A pale
diaphanous butterfly with a very black body followed them and Ada cried 'Look!'
and explained it was closely related to a Japanese Parnassian. Mlle Larivière
said suddenly she would use a pseudonym when publishing the story. (1.13)
Mlle Larivière publishes her story under the
penname Guillaume de Monparnasse:
Yes! Wasn't that a scream? Larivière blossoming forth, bosoming forth as a
great writer! A sensational Canadian bestselling author! Her story 'The
Necklace' (La rivière de diamants) had become a classic in girls'
schools and her gorgeous pseudonym 'Guillaume de Monparnasse' (the leaving out
of the 't' made it more intime) was well-known from Quebec to Kaluga.
As she put it in her exotic English: 'Fame struck and the roubles rolled, and
the dollars poured' (both currencies being used at the time in East Estotiland);
but good Ida, far from abandoning Marina, with whom she had been platonically
and irrevocably in love ever since she had seen her in 'Bilitis,' accused
herself of neglecting Lucette by overindulging in Literature; consequently she
now gave the child, in spurts of vacational zeal, considerably more attention
than poor little Ada (said Ada) had received at twelve, after her first
(miserable) term at school. Van had been such an idiot; suspecting Cordula!
Chaste, gentle, dumb, little Cordula de Prey, when Ada had explained to him,
twice, thrice, in different codes, that she had invented a nasty tender
schoolmate, at a time when she had been literally torn from him, and
only assumed - in advance, so to speak - such a girl's existence. A kind of
blank check that she wanted from him; 'Well, you got it,' said Van, 'but now
it's destroyed and will not be renewed; but why did you run after fat Percy,
what was so important?' (1.31)
"Monparnasse" hints at Mount Parnassus. In his essay
"Henri de Régnier" (1910) Maximilian Voloshin mentions José Maria de Heredia,
"the most perfect and plastic of Parnassian poets:"
Самый совершенный и пластический из поэтов
Парнаса - Хозе-Мария Эредиа - выдал своих дочерей за двух поэтов: старшую за
Пьера Луиса, младшую - за Анри де Ренье.
Как стареющий Лир, он разделил своё царство в
области поэзии между своими зятьями.
Voloshin compares Heredia (whose daughters married Pierre Louys and Henri
de Régnier) to ageing King Lear who divided his kingdom between his sons-in-law.
Voloshin is the author of Demony Glukhonemye ("Deaf Mute Demons,"
1917). As he speaks to Van, Demon Veen (Van's and Ada's father) mentions
Cordula de Prey and Cordelia O'Leary:
'My suggestion is, come with me to a cocktail party
today. It is given by the excellent widow of an obscure Major de Prey -
obscurely related to our late neighbor, a fine shot but the light was bad on the
Common, and a meddlesome garbage collector hollered at the wrong moment. Well,
that excellent and influential lady who wishes to help a friend of mine'
(clearing his throat) 'has, I'm told, a daughter of fifteen summers, called
Cordula, who is sure to recompense you for playing Blindman's Buff all summer
with the babes of Ardis Wood.'
'We played mostly Scrabble and Snap,' said Van. 'Is the
needy friend also in my age group?'
'She's a budding Duse,' replied Demon austerely, 'and
the party is strictly a "prof push." You'll stick to Cordula de Prey, I, to
Cordelia O'Leary.'
'D'accord,' said Van.
Cordula's mother, an overripe, overdressed, overpraised
comedy actress, introduced Van to a Turkish acrobat with tawny hairs on his
beautiful orang-utan hands and the fiery eyes of a charlatan - which he was not,
being a great artist in his circular field. Van was so taken up by his talk, by
the training tips he lavished on the eager boy, and by envy, ambition, respect
and other youthful emotions, that he had little time for Cordula, round-faced,
small, dumpy, in a turtle-neck sweater of dark-red wool, or even for the
stunning young lady on whose bare back the paternal hand kept resting lightly as
Demon steered her toward this or that useful guest. But that very same evening
Van ran into Cordula in a bookshop and she said, 'By the way, Van - I can call
you that, can't I? Your cousin Ada is my schoolmate. Oh, yes. Now, explain,
please, what did you do to our difficult Ada? In her very first letter from
Ardis, she positively gushed - our Ada gushed! - about how sweet, clever,
unusual, irresistible -'
'Silly girl. When was that?'
'In June, I imagine. She wrote again later, but her
reply - because I was quite jealous of you - really I was! - and had fired back
lots of questions - well, her reply was evasive, and practically void of
Van.'
He looked her over more closely than he had done before. He had read
somewhere (we might recall the precise title if we tried, not Tiltil, that's in
Blue Beard...) that a man can recognize a Lesbian, young and alone (because a
tailored old pair can fool no one), by a combination of three characteristics:
slightly trembling hands, a cold-in-the-head voice, and that skidding-in-panic
of the eyes if you happen to scan with obvious appraisal such charms as the
occasion might force her to show (lovely shoulders, for instance). Nothing
whatever of all that (yes - Mytilène, petite isle, by Louis Pierre)
seemed to apply to Cordula, who wore a 'garbotosh' (belted mackintosh) over her
terribly unsmart turtle and held both hands deep in her pockets as she
challenged his stare. (1.27)
Pierre Louys is the author of "The Songs of Bilitis."
"Mytilène, petite isle" seems to hint at Aldanov's novel Svyataya
Elena, malen'kiy ostrov ("St. Helena, a Small Island," 1921). In his review
in Contemporary Notes (# 61) of Aldanov's novel Peshchera
("The Cave," 1936) VN particularly praises "the letter from Russia" and the
description of Lenin and his gang being photographed for posterity:
Всё "письмо из России" великолепно, и особенно описaние, кaк Ленин с шaйкой
"снимaлся для потомствa". "Зa его стулом стояли Троцкий во френче и Зиновьев в
кaкой-то блузе или толстовке". "...Кaкие Люциферовы чувствa они должны
испытывaть к нежно любимому Ильичу..." "А ведь, если б в тaком-то году, нa
тaком-то съезде, голосовaть не тaк, a инaче, дa нa тaкую-то брошюру ответить вот
тaк, то ведь не он, a я сидел бы "Дaвыдычем" нa стуле, a он стоял бы у меня зa
спиной с доброй, товaрищески-верноподдaнической улыбкой!" Это звучит приговором
окончaтельным, вечным, тем приговором, который вынесут будущие
временa.
Zinoviev's tolstovka (long belted blouse) brings to
mind Ivan Durmanov's bayronka in a picture in Marina's
bedroom:
A formal photograph, on a separate page: Adochka,
pretty and impure in her flimsy, and Vanichka in gray-flannel suit, with
slant-striped school tie, facing the kimera (chimera, camera) side by
side, at attention, he with the shadow of a forced grin, she, expressionless.
Both recalled the time (between the first tiny cross and a whole graveyard of
kisses) and the occasion: it was ordered by Marina, who had it framed and set up
in her bedroom next to a picture of her brother at twelve or fourteen clad in a
bayronka (open shirt) and cupping a guinea pig in his gowpen (hollowed
hands); the three looked like siblings, with the dead boy providing a
vivisectional alibi. (2.7)
The formal photograph was taken by Kim Beauharnais, the kitchen boy and
photographer at Ardis whose surname hints at Napoleon's first wife. The last
photograph in Kim's album is his "apotheosis" of Ardis:
The entire staff stood in several rows on the steps of
the pillared porch behind the Bank President Baroness Veen and the Vice
President Ida Larivière. Those two were flanked by the two prettiest typists,
Blanche de la Tourberie (ethereal, tearstained, entirely adorable) and a black
girl who had been hired, a few days before Van's departure, to help French, who
towered rather sullenly above her in the second row, the focal point of which
was Bouteillan, still wearing the costume sport he had on when driving off with
Van (that picture had been muffed or omitted). On the butler's right side stood
three footmen; on his left, Bout (who had valeted Van), the fat, flour-pale cook
(Blanche's father) and, next to French, a terribly tweedy gentleman with
sightseeing strappings athwart one shoulder: actually (according to Ada), a
tourist, who, having come all the way from England to see Bryant's Castle, had
bicycled up the wrong road and was, in the picture, under the impression of
accidentally being conjoined to a group of fellow tourists who were visiting
some other old manor quite worth inspecting too. The back rows consisted of less
distinguished menservants and scullions, as well as of gardeners, stableboys,
coachmen, shadows of columns, maids of maids, aids, laundresses, dresses,
recesses - getting less and less distinct as in those bank ads where limited
little employees dimly dimidiated by more fortunate shoulders, but still
asserting themselves, still smile in the process of humble
dissolve.(ibid.)
As he speaks to Cordula, Van quotes an Arabian adage:
“Since you collect adages,” persisted Van, “let me quote an
Arabian one. Paradise is only one assbaa south of a pretty girl’s sash.
Eh bien?” (3.2)
Abdella
Bouazza: As far as I know,
there is no such an adage, despite VN's use of the Arabic assbaa or
isba', literally "a finger" but also a measure, approx. 1.5 inch.
The closest I came to such a
statement was in Henri de Regnier (1864-1936), symbolist poet and
novelist.
“…il n’était pas
certain de l’existence d’un Dieu de justice et de paix, disant qui’il
échangerait volontiers sa part de paradis pour celle que l’on trouve au giron
complaisant d’une belle fille.” Henri de
Regnier, La Pécheresse, p. 24 (Paris: Albin Michel
1922).
Assbaa is a
six-letter word and brings to mind Hodasevich's poem Daktili ("The
Dactyls," 1928). In Greek dactylos means
"finger." Each of the six stanzas of Hodasevich's poem consists of
six lines and begins with the words: Byl moy otets shestipalym...
("My father was six-fingered..."). As VN points out in his EO Commentary (vol.
II, pp. 159-60), the joint pseudonym of Byron's translators, Amédée Pichot
and Eusèbe de Salle, "A. E. de Chastopalli," is an imperfect anagram of
their names and by a bizarre resembles the Russian word for
"six-fingered" (shestipalyi). The Dactyls were also metalworkers and
magicians dwelling on Mount Ida (cf. Ida Larivière).
Hodasevich's father was a
photographer in Tula who took a picture of Tolstoy's family (reproduced in
Sergey Tolstoy's Ocherki bylogo, "The Sketches of the Past," 1949). The
characters in Tolstoy's War and Peace include Napoleon.
Astraddle, she [Cordula] 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). (3.2)
In her memoir essay
on Bryusov, Geroy truda ("The Hero of Toil," 1925), Marina
Tsvetaev (who as a girl spent her summers in Tarusa, near Kaluga) mentions
an old white osobnyachok in Moscow housing the music school of
Zograf-Plaksin:
Первая встреча моя с Брюсовым была заочная. Мне
было 6 лет. Я только что поступила в музыкальную школу Зограф-Плаксиной
(старинный белый особнячок в Мерзляковском пер<еулке>, на Никитской)...
И разговор матери и дамы о музыке, о детях,
рассказ дамы о своём сыне Валерии (а у меня сестра была Валерия, поэтому
запомнилось), «таком талантливом и увлекающемся», пишущем стихи и имеющем
недоразумения с полицией.
The name Zograf-Plaksin brings to mind Zographos
("Zogdog"), one of Van's schoolmates at Riverlane. Marina Tsvetaev is the
author of a memoir essay on Voloshin, Zhivoe o zhivom ("A Living Word
about the Living Man," 1932).
Van meets Cordula (now Mrs. Ivan G. Tobak) in Lute (as
Paris is also known on Antiterra):
A moment later, as happens so often in farces
and foreign cities, Van ran into another friend. With a surge of delight he saw
Cordula in a tight scarlet skirt bending with baby words of comfort over two
unhappy poodlets attached to the waiting-post of a sausage shop. Van stroked her
with his fingertips, and as she straightened up indignantly and turned around
(indignation instantly replaced by gay recognition), he quoted the stale but
appropriate lines he had known since the days his schoolmates annoyed him with
them:
The Veens speak only to Tobaks
But Tobaks speak only to dogs. (3.2)
Voloshin
is the author of Lutetia Parisiorum (a sonnet written on April 22,
1915). In his essay The National Festival July 14 in Paris (1916)
Voloshin describes a merry-go-round of bicycles. The girls riding them have
their hair done à la chien (dog-style):
Быстро вертится карусель, и
играет орган. Карусель маленькая, из велосипедов. На них сидят верхом девицы с
причёсками à la chien, макро [souteneurs] в каскетках, дети... Все
они с увлечением работают ногами и трясут расставленными локтями.*
After helping her to nurse
Andrey at Agavia Ranch through a couple of acrimonious years (she begrudged
Ada every poor little hour devoted to collecting, mounting, and rearing!), and
then taking exception to Ada's choosing the famous and excellent Grotonovich
Clinic (for her husband's endless periods of treatment) instead of Princess
Alashin's select sanatorium, Dorothy Vinelander retired to a subarctic monastery
town (Ilemna, now Novostabia) where eventually she married a Mr Brod or Bred,
tender and passionate, dark and handsome, who traveled in eucharistials and
other sacramental objects throughout the Severnïya Territorii and who
subsequently was to direct, and still may be directing half a century later,
archeological reconstructions at Goreloe (the 'Lyaskan Herculanum'); what
treasures he dug up in matrimony is another question. (3.8)
It seems that the Princess' name comes
from à la chien, the phrase used by Voloshin in his
essay.
Would she write? Oh, she did! Oh, every old thing
turned out superfine! Fancy raced fact in never-ending rivalry and girl giggles.
Andrey lived only a few months longer, po pal'tzam (finger counting)
one, two, three, four - say, five. Andrey was doing
fine by the spring of nineteen six or seven, with a comfortably collapsed lung
and a straw-colored beard (nothing like facial vegetation to keep a patient
busy). Life forked and reforked. Yes, she told him. He insulted Van on the
mauve-painted porch of a Douglas hotel where Van was awaiting his Ada in a final
version of Les Enfants Maudits. Monsieur de
Tobak (an earlier cuckold) and Lord Erminin (a second-time second) witnessed the
duel in the company of a few tall yuccas and short cactuses. Vinelander wore a
cutaway (he would); Van, a white suit. Neither man wished to take any chances,
and both fired simultaneously. Both fell. Mr Cutaway's bullet struck the outsole
of Van's left shoe (white, black-heeled), tripping him and causing a slight
fourmillement (excited ants) in his foot - that was all. Van got his adversary
plunk in the underbelly - a serious wound from which he recovered in due time,
if at all (here the forking swims in the mist). Actually it was all much duller.
(ibid.)
Van fights this duel with Andrey Vinelander (Ada's husband who dies of
tuberculosis) in his dream. Les Enfants Maudits (the
title of Mlle Larivière's novel) blends un enfant terrible with Les
Poètes maudits (initially, the title of a book by Paul Verlaine,
1884). In the closing lines of his poem Khotite l' znat' vse tainstva
lyubvi... ("Do you Want to Know All Secrets of Love?" 1827) Baratynski
plays on the phrase po pal'tsam (in detail):
Хотите ль знать все таинства
любви?
Послушайте девицу пожилую:
Какой огонь она родит в крови!
Какую
власть дарует поцелую!
Какой язык пылающим очам!
Как миг один рассудок
побеждает:
По пальцам всё она расскажет вам.
— Ужели всё
она по пальцам знает?
Btw., in 1931 the Japanese film director Yasujiro Ozu made
a movie of Henri de Régnier's story "The Sorrow of the Beautiful Woman"
(alas, I fail to find out its original French title).
Bilitis = Tbilisi
Bruni = rubin = Nibur
In the opening
lines of "The Dactyls" Hodasevich mentions F. A. Bruni
(1799-1875), his father's teacher at the Academy of Arts:
Был мой отец шестипалым. По ткани,
натянутой туго,
Бруни его обучал мягкою кистью водить.
He had six
fingers, my father. Across the stretch of canvas,
Bruni tutored the soft
trail of his brush.
rubin - Russ., ruby; Ruby Black
is Van's black wet-nurse whom Marina's mad twin sister Aqua mentions in her
suicide note:
Aujourd'hui
(heute-toity!) I, this eye-rolling toy, have earned the psykitsch
right to enjoy a landparty with Herr Doktor Sig, Nurse Joan the Terrible, and
several 'patients,' in the neighboring bor (piney wood) where I noticed
exactly the same skunk-like squirrels, Van, that your Darkblue ancestor imported
to Ardis Park, where you will ramble one day, no doubt. The hands of a clock,
even when out of order, must know and let the dumbest little watch know where
they stand, otherwise neither is a dial but only a white face with a trick
mustache. Similarly, chelovek (human being) must know where he stands
and let others know, otherwise he is not even a klok (piece) of a
chelovek, neither a he, nor she, but 'a tit of it' as poor Ruby, my
little Van, used to say of her scanty right breast. I, poor Princesse Lointaine,
très lointaine by now, do not know where I stand. Hence I must fall. So
adieu, my dear, dear son, and farewell, poor Demon, I do not know the date or
the season, but it is a reasonably, and no doubt seasonably, fair day, with a
lot of cute little ants queuing to get at my pretty pills.
[Signed] My sister's sister who
teper'
iz ada ('now is out of hell')
(1.3)
Nibur - Russian spelling of Niebuhr, the German
historian (1776-1831). In Pushkin's Istoriya sela Goryukhina ("The
History of Goryukhino Village," 1830) Ivan Petrovich. Belkin mentions
Niehbur:
Имя его [Курганова] казалось мне вымышленным и предание о нем
пустою мифою, ожидавшею изыскания нового Нибура.
*see also my post of Jan. 8, 2014
Alexey
Sklyarenko