Like Humbert Humbert in Lolita, the
protagonist of Volshebnik (“The Enchanter,” 1939) marries the
mother of the little girl with whom he fell in love. He loves his
step-daughter, but opechatka zhelaniya (the misprint of desire) distorts
smysl lyubvi (the meaning of love):
Пусть в будущем свобода действий, свобода особого и его
повторений, всё осветит и согласует; пока, сейчас, сегодня, опечатка желания искажала
смысл любви; оно служило, это тёмное место, как бы помехой, которую надо
было как можно скорее раздавить, стереть, -- любым предлогом наслаждения, --
чтобы в награду получить возможность смеяться вместе с ребёнком, понявшим
наконец шутку, бескорыстно печься о нём, волну отцовства совмещать с волной
влюблённости.
Smysl lyubvi (“The Meaning of Love,” 1892-93) is a series of five
articles by Vladimir Solovyov. In the fifth article the author quotes four
poems by Afanasiy Fet: Alter ego (1879), Izmuchen zhizn’yu,
kovarstvom nadezhdy… (“Tormented by life, by hope’s deceit…”
1864), Naprasno (“In Vain,” 1852) and Poetam (“To
Poets,” 1890).
Zhelanie (“Desire,”
1858) is a poem by Vyazemski. It has for epigraph the opening line of Boratynski’s
(sic) poem Razuverenie (“Dissuasion,” 1821): Ne iskushay
menya bez nuzhdy (“Don’t tempt me without need…”).
In the poem’s second stanza Vyazemski compares desire to Proteus and says
that desire volshebno (magically) assumed the shape of all enticements
of beauty, all dreams, all temptations:
Протей, всегда разнообразный,
Во все приманки красоты,
Во все мечты, во все соблазны
Волшебно облекалось ты.
Solovyov’s last article was Po
povodu poslednikh sobytiy (“Apropos of the Latest Events,”
1900). The characters of VN’s play Sobytie (“The Event,”
1938) include Alfred Afanasievich Barboshin, the private detective whom the
portrait painter Troshcheykin hired to protect himself from Barbashin.
Barbashin and Barboshin seem to be two incarnations of one and the same
character: the devil (who is not as terrible, as he is he is painted). Like
Baratynski, their names begin with Bar-, and, like Shenshin (Afanasiy
Fet’s “real” name), end in -shin.
Like “The Event,” “The
Enchanter” is a part of VN’s hexaptych (that consists of two plays
and four stories).
Alexey Sklyarenko