She [the
prostitute] took him [Hugh Person] to one
of the better beds in a hideous old roominghouse - to the precise "number," in
fact, where ninety-one, ninety-two, nearly ninety-three years ago a Russian
novelist had sojourned on his way to Italy. ...He [the novelist] expects his
friend Kandidatov, the painter, to join him here any moment for the outing, one
of those lighthearted hikes that romantics would undertake even during a drizzly
spell in August; his boots are still wet from a ten-mile ramble to the nearest
casino. ...and the loose sheets
of a rudimentary novel under the provisional title Faust in Moscow. As
he sits at that deal table, the very same upon which our Person's whore has
plunked her voluminous handbag, there shows through that bag, as it were, the
first page the Faust affair with energetic erasures and untidy
insertions in purple, black, reptile-green ink. (Transparent
Things, 6)
As I pointed out before (see my post of 24 Sept., 2004),
we do not know where Ivan Turgenev, the author of Faust (1856),
First Love (1860), Fathers and Children (1861),
Phantoms (1864), Smoke (1867) and the
autobiographical Fire in the Sea (1883), was between August 2
(July 21, OS), 1856, when he left St. Petersburg onboard steamer bound
to Stettin, and August 20. Probably in Courtavenel, the estate of Louis and
Pauline Viardot; but, theoretically, he could have visited Geneva (the
city where ninety-three years later, in 1949, Person Senior dies of a
stroke and, on the same night, his twenty-two-year-old son buys himself the
services of a prostitute) on his way to Courtavenel (the Russian novelist
in TT, "a minor Dostoevski," is travelling to Italy).
In Turgenev's story Prizraki (Phantoms)
the narrator is repeatedly visited by Ellis, a female
phantom that conducts him on a series of nocturnal flights in space and
time allowing him to witness various scenes in the past and
present and see historical personages like Julius Caesar or
Stenka Razin. Ellis is described as woven of semi-transparent milky haze
(the hero can see through her face a gently moving twig of the old
lightning-struck oak tree): Îíà êàçàëàñü âñÿ êàê áû
ñîòêàíà èç ïîëóïðîçðà÷íîãî, ìîëî÷íîãî òóìàíà -- ñêâîçü å¸ ëèöî ìíå âèäíåëàñü
âåòêà, òèõî êîëåáëåìàÿ âåòðîì,-- òîëüêî âîëîñû äà ãëàçà ÷óòü-÷óòü ÷åðíåëè, äà íà
îäíîì èç ïàëüöåâ ñëîæåííûõ ðóê áëèñòàëî áëåäíûì çîëîòîì óçêîå êîëüöî.
(chapter IV)
A major immigrant inspection station
from 1892 until 1954, the Ellis Island is
mentioned in Pnin (Chapter One) by the eponymous hero: How Pnin came to the Soedinyonnye Shtaty (the
United States). “Examination on ship before landing. Very well! ‘Nothing to
declare?’ ‘Nothing.’ Very well! Then political questions. He asks: ‘Are you
anarchist?’ I answer” — time out on the part of the narrator for a spell of cozy
mute mirth — “‘First what do you understand under “anarchism”? Anarchism
practical, metaphysical, theoretical, mystical, abstractical, individual,
social? When I was young,’ I say, ‘all this had for me signification.’ So we had
a very interesting discussion, in consequence of which I passed two
whole weeks on Ellis Island...”
According to Ostap Bender, zagranitsa (foreign
countries, with the USA being the destination of most Russian émigrés) is the afterlife myth:
whoever gets there never comes back: "Ìíå îäèí
äîêòîð âñ¸ îáúÿñíèë, -- ïðîäîëæàë Îñòàï, -- çàãðàíèöà -- ýòî ìèô
î çàãðîáíîé æèçíè. Êòî òóäà ïîïàäàåò, òîò íå âîçâðàùàåòñÿ." (The Golden Calf, Chapter 32: The Gates of Great
Opportunities). In the first novel of the Ilf and Petrov
dilogy, The Twelve Chairs (chapter XIV: The Union of Sword and
Plough), Ostap Bender promises that zagranitsa nam pomozhet
(foreign countries will help us).
Hugh Person dies in the
fire in the Ascot Hotel (chapter 26). At least two characters in The
Golden Calf, dvornik (yardman) Nikita Pryakhin and no one's
grandmother, perish in the fire (chapter XXI: The End of the Crows's
Nest). Nikita's "libertarian" last words, kak pozhelaem, tak i
sdelaem ("we shall act as we wish"), became
proverbial.
Ilf and Petrov were "the Soviet Juvenals." During their
flight to St. Petersburg, Ellis shows the hero of Phantoms a young
girl reading one of the latest Juvenals: íåñêîëüêî ïîäàëüøå,
ó ðàñêðûòîãî îêíà âûñîêîãî äîìà, ÿ óâèäåë äåâèöó â èçìÿòîì ø¸ëêîâîì ïëàòüå, áåç
ðóêàâ÷èêîâ, ñ æåì÷óæíîé ñåòêîé íà âîëîñàõ è ñ ïàïèðîñêîé âî ðòó. Îíà
áëàãîãîâåéíî ÷èòàëà êíèãó: ýòî áûë òîì ñî÷èíåíèé îäíîãî èç íîâåéøèõ Þâåíàëîâ.
(chapter XXII)
When Hugh Person first meets Armande on a
Swiss local train (in June, 1959), she reads R.'s novel Figures in a
Golden Window (The Burning Window, as she
garbles its title: chapter 9). The cover is by the famous Paul Plam
(plamya is Russian for "flame; fire"). Btw., in Fathers and
Children Princess R. ruins the life of Pavel Petrovich
Kirsanov.
The "prophetic" name of Turgenev's female phantom also brings
to mind Ellis (the pen-name of Lev Kobylinski*), Baudelaire's Russian
translator (when he writes of Armande, his new acquaintance, in his
diary, HP prophetically quotes Baudelaire: Ouvre ta
robe, Déjanire that I may mount sur mon
bûcher), and Havelock Ellis, the English
psychologist.
HP strangles Armande in his sleep trying to save his bed
mate from the fire (chapter 20). From Chapter Four of The
Gift: Once at Turgenev's country place the first two
[Turgrenev and Grigorovich], together with Botkin and
Druzhinin, composed and acted a domestic farce. In a scene where a couch was
supposed to catch fire, Turgenev had to come out running with the cry...
here the common efforts of his friends had persuaded him to utter the
unfortunate words which in his youth he had allegedly addressed to a sailor
during a fire on board ship: 'Save me, save me, I am my mother's only
son.'
See also my post of 19 Nov 2004 on Turgenev and Pauline
anide
*about that person see Andrey Bely's memoir V
nachale veka (At the Turn of the Century)
Alexey Sklyarenko