Three elements, fire, water, and air,
destroyed, in that sequence, Marina, Lucette, and Demon. Terra waited.
(3.1)
Balmont is the author of "Fire," "Water," "Air" and "Earth" (the
four cycles of poems).
'Look, gipsies,' she
[Ada] whispered, pointing at three shadowy forms - two men, one with
a ladder, and a child or dwarf - circumspectly moving across the gray lawn. They
saw the candlelit window and decamped, the smaller one walking à
reculons as if taking pictures. (1.19)
A child or dwarf who takes pictures is, no doubt, Kim
Beauharnais, the kitchen boy and photographer at Ardis whom Ada bribed to
set the Barn on fire. Nine 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 Kipling's novel Kim
(1900) the action takes place in India. Kim Beauharnais' surname
hints at Napoleon's first wife. Napoleon was Marina Tsvetaev's sole idol
and influence (see "A Living Word about the Living Man," Marina Tsvetaev's essay
on Maximilian Voloshin). In her essay Bal'montu
("To Balmont," 1925) Marina Tsvetaev mentions two people who visited Hades
while still alive: earthly Odysseus and heavenly Orpheus. According to the
author, even if Orpheus were blind, like Homer, he would have found his
Eurydice:
Двое, Бальмонт, побывали в Аиде живыми: бытовой
Одиссей и небесный Орфей. Одиссей, помнится, не раз спрашивал дорогу, об Орфее
не сказано, доскажу я. Орфея в Аид, на свидание с любимой, привела его
тоска: та, что всегда ходит — своими путями! И будь Орфей слеп, как
Гомер, он все равно нашёл бы Эвридику.
The Burning Barn in Ada
brings to mind the fire of Voron'ya slobodka ("A Crow's Nest") in Ilf
and Petorv's "The Golden Calf" (1931). One of the novel's chapters is
entitled "Homer, Milton and Panikovski."
The speakers at Balmon't
anniversary in 1920, in Moscow, included Iname, a Japanese girl. In her
essay Marina Tsvetaev mentions Iname's guttural, somewhat Gipsy sound of
speech:
И японочка Инамэ — бледная, безумно-волнующаяся: «Я
не знаю, что мне Вам сказать. Мне грустно. Вы уезжаете. Константин Дмитриевич!
Приезжайте к нам в Японию, у нас хризантемы и ирисы. И...» Как раскатившиеся
жемчужины, японский щебет. («До свидания», должно быть.) Со скрещенными ручками
— низкий поклон. Голос глуховатый, ясно слышится биение сердца, сдерживаемое
задыхание. Большие перерывы. — Ищет слов. — Говор гортанный, немножко цыганский.
Личико жёлто-бледное. И эти ручки крохотные!
Balmont was a friend of Bryusov,
the author of Ognennyi angel ("The Fiery Angel," 1907). In Geroy
truda ("The Hero of Toil," 1925), Marina Tsvetaev's essay on Bryusov, the
author's eight-year-old daughter Alya (Ariadna Efron) compares Bryusov to Shere
Khan, the tiger in Kipling's Jungle Book, and Bryusov's mistress
Adalis, to one of the young wolves.
Alexey
Sklyarenko