Три слова являют нам Брюсова: воля, вол, волк. Триединство не только
звуковое - смысловое: и воля - Рим, и вол - Рим, и волк - Рим. Трижды римлянином
был Валерий Брюсов: волей и волом - в поэзии, волком (homo homini lupus est) в
жизни.
The widow's name comes from tapir (any of
several large, stout, three-toed ungulates of the family Tapiridae, of Central
and South America, the Malay Peninsula, and Sumatra, somewhat resembling a swine
and having a long, flexible snout). This exotic animal is mentioned by
Bryusov in his 1911 poem "Весёлый зов весенней зелени..." ("The merry call of
the vernal green," 1911):
От тяжкой поступи тапира
До лёгких трепетов
стрекоз
From a tapir's heavy gait
To the light trepidations of
dragon-flies.
In his devastating essay on Bryusov (in "The
Silhouettes of Russian Writers") Yuli Aihenvald (the critic whom VN mentions in
Speak, Memory along with Marina Tsvetaev, a "poet of
genius") notes that this tapir, artificially brought from such
a distant land for the rhyme's sake alone, tramples down with its heavy
gait the whole poem.
In her mother's shop Mrs Tapirov's daughter used to put a bunch of real
roses among the fake ones pour attraper le client (1.4). Years
later Van, standing before a shop-window with vased flowers on
consoles, recalls his first love and wonders if the girl's name was not
Rose or Roza (1.42). If Van is correct, his first love is a namesake of the
Negro girl who was procured by Valerio and whom Van (living in a penthouse of a
tall building on Alexis Avenue in Manhattan) shares with Mr Dean (a
cryptogrammatist who dwells on the floor below).
When Demon visits Van in Manhattan to inform his son of uncle Dan's death,
Valerio is Demon's fellow traveller in the lift:
With the simple and, combinationally speaking, neat,
thought that, after all, there was but one sky (white, with minute multicolored
optical sparks), Demon hastened to enter the lobby and catch the lift which a
ginger-haired waiter had just entered, with breakfast for two on a wiggle-wheel
table and the Manhattan Times among the shining, ever so slightly scratched,
silver cupolas. Was his son still living up there, automatically asked Demon,
placing a piece of nobler metal among the domes. Si, conceded the
grinning imbecile, he had lived there with his lady all winter.
'Then we are fellow travelers,' said Demon inhaling not
without gourmand anticipation the smell of Monaco's coffee, exaggerated by the
shadows of tropical weeds waving in the breeze of his brain. (2.8)
Demon is under the influence of some bright Chilean drug. Hodasevich
in his memoir essays "End of Renata" and "Bryusov" (included in
Necropolis, 1939) and Marina Tsvetaev in her "Hero of
Toil" both mention the sad fact that Bryusov was a
morphinist.
Marina Tsvetaev realized that Bryusov was a wolf when, at a
reading of poetry in which she participated along with eight other women
(one of them, Bryusov's mistress Adalis, was nine-month-pregnant and feared that
she would give birth to a child right here), she saw Bryusov's smile
(or, rather, grin):
- Значит, я теперь - премированный
щенок? Ответный смех залы и - добрая - внезапная - волчья - улыбка Брюсова.
«Улыбка» - условность, просто внезапное обнаружение и такое же исчезновение
зубов. Не улыбка? Улыбка! Только не наша, волчья. (Оскал, осклаб, ощер.)
Тут я впервые догадалась, что Брюсов -
волк.
A character in Lewis Carroll's Alice's
Adventures in Wonderland (translated by VN as Anya v strane
chudes), the Cheshire-Cat is famous for its grin.
Van's former schoolmate Cheshire sends Lucette
racing tips:
'Your friend Dick Cheshire sends
me presents and racing tips.' (3.3)
In his memoir essay on Bryusov Hodasevich speaks
of Bryusov's interest in horse-races:
Так, например, в 1921 г.
Брюсов совмещал какое-то высокое назначение по Наркомпросу - с не менее
важной должностью в Гукон, т. е.... в Главном Управлении по Коннозаводству (Как
ни странно, некоторая логика в этом была: самые первые строки Брюсова,
появившиеся в печати, - две статьи о лошадях в
одном из специальных журналов:
не то "Рысак и Скакун", не то "Коннозаводство и Спорт".
Отец Брюсова, как я указывал, был лошадник - любитель. Когда-то я
видел детские письма Брюсова к матери, сплошь наполненные беговыми
делами и впечатлениями.)
Что ж? Он честно трудился и там и даже, идя в
ногу с нэпом, выступал в печати, ведя кампанию за восстановление
тотализатора.
Demon's adversary in a sword duel, Baron d'Onsky
seems to be a horse (Onegin's Don stallion). As she speaks to Adalis (who came
to invite her to participate in the reading), Marina Tsvetaev (whose husband
Sergey Efron was in the White Army) mentions Donskoy monarkhism
(the Don monarchism) of the White Army soldiers:
«Я пришла спросить вас, будете ли вы
читать на вечере поэтесс». - «Нет». - «Я так и знала и сразу сказала В. Я. Ну, а
со мной одной будете?» - «С вами одной, да». - «Почему? Вы ведь моих стихов не
знаете». - «Вы умны и остры и не можете писать плохих стихов. Ещё меньше -
читать». (Голос вкрадчиво:) - «Со мной и с Радловой?» - «Коммунистка?» - «Ну,
женский коммунизм...» «- Согласна, что мужской монархизм - лучше. (Пауза.)
Донской. Но, шутки в сторону, партийная или нет?» - «Нет, да нет
же!»
Valerio is a waiter in 'Monaco,' a
good restaurant in the entresol of a tall building crowned by Van's
penthouse and its spacious terrace.
In an impromptu poem (1841)
addressed to Lev Sergeevich Pushkin (the poet's younger brother)
Lermontov (the author of Demon, 1829-39, and Valerik,
1840) compares Pyatigorsk, a Caucasian spa, to Monaco:
Очарователен кавказский наш
Монако!
Танцоров, игроков, бретёров в нем толпы;
В нём лихорадят нас вино,
игра и драка,
И жгут днём женщины, а по ночам —
клопы.
.
In her memoir essay Mat' i
muzyka ("Mother and Music," 1934) Marina Tsvetaev
mentions zhar v doline Dagestana (a noon's heat in a dale of
Dagestan) from Lermontov's prophetic poem Son ("The Dream,"
1841):
Но клавиши — я любила: за черноту и белизну
(чуть желтизну!), за черноту, такую явно, — за белизну (чуть желтизну!), такую
тайно-грустную, за то, что одни широкие, а другие узкие (обиженные!), за то, что
по ним, не сдвигаясь с места, можно, как по лестнице, что эта лестница — из-под
рук! — и что от этой лестницы сразу ледяные ручьи — ледяные лестницы ручьев
вдоль спины — и жар в глазах — тот самый жар в долине Дагестана из Андрюшиной
хрестоматии.
Like Lermontov's poem, Ada is a triple dream (a dream
within a dream within a dream; see in The Nabokovian #53 my "Ada as a
Triple Dream").
There is the poet's name in Palermontovia (on Antiterra,
a part of the British Commonwealth):
A small map of the European part of the
British Commonwealth - say, from Scoto-Scandinavia to the Riviera, Altar and
Palermontovia - as well as most of the U.S.A., from Estoty and Canady to
Argentina, might be quite thickly prickled with enameled red-cross-flag pins,
marking, in her War of the Worlds, Aqua's bivouacs. (1.3)
The Riviera brings to mind Riverlane, Van's boarding-school,
but also Nice and Demon's Mediterranean villa Armina:
Marina arrived in Nice a few days after
the duel, and tracked Demon down in his villa Armina, and in the ecstasy of
reconciliation neither remembered to dupe procreation, whereupon started the
extremely interesnoe polozhenie ('interesting condition') without
which, in fact, these anguished notes could not have been strung.
(1.2)
Demon later gave villa Armina to Marina, Van's, Ada's and
Lucette's mother who spends her last years there (3.1). Similarly, Van gives to
Cordula (his former mistress) his Manhattan apartment where he once lived
with her:
Astraddle, she resembled a child braving her first
merry-go-round. She made a rectangular moue as she used that vulgar
contraption. Sad, sullen streetwalkers do it with expressionless faces, lips
tightly closed. She rode it twice. Their brisk nub and its repetition lasted
fifteen minutes in all, not five. Very pleased with himself, Van walked with her
for a stretch through the brown and green Bois de Belleau in the direction of
her osobnyachyok (small mansion).
'That reminds me,' he said, 'I no longer use our Alexis
apartment. I've had some poor people live there these last seven or eight years
- the family of a police officer who used to be a footman at Uncle Dan's place
in the country. My policeman is dead now and his widow and three boys have gone
back to Ladore. I want to relinquish that flat. Would you like to accept it as a
belated wedding present from an admirer? Good. (3.2)
According to Marina Tsvetaev, the music school of Zograf-Plaksin was in the
old white small masion (starinnyi belyi osobnyachok)
in the Merzlyakovski pereulok (lane) in Moscow.
Alexey Sklyarenko