It was, incidentally, the same kindly but
touchy Avidov (mentioned in many racy memoirs of the time) who once catapulted
with an uppercut an unfortunate English tourist into the porter's lodge for his
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 hints at Mme Gritsatsuev, "a passionate woman, a
poet's dream," in Ilf and Petrov's The Twelve Chairs. In
Sorbonne (a cheap hotel in Stargorod, the city where Mme Gritsatsuev lives)
Father Fyodor attempts to sting Bender with 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 (see my
previous post).
In his essay Venetsiya ("Venice," 1911) Kuprin
confesses that he was tempted to steal an engraved steel key of
one of the doors in the Doge's Palace:
Простой стальной ключ, всунутый в замок двери,
отчеканен рукой великолепного мастера, который, может быть, даже не оставил
своего имени истории, и я должен, к моему стыду, признаться, что только большое
усилие воли помешало мне украсть этот ключ на память о Венеции.
In his essay Kuprin mentions Botticelli's mosaic in the tomb
of Cardinal Zeno depicting the whole story of Herod, Herodias, Salome and
John the Baptist. According to Kuprin, Salome's famous dance as painted by
Botticelli would have made Ida Rubinstein (the ballerina who
was portrayed as Salome by Serov) blush and turn
away:
А знаменитый танец Саломеи заставил бы
покраснеть и отвернуться Иду Рубинштейн.
На Саломее... на ней, то есть, я хотел сказать,
на этой длинноногой прекрасной женщине, с невинно наклонённой набок головой и с
удивлённо поднятыми кверху тонкими бровями... вы понимаете, что я хочу
сказать?.. На ней нет совсем ничего.
Pokrasnet' (to blush) comes from krasnyi
(red). Hence "Venezia Rossa" (rosso is Italian for "red"). In
Botticelli's painting the head of naked Salome is innocently
bent nabok (on one side). Ada's habit to blush distresses Van "as
being much more improper than any act that might cause it" (1.20). Ida
Rubinstein is a namesake of Ida Larivière (Lucette's prim
governess).
At the end Kuprin gives an advice to all Russian
tourists:
P.S. Неизбежный совет всем русским туристам.
Оставляйте Венецию и кардинала Зено в виде десерта: после них все кажется
пресным.
"Leave Venice and Cardinal Zeno for the dessert.
Everything after them seems insipid." The same can be said of VN and his
writings, no?
Remarkably, in the second of the three poems dedicated to
Venice (included in "Italian Verses," 1909), "Холодный ветер
от лагуны..." ("The cold wind from the lagoon..."), Blok (the author
of "The Twelve," 1918) mentions Salome carrying his blood-stained
head:
В тени дворцовой галлереи,
Чуть озарённая луной,
Таясь проходит Саломея
С моей кровавой головой.
In Ada (3.3) Lucette is linked to Blok's
Incognita, and Van Veen is modeled partly on the romantic image of
the author of The Night Violet, the poem (1906) subtitled "A
Dream." Btw., Nochnaya fialka (The Night Violet, 1933) is
a story by Kuprin.
Alexey Sklyarenko