For the big picnic on Ada's twelfth birthday and Ida's forty-second jour de f¨ºte, the child was permitted to wear her lolita (thus dubbed after the little Andalusian gipsy of that name in Osberg's novel and pronounced, incidentally, with a Spanish 't,' not a thick English one), a rather long, but very airy and ample, black skirt, with red poppies or peonies, 'deficient in botanical reality,' as she grandly expressed it, not yet knowing that reality and natural science are synonymous in the terms of this, and only this, dream. (1.13)
The first name of Mlle Larivi¨¨re (Lucette¡¯s governess), Ida, seems to hint at Little Ida¡¯s Flowers (1835), a fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen. Andersen is the author of The Little Mermaid (1837). In his autobiography Speak, Memory (1967) VN says that Tamara (as the author calls his first love: Valentina, or ¡®Lyusya,¡¯ Shulgin) accepted a certain condition set by her mother with the fortitude of Hans Andersen¡¯s little mermaid (p. 185). In Ada Van calls Lucette ¡°our Esmeralda and mermaid¡± (2.8) and, after Lucette¡¯s suicide, ¡°a mermaid in the groves of Atlantis¡± (Part Four).
Esmeralda is a gipsy girl in Victor Hugo's Notre Dame de Paris (1831). In her memoir essay on Andrey Bely, Plennyi dukh ("The Captive Spirit," 1934) Marina Tsvetaev (whose surname comes from tsvet, ¡°flower; color¡±) mentions Esmeralda and her pet goat Djali:
§²§à§Ó§ß§Ñ§ñ §Ý§å§Ø§Ñ§Û§Ü§Ñ, §å§ä§í§Ü§Ñ§ß§ß§Ñ§ñ §Ø§×§Ý§ä§í§Þ§Ú §è§Ó§Ö§ä§à§é§Ü§Ñ§Þ§Ú, §ã§ä§Ñ§Ý§Ñ §Ü§à§Ó§â§Ú§Ü§à§Þ §á§à§Õ §Ö§Ô§à §ß§à§Ô§Ñ§Þ§Ú ¡ª §Ú §ã§Ü§Ó§à§Ù§î §Ü§â§å§Ø§Ñ§Ó§ê§Ö§Ô§à§ã§ñ, §á§â§Ú§á§à§Õ§í§Þ§Ñ§ð§ë§Ö§Ô§à§ã§ñ, §Ó§ã§á§Ñ§â§ç§Ú§Ó§Ñ§ð§ë§Ö§Ô§à, §á§â§Ú§á§Ñ§Õ§Ñ§ð§ë§Ö§Ô§à, §å§Ü§Ý§à§ß§ñ§ð§ë§Ö§Ô§à§ã§ñ, §Ó§à§ä-§Ó§à§ä §Ú§Þ§Ö§ð§ë§Ö§Ô§à §à§ä§Õ§Ö§Ý§Ú§ä§î§ã§ñ §à§ä §Ù§Ö§Þ§Ý§Ú ¡ª §Ó§Ú§Õ§Ö§ß§Ú§Ö §Õ§Ö§Ó§å§ê§Ü§Ú §ã §Ü§à§Ù§à§é§Ü§à§Û, §ß§Ñ §ä§à§Ý§î§Ü§à §é§ä§à §â§Ñ§Ù§Ó§×§â§ß§å§ä§à§Þ §Ü§à§Ó§â§Ú§Ü§Ö, §á§à§Õ §Õ§Ó§å§Ò§Ñ§ê§Ö§ß§ß§í§Þ §Ó§Ú§Õ§Ö§ß§Ú§Ö§Þ §Ó§Ö§Ü§à§Ó¡
¡ª §¿§ã§Þ§Ö§â§Ñ§Ý§î§Õ§Ñ! §¥§Ø§Ñ§Ý§Ú!
A son of Professor Bugaev, Bely told Marina Tsvetaev (a daughter of Professor Tsvetaev) that he would have preferred to be, like Andersen, a coffin-maker¡¯s son:
§¦§ã§Ý§Ú §å§Ø §ß§Ö§á§â§Ö§Þ§Ö§ß§ß§à §ß§å§Ø§ß§à §Ò§í§ä§î §é§î§Ú§Þ-§ä§à §ã§í§ß§à§Þ, §ñ §Ò§í §á§â§Ö§Õ§á§à§é§×§Ý, §Ü§Ñ§Ü §¡§ß§Õ§Ö§â§ã§Ö§ß, §Ò§í§ä§î §ã§í§ß§à§Þ §Ô§â§à§Ò§à§Ó§ë§Ú§Ü§Ñ.
The characters of Ilf and Petrov¡¯s novel Dvenadtsat¡¯ stulyev (¡°The Twelve Chairs,¡± 1928) include the coffin-maker Bezenchuk. The novel¡¯s first chapter is entitled ¡°Bezenchuk and the Nymphs.¡± In VN¡¯s novel Lolita (1955) Dolores Haze (Lolita¡¯s ¡°real¡± name) is a nymphet (according to Humbert Humbert). Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in Lolita) writes his memoirs in prison and constantly appeals to ladies and gentlemen of the jury. In ¡°The Twelve Chairs¡± Ostap Bender often repeats the phrase Lyod tronulsya, gospoda prisyazhnye zasedateli (¡°The ice is broken, gentlemen of the jury¡±).
Dr Larivi¨¨re is a character in Flaubert¡¯s Madame Bovary (1857), a novel alluded to in Lolita. On Antiterra (Earth¡¯s twin planet on which Ada is set) Flaubert¡¯s novel is known as Floeberg¡¯s Ursula (1.20). Floeberg is ¡°a mass of ice floes resembling an iceberg.¡± In Speak, Memory (Chapter Three, 1) VN mentions the appointment with an iceberg that his uncle Konstantin Dmitrievich has escaped:
Uncle Konstantin was in the diplomatic service and, in the last stage of his career in London, conducted a bitter and unsuccessful struggle with Sablin as to which of them would head the Russian mission. His life was not particularly eventful, but he had had a couple of nice escapes from a fate less tame than the draft in a London hospital, which killed him in 1927. Once, in Moscow, on February 17, 1905, when an older friend, the Grand Duke Sergey, half a minute before the explosion, offered him a lift in his carriage, and my uncle said no, thanks, he¡¯d rather walk, and away rolled the carriage to its fatal rendezvous with a terrorist¡¯s bomb; and the second time, seven years later, when he missed another appointment, this one with an iceberg, by chancing to return his Titanic ticket. (p. 49)
In ¡°The Twelve Chairs¡± Chapter Seven is entitled Sledy Titanika (¡°Traces of the Titanic¡±). The Titanic is a hair dye that, instead of making Vorobyaninov¡¯s hair and moustache jet black, colors them in green.
Osberg = Borges
Sig Leymanski = Kingsley Amis
Gitanilla Esmeralda + navsegda = Antilia Glems + Gerald + Ada + Sevan/vesna/naves
J. L. Borges (1899-86) is the author of Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote (1939). Don Quixote (The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha, 1605-15) is, of course, a novel by Cervantes, the author La Gitanilla (1613). On Antiterra, The Gitanilla (2.5, et passim) is a novel by Osberg. Lolita is the gitanilla¡¯s name.
Navsegda is Russian for ¡°forever, for good.¡±
Antilia Glems (Sig Leymanski¡¯s enchanting, melancholy, betrayed wife) is a character in Van¡¯s philosophical novel Letters from Terra (2.2).
Gerald is Moris Gerald, the main character in Captain Mayne Reid's Headless Horseman. In Chapter Ten of Speak, Memory VN tells about his first cousin and best friend Yuri Rausch von Traubenberg with whom as a child VN reenacted the scenes from Mayne Reid¡¯s novel. On Antiterra The Headless Horseman is a long poem by Pushkin (the author of The Bronze Horseman, 1833):
The year 1880 (Aqua was still alive - somehow, somewhere!) was to prove to be the most retentive and talented one in his long, too long, never too long life. He was ten. His father had lingered in the West where the many-colored mountains acted upon Van as they had on all young Russians of genius. He could solve an Euler-type problem or learn by heart Pushkin's 'Headless Horseman' poem in less than twenty minutes. (1.28)
Leonhard Euler (1707-83) was a Swiss mathematician (who lived and died in St. Petersburg, VN¡¯s home city). Andrey Bely¡¯s father was a Professor of mathematics.
Sevan is the largest lake in Armenia. Vesna is Russian for ¡°spring.¡± Naves means ¡°penthouse; awning.¡±
Speaking of Hans Christian Andersen and Vladimir Nabokov: according to Cordula (Van¡¯s former lover whose name is also an orchid¡¯s name), her husband resembles Vladimir Christian of Denmark:
'My notion of propriety may not be the same as yours. And what about Cordula de Prey? She won't mind?'
'The apartment is mine,' said Van, 'and besides, Cordula is now Mrs Ivan G. Tobak. They are making follies in Florence. Here's her last postcard. Portrait of Vladimir Christian of Denmark, who, she claims, is the dead spit of her Ivan Giovanovich. Have a look.' (2.5)
The home city of Botticelli, Florence brings to mind his Primavera (Spring), Flora (a slender, hardly nubile, half-naked music-hall dancer in ¡®Ursus,¡± 2.8) and Eric Veen¡¯s floramors (2.3).
Alexey Sklyarenko