Examining VN's conclusion of the lecture on Dickens, in
relation to ADA (where Dickens is indirectly mentioned, btw, as in
"Bleakhouse horsepittle," in the chapter with its non-leporine
doctors) :
"A great writer's world is indeed a magic
democracy where even some very minor character, even the most
incidental character like the person who tosses the twopence,
has the right to live and breed."LL,124).
VN's observation about an incidental character's right to
breed, engendered a curious strain when I re-examined the example
of VN's shot at Chekhov's advice to dramatists (in a former VN-L
posting) while comparing it to his nod to Jane Austen:
'Dr Krolik,
our local naturalist, to whom you, Van, have referred, as Jane
Austen might have phrased it, for the sake of rapid narrative
information (you recall Brown, don’t you, Smith?), has
determined the example I brought back from Sacramento to
Ardis...'
In the first place, I discovered a reference to "canicule"
twice, in connection to the lines about Krolik, or his son:
1. "...‘Well,’ answered Ada, straddling
her favorite limb, ‘as we all know by now, Mlle La Rivière de
Diamants has nothing against a hysterical little girl’s not
wearing pantalets during l’ardeur de la canicule.’
‘I refuse to share the ardor of your little canicule with an
apple tree.’
‘It is really the Tree of Knowledge — this specimen was imported
last summer wrapped up in brocade from the Eden National Park
where Dr Krolik’s son is a ranger and breeder.’
‘Let him range and breed by all means,’ said Van..."
2. But, in the sudden storm, calculations
went to the canicular devils.
‘Well,’ said Van, when the mind took over again, ‘let’s go back
to our defaced childhood. I’m anxious’ — (picking up the album
from the bedside rug) — ‘to get rid of this burden. Ah, a new
character, the inscription says: Dr Krolik.’
‘Wait a sec. It may be the best Vanishing Van but it’s terribly
messy all the same. Okay. Yes, that’s my poor nature teacher.’
"
Trying to sort out the items related to doctors I got
practically nowhere (only a reminder that Ada was afraid she was
pregnant and relieved with the negative result after her
consultation with Dr.Seitz. Van was organically sterile.). There's
a deliberate confusion about Van's breathing and breeding
transient characters. Bouteillan has a son, Bouteillan Jr who
might become young Bout, although there is a bouteiller
named Bout (I haven't tried to distinguish butlers nor coachmen -
yet)
Ada's Dr. Krolik, for example, always a
lepidopterist, sometimes passes as a physician who atends uncle
Dan or is invoked by Marina. Like the family butlers, he has
various direct and indirect relatives.
I'll begin with Darkbloom's synthetic note:
p.13. Dr Lapiner: for some
obscure but not unattractive reason, most of the physicians in
the book turn out to bear names connected with rabbits. The
French ‘lapin’ in Lapiner is matched by the Russian ‘Krolik’,
the name of Ada’s beloved lepidopterist (p.13, et passim) and
the Russian ‘zayats’ (hare) sounds like ‘Seitz’ (the German
gynecologist on page 181); there is a Latin ‘cuniculus’ in
‘Nikulin’ (‘grandson of the great rodentiologist Kunikulinov’,
p.341), and a Greek ‘lagos’ in ‘Lagosse’ (the doctor who attends
Van in his old age). Note also Coniglietto, the Italian
cancer-of-the-blood specialist, p.298.
Here are two indications of Krolik, presented acting as
a physician, not only as a lepidopterist, by aging Van:
1."He should see Dr Krolik. It’s
depressing. It’s a rhythmic pumping pant. It made my soup
ripple.’
‘Look, Dad,’ said Van, ‘Dr Krolik can’t do much, because, as
you know quite well, he’s dead, and Marina can’t tell her
servants not to breathe, because, as you also know, they’re
alive.’ "
2. Three adult gentlemen, moreover, were
expected but never turned up: Uncle Dan, who missed the morning
train from town; Colonel Erminin, a widower, whose liver, he
said in a note, was behaving like a pecheneg; and his doctor
(and chess partner), the famous Dr Krolik, who called himself
Ada’s court jeweler, and indeed brought her his birthday
present early on the following day — three exquisitely carved
chrysalids
Then we have Dan's delirium related to Bosch and rats
("rodents", among them VN's cherished squirrels and beavers as
found in his other novels) and the "leporine doctors" What do
rats and rabbits have in common, besides being seen as pests or
as laboratory animals? Why mix them up when Dr.Kunikulinov is
included among the "great rodentiologists"? (Classification is
one of VN's scientiphic interests...)
Demon made a long-distance call and
received a full account of Dan’s death from the inordinately
circumstantial Dr Nikulin (grandson of the great
rodentiologist Kunikulinov — we can’t get rid of the lettuce).
Daniel Veen’s life had been a mixture of the ready-made and
the grotesque; but his death had shown an artistic streak
because of its reflecting (as his cousin, not his doctor,
instantly perceived) the man’s latterly conceived passion for
the paintings, and faked paintings, associated with the name
of Hieronymus Bosch. The Swiss doctor, who had been told
everything (and had even turned out to have known at medical
school a nephew of Dr Lapiner)
Dr. Krolik sprouts different relatives or mimics :
1.Marina had her own Dr Krolik, pour
ainsi dire;
2.‘How curious — in the state Kim
mounted him here, he looks much less furry and fat than I
imagined. In fact, darling, he’s a big, strong, handsome old
March Hare! Explain!’ / ‘There’s nothing to explain. I asked
Kim one day to help me carry some boxes there and back, and
here’s the visual proof. Besides, that’s not my Krolik but
his brother, Karol, or Karapars, Krolik. A doctor of
philosophy, born in Turkey.’
3. Dr Krolik’s son is a ranger and breeder.’
4. ...unofficially to consult Dr
Krolik’s cousin, the gynecologist Seitz (or ‘Zayats,’ as she
transliterated him mentally since it also belonged, as Dr
‘Rabbit’ did, to the leporine group in Russian
pronunciation).
There are non-rodent or non-leporine doctors (mainly variations
on Freud, but there are other anagramatical characters, too - and
I forget who was the "waggish novelist"...)
1. . This Theresa maddened with her messages
a scientist on our easily maddened planet; his anagram-looking
name, Sig Leymanksi, had been partly derived by Van from that of
Aqua’s last doctor.
2. Dakbloom: p.267. Sig
Leymanski: anagram of the name of a waggish British novelist
keenly interested in physics fiction.
3. A Dr Froid, one of the administerial
centaurs, who may have been an émigré brother with a
passport-changed name of the Dr Froit of Signy-Mondieu-Mondieu
in the Ardennes or, more likely, the same man, because they both
came from Vienne, Isère, and were only sons (as her son was),
evolved, or rather revived, the therapistic device, aimed at
establishing a ‘group’ feeling...
4. " The astorium in St Taurus, or
whatever it was called (who cares — one forgets little things
very fast, when afloat in infinite non-thingness) was, perhaps,
more modem, with a more refined desertic view, than the
Mondefroid bleakhouse horsepittle, but in both places a demented
patient could outwit in one snap an imbecile pedant." (note a reference to Charles Dickens: "a
bleakhouse horsepittle")
5.Aqua reckoned she must procure for
herself a maximum period of undisturbed stupor elsewhere than in
a glass house, and the carrying out of that second part of the
project was simplified and encouraged by another agent or double
of the Isère Professor, a Dr Sig Heiler whom everybody venerated
as a great guy and near-genius in the usual sense of near-beer.
Such patients who proved by certain twitchings of the eyelids
and other semiprivate parts under the control of medical
students that Sig (a slightly deformed but not unhandsome old
boy) was in the process of being dreamt of as a ‘papa Fig,’
spanker of girl bottoms and spunky spittoon-user
........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
There's a confusion between Fig and Sig (not Sigmund Freud, but
a Dr Sig Heiler with his Nazi-saluting name)
What are we to make out of this "papa Fig" in the guise
of Uncle Ruka and the sudden reference to a marmoreal guest from "Don
Juan's Last Fling? (Fig leaves cannot hide uncomfortable
memories.) .
She must have been about nine when ...an
eminent painter whom she could not and would not name, came
several times to dinner at Ardis Hall. Her drawing teacher, Miss
Wintergreen, respected him greatly, who drew his diminutive
nudes invariably from behind — fig-picking, peach-buttocked
nymphets straining upward, or else rock-climbing girl scouts in
bursting shorts —
‘I know exactly,’ interrupted Van angrily, ‘whom you mean, and
would like to place on record that even if his delicious talent
is in disfavor today, Paul J. Gigment had every right to paint
schoolgirls and poolgirls from any side he pleased. Proceed.’
Every time (said unruffled Ada) Pig Pigment came, she cowered
when hearing him trudge and snort and pant upstairs, ever nearer
like the Marmoreal Guest, that immemorial ghost, seeking her,
crying for her in a thin, querulous voice not in keeping with
marble.
Or to Van's denials, aiming at critical little minds and
dry-fig hearts about whom he cares "not a fig"?
"...his adoration for his father remained
unchanged...No accursed generalizer, with a half-penny mind and
dry-fig heart, would be able to explain (and this is my sweetest
revenge for all the detractions my lifework has met with) the
individual vagaries evolved in those and similar matters. No art
and no genius would exist without such vagaries, and this is a
final pronouncement, damning all clowns and clods."