In a letter to Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Ada, 1969) written after the suicide of Lucette (Van's and Ada's half-sister who jumps into the Atlantic from Admiral Tobakoff) Demon Veen (Van's and Ada's father) mentions Howard Hool, a Hollywood actor who played the protagonist in Don Juan's Last Fling (a film that Van and Lucette watch in the Tobakoff cinema hall) and who complained that he had been made to play an impossible cross between two Dons:
Son:
I have followed your instructions, anent that letter, to the letter. Your epistolary style is so involute that I should suspect the presence of a code, had I not known you belonged to the Decadent School of writing, in company of naughty old Leo and consumptive Anton. I do not give a damn whether you slept or not with Lucette; but I know from Dorothy Vinelander that the child had been in love with you. The film you saw was, no doubt, Don Juan’s Last Fling in which Ada, indeed, impersonates (very beautifully) a Spanish girl. A jinx has been cast on our poor girl’s career. Howard Hool argued after the release that he had been made to play an impossible cross between two Dons; that initially Yuzlik (the director) had meant to base his ‘fantasy’ on Cervantes’s crude romance; that some scraps of the basic script stuck like dirty wool to the final theme; and that if you followed closely the sound track you could hear a fellow reveler in the tavern scene address Hool twice as ‘Quicks.’ Hool managed to buy up and destroy a number of copies while others have been locked up by the lawyer of the writer Osberg, who claims the gitanilla sequence was stolen from one of his own concoctions. In result it is impossible to purchase a reel of the picture which will vanish like the proverbial smoke once it has fizzled out on provincial screens. Come and have dinner with me on July 10. Evening dress. (3.6)
On Demonia (Earth's twin planet also known as Antiterra) VN's Lolita (1955) is known as The Gitanilla, a novel by the Spanish writer Osberg. Osberg is an anagram of Borges. An Argentine writer, J. L. Borges (1899-1986) is the author of Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote (1939). The characters in Tennessee Williams' play Camino Real (1953) include Don Quixote and his partner Sancho, Marguerite Gautier (see The Lady of the Camellias), Casanova, Lord Byron (the author of Don Juan), the Gypsy girl Esmeralda (see The Hunchback of Notre-Dame), and others. To Mrs. Flora Goforth (the main character in Tennessee Williams' play The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore, 1963) Chris Flanders (the young poet, who because of his past presence in the company of so many elderly women at the time of their deaths has won the mocking nickname of "the angel of death") comes as an answer to a carnal prayer, a last fling before she is forced to face ultimate loneliness. Describing Lucette's suicide, Van says that death is only a more complete assortment of the infinite fractions of solitude:
The sky was also heartless and dark, and her body, her head, and particularly those damned thirsty trousers, felt clogged with Oceanus Nox, n,o,x. At every slap and splash of cold wild salt, she heaved with anise-flavored nausea and there was an increasing number, okay, or numbness, in her neck and arms. As she began losing track of herself, she thought it proper to inform a series of receding Lucettes — telling them to pass it on and on in a trick-crystal regression — that what death amounted to was only a more complete assortment of the infinite fractions of solitude. (3.5)
The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore (the title of Tennessee Williams' play) brings to mind the apron of a quite accidental milkmaid mentioned by Van when he describes Demon's sword duel with Baron d'Onsky (Skonky):
Upon being questioned in Demon’s dungeon, Marina, laughing trillingly, wove a picturesque tissue of lies; then broke down, and confessed. She swore that all was over; that the Baron, a physical wreck and a spiritual Samurai, had gone to Japan forever. From a more reliable source Demon learned that the Samurai’s real destination was smart little Vatican, a Roman spa, whence he was to return to Aardvark, Massa, in a week or so. Since prudent Veen preferred killing his man in Europe (decrepit but indestructible Gamaliel was said to be doing his best to forbid duels in the Western Hemisphere — a canard or an idealistic President’s instant-coffee caprice, for nothing was to come of it after all), Demon rented the fastest petroloplane available, overtook the Baron (looking very fit) in Nice, saw him enter Gunter’s Bookshop, went in after him, and in the presence of the imperturbable and rather bored English shopkeeper, back-slapped the astonished Baron across the face with a lavender glove. The challenge was accepted; two native seconds were chosen; the Baron plumped for swords; and after a certain amount of good blood (Polish and Irish — a kind of American ‘Gory Mary’ in barroom parlance) had bespattered two hairy torsoes, the whitewashed terrace, the flight of steps leading backward to the walled garden in an amusing Douglas d’Artagnan arrangement, the apron of a quite accidental milkmaid, and the shirtsleeves of both seconds, charming Monsieur de Pastrouil and Colonel St Alin, a scoundrel, the latter gentlemen separated the panting combatants, and Skonky died, not ‘of his wounds’ (as it was viciously rumored) but of a gangrenous afterthought on the part of the least of them, possibly self-inflicted, a sting in the groin, which caused circulatory trouble, notwithstanding quite a few surgical interventions during two or three years of protracted stays at the Aardvark Hospital in Boston — a city where, incidentally, he married in 1869 our friend the Bohemian lady, now keeper of Glass Biota at the local museum. (1.2)
Darkbloom (‘Notes to Ada’): Aardvark: apparently, a university town in New England.
Gamaliel: a much more fortunate statesman than our W.G. Harding.
An amusing Douglas d’Artagnan arrangement hints at Douglas Fairbanks, a movie actor who played d'Artagnan in a Hollywood version of Dumas' The Three Musketeers (1844). Demon's adversary, Baron d’Onsky seems to be a cross between Dmitri Donskoy, the Moscow Prince who defeated Khan Mamay in the battle of Kulikovo (1380), and Onegin’s donskoy zherebets (Don stallion) in Chapter Two (V: 4) of Pushkin's Eugene Onegin:
Сначала все к нему езжали;
Но так как с заднего крыльца
Обыкновенно подавали
Ему донского жеребца,
Лишь только вдоль большой дороги
Заслышат их домашни дроги, —
Поступком оскорбясь таким,
Все дружбу прекратили с ним.
«Сосед наш неуч; сумасбродит;
Он фармазон; он пьет одно
Стаканом красное вино;
Он дамам к ручке не подходит;
Все да да нет; не скажет да-с
Иль нет-с». Таков был общий глас.
At first they all would call on him,
but since to the back porch
habitually a Don stallion
for him was brought
as soon as one made out along the highway
the sound of their domestic runabouts —
outraged by such behavior,
they all ceased to be friends with him.
“Our neighbor is a boor; acts like a crackbrain;
he's a Freemason; he
drinks only red wine, by the tumbler;
he won't go up to kiss a lady's hand;
'tis all ‘yes,’ ‘no’ — he'll not say ‘yes, sir,’
or ‘no, sir.’ ” This was the general voice.
An American playwright and screenwriter, Tennessee Williams (1911-83) brings to mind a progressive poet in residence at Tennesee Waltz College mentioned by Van in the "library" chapter of Ada:
In those times, in this country 'incestuous' meant not only ‘unchaste’ — the point regarded linguistics rather than legalistics — but also implied (in the phrase ‘incestuous cohabitation,’ and so forth) interference with the continuity of human evolution. History had long replaced appeals to ‘divine law’ by common sense and popular science. With those considerations in mind, ‘incest’ could be termed a crime only inasmuch as inbreeding might be criminal. But as Judge Bald pointed out already during the Albino Riots of 1835, practically all North American and Tartar agriculturists and animal farmers used inbreeding as a method of propagation that tended to preserve, and stimulate, stabilize and even create anew favorable characters in a race or strain unless practiced too rigidly. If practiced rigidly incest led to various forms of decline, to the production of cripples, weaklings, ‘muted mutates’ and, finally, to hopeless sterility. Now that smacked of ‘crime,’ and since nobody could be supposed to control judiciously orgies of indiscriminate inbreeding (somewhere in Tartary fifty generations of ever woolier and woolier sheep had recently ended abruptly in one hairless, five-legged, impotent little lamb — and the beheading of a number of farmers failed to resurrect the fat strain), it was perhaps better to ban ‘incestuous cohabitation’ altogether. Judge Bald and his followers disagreed, perceiving in ‘the deliberate suppression of a possible benefit for the sake of avoiding a probable evil’ the infringement of one of humanity’s main rights — that of enjoying the liberty of its evolution, a liberty no other creature had ever known. Unfortunately after the rumored misadventure of the Volga herds and herdsmen a much better documented fait divers happened in the U.S.A. at the height of the controversy. An American, a certain Ivan Ivanov of Yukonsk, described as an ‘habitually intoxicated laborer’ (‘a good definition,’ said Ada lightly, ‘of the true artist’), managed somehow to impregnate — in his sleep, it was claimed by him and his huge family — his five-year-old great-granddaughter, Maria Ivanov, and, then, five years later, also got Maria’s daughter, Daria, with child, in another fit of somnolence. Photographs of Maria, a ten-year old granny with little Daria and baby Varia crawling around her, appeared in all the newspapers, and all kinds of amusing puzzles were provided by the genealogical farce that the relationships between the numerous living — and not always clean-living — members of the Ivanov clan had become in angry Yukonsk. Before the sixty-year-old somnambulist could go on procreating, he was clapped into a monastery for fifteen years as required by an ancient Russian law. Upon his release he proposed to make honorable amends by marrying Daria, now a buxom lass with problems of her own. Journalists made a lot of the wedding, and the shower of gifts from well-wishers (old ladies in New England, a progressive poet in residence at Tennesee Waltz College, an entire Mexican high school, et cetera), and on the same day Gamaliel (then a stout young senator) thumped a conference table with such force that he hurt his fist and demanded a retrial and capital punishment. It was, of course, only a temperamental gesture; but the Ivanov affair cast a long shadow upon the little matter of ‘favourable inbreeding.’ By mid-century not only first cousins but uncles and grandnieces were forbidden to intermarry; and in some fertile parts of Estoty the izba windows of large peasant families in which up to a dozen people of different size and sex slept on one blin-like mattress were ordered to be kept uncurtained at night for the convenience of petrol-torch-flashing patrols — ‘Peeping Pats,’ as the anti-Irish tabloids called them. (1.21)
Darkbloom (‘Notes to Ada’): fait divers: news item.
blin: Russ., pancake.
On the other hand, The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore reminds one of a question Van asks Trofim Fartukov (the Russian coachman in "Ardis the Second") when he leaves Ardis forever:
‘The express does not stop at Torfyanka, does it, Trofim?’
‘I’ll take you five versts across the bog,’ said Trofim, ‘the nearest is Volosyanka.’
His vulgar Russian word for Maidenhair; a whistle stop; train probably crowded.
Maidenhair. Idiot! Percy boy might have been buried by now! Maidenhair. Thus named because of the huge spreading Chinese tree at the end of the platform. Once, vaguely, confused with the Venus’-hair fern. She walked to the end of the platform in Tolstoy’s novel. First exponent of the inner monologue, later exploited by the French and the Irish. N’est vert, n’est vert, n’est vert. L’arbre aux quarante écus d’or, at least in the fall. Never, never shall I hear again her ‘botanical’ voice fall at biloba, ‘sorry, my Latin is showing.’ Ginkgo, gingko, ink, inkog. Known also as Salisbury’s adiantofolia, Ada’s infolio, poor Salisburia: sunk; poor Stream of Consciousness, marée noire by now. Who wants Ardis Hall!
‘Barin, a barin,’ said Trofim, turning his blond-bearded face to his passenger.
‘Da?’
‘Dazhe skvoz’ kozhanïy fartuk ne stal-bï ya trogat’ etu frantsuzskuyu devku.’
Barin: master. Dázhe skvoz’ kózhanïy fártuk: even through a leathern apron. Ne stal-bï ya trógat’: I would not think of touching. Étu: this (that). Frantsúzskuyu: French (adj., accus.). Dévku: wench. Úzhas, otcháyanie: horror, despair. Zhálost’: pity, Kóncheno, zagázheno, rastérzano: finished, fouled, torn to shreds. (1.41)
Darkbloom (‘Notes to Ada’): marais noir: black tide.
In Turgenev's story Zhivye moshchi ("A Living Relic") included in Zapiski okhotnika ("The Notes of a Hunter," 1852) Lukerya addresses the narrator Barin, a barin:
Я отправился по этой тропинке; дошел до пасеки. Рядом с нею стоял плетеный сарайчик, так называемый амшаник, куда ставят улья на зиму. Я заглянул в полуоткрытую дверь: темно, тихо, сухо; пахнет мятой, мелиссой. В углу приспособлены подмостки, и на них, прикрытая одеялом, какая-то маленькая фигура... Я пошел было прочь...
— Барин, а барин! Петр Петрович! — послышался мне голос, слабый, медленный и сиплый, как шелест болотной осоки.
Я остановился.
— Петр Петрович! Подойдите, пожалуйста! — повторил голос. Он доносился до меня из угла с тех, замеченных мною, подмостков.
Я приблизился — и остолбенел от удивления. Передо мною лежало живое человеческое существо, но что это было такое?
I set off along this path; reached the apiary. Next to her was a wicker shed, the so-called amshanik, where hives are placed for the winter. I looked through the half-open door: dark, quiet, dry; smells like mint, lemon balm. In the corner there is a scaffold, and on them, covered with a blanket, is some kind of small figure... I started to walk away...
- Master, but master! Pyotr Petrovich! - I heard a voice, weak, slow and hoarse, like the rustle of a marsh sedge.
I stopped.
- Pyotr Petrovich! Come here please! The voice repeated. It came to me from the corner from those scaffolds I had seen.
I approached - and was dumbfounded with surprise. Before me lay a living human being, but what was it?
According to Ada, the circular marblings on her palms that she shares with Turgenev’s Katya (a character in "Fathers and Sons," 1962) are called 'waltzes' in California:
Blinking in the green sunshine under a birch tree, Ada explained to her passionate fortuneteller that the circular marblings she shared with Turgenev's Katya, another innocent girl, were called 'waltzes' in California ('because the señorita will dance all night'). (1.17)
Ada's 'waltzes' bring to mind the Tennessee Waltz College mentioned by Van in the "library" chapter. In the same chapter Marina (Van's, Ada's and Lucette's mother) says that at Van’s age she would have poisoned her governess with anti-roach borax if forbidden to read, for example, Turgenev’s Smoke:
Her intimacy with her cher, trop cher René, as she sometimes called Van in gentle jest, changed the reading situation entirely — whatever decrees still remained pinned up in mid-air. Soon upon his arrival at Ardis, Van warned his former governess (who had reasons to believe in his threats) that if he were not permitted to remove from the library at any time, for any length of time, and without any trace of ‘en lecture,’ any volume, collected works, boxed pamphlets or incunabulum that he might fancy, he would have Miss Vertograd, his father’s librarian, a completely servile and infinitely accommodative spinster of Verger’s format and presumable date of publication, post to Ardis Hall trunkfuls of eighteenth century libertines, German sexologists, and a whole circus of Shastras and Nefsawis in literal translation with apocryphal addenda. Puzzled Mlle Larivière would have consulted the Master of Ardis, but she never discussed with him anything serious since the day (in January, 1876) when he had made an unexpected (and rather halfhearted, really — let us be fair) pass at her. As to dear, frivolous Marina, she only remarked, when consulted, that at Van’s age she would have poisoned her governess with anti-roach borax if forbidden to read, for example, Turgenev’s Smoke. Thereafter, anything Ada wanted or might have wanted to want was placed by Van at her disposal in various safe nooks, and the only visible consequence of Verger’s perplexities and despair was an increase in the scatter of a curious snow-white dust that he always left here and there, on the dark carpet, in this or that spot of plodding occupation — such a cruel curse on such a neat little man! (1.21)
Darkbloom (‘Notes to Ada’): her, trop cher René: dear, too dear (his sister’s words in Chateaubriand’s René).