Describing his first sexual experience at Riverlane (Van’s prep-school), Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) calls himself “hell-raker:”
That was love, normal and mysterious. Less mysterious and considerably more grotesque were the passions which several generations of schoolmasters had failed to eradicate, and which as late as 1883 still enjoyed an unparalleled vogue at Riverlane. Every dormitory had its catamite. One hysterical lad from Upsala, cross-eyed, loose-lipped, with almost abnormally awkward limbs, but with a wonderfully tender skin texture and the round creamy charms of Bronzino’s Cupid (the big one, whom a delighted satyr discovers in a lady’s bower), was much prized and tortured by a group of foreign boys, mostly Greek and English, led by Cheshire, the rugby ace; and partly out of bravado, partly out of curiosity, Van surmounted his disgust and coldly watched their rough orgies. Soon, however, he abandoned this surrogate for a more natural though equally heartless divertissement.
The aging woman who sold barley sugar and Lucky Louse magazines in the corner shop, which by tradition was not strictly out of bounds, happened to hire a young helper, and Cheshire, the son of a thrifty lord, quickly ascertained that this fat little wench could be had for a Russian green dollar. Van was one of the first to avail himself of her favors. These were granted in semi-darkness, among crates and sacks at the back of the shop after hours. The fact of his having told her he was sixteen and a libertine instead of fourteen and a virgin proved a source of embarrassment to our hell-raker when he tried to bluster his inexperience into quick action but only succeeded in spilling on the welcome mat what she would have gladly helped him to take indoors. (1.4)
In Eugene Onegin (Six: IV: 9) Pushkin calls Zaretski (Lenski’s second whose name comes from zarechye, “the other side of the river”) glava poves (chieftain of rakehells):
Вперёд, вперёд, моя исторья!
Лицо нас новое зовёт.
В пяти верстах от Красногорья,
Деревни Ленского, живёт
И здравствует ещё доныне
В философической пустыне
Зарецкий, некогда буян,
Картёжной шайки атаман,
Глава повес, трибун трактирный,
Теперь же добрый и простой
Отец семейства холостой,
Надёжный друг, помещик мирный
И даже честный человек:
Так исправляется наш век!
Forward, forward, my story!
A new persona claims us.
Five versts from Krasnogórie,
Lenski's estate, there lives
and thrives up to the present time
in philosophical reclusion
Zarétski, formerly a brawler,
the hetman of a gaming gang,
chieftain of rakehells, pothouse tribune,
but now a kind and simple
bachelor paterfamilias,
a steadfast friend, a peaceable landowner,
and even an honorable man:
thus does our age correct itself!
Pomeshchik mirnyi (a peaceable landowner) brings to mind “peaceful country gentleman” (as Van calls his maternal grandfather, General Ivan Durmanov):
Van’s maternal grandmother Daria (‘Dolly’) Durmanov was the daughter of Prince Peter Zemski, Governor of Bras d’Or, an American province in the Northeast of our great and variegated country, who had married, in 1824, Mary O’Reilly, an Irish woman of fashion. Dolly, an only child, born in Bras, married in 1840, at the tender and wayward age of fifteen, General Ivan Durmanov, Commander of Yukon Fortress and peaceful country gentleman, with lands in the Severn Tories (Severnïya Territorii), that tesselated protectorate still lovingly called ‘Russian’ Estoty, which commingles, granoblastically and organically, with ‘Russian’ Canady, otherwise ‘French’ Estoty, where not only French, but Macedonian and Bavarian settlers enjoy a halcyon climate under our Stars and Stripes.
The Durmanovs’ favorite domain, however, was Raduga near the burg of that name, beyond Estotiland proper, in the Atlantic panel of the continent between elegant Kaluga, New Cheshire, U.S.A., and no less elegant Ladoga, Mayne, where they had their town house and where their three children were born: a son, who died young and famous, and a pair of difficult female twins. Dolly had inherited her mother’s beauty and temper but also an older ancestral strain of whimsical, and not seldom deplorable, taste, well reflected, for instance, in the names she gave her daughters: Aqua and Marina (‘Why not Tofana?’ wondered the good and sur-royally antlered general with a controlled belly laugh, followed by a small closing cough of feigned detachment — he dreaded his wife’s flares). (1.1)
New Cheshire brings to mind Van’s schoolmate at Riverlane. The name Durmanov comes from durman (thorn-apple; drug, intoxicant). In his poem Tolstomu (“To Tolstoy,” 1818) Vyazemski mentions myatezhnykh sklonnostey durman (the intoxicant of rebellious inclinations) that throws Tolstoy iz raya v ad, iz ada v ray (from paradise to hell, from hell to paradise):
Американец и цыган,
На свете нравственном загадка,
Которого, как лихорадка,
Мятежных склонностей дурман
Или страстей кипящих схватка
Всегда из края мечет в край,
Из рая в ад, из ада в рай!
Которого душа есть пламень,
А ум — холодный эгоист;
Под бурей рока — твёрдый камень!
В волненьи страсти — лёгкий лист!
In a letter of Oct. 14, 1823, to Vyazemski Pushkin says that the epigraph to his poem Kavkazskiy plennik (“The Caucasian Captive,” 1821) was “Under fate’s tempest a hard stone! / In the agitation of passion a light leaf!” (the last two lines in the above quoted fragment of Vyazemski’s epistle to Tolstoy). Pushkin dropped it because he feared that readers would mistake Tolstoy for the prototype of his Captive. In his EO Commentary (vol. III, p. 7) VN points out that some amateurs of prototype wrongly see in Zaretski a skit on Fyodor Tolstoy. According to VN, “Fyodor Tolstoy’s nickname, ‘the American,’ is a good sample of Russian humor: in 1803, while taking part in the first lap of Admiral Krusenstern’s famous voyage around the world, Tolstoy was dumped for insubordination on Rat Island, in the Aleutians, and had to wander back via Siberia, which took him a couple of years” (EO Commentary, vol. II, p. 428). Stern (cf. Krusenstern) is German for “star.” Cheshire (Van’s schoolmate) is a rugby ace. Describing his work on Letters from Terra, Van mentions novels like ‘Star Rats,’ and ‘Space Aces:’
He had written it involuntarily, so to speak, not caring a dry fig for literary fame. Neither did pseudonymity tickle him in reverse — as it did when he danced on his hands. Though ‘Van Veen’s vanity’ often cropped up in the drawing-room prattle among fan-wafting ladies, this time his long blue pride feathers remained folded. What, then, moved him to contrive a romance around a subject that had been worried to extinction in all kinds of ‘Star Rats,’ and ‘Space Aces’? We — whoever ‘we’ are — might define the compulsion as a pleasurable urge to express through verbal imagery a compendium of certain inexplicably correlated vagaries observed by him in mental patients, on and off, since his first year at Chose. Van had a passion for the insane as some have for arachnids or orchids. (2.2)
Van, Ada and Lucette are the children of Marina Durmanov. The last note of Marina’s twin sister Aqua (Demon’s poor mad wife) was signed “my sister’s sister who teper’ iz ada (now is out of hell)” (1.3). In her last note Aqua twice repeats the word chelovek (human being). In Six: IV: 13 of EO Pushkin calls Zaretski chestnyi chelovek (an honorable man).
According to VN, the name of Lenski’s estate corresponds to English “Fairhill:”
Five versts from Krasnogórie: Anglice, “Three miles from Fairhill” (EO Commentary, vol. III, p. 6).
While Van’s prep-school, Riverlane, seems to hint at Lenski’s second, Ada’s school for girls, Brownhill, brings to mind Lenski’s countryseat.
In the same note to Six: IV: 3 VN writes: ‘Whether Pushkin desired it or not, the not-uncommon name of Lenski’s countryseat has more links with myths and enchantments than matter-of-fact “Fairhill” would have.’
In Ada VN manages to add subtle erotic connotations to the not-uncommon matter-of-fact “Riverlane” and “Brownhill.”
Marina’s husband, Daniel Veen (Lucette’s father), is known in society as Durak Walter or Red Veen:
The ‘D’ in the name of Aqua’s husband stood for Demon (a form of Demian or Dementius), and thus was he called by his kin. In society he was generally known as Raven Veen or simply Dark Walter to distinguish him from Marina’s husband, Durak Walter or simply Red Veen. Demon’s twofold hobby was collecting old masters and young mistresses. He also liked middle-aged puns. (1.1).
An obsolete word for “fair,” krasnyi means today “red.” Durak is Russian for “fool.” Describing Zeretski (Six: VI: 2), Pushkin says that he umel morochit’ duraka (knew how to gull a fool):
Бывало, он трунил забавно,
Умел морочить дурака
И умного дурачить славно,
Иль явно, иль исподтишка,
Хоть и ему иные штуки
Не проходили без науки,
Хоть иногда и сам впросак
Он попадался, как простак.