Most summers she [Ada] spent at Ardis; most winters in their Kaluga
town home - two upper stories in the former Zemski chertog
(palazzo). (1.24)
He [Van] was
out, he imagined, na progulke (promenading) in the gloomy firwood with
Aksakov, his tutor, and Bagrov's grandson, a neighbor's boy, whom he teased and
pinched and made horrible fun of, a nice quiet little fellow who quietly
massacred moles and anything else with fur on, probably pathological. (Ibid.)
Chertog is mentioned in S. T. Aksakov's fairy
tale Alen'kiy tsvetochek ("The Little Scarlet Flower") appended to
The Childhood Years of Bagrov Grandson:
Выходит он под конец на поляну широкую, и
посередь той поляны широкия стоит дом не дом, чертог не чертог,
а дворец королевский или царский, весь в огне, в серебре и золоте и в каменьях
самоцветныих, весь горит и светит, а огня не видать; ровно солнушко красное,
инда тяжело на него глазам смотреть. (At last he
emerged into a wide clearing and there in the centre a fantastic sight met his
gaze: neither house nor mansion, but a magnificient royal palace decorated with
silver, and gold, and precious stones. It blazed and glittered, but no fire was
to be seen. It was like staring into the brilliant sun, and the vision hurt
his eyes.)
Pushkin's poem Cleopatra (recited by the
improvisatore in The Egyptian Nights, 1835) begins:
Chertog siyal (The palace shone).
Chertog has chert (also spelt chort
and chyort), devil, in it. They traveled to
Kaluga and drank the Kaluga Waters, and saw the family dentist. Van, flipping
through a magazine, heard Ada scream and say 'chort' (devil) in the
next room, which he had never heard her do before. (1.22)
In The Lipetsk Waters, a comedy (1815)
by "caustic" Shahovskoy, Zhukovski is satirized as Fialkin.
Fialka being Russian for "violet," Ada calls Violet Knox (old
Van's secretary) Fialochka* (5.4).
chertog + B = chert +
Bog
luna + Charski = Lunacharski (Bog - Russ., God; luna - Russ.,
moon; Charski - the author-like figure in The
Egyptian Nights; Lunacharski - the minister
of Enlightenment in Lenin's government)
*The Night Violet is a poem (1906) by
Blok
Alexey Sklyarenko