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

We thus have ample evidence that a different reality, the reality whose hero was Aleksandr Blok, underlies Van’s dream of floramors—at least, its final part. Not only does Van Veen “fulfill” certain poetic dreams of Blok (first of all his dream of the Incognita), but, vice versa, what Van only dreams of was enacted by Blok. The mutual dream (which is reminiscent of the old Chinese parable of the sage and the butterfly) becomes even more striking if we consider the similarity of Van’s and Blok’s features and, especially, their manners. First of all, both men are outstanding Don Juans. In the fragment describing the half-ruined Villa Venus from which the novel Ada began (SO, p. 310), Ada’s protagonist is named Juan. Van Veen's “Don Juan list” is formidable. Even if all the women who are only dreamt of by Van are not included, the list would contain many hundreds of names. (Van once confesses that “he could never go without girl pleasure for more than forty-eight hours:” 3.5.) Blok’s Don Juan list might not be so long, but it too is impressive. According to rumors, his partners amounted to more than three hundred women. For the most part, they were “one-night stands.” And I think that the famous “Van question,” which he poses to Cordula and which Lucette wants him to ask her (2.5), can be traced back to the lines from Blok’s poem «В Дюнах» (“In the Dunes”), from the cycle «Вольные мысли» (“Free Thoughts,” 1907), written in free verse:

Свободным взором
Красивой женщине смртрю в глаза
И говорю: “Сегодня ночь, а завтра –
Сияющий и новый день. Приди.
Бери меня, торжественная страсть.
А завтра я уйду – и запою.”

With a frank gaze
Into a beautiful woman’s eyes I look
And say: “Today is night, but tomorrow –
A radiant new day. Come.
Take me, triumphant passion.
And tomorrow I shall away – and sing.”

Blok is furthermore the author of the poem «Шаги Командора» (“The Steps of the Knight Commander,” 1912) from the cycle “Retribution,” which is the best treatment of the Don Juan legend by a Russian Silver Age poet. That legend also finds its original interpretation in Ada. In the ship cinema on board the “Tobakoff,” Van and Lucette watch the film (in which Ada is cast) called Don Juan’s Last Fling (3.5). It is after this film (which Van refuses to see to the end) that Lucette commits suicide. I hope to compare Pushkin’s, Blok’s and Nabokov’s versions of the European legend about Don Juan in one of my future essays. Now, let’s turn from the specifically Don Juanian features to the general similarity between Blok and Van Veen. We shall see that Nabokov consciously used Blok’s physical appearance as a model for his hero.

In his essay “Forbidden Masterpieces in Nabokov’s Ada’s” (not yet published, but known to me, in parts, through private communication), Donald B. Johnson argues that at least some of the novel’s characters, as far as their physical appearance is concerned, were drawn by Nabokov from real people or, rather, from their portraits by famous artists. For instance, in describing Ada Veen as she looks at sixteen Nabokov seems to have used Serov’s portrait of Ada Simonovich (1889). The famous portrait of Blok by Konstantin Somov (1907) possibly served Nabokov as a model for Van Veen.

Portrait of Aleksandr Blok
by Konstantin Somov (1907)
Pencil, crayons, gouache on paper

First of all, a proud profile resembling that of a foreigner and “the stern face of a Florentine” are shared by Blok and Van Veen. Then there is Van’s curly hair. That he has “inherited” it not, say, from Pushkin, but directly from Blok is confirmed by the following comparison. We learn that Van is curly-headed only at the end of Part Two, when Van, whose long affair with Ada is finally discovered by Demon, walks home across Manhattan with the intention of shooting himself. “He was coatless, tieless, hatless; a strong sharp wind dimmed his sight with salty frost and played Medusaean havoc with his black locks.” (2.11) Interestingly, in the first poem of Blok’s (already mentioned) cycle “Incantation by Fire and Darkness,” which has the first five lines of Lermontov’s famous «Благодарность» (“Gratitude”) as an epigraph, the following lines occur:

И встречаю тебя у порога
С буйным ветром в змеиных кудрях,
С неразгаданным именем Бога
На холодных и сжатых губах.

And speaking of lips, we know that the lips of Van and Ada, brother and sister, are “absurdly similar in style, tint and tissue.” (1.17) As a parallel, here are the last two lines of the seventh poem “Ночь – как века, и томный трепет...” (“The night is like the ages, and languid trepidation…”) from Blok’s cycle «Чёрная кровь» (“Black Blood,” 1909-1914):

Тогда мой рот своим извивом алым
На твой таинственно похож

Then my mouth, with its crimson curve,
Mysteriously resembles yours.

It is also interesting to cite the full text of the brief second poem from the cycle. Van and Ada would have particularly enjoyed it, for they live on Demonia and consider themselves to be young demons:

Я гляжу на тебя. Каждый демон во мне
Притаился, глядит.
Каждый демон в тебе сторожит,
Притаясь в грозовой тишине...

И вздымается жадная грудь...
Этих демонов страшных вспугнуть?
Нет! Глаза отвратить и не сметь, и не сметь
В эту страшную пропасть глядеть!

And the avid breast rises…
Frighten off those terrible demons?
No! Avert one’s eyes and dare not, dare not
Gaze into that terrible abyss!

But let’s return to Van, who, having returned to his penthouse on Alex[is] Avenue, stands before a mirror holding the barrel of his Thunderbolt pistol to his temple. He presses the trigger—but nothing happens, for the pistol in his hand has imperceptibly turned into a comb. Is it necessary to point out that such transformations can occur only in dreams? When the reader realizes that this is another of Van’s waking dreams, he can easily guess, given the many details that hint at the correct solution, who sends Van this dream, thereby saving his life. It is also most interesting that the situation Van finds himself in is reflected in the following lines by Blok (from his poem “Ночь как ночь и улица пустынна...” “A night like any other and the street deserted…” from the cycle “Retribution”):

Все на свете, все на свете знают:
Счастья нет.
И который раз в руках сжимают
Пистолет!

И который раз, смеясь и плача,
Вновь живут!
День – как день; ведь решена задача:
Все умрут.

And how many times, laughing and weeping,
They live on.
A day like any other; for the problem is solved:
Everyone will die.

That it is Aqua who helps Van solve this simple problem is confirmed by the following. The lines just quoted echo one of Blok’s most famous poems, from his magnificent cycle «Пляски смерти» (“Dance Macabre,” 1912-1914):

Ночь. Улица. Фонарь. Аптека.
Бессмысленный и тусклый свет.
Живи ещё хоть четверть века –
Всё будет так. Исхода нет.

Умрёшь – начнёшь опять сначала,
И повторится всё как встарь:
Ночь, ледяная рябь канала,
Аптека, улица, фонарь.

Die – and begin again from the beginning,
And all will repeat as of old:
Night, a canal’s icy ripple,
Pharmacy, street, lantern.

Poor Aqua managed to successfully commit suicide. She did it by ingesting an innocuous medication combined with an equally innocuous cleaning fluid. She was probably aware that the mix would be lethal, because she had once helped Milton Abraham organize a “Phree Pharmacy” in Belokonsk (1.3). Thus, it seems that a connection can be established between Aqua’s suicide and another poem by Blok from the cycle “Dance Macabre”:

Пустая улица. Один огонь в окне.
Еврей-аптекарь охает во сне.

Скелет, до глаз закутанный плащом,
Чего-то ищет, скалясь чёрным ртом...

And before the glass shelf labeled Venena,
Having proprietorially bent his creaking knees,

A skeleton, wrapped to the eyes in a cloak,
Is seeking something, grinning with a black mouth…

Perhaps, in dying, Aqua has begun all over again (this time, on Terra), as in the preceding poem by Blok. She does not want this for Van, knowing that a reunion with Ada and a long happy life with her still lie in store for him. It is no accident that we learn of their (not yet final) reunion, which takes place thirteen years later, in the very next sentence. Happy again, Van and Ada only laugh at Van’s youthful impulse to shoot himself.

The major part of Nabokov’s family chronicle—almost three fourths of the book—is dedicated to the childhood and youth of the two heroes, Van and Ada. Their youth ends when they separate at the end of Part Two—Van, in order to almost succumb to the temptation of suicide; Ada, in order to marry Andrey Vinelander. But their younger half-sister, Lucette, fails to live beyond the limits of “the perilous age.” She commits suicide in Part Three of the novel and thus remains young forever. Van and Ada outlive her by many years, but perhaps it is Lucette to whom they owe the bliss of their final reunion and long life together. At least if Van, in his mature, and even old, age, still has youthful dreams, certainly it is only thanks to Lucette. The last beautiful dream that Lucette sends Van and that he sees in waking life is, apparently, Van’s charming secretary, Miss Violet Knox. Ada affectionately calls her Fialochka (little violet). Her surname is homonymic with the Latin word for “night,” nox. It connects to Lucette’s suicide: “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.” (3.5) At the same time, the name and surname of Van’s secretary is a reference to the heroine of Blok’s poem «Ночная Фиалка» (literally, “Night Violet,” meaning wild orchid) mentioned at the beginning of this article. The “night violet” in Blok’s poem is not only a mauve flower that grows in a bog, but also “Королевна туманной страны” (“princess of a misty land”) who spins an endless yarn—the yarn of dreams.

Van decides to write his memoirs in 1957, the year he meets Violet Knox. She is responsible for typing Van’s manuscript (5.4) and so participates in the creation of Ada. From this fact we can infer two things. First, that Van and Ada are somehow prompted to write the autobiography by Lucette’s spirit. Second, that Lucette helps them in the work that will continue for ten years until the last day of Van’s and Ada’s lives. Generous Lucette returns good for all the evil that Van and Ada have unwittingly done to her, ultimately driving her to suicide. Moreover, she allows them to relive the dramatic events of their love. But at the same time, she makes them feel pangs of conscience at the end of their lives. And I think that the epigraph Blok chose for the long poem “Retribution”—Solness’s words in Ibsen’s drama The Master Builder—would also perfectly fit Ada: YOUTH IS RETRIBUTION.

I thank Victor Fet for his help in translating this essay and Jeff Edmunds for improving the English text—and, particularly, for his new English renderings of Blok’s poems. A somewhat briefer version of the essay originally appeared in The Nabokovian. It is reprinted here with the kind permission of the editors.