A character in Iris Black's unfinished detective novel, Diana
Vane, meets Jules at a riding school:
Diana Vane, an incidental but on the whole
nice girl, sojourning in Paris, happened to meet, at a
riding school, a strange Frenchman, of Corsican, or perhaps
Algerian, origin, passionate, brutal, unbalanced.
(1.12)
Iris shows to her husband what is supposed to be Jules's love
letter to Diana. After reading it Vadim says: "this is not a romantic Corsican writing a crime
passionnel letter; it is a Russian blackmailer knowing just enough
English to translate into it the stalest Russian locutions."
(ibid.)
In Dostoevski's Besy (The
Possessed) Captain Lebyadkin sends a love letter to Liza Tushin. One
of Lebyadkin's poems addressed to Liza is entitled Zvezde-amazonke
("To a Star on Horseback"):
И порхает звезда на коне
В хороводе других амазонок;
Улыбается с лошади мне
Ари-сто-кратический ребёнок.
And the star flutters on horseback
in the round dance of other amazons.
An aristocratic child
smiles at me from the horse.
In his article The Poetry of Ignat Lebydkin (1931)
Hodasevich says that several years ago in St. Petersburg he asked
young poets who was the author of the lines: "And the
star flutters on horseback / in the round dance of other
amazons" and every time the answer was: "Blok." In his
Italian Verses (1909) Blok compares Florence to a smoky
iris and in his poem V restorane (At a
Restaurant, 1910) Blok mentions a black rose:
Я послал тебе чёрную розу в бокале
Золотого,
как небо, аи.
I sent you a black rose in a goblet
Of champagne, golden as
the sky.
Lieutenant Starov (who seems to be the real author of the
letter that Iris shows to Vadim) murders Iris Black as she returns
from Paon d'Or ("The Golden Peacock"), the restaurant where she dined with Vadim
and her brother Yvor. (1.13)
In his love letter to Liza Tushin (quoted by Hodasevich in his
article) Lebyadkin says: "Вы богиня в древности, а я
ничто и догадался о беспредельности" ("you are a goddess in
antiquity, and I'm nothing and have guessed about infinity"). Diana is the moon personified as a goddess. In Canto One of Eugene
Onegin Pushkin mentions lik Diany (Diana's face) not reflected by
the mirror of the Neva in the white nights:
Как часто летнею порою,
Когда прозрачно и
светло
Ночное небо над Невою
И вод весёлое стекло
Не отражает лик
Дианы,
Воспомня прежних лет романы,
Воспомня прежнюю
любовь,
Чувствительны, беспечны вновь,
Дыханьем ночи
благосклонной
Безмолвно упивались мы!
Как в лес зелёный из
тюрьмы
Перенесён колодник сонный,
Так уносились мы мечтой
К началу
жизни молодой.
How oft in summertide,
when transparent and luminous
is the night sky above the Neva,
and the gay glass of waters
doesn't reflect Diana's visage -
having recalled intrigues of former
years,
having recalled a former love,*
Impressible, carefree again,
the breath of the benignant night
we silently drank in!
As to the greenwood from a prison
a slumbering clogged convict is transferred,
so we'd be borne off by a dream
to the beginning of young life. (XLVII)
Pushkin's EO is a novel in verse. Vadim is the author of
Plenilune, a novella in verse (1929):
I broke the monastic rules of
work on my novella in verse Polnolunie (Plenilune) by riding
with her [Iris] in the Bois or dutifully
escorting her to fashion-show teases and exhibitions of avant-garde
frauds. (1.12)
Diana Vane's surname brings to mind VN's story The
Vane Sisters (1959). The name of the elder sister, Cynthia, hints at the
goddess Artemis (Apollo's sister who was born on Mt. Cynthus, on
Delos). The moon is the emblem of Artemis (Cynthia). The name of
the younger sister, Sybil, hints at sibyls, the ancient prophetesses.
Dostoevski's Pushkinskaya rech' (the speech at the unveiling of
the Pushkin monument in Moscow in June, 1880) begins as
follows:
PUSHKIN is an extraordinary phenomenon, and, perhaps, the
unique phenomenon of the Russian spirit, said Gogol. I will add, ‘and a
prophetic phenomenon.’ Yes, in his appearing there is contained for all us
Russians, something incontestably prophetic. Pushkin arrives exactly at the
beginning of our true selfconsciousness, which had only just begun to exist a
whole century after Peter’s reforms, and Pushkin’s coming mightily aids us in
our dark way by a new guiding light. In this sense Pushkin is a presage and a
prophecy.
Dostoevski's favorite poem by Pushkin was Prorok
(The Prophet, 1826). It begins:
Духовной жаждою томим,
В пустыне мрачной я
влачился, -
И шестикрылый серафим
На перепутьи мне явился.
Tormented by a spiritual thirst,
I stumbled through a
gloomy waste,
And there a six-winged seraph
Appeared before me at the
crossroad.
Shestikrylyi serafim (a six-winged seraph) in
Pushkin's poem brings to mind Lyubov' Serafimovna Savich, a reformed terrorist's
daughter who works for Vadim as a secretary after Iris Black's death (before
Vadim meets Annette Blagovo): Zdraste, and once
more zdraste, Lyubov Serafimovna--and, oh, what a delightful
amalgam that was, with lyubov meaning "love," and Serafim ("seraph")
being the Christian name of a reformed terrorist! (2.2)
Lyuba's father, a famous SR (Social Revolutionist), had recently died in Meudon upon completing his biography of
Alexander the First (a tedious work in two volumes
entitled The Monarch and the Mystic, now available to
American students in an indifferent translation. Harvard, 1970). (ibid.) The author of Kon' blednyi (Pale Horse,
1913, under the pen name V. Ropshin) and Kon' voronoy (Black
Horse, 1923), Boris Savinkov (1879-1925, one of the leaders of the SR
Party and a reformed terrorist) was less happy: he died a Luzhinesque death
in the Lubyanka prison. Savinkov served as a model for Dudkin in Bely's
Petersburg (1916).
On the other hand, Seraphim of Sarov (1754/59?-1833, a Russian
Saint, contemporary of Alexander the First) brings to mind Count Starov, Vadim's
benefactor who can be his (and Iris Black's, and Annette Blagovo's, and Louise
Adamson's) father.
Had there been a Miss Russia and had the age of
prize misses been prolonged to just under thirty, beautiful Lyuba would have won
the title. She was a tall woman with slim ankles, big breasts, broad shoulders,
and a pair of gay blue eyes in a round rosy face...
Not only had I never experienced the
faintest twinge of desire in regard to beautiful Lyuba, but the indifference of
my senses was turning to positive repulsion. The softer her glances fluttered,
the more ungentlemanly my reaction became. Her very refinement had a dainty edge
of vulgarity that infested with the sweetness of decay her entire
personality. (ibid.)
Vadim's aversion to Lyuba Savich reminds one of Onegin's
attitude in regard to Olga Larin:
"Я выбрал бы другую,
Когда б я был, как ты,
поэт.
В чертах у Ольги жизни нет.
Точь-в-точь в Вандиковой
Мадоне:
Кругла, красна лицом она,
Как эта глупая луна
На этом глупом
небосклоне".
"I'd have chosen the other,
if I had been like you a poet.
In Olga's features there's no life,
just as in a Vandyke Madonna:
she's round and fair of face
as is that silly moon
up in that silly sky." (EO, Three: V: 6-12)
Btw., Pushkin's term of contradistinctive endearment for his
wife was kosaya madonna ("strabismic madonna"). See also Pushkin's poem
Madona (1830).
*these lines were used by VN as the epigraph to
Mashen'ka (Mary, 1926)
Alexey Sklyarenko