Мальбрук в поход собрался
— Mironton — mironton — mirontaine —
Мальбрук в поход собрался —
Зарыт...
Malbrook prepared to fight a campaign
- Mironton-mironton-mirontaine -
Malbrook prepared to fight a campaign
-
Buried...
Folding the linen, Blanche hums this song in
French:
Everything appeared as it always used to be, the little nymphs and goats on
the painted ceiling, the mellow light of the day ripening into evening, the
remote dreamy rhythm of Blanche's 'linen-folding' voice humming 'Malbrough'
(...ne sait quand reviendra, ne sait quand reviendra) and the two
lovely heads, bronze-black and copper-red, inclined over the table...
'Mon page, mon beau page,
- Mironton-mironton-mirontaine -
Mon page, mon beau page...' (1.40)
Btw., Malen'kiy
pazh ("Little Page") is a poem by Marina Tsvetaev included in Vecherniy
albom ("The Evening Album," 1910).
In one of her letters to Van Ada calls Blanche (who
returned to Ardis and married Trofim Fartukov, the coachman) "Cinderella de
Torf:" Je réalise, as your sweet Cinderella de
Torf (now Madame Trofim Fartukov) used to say, that I'm being coy and
obscene. (2.1)
Torf is Russian for "peat." Pasternak's
poem "To Marina Tsvetaev" (1929) ends in the lines:
Он вырвется, курясь, из прорв
Судеб, расплющенных в лепёху,
И внуки
скажут, как про торф:
Горит такого-то эпоха.
...And the grandchildren will say, as of
peat:
the epoch of So-and-so is burning.
One is tempted to substitute Nabokova ("of
Nabokov") for takogo-to ("of So-and-so"):
И внуки скажут, как про торф:
Горит Набокова эпоха.
On Antiterra Pasternak's novel Doktor
Zhivago (1957) is known as Les
Amours du Docteur Mertvago, a mystical romance by a pastor, and
Mertvago Forever (2.5). A tattered copy of the former romance was
mislaid by Blanche:
A pointer of sunlight daubed with greener paint a long green box where
croquet implements were kept; but the balls had been rolled down the hill by
some rowdy children, the little Erminins, who were now Van's age and had grown
very nice and quiet.
'As we all are at that age,' said Van and stooped to pick up a curved
tortoiseshell comb - the kind that girls use to hold up their hair behind; he
had seen one, exactly like that, quite recently, but when, in whose
hairdo?
'One of the maids,' said Ada. 'That tattered chapbook must also belong to
her, Les Amours du Docteur Mertvago, a mystical romance by a pastor.'
(1.8)
Erminin + vair = miniver + rain
Marina Tsvetaev's essay on Pasternak is entitled
Svetovoy liven' ("The Shower of Light," 1922). The name Blanche means
"white." Blanche is the mistress of Bouteillan (the butler at Ardis) and of
his bastard Bout. She also has a romance with old Sore, the Burgundian
night watchman (1.31). Marina Tsvetaev is the author of Plennyi
dukh ("The Captive Spirit," 1934), a memoir essay about Andrey Bely (the
penname of Boris Bugaev, 1880-1934). Belyi means "white."
In "The Shower of Light" Marina Tsvetaev compares
Pasternak to Mayakovski:
Господа, эта книга - для всех. И надо, чтоб её все знали, эта книга для душ
то, что Маяковский для тел: разряжение в действии. Не только целебна - как те
его сонные травы - чудотворна.
According to Marina Tsvetaev, Pasternak's book
Sestra moya zhizn' ("My Sister Life," 1922) is for souls what Mayakovski is
for bodies: the discharging in action.
In his poem O Pravitelyakh (On Rulers, 1945)
VN mentions his "late namesake" (V. V. Mayakovski), the coachmen of
empires and monstrous pumpkin:
Кучера государств зато хороши
при
исполнении должности: шибко
ледяная навстречу летит синева,
огневые трещат
на ветру рукава...
Наблюдатель глядит иностранный
и спереди видит
прекрасные очи навыкат,
а сзади прекрасную помесь диванной
подушки с
чудовищной тыквой.
Per contra, the coachmen of empires
look good
when performing their duties:
swiftly
toward them flies the blue of the
sky;
their flame-colored sleeves clap in
the wind;
the foreign observer looks on
and sees
in front bulging eyes of great
beauty
and behind a beautiful
blend
of divan cushion and monstrous
pumpkin.
In Charles Perrault's fairy
tale Cendrillon ou la Petite Pantoufle de verre (1697) the
carriage is metamorphosed into a pumpkin. In the night of the Burning Barn
Blanche returns to Ardis in a pumpkin-hued police van:
When he grew too loud, she shushed, shushingly
breathing into his mouth, and now her four limbs were frankly around him as if
she had been love-making for years in all our dreams - but impatient young
passion (brimming like Van's overflowing bath while he is reworking this, a
crotchety gray old wordman on the edge of a hotel bed) did not survive the first
few blind thrusts; it burst at the lip of the orchid, and a bluebird uttered a
warning warble, and the lights were now stealing back under a rugged dawn, the
firefly signals were circumscribing the reservoir, the dots of the carriage
lamps became stars, wheels rasped on the gravel, all the dogs returned well
pleased with the night treat, the cook's niece Blanche jumped out of a
pumpkin-hued police van in her stockinged feet (long, long after midnight, alas)
- and our two naked children, grabbing lap robe and nightdress, and giving the
couch a parting pat, pattered back with their candlesticks to their innocent
bedrooms. (1.19)
On the following morning Blanche finds her slipper
in one of the waistpaper-baskets of the library (where Van
and Ada, on the black divan with yellow cushions, made love for the
first time):
Suddenly Van heard her lovely dark voice on the
staircase saying in an upward direction, 'Je l'ai vu dans une des corbeilles
de la bibliothèque' - presumably in reference to some geranium or violet or
slipper orchid. There was a 'bannister pause,' as photographers say, and after
the maid's distant glad cry had come from the library Ada's voice added: 'Je
me demande, I wonder qui l'a mis là, who put it there.'
Aussitôt après she entered the dining room. (1.20)
"Ashette" hints at Hachette, a French publishing firm.
One is reminded of Ole Lukoye, Sergey Efron's and Marina Tsvetaev's
bogus publishing house (Ole Lukøje is a fairy tale by H. Ch.
Andersen).
Alexey Sklyarenko