Lucette to Van: '- because
at the other end, at the heel end of the Vaniada divan - remember? - there was
only the closet in which you two locked me up at least ten times.'
'Nu uzh i desyat' (exaggeration). Once - and
never more. It had a keyless hole as big as Kant's eye. Kant was famous for his
cucumicolor iris.' (2.5)
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) appears in Aldanov's Chyortov
most (The Devil's Bridge, the second novel in Aldanov's
tetralogy The Thinker about the French Revolution and Napoleonic
wars; Saint Helena, Small Island is the tetralogy's last novel).
According to Aldanov, Kant had golubye (blue) eyes:
Из глубоких впадин, покрытых седыми бровями, лили
мягкий свет голубые глаза. (The Devil's Bridge, Part One,
chapter XI)
"Cucumicolor" suggests that Kant's eyes were green, the same color
as Lucette's eyes are:
The three of them cuddled and cosseted so frequently
and so thoroughly that at last one afternoon on the long-suffering black divan
he and Ada could no longer restrain their amorous excitement, and under the
absurd pretext of a hide-and-seek game they locked up Lucette in a closet used
for storing bound volumes of The Kaluga Waters and The Lugano
Sun, and frantically made love, while the child knocked and called and
kicked until the key fell out and the keyhole turned an angry green.
(1.34)
Kant + iris = akt/kat/tak
+ Sirin = satirik + N
akt - Russ., act (cf. polovoy akt,
coitus)
kat - obs.,
executioner
tak - Russ.,
so (sic); thus, etc.
Sirin - VN's Russian nom de plume
satirik - Russ.,
satirist
Kant is a namesake of the cartoonists Emmanuil de Saint Priest (whose
karandashi, pencils, were blunted by Prolasov: Eugene Onegin,
Eight: XXVI: 3-4) and Emmanuel Poiré (Caran
d'Ache). "The famous St Priest of Chose" is
mentioned in the same chapter of Ada as Mr Plunkett (the reformed
shuler who brings to mind Balunski, the former king of cardsharps
in Kuprin's story Uchenik, "The Disciple"):
This was followed by a good bluff against a better one;
and with Van's generously slipping the desperately flashing and twinkling young
lord good but not good enough hands, the latter's martyrdom came to a sudden end
(London tailors wringing their hands in the fog, and a moneylender, the famous
St Priest of Chose, asking for an appointment with Dick's father).
(1.28)
In Pushkin's EO (Two: VI: 8) Lenski is poklonnik Kanta i
poet (Kant's votary and a poet). In his EO Commentary, note to Eight:
XXVIa: 5-11, VN quotes Pushkin's poem Eyo glaza ("Her Eyes," 1828)
beginning with line 7 ("the eyes of my Olenin!") and translates
to English Pushkin's poem To Dawe, Esqr.:
Why draw with your pencil sublime
My Negro profile? Though transmitted
By you it be to future time,
It will be by Mephisto twitted.
Draw fair Olenin's features, in the glow
Of heart-engendered inspiration:
Only on youth and beauty should bestow
A genius its adoration.
"Esqr." in the title of Pushkin's poem brings to
mind Walter C. Keyway, Esq., an English tourist whom Baron Klim Avidov
catapulted with an uppercut into the porter's lodge for jokingly
remarking how clever it was to drop the first letter of one's name in order to
use it as a particule, at the Gritz, in Venezia Rossa (1.36). "Gritz"
brings to mind Mme Gritsatsuev, "a passionate woman, a poet's dream," in
Ilf and Petrov's The Twelve Chairs (1928). Mme Gritsatsuev
lives in Stargorod ("Oldton," possibly an allusion to Novgorod,
"Newton"). In Sorbonne (a cheap hotel in Stargorod) Father Fyodor attempts
to sting Bender with karandash (a pencil) pushed through a keyhole, but
Bender snatches it, with a pocket-knife carves a rude word on its edge and
pushes it back through the keyhole of the priest's door:
Ostap bent down to the keyhole, cupped his
hand to his mouth, and said clearly:
"How much is opium for the
people?"
There was silence behind the door:
"Dad, you're a nasty old man,"
said Ostap loudly.
That very moment the point of Father Fyodor's pencil shot
out of the keyhole and wiggled in the air in an attempt to sting his enemy. The
concessionaire jumped back in time and grasped hold of it. Separated by the
door, the adversaries began a tug-of-war. Youth was victorious, and
the pencil, clinging like a splinter, slowly crept out of the keyhole. Ostap
returned with the trophy to his room, where the partners were still more
elated.
"And the enemy's in flight, flight, flight," he
crooned.
He carved a rude word on the edge of the pencil with a
pocket-knife, ran into the corridor, pushed the pencil through the priest's
keyhole, and hurried back. (Chapter XII "A Passionate Woman,
a Poet's Dream")
Baron Klim Avidov = Vladimir
Nabokov
Olenin + barn = Lenin +
Baron
In the Night of the Burnung
Barn (when Van and Ada make love for the first
time) the Baronial Barn is set on
fire by Kim Beauharnais, the kitchen boy and photographer at
Ardis (1.19). Years later Van blinds Kim for spying on him and Ada and
attempting to blackmail Ada:
'But, you know, there's one thing I
regret,' she [Ada] added: 'Your use of an
alpenstock to release a brute's fury - not yours, not my Van's. I should never
have told you about the Ladore policeman. You should never have taken him into
your confidence, never connived with him to burn those files - and most of
Kalugano's pine forest. Eto unizitel'no (it is
humiliating).'
'Amends have been made,' replied fat Van with a fat
man's chuckle. 'I'm keeping Kim safe and snug in a nice Home for Disabled
Professional People, where he gets from me loads of nicely brailled books on new
processes in chromophotography.' (2.11)
In Ilf and Petrov's The Golden Calf (1932) Bender successfully
blackmails Koreyko, a secret Soviet millionaire. One of the novel's chapters is
entitled "Homer, Milton and Panikovski" (Homer and Milton were blind, Panikovski
simulates blindness).
Kant's home city where he spent all his life, Koenigsberg
(renamed Kaliningrad* after the World War II), brings to mind Kingston
(Koenig is German for "king"), Van's American University where he
teaches philosophy and where Lucette visits him (2.5). Btw., "Koenigsberg bridge
problem" (a mathematical problem in graph theory) was solved by Leonhard Euler,
the mathematician who is mentioned in Ada:
The year 1880 (Aqua was still alive - somehow,
somewhere!) was to prove to be the most retentive and talented one in his long,
too long, never too long life. He was ten. His father had lingered in the West
where the many-colored mountains acted upon Van as they had on all young
Russians of genius. He could solve an Euler-type problem or learn by heart
Pushkin's 'Headless Horseman' poem in less than twenty minutes.
(1.28)
and in Kuprin's scifi novella Zhidkoe solntse ("Liquid Sun,"
1912):
- Знaчит, Гук, и Эйлер, и
Юнг?..
- Дa, - прервaл меня лорд
Чaльсбери, - и они, и Френель, и Коши, и Мaлюс, и Гюйгенс, и дaже великий
Арaго - все они ошибaлись, рaссмaтривaя явление светa кaк одно из состояний
мирового эфирa.
Henry Dibble (the hero and narrator in "Liquid Sun") brings to Lord
Chalsbury, the owner of a laboratory on the extinct volcano
Cayambe in Ecuador, the priceless eye-like diamonds from the two
Amsterdam jewelers (both of whom are Jewish). According to Marina (Van's,
Ada's and Lucette's mother, poor mad Aqua's twin sister), "the installation and
upkeep of the 'drums' (cylinders) of a magnetic telephone cost a Jew's
eye:"
Marina's contribution was more modest, but
it too had its charm. She showed Van and Lucette (the others knew all about it)
the exact pine and the exact spot on its rugged red trunk where in old, very old
days a magnetic telephone nested, communicating with Ardis Hall. After the
banning of 'currents and circuits,' she said (rapidly but freely, with an
actress's désinvolture pronouncing those not quite proper words - while
puzzled Lucette tugged at the sleeve of Van, of Vanichka, who could explain
everything), her husband's grandmother, an engineer of great genius, 'tubed' the
Redmount rill (running just below the glade from a hill above Ardis). She made
it carry vibrational vibgyors (prismatic pulsations) through a system
of platinum segments. These produced, of course, only one-way messages, and the
installation and upkeep of the 'drums' (cylinders) cost, she said, a Jew's eye,
so that the idea was dropped, however tempting the possibility of informing a
picnicking Veen that his house was on fire. (1.13)
In Kuprin's story
Poslednee slovo ("The Last Word," 1908)
fotofon (the photophone, telecommunications device which allowed
for the transmission of speech on a beam of light) is mentioned among other
modern (and not so modern, as, for instance, the
newspaper) inventions:
Да! Это он, не кто, как он, изобрёл шарманку,
граммофон, биоскоп, фотофон, биограф, фонограф, ауксетофон, патефон, музыкальный
ящик монопан, механического тапёра, автомобиль, бумажные воротники, олеографию и
газету.
*Lenin's home city on the Volga, Simbirsk, was renamed Ulyanovsk (after
Lenin's real name).