You’ve heard of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Now get ready for the Noodler’s Cinematic Universe (NCU). Nathan Tardif is a salty New Englander who makes inks that are as wet as a Nor’Easter and shade like a Cape Cod sunset. Tardif uses all kinds of historical and political references for his ink names and ink series, such as the Russian writers inks from a few years back. The references are so vast that Tardif has created an aura around each ink that’s filled with lore. Why does this ink have this name? Why this color? What do they know? Each ink has a story, and each story may or may not have a parallel in movies.
The first ink in the NCU is Lermontov. Lermontov is a blue-grey shading ink that is named after Mikhail Lermontov, a nineteenth century Russian romantic poet. Reading about him on Wikipedia, some of the themes from his work reminded me of Boris Lermontov, a character from the 1948 movie The Red Shoes. In this movie, there is a lot of the same shade of blue-grey that is Noodler’s Lermontov.
Mikhail Lermontov was a poet who has been said to be the greatest figure in Russian Romanticism. He only lived to be 26 years old, but had a prolific career before dying in a duel. His early works are romantic, and his later works are realist. There seems to be a theme throughout his personal life of suppressing any romantic urges out of fear of getting burned. In his working life, he also suppressed his romantic and fantastic urges in order to master his craft. Lermontov’s novel, A Hero of Our Time, has a self-destructive protagonist who keeps hurting those around him because he feels that he’s fated to act this way. As his life goes on, the protagonist grows more and more dissatisfied with his actions but hides his emotional turmoil from other people.
The Red Shoes is based on the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale of the same name, but takes place in the world of ballet. It’s about the conflict between artistic passion and the human condition. Boris Lermontov is the director of a ballet company in London whose passion and determination are so great that he doesn’t have room for emotions. He takes a ballerina named Victoria Page into his company, and wants to develop her into a prima ballerina. Here is a trailer:
Victoria is an excellent dancer who equates her desire to dance with her desire to live. Victoria proves herself as a dancer and rises through the ranks until the lead ballerina leaves to get married. Lermontov is angry and says: “You cannot have it both ways. A dancer who relies upon the doubtful comforts of human love can never be a great dancer. Never.” When a coworker tells Lermontov that he can’t alter human nature, he retorts that you can just ignore it. The subtext here is that Lermontov is repressing his own homosexuality. His only gratification is through controlling the ballet, and controlling people. Victoria becomes lead ballerina when Lermontov begins a production of the ballet of The Red Shoes. During rehearsal for the show, Victoria falls in love with the conductor for the ballet, Julian Craster. The show is magnificent, and the story of the ballet foreshadows the rest of the movie. For a scene of Lermontov describing the story, watch this video:
The similarities between Boris Lermontov and Mikhail Lermontov and his work seem purposeful and uncanny, but what does this have to do with ink color? Here are two swatches of Noodler’s Lermontov:
This ink shades quite a bit, from navy to blue-grey. On Tomoe River, Lermontov sinks into the paper but still shades. Even with normal writing, the show-through is pretty bad with bleed-through to the back of the page in some spots. On Rhodia with a flex nib, it feathers quite a bit. It’s a wet ink that flows well out of most pens, but won’t dry quickly.
Take a look at the above photos, then look at all these screenshots where this blue appears in The Red Shoes:
I don’t know if the blue in this movie is why Nathan Tardif made Lermontov the color that it is, but the shades are pretty darn similar. I like this ink, and this exercise helped me like it even more. If you like this movie/ink crossover, let me know.
Left Hook Pens 
Leave a Reply