Mike M writes: "In my first posting here (6/30) I
mentioned that it was possible that Ben Wright might have alluded to
Shakespeare's contemporary Ben [Jonson play]Wright. I'd not seen the Darkbloom
glossary at that time (I didn't know there was one), where VD explains that BW
was a poet in his own right, which confirms my original suspicion. Ben Wright's
co-driver was Trofim Fartukov. .."
Jansy Mello: Two more quotes for Mike M to work
upon, and a question: does "Ben" really indicate Ben Jonson? How can we
interpret VN's use of this name close to his own "Sirin" (with an added "e",
like in Botkin/Botkine, following a transliteration from the Arab).
The quote that distinguishes "puzzled Will" from a "more
normal" Chekov doesn't make any deliberate pun concerning the word
"playwright,"but a rhyme with "right"
Darkbloom's note on "petard" (aimed at Ardis) may be misleading.
Petard also means an explosive device, fireworks and, even, in soccer slang used
somewhere, a particularly strong quick to the ball.
Mike M. might be interested in the relation between Van Veen and
Voltemand (Letters from Terra) with references to Hamlet,
while he meets Lucette.
(Ada): ‘I seem to have always felt, for
example, that acting should be focused not on "characters," not on "types" of
something or other, not on the fokus-pokus of a social theme, but exclusively on
the subjective and unique poetry of the author, because playwrights, as the
greatest among them has shown, are closer to poets than to novelists. In
"real" life we are creatures of chance in an absolute void — unless we be
artists ourselves, naturally; but in a good play I feel authored, I feel passed
by the board of censors, I feel secure, with only a breathing blackness before
me (instead of our Fourth-Wall Time), I feel cuddled in the embrace of puzzled
Will (he thought I was you) or in that of the much more normal Anton Pavlovich,
who was always passionately fond of long dark hair.’
p.316. petard:
Mr Ben Wright, a poet in his own right, is associated throughout with
pets (farts).
Herr Mispel, who liked to air his authors,
discerned in Letters from Terra the influence of Osberg (Spanish writer of
pretentious fairy tales and mystico-allegoric anecdotes, highly esteemed by
short-shift thesialists) as well as that of an obscene ancient Arab, expounder
of anagrammatic dreams, Ben Sirine, thus transliterated by Captain de
Roux, according to Burton in his adaptation of Nefzawi’s treatise on the best
method of mating with obese or hunchbacked females (The Perfumed Garden, Panther
edition, p.187, a copy given to ninety-three-year-old Baron Van Veen by his
ribald physician Professor Lagosse). His critique ended as follows: ‘If Mr
Voltemand (or Voltimand or Mandalatov) is a psychiatrist, as I think he
might be, then I pity his patients, while admiring his
talent.’