Aleksandr Blok's Dreams as Enacted in Ada by Van Veen--and Vice Versa
by Alexey Sklyarenko
page two of three

As we know, this transformation never occurred. Blok’s dream didn’t come true. But what has proven impossible in life is possible in art, and perhaps this is the only consolation allowed to us. The greater part of Ada, a spacious and delightful family chronicle, “is staged in a dream-bright America” (5.6). That fantastic half-Russian land, “the Amerussia of Abraham Milton” (1.3), is closer to Blok’s dream of a Russia that has turned into a new America (even if by means of acrobatic somersault to another continent) than to the real United States. The fact that the colorful reality described in Ada is directly connected to Blok’s dream of “a new America” is confirmed by another dream of Blok’s realized in Ada: Blok’s delightful dream of the Incognita which Van Veen, the protagonist of Ada, has in waking life. What is even more surprising, a real event that once happened to Blok seems to underlie another, even more complex dream of Van’s. Moreover, it seems that the very image of Van Veen (as far as his looks and his behavior toward women are concerned) can be traced back to Blok.

Van’s Incognita dream is sent to him by Aqua, who committed suicide—partly because of her unrequited love for Demon. By sending Van this dream, Aqua probably wants to warn him against acting thoughtlessly toward his innocent half-sister and to prevent Lucette’s suicide. Unfortunately, Van fails to correctly interpret this and other dreams that Aqua sends him from Terra and so dismisses the warning. After Lucette follows poor Aqua’s example and commits suicide, Van never dreams of the Incognita again. No wonder: now that Lucette is dead, there is no longer a need to warn him. But apparently Lucette does not bear Van malice—for she sends him, in her turn, one of the most beautiful dreams that a literary character has ever had: Van’s dream of the floramors.

Van is dreaming of Villa Venus, as earlier he had been dreaming of the Incognita, as it were, in waking life. It seems to Van that he really does visit all one hundred, or ninety-nine, memorial floramors built by Eric’s grandfather. (David van Veen died as his hundredth house was being built.) We can infer that the floramors exist only in Van’s dream when we learn their number. The chapter preceding the floramor chapter concludes with Van falling asleep, and the last words brushing his consciousness are: “ninety-seven, night-nine, one hund, red dog…” (2.2). Just as David van Veen fails to complete his hundredth villa before he dies, Van fails to count to one hundred before he falls asleep, and gets two dogs instead (Hund is German for dog)1. On the other hand, the following chapter (2.4) is a discourse on Van’s dreams. Van divides them into two main categories: professional and erotic. Since Van’s professional field of study is “terrology,” a branch of psychiatry that deals with the problem of Terra, his dream of the floramors (just like his dream of the Incognita) falls into both categories. While the mildly erotic dream of the Incognita is sent to Van by Aqua, the frankly erotic dream of the floramors, almost “the real thing,” is sent to him by Lucette from Terra. However, the main reason leading me to believe the floramors exist only in Van’s dream can be found in the Villa Venus chapter itself (see my article “Ada as a Triple Dream”).

Toward the end of that chapter, when the luxurious floramors collapse one after another with amazing speed, a different reality begins to transpire through the fabric of Van’s dream. In the last remaining floramor, a half-ruined villa somewhere in Southern Italy, on the shore of the Mediterranean, Van holds in his lap a sleeping girl, whose name he believes to be Adora. In my essay “A Window onto Terra,” I suggest that one can discern, through the description of the entire scene, certain details of Paul Alexis’ story “La fin de Lucie Pelegrin.” But this is just part of the explanation. True, Lucette, the director of Van’s dream, uses certain characters of that story, including Lucie’s pregnant bitch Miss, in order to create for Van a verisimilar illusion of reality. But it seems that another, completely real incident underlies Van’s visit to one last floramor.

The incident involves Aleksandr Blok and is known to us from the account of a streetwalker, who described her strange encounter with the poet. Nabokov could have read of it in Maxim Gorky’s sketch, “А. А. Блок” (Заметки из дневника. Воспоминания. Берлин, 1924) (“Notes from a Diary. Reminiscences,” Berlin, 1924”), or in the Russian magazine Beseda also published in Berlin (No. 1, May-June 1923).2 Gorky met the барышня с Невского (“Young Lady from the Nevsky,” as he calls her) in a restaurant on the Nevksy—St. Petersburg’s most famous avenue—and here is what she told him:

“Is that little book you have by Blok, the notorious one? I’ve met him too, although just one time. Once in the autumn, very late, and, you know, slush, fog, already about midnight on the city council clock, I was awfully tired and about to go home, when suddenly on the corner of Ital’ianskaia street I was hailed by a well-dressed, handsome type, very proud face, I even thought: a foreigner. We went on foot—it was nearby, 10 Karavannaia Street, rooms for rendezvous. I talked while walking, but he kept silent, and I felt uneasy, somehow unusual—I don’t like rude men. We went in and I asked for tea; he rang, but no servant came, so he went himself into the corridor, and I was, you know, so tired, so chilly, and I fell asleep sitting on the divan. Then I suddenly woke up and saw him sitting opposite me holding his head in his hands, elbows on the table, and looking at me so sternly—horrible eyes! But I was too ashamed to feel fear, I only thought: “Oh, my God, he must be a musician!” He had curly hair. “Oh, excuse me, I said, I’ll get undressed now.”

And he smiled politely and said: “Not necessary, don’t bother.” He seated himself next to me on the divan, took me onto his lap and said, stroking my hair: “Do doze a little more!” And just imagine!—I fell asleep again—scandalous! I understand, of course, that this was bad, but there was nothing I could do! He was rocking me so softly and I felt so comfortable with him; I would open my eyes and smile, and he would smile. It seems I had actually fallen asleep when he shook me gently and said: “Well, good-bye. I must be going.” And he placed twenty-five rubles on the table. “Listen,” I said, “how that can be?” Of course I felt dreadfully embarrassed, apologized. It was all so funny, so unusual. And he laughed softly, shook my hand and even kissed it. He left, and as I was leaving, the servant said: “Do you know who that was with you? Blok, the poet – look!” And he showed me a portrait in a magazine, and I saw that it was indeed he. “My God,” I thought, “how foolishly that went!”

And [continues Gorky] across her animated, snub-nosed face, in the mischievous eyes of a little stray dog, there flashed a reflection of the heartache and the mortification. I gave the young lady all the money I had with me and from that moment felt that Blok was very clear and dear to me.

I like his stern face and the head of a Renaissance Florentine.”

One might ask what this scene, as described by Gorky, has to do with the scene in Van’s last villa Venus? It turns out that there are many parallels between them. First of all, both men, Blok and Van Veen, hold a sleeping girl, a prostitute, in their laps. Van pulls his opera cloak over the girl. The girl in Gorky’s sketch doesn’t mention the legendary cloak, but so many memoirists speak of Blok’s “blue cloak” that it has become practically proverbial. The blue cloak is mentioned in Blok’s famous poem “О доблестях, о подвигах, о славе...” (“Of valour, of exploits, of glory…” 1908), which opens the cycle of verse «Возмездие» (“Retribution,” 1908-1913, not to be confused with the long poem of that name). True, Van’s last floramor is located in Italy, and the rooms to which the girl takes Blok, in Petersburg. But let me call your attention to the name of the street where Blok meets her, Ital’ianskaia (“Italian” street). This street runs parallel to Nevsky Avenue and crosses Karavannaia street (whose name is explained in Speak, Memory as the Street of Caravans: Chapter Nine: 3), where the maison de passe was located. Karavannaia street (note that there is “Van” in that name and that there is a sexual pun on “caravan” in Ada: “one more caro [flesh] Van and a Camel before her morning bath:” 2.8) was well-known to Nabokov, because twice a day he rode its whole length from his home to the Tenishev School and from the school back home. The street runs from Nevsky Avenue to the Cinizelli circus. In Speak, Memory Nabokov notes that this circus was “famous for its wrestling tournaments.” But Blok, too, speaks of Petersburg circuses and wrestling tournaments in his foreword to “Retribution” (the long poem). Here is what he says of them:

“Inseparably connected to all this [the events that happened in 1911] is for me the flourishing of French wrestling in the Petersburg circuses: a thousand-strong crowd showed an exceptional interest in it; there were true artists among the wrestlers; I shall never forget the wrestling match between the ugly Russian heavyweight and the Dutchman whose muscular system was a most perfect musical instrument of rare beauty.”

Cinizelli Circus in the 19th century
(Image from the Sankt-Peterburgskii Tsirk Web site)

The new Cinizelli circus--its building was considered one of the most beautiful circus buildings in Europe--opened in 1877. It was built on the spot of the pavilion “Панорама Палермо,” a diminutive model of Palermo, which had burned down in 1852. Nabokov might have leanred of this fact in A. F. Koni’s essay Peterburg. Vospominaniia starozhila (“St. Petersburg. Reminiscences of an Old Resident”), 1922. Both Vladimir Solovyov's prophetic gift and Lermontov are mentioned in the text—the latter, when the author of the essay, making an imaginary tour of 19th-century St. Petersburg, passes very near the spot where the Nabokov family's home would later be built on Morskaia Street. The famous lawyer Koni (1844-1927) was a friend of many writers and public figures, including A. A. Blok and V. D. Nabokov, and it is not unlikely that VN read his interesting memoirs. If he did, the “panorama of Palermo” that had occupied the spot where the (renamed, but still extant) Cinizelli circus was built could be another link to the otherworldly Palermontovia in Ada, connecting Van’s visit to one last Villa Venus with the incident involving the prostitute and Blok. (By a neat coincidence, koni is Russian for “horses,” depictions of which can be seen in the illustration above. The equine theme in Ada is fascinating and deserves a separate article.)

This passage would be worth citing for the mere reason that Van is also a poet of physical strength. In his student years he performs in English variety shows as an acrobat—his repertoire includes the striking stunt of dancing on his hands. He is taught this stunt by King Wing, Demon’s wrestling master, a former circus artiste. Van’s beautifully attuned muscular system (note, by the way, that Van Veen is a “Dutch” name) allows him to win the fight at the picnic (1.39) against the ugly heavyweight Percy de Prey (a Russian count, despite his non-Russian name). So interesting new parallels can be traced between Blok’s foreword to “Retribution” and Ada. The parallels are even more obvious if we consider other events of 1911 mentioned (or passed over in silence) by Blok in his foreword to the poem (that “was jotted down, in its main features, in 1911”).

Among the events Blok cites are “a most interesting lecture” delivered by P. N. Miliukov, “The Armed World and the Reduction of Arms,” and “the prophetic article” by A. P. Mertvago, “The Nearness of a Great War” (Utro Rossii, 1911, Oct. 25). The First World War broke out less than three years after the appearance of Mertvago’s article, and less than three years after Blok had written the foreword to “Retribution,” V. D. Nabokov, the writer’s father, was killed in Berlin. In 1922, when that same P. N. Miliukov was delivering another lecture, there was a terrorist attempt on his life. V. D. Nabokov, Miliukov’s friend and the Kadet party associate, managed to disarm the first assailant with a boxing blow, but was shot dead from behind by the second terrorist. One might ask: what does this tragedy have to do with Ada? In my opinion, it plays a very important role in the novel. Nabokov’s dream of Demonia, the planet on which Ada is staged, might have been sent to him by the spirit of his father (see my “Addendum to Ada as a Triple Dream” in The Nabokovian no. 53 and my essay “Fathers and Children in Ada” in TN, no. 54). I am quite certain that Nabokov believed in the supernatural origin of his inspiration for the novel, and, it seems to me, that he had reason to do so.

The rare but “telling” name Mertvago also occurs in Ada. B. Pasternak’s novel «Доктор Живаго» (Doctor Zhivago, 1957) is known on Antiterra as “Les Amours du Docteur Mertvago, a mystical romance by a pastor” (1.8). As Vivian Darkbloom explains in his “Notes to Ada,” zhiv means “alive” in Russian and mertv, “dead.” Indeed, Doctor Zhivago, for which Pasternak received the Nobel Prize, is a completely dead volume that even a few first-rate “Poems of Iuriy Zhivago,” placed at the end of the text, fail to enliven. However, I think that Nabokov plays on the title of Pasternak’s novel not only (and not so much) in order to stress his contempt for it. By introducing the name Mertvago into the text of Ada, he hints that Blok’s foreword to “Retribution” also has a prophetic power. Namely, it portends in a strange way the murder of V. D. Nabokov in Berlin. The writer’s father was killed, that is, became mertv, defending P. N. Miliukov whom Blok mentions in his foreword along with a “prophetic” article whose author is a certain Mertvago. The murder of V. D. Nabokov occurred some 32 months after Blok had written his text, just as the war broke out 32 months after the publication of Mertvago’s article. The prophetic character of Blok’s foreword would have been indisputable, had it been written by Blok on July 20, V. D. Nabokov’s birthday. Actually, though, it is marked with a slightly different date: 1919, July 12. Still I think that it was this date that prompted Nabokov to “correct,” as it were, his father’s birthday – from the 20^th to the 21^st of July (“12” backwards) – and to give this birthday to Ada, the Fair Lady of his novel.

1. These two dogs seem to correspond to the pregnant bitch Miss from Paul Alexis’ story La fin de Lucie Pelegrin and “a little dog” from the fragment of Gorky’s reminiscences that follows. Both the story and the fragment serve as important sources of Van’s dream of floramors. Note that Nabokov transforms the pregnant dog from the Alexis story into a pregnant woman, the courtesan in Van’s last Villa Venus, using the fact that the whore (“the Young Lady [or Miss] from the Nevsky”) in Gorky’s sketch has the mischievous eyes of a little stray dog (плутовские глаза бездомной собачонки).

2. He might also have come across an English translation of the fragment by Moura Budberg, Blok and the Strumpet (Maxim Gorky, Fragments from my Diary, London, 1940, pp. 148-149).