In Ada (2.3), David van Veen is an architect who
built a hundred floramors to fulfil the fantasy of his grandson Eric, the author
of the essay "Villa Venus: an Organized Dream".
As I pointed out before, arkhitektor vinovat (the
architect is to blame) was a proverbial phrase in Tolstoy's family.
In an anonymous poem written in 1725, soon
after the death of Peter I, the founder of St. Petersburg is called
arkhitekton (obs., the
architect):
Возрыдай днесь прегорко, Петрополе святый,
Аще и славно Петром Великим
зачатый,
Ибо архитектон твой взят от тебя к
богу,
В радости место печаль оставль тебе
многу.
Peter I used to call the city he founded in the Neva's
estuary Paradiz.
For Van, Eric Veen's Villa Venus is a paradise: As he
was dressing, a messenger brought him a note from Lord C. (he was a cousin of
one of Van's Riverlane schoolmates), in which generous Dick proposed to
substitute for his debt an introduction to the Venus Villa Club to which his
whole clan belonged. Such a bounty no boy of eighteen could hope to obtain. It
was a ticket to paradise. (1.28) I have frequented
bordels since my sixteenth year, but although some of the better ones,
especially in France and Ireland, rated a triple red symbol in Nugg's guidebook,
nothing about them pre-announced the luxury and mollitude of my first Villa
Venus. It was the difference between a den and an Eden. (2.3)
Dick C.who offers Van an introduction to the Venus Villa Club seems to
be a cousin of Cheshire, Van's schoolmate at Riverlane whose name hints at the
Cheshire-Cat in "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" (known on Antiterra as
"Palace in Wonderland", 1.8).
While Merezhkovski in his "Peter and Alexey" compares Peter I to an
aquatic bird, Alexey Tolstoy in his "Peter I" compares the tsar to a cat. (One
also remembers the well-known lubok painting "How the Mice Buried the
Cat".)
Alexey Sklyarenko