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)
In Aldanov's Mogila voina ("The Grave of the Warrior," 1938)
the action begins in Venice, the city where Lord Byron (the hero of Aldanov's
"philosophical fairy tale") lived before sailing off to Greece. Venezia
Rossa means "Red Venice." When Byron and his mistress, Countess Teresa
Guiccioli, approach the city from the sea in a gondola, Venice is
"flooded with red light:"
Гондола подходила к Сакка-сан-Биаджо. Показалась
залитая красным светом Венеция, и в сотый раз он испытал
впечатление чуда при виде этого затопленного города, медленно
разрушающегося города дворцов и церквей, города с людьми, не научившимися ходить
как следует из-за гондол и каналов, города, в котором лодочники с лицами
древних патрициев, не думая ни о какой литературе, поют строфы Торквато
Тассо. (chapter I)
Like Pushkin in his Eugene Onegin (One: XLVIII: 13-14), Aldanov
mentions the gondoliers singing the stanzas of Torquato Tasso. The
characters of Tasso's Jerusalem Deivered include Erminia, a young
woman who is hopelessly in love with Tancred. Erminia was the nickname
of E. M. Khitrovo, Kutuzov's daughter who was hopelessly in love with Pushkin.
Erminia brings to mind the Erminin twins in Ada. Van's
conversation with Greg Erminin, whom Van after a long
separation meets in Paris, on the Avenue Guillaume
Pitt, parodies the dialogue of Onegin and Prince N. in Eugene
Onegin (Eight: XVIII: 1-4):
'Tak tï zhenat (so you are married)? Didn't
know it. How long?'
'About two years.'
'To whom?'
'Maude Sween.'
'The daughter of the poet?'
'No, no, her mother is a Brougham.' (3.2)
On Antiterra Paris is also known as Lute (1.28, et
passim). In his "Ode to Count Khvostov" (1825) Pushkin
mentions lyutyi Pit (fierce Pitt, "the famous English minister and
well-known enemy of Freedom") and compares Khvostov to Byron (spelled
"Beyron" in a mocking imitation of Kuechelbecker and Ryleev):
Султан ярится. Кровь Эллады
И резвоскачет, и кипит.
Открылись грекам древни клады,
Трепещет в Стиксе лютый пит.
И се - летит продерзко судно
И мещет громы обоюдно.
Се Бейрон, Феба образец.
Притек, но недуг быстропарный,
Строптивый и неблагодарный
Взнёс смерти на него резец.
...Вам с Бейроном шипела злоба,
Гремела и правдива лесть.
Он лорд - граф ты! Поэты оба!
Се, мнится, явно сходство есть.
According to VN (EO Commentary, II, p. 479) , Russians
on the whole had less trouble with Byron's and his characters' names than Byron
had with Russian ones (he rhymed, for instance "Souvaroff - lover of" and
"Suvarrow - sorrow" instead of the correct "Suvorov - more of").
A distant relative of the Count, Suvorov died in Khvostov's St.
Petersburg house and was buried in the Alexander Nevski monastery
(lavra). Suvorov's epitaph was composed by Derzhavin:
Суворов спросил однажды:
- Какую же ты мне напишешь эпитафию?
- По-моему, много слов не нужно, - ответил Державин.
Довольно сказать: здесь лежит Суворов.
6 мая Суворов при нём
скончался. (Hodasevich, Derzhavin, 1931)
In his review of Derzhavin (Sovremennye zapiski,
XLVI, pp. 496-97) Aldanov compares Hodasevich's prose style to that of
Pushkin in The Queen of Spades:
Это чисто пушкинская проза... одной звуковой своей
формой вызывает в памяти читателя "Пиковую даму."
Aldanov's "Grave of the Warrior" ends as follows:
На месте дома, в котором умер Байрон, теперь, по
словам писателя-очевидца, находится "а public and very promiscuous
latrine." Английский турист испытывает чувство позора", -- говорит
Никольсон.
"The English tourist feels shame," [when he sees what had
become of the house in Missolonghi where Byron died] Nickolson
says.
Like "The Grave of the Warrior," Aldanov's Punshevaya
vodka ("The Punch Vodka," 1938) is "philosophical
fairy tale:"
"Пуншевая Водка" и "Могила Воина",
разумеется, не исторические романы, а "философские сказки". Не следует ли
напомнить, что у этого литературного рода должны быть свои законы? (the
author's note prefaced to "The Grave of the Warrior")
Baron Klim Avidov (who, according to Walter C.
Keyway, Esq., dropped the first letter of his name in order to
use it as a nobility particle) and vodka bring to mind Denis Davydov, the
poet and soldier who is mentioned by Chekhov in a letter of Nov. 25, 1892,
to Suvorin:
Let me remind you that the writers, who we
say are for all time or are simply good, and who intoxicate us, have one common
and very important characteristic; they are going towards something and are
summoning you towards it, too, and you feel not with your mind, but with your
whole being, that they have some object, just like the
ghost of Hamlet's father, who did not come and disturb the imagination for
nothing. Some have more immediate objects—the abolition of serfdom, the
liberation of their country, politics, beauty, or simply vodka, like Denis
Davydov; others have remote objects—God, life beyond the grave, the happiness of
humanity, and so on. The best of them are realists and paint life
as it is, but, through every line's being soaked in the consciousness of an
object, you feel, besides life as it is, the life which ought to be, and that
captivates you.
In his letter Chekhov modestly compares his
story Palata No. 6 (1892) to
lemonade:
You are a hard drinker, and I
have regaled you with sweet lemonade, and you, after giving the lemonade its
due, justly observe that there is no spirit in it. That is just what is lacking
in our productions—the alcohol which could intoxicate and subjugate, and you
state that very well. Why not? Putting aside "Ward No. 6" and myself, let us
discuss the matter in general, for that is more
interesting.
One of Ada's lovers, the composer Philip Rack
(Lucette's music teacher who was poisoned by his wife Elsie) dies in the
Kalugano hospital, in Ward Five:
Did Van like music? Sportsmen usually did,
didn't they? Would he care to have a Sonorola by his bed? No, he disliked music,
but did the doctor, being a concert-goer, know perhaps where a musician called
Rack could be found? 'Ward Five,' answered the doctor promptly. Van
misunderstood this as the title of some piece of music and repeated his
question. Would he find Rack's address at Harper's music shop? Well, they used
to rent a cottage way down Dorofey Road, near the forest, but now some other
people had moved in. Ward Five was where hopeless cases were kept.
(1.42)
6 + 5 = 11. In card games of chance 11 is an ace's value. In
his third game of stuss with Chekalinski, Hermann "mispulled" a queen
instead of the ace he thought he had taken from his deck.
11 + 6 = 17. Hermann went
out of his mind, and is now confined in room Number 17 of the Obukhov Hospital.
He never answers any questions, but he constantly mutters with unusual
rapidity: "Three, seven, ace! Three, seven,
queen!.." ("The Queen of Spades," Epilogue)
According to Tomski (a character in Pushkin's story), his
grandmother learnt the secret of three cards from Count St.
Germain whom she met in Paris:
She had shortly before become acquainted
with a very remarkable man. You have heard of Count St. Germain, about whom so
many marvellous stories are told. You know that he represented himself as the
Wandering Jew, as the discoverer of the elixir of life, of the philosopher's
stone, and so forth. Some laughed at him as a charlatan; but Casanova, in his
memoirs, says that he was a spy. (chapter I)
Venice is Casanova's home city. After his first night with Ada
in "Ardis the Second" Van tells her:
"I've paid you eight compliments, as a certain
Venetian - "
"I'm not interested in vulgar Venetians.
You have become so coarse, dear Van, so strange..." (1.31)
According to Van, Casanova had a definitely monochromatic
pencil:
What we have now is not so much a Casanovanic situation
(that double-wencher had a definitely monochromatic pencil - in keeping with the
memoirs of his dingy era) as a much earlier canvas, of the Venetian (sensu
largo) school, reproduced (in 'Forbidden Masterpieces') expertly enough to
stand the scrutiny of a bordel's vue d'oiseau. (2.8)
This can not be said of Van Veen and his memoirs:
Inset [in
Van's palata in the Kalugano hospital], so to speak, was
Tatiana, a remarkably pretty and proud young nurse, with black hair and
diaphanous skin (some of her attitudes and gestures, and that harmony between
neck and eyes which is the special, scarcely yet investigated secret of feminine
grace fantastically and agonizingly reminded him of Ada, and he sought escape
from that image in a powerful response to the charms of Tatiana, a torturing
angel in her own right. Enforced immobility forbade the chase and grab of common
cartoons. He begged her to massage his legs but she tested him with one glance
of her grave, dark eyes - and delegated the task to Dorofey, a beefy-handed male
nurse, strong enough to lift him bodily out of bed. with the sick child clasping
the massive nape. When Van managed once to twiddle her breasts, she warned him
she would complain if he ever repeated what she dubbed more aptly than she
thought 'that soft dangle.' An exhibition of his state with a humble appeal for
a healing caress resulted in her drily remarking that distinguished gentlemen in
public parks got quite lengthy prison terms for that sort of thing. However,
much later, she wrote him a charming and melancholy letter in red ink on pink
paper; but other emotions and events had intervened, and he never met her
again). (1.42)
Tatiana's charming and
melancholy letter in red ink on pink paper brings to mind
Tatiana's letter to Onegin in Pushkin's EO - but also Prince N.'s rose-red
banknote pocketed by Demon who won a bet with his orchestra-seat
neighbor (1.2).
In a letter of March 11, 1892, to Suvorin Chekhov criticizes
Pisarev's attitude to Tatiana's letter to Onegin:
It is not Pisarev's ideas that are brutalizing,
for he has none, but his coarse tone. His attitude to Tatiana, especially to her
charming letter, which I love tenderly, seems to me simply abominable. His
criticism has the foul aroma of an insolent captious
procurator.
In a letter of May 15, 1889, to Suvorin Chekhov,
answering Suvorin's letter about Paul Bourget, calls the radical
critic Pisarev "a belligerent Spanish monk:"
In the middle ages alchemy was gradually in a
natural, peaceful way changing into chemistry, and astrology into astronomy; the
monks did not understand, saw a conflict and fought against it. Just such a
belligerent Spanish monk was our Pisarev in the sixties.
Philip Rack's name seems to hint at the Spanish
Inquisition. Rack's wife Elsie brings to mind Elsie de Nord, a vulgar literary
demimondaine whose name hints at Elsinore (the royal castle in
Hamlet):
Arch and grandiloquent, Ada would be
describing a dream, a natural history wonder, a special belletristic device -
Paul Bourget's 'monologue intérieur' borrowed from old Leo - or some ludicrous
blunder in the current column of Elsie de Nord, a vulgar literary demimondaine
who thought that Lyovin went about Moscow in a nagol'nïy tulup, 'a
muzhik's sheepskin coat, bare side out, bloom side in,' as defined in a
dictionary our commentator produced like a conjurer, never to be procurable by
Elsies. (1.10)
Speaking of uppercuts: as a Cambridge student, Byron
participated in boxing matches.
Alexey Sklyarenko