать их стон)...
and Ada (Part Two, 3): The boy's grandfather [the architect David van
Veen] set at once to render in brick and stone, concrete and marble,
flesh and fun, Eric's fantasy.
One also remembers Pushkin's small tragedy The
Stone Guest known on Antiterra as "The Marmoreal Guest"
(1.18).
Several interesting facts about Iskander (Herzen's
nickname). An illegitimate child of a rich Russian landowner, Ivan
Yakovlev, Herzen (1812-70) was born in Moscow shortly before Napoleon's
invasion of Russia and brief occupation of the city. His father, after a
personal interview with Napoleon, was allowed to leave Moscow after agreeing to
bear a letter from the French to the Russian emperor in St. Petersburg. In 1837
Herzen eloped with his first cousin, Natalya Zakharyin. They left Russia in
1847. In emigration Natalie fell in love with the poet Georg
Herwegh (if I remember it correctly, they had a romantic tryst in a
mountain chalet near Montreux; the monogram Natalie devised for herself and
Herwegh looks like Ada's special monogram turned upside down***). After she
died in 1852, Herzen began an affair with Natalya Tuchkov, the common-law wife
of his best friend Nikolay Ogaryov. In Chapter Four of The Gift,
Chernyshevsky visits them in London.
Speaking of Napoleon,
it is a boar's name in George Orwell's Animal
Farm (1945; for the French translation Orwell suggested URSA, Union des
républiques socialistes animales, as a title). Eric Veen
(the author of the Villa Venus project) is a namesake of Eric Blair
(Orwell's real name). Animal is an anagram of malina (raspberry).
Mandelshtam said of Stalin (who is also the target of Orwell's satire): Chto
ni kazn' u nego, to malina ("Whatever the execution, it is
raspberry to him"). Raspberries and raspberry syrup are mentioned
in Ada (1.2, 1.5). And so is Napoleon's first wife (to whom Marina,
Van's, Ada's and Lucette's mother, refers as "Queen Josephine:"
1.5). Btw., Marina + Stalin + Logos + SS = malina + starling + Sosso
(SS - Schutzstaffeln, Hitler's secret police; Sosso - on Antiterra, the
ruler of the ruthless Sovietnamur Khanate: 2.2, a play on Soso Dzhugashvili,
Stalin's real name; there is also a John Starling in Ada)
*present-day Kirov (old day Khlynov); Vyatka +
z = vzyatka (bribe; cards. trick)
**Germ., mountain; one also remembers Osberg, the
author (on Antiterra) of The Gitanilla (Osberg =
Borges)
***see Ada (Part One, 7) and E. A.
Carr, The Romantic Exiles
Alexey Sklyarenko