Sybil Swallow & Hazel Shade in Pale Fire

According to John Shade (the poet in VN's novel Pale Fire, 1962), his daughter always nursed a small mad hope:

 

I think she always nursed a small mad hope. (Line 383)

 

In Canto Three of his poem Shade tells about IPH (a lay Institute of Preparation for the Hereafter) and, at the end of the Canto, mentions "faint hope:"

 

Stormcoated, I strode in: Sybil, it is
My firm conviction – "Darling, shut the door.
Had a nice trip?" Splendid – but what is more
I have returned convinced that I can grope
My way to some – to some – "Yes, dear?" Faint hope. (ll. 830-835)

 

In Shakespeare’s historical play Richard III (Act 5, scene 2) Richmond says:

 

True hope is swift, and flies with swallow’s wings.

Kings it makes gods, and meaner creatures kings.

 

In his Commentary Kinbote (who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla) calls the poet’s wife “Sybil Swallow:”

 

John Shade and Sybil Swallow (see note to line 247) were married in 1919, exactly three decades before King Charles wed Disa, Duchess of Payn. Since the very beginning of his reign (1936-1958) representatives of the nation, salmon fishermen, non-union glaziers, military groups, worried relatives, and especially the Bishop of Yeslove, a sanguineous and saintly old man, had been doing their utmost to persuade him to give up his copious but sterile pleasures and take a wife. It was a matter not of morality but of succession. As in the case of some of his predecessors, rough alderkings who burned for boys, the clergy blandly ignored our young bachelor's pagan habits, but wanted him to do what an earlier and even more reluctant Charles had done: take a night off and lawfully engender an heir. (note to Line 275)

 

Duchess of Payn, of Great Payn and Mone, Queen Disa seems to blend Leonardo's Mona Lisa with Desdemona, Othello’s wife in Shakespeare's Othello. In Shakespeare's play Othello mentions a two-hundred-year-old Egyptian sybil who gave his mother a magic handkerchief:

 

'Tis true. There’s magic in the web of it.

A sibyl, that had numbered in the world

The sun to course two hundred compasses,

In her prophetic fury sewed the work.

The worms were hallowed that did breed the silk,

And it was dyed in mummy which the skillful

Conserved of maidens' hearts. (Act III, scene 4) 

 

At the end of a draft (inserted by Soviet editors in the gap in "The Egyptian Nights," 1835) Pushkin compares a poet to Desdemona who, without asking anybody, chooses kumir (the idol) for her heart:

 

Таков поэт: как Аквилон
Что хочет, то и носит он -
Орлу подобно, он летает
И, не спросясь ни у кого,
Как Дездемона избирает
Кумир для сердца своего.

 

In his poem Nadezhdoy sladostnoy mladencheski dysha... ("Breathing youthfully with sweet hope..." 1823) Pushkin says that, had he believed in his soul’s immortality, he would destroy life, urodlivyi kumir (an ugly idol):

 

Надеждой сладостной младенчески дыша,
Когда бы верил я, что некогда душа,
От тленья убежав, уносит мысли вечны,
И память, и любовь в пучины бесконечны, -
Клянусь! давно бы я оставил этот мир:
Я сокрушил бы жизнь, уродливый кумир,
И улетел в страну свободы, наслаждений,
В страну, где смерти нет, где нет предрассуждений,
Где мысль одна плывёт в небесной чистоте...

Но тщетно предаюсь обманчивой мечте;
Мой ум упорствует, надежду презирает...
Ничтожество меня за гробом ожидает...
Как, ничего! Ни мысль, ни первая любовь!
Мне страшно... И на жизнь гляжу печален вновь,
И долго жить хочу, чтоб долго образ милый
Таился и пылал в душе моей унылой.

 

Ot tlen'ya ubezhav (having fled decay) in the poem's third line brings to mind tlen'ya ubezhit ([my soul] will flee decay), a phrase used by Pushkin his poem Exegi monumentum (1836). As VN points out in his EO Commentary (vol. II, p. 310), in Exegi monumentum Pushkin parodies stanza for stanza Derzhavin’s poem Pamyatnik (“The Monument,” 1796). In his poem Lastochka (“The Swallow,” 1792-94) written after the death of ‘Plenyra’ (Derzhavin’s first wife) Derzhavin compares his soul to a swallow. In a letter of April 11, 1831, to Pletnyov (to whom Eugene Onegin is dedicated) Pushkin calls Pletnyov ten’ vozlyublennaya (the beloved shade) and asks Pletnyov (who did not respond to Pushkin’s letters for a long time), if he is already dead, to bow to Derzhavin and to embrace Delvig (who died at the beginning of 1831):

 

Воля твоя, ты несносен: ни строчки от тебя не дождёшься. Умер ты, что ли? Если тебя уже нет на свете, то, тень возлюбленная, кланяйся от меня Державину и обними моего Дельвига.

 

The author of Voskresshie bogi. Leonardo da Vinchi ("Resurrected Gods. Leonardo da Vinci," 1900), Merezhkovski in his poem Nadezhda ("Hope," 1894) compares Hope to izgnannaya doch’ velikogo tsarya (“the expelled daughter of a great king”):

 

Ты в рубище зимой встречалась мне порою
На снежных улицах, в мерцанье фонаря;
Как изгнанная дочь великого царя,
С очами гордыми, с протянутой рукою.

 

In his essay Pushkin (1896) Merezhkovski mentions neyasnyi shyopot Sibilly (the unclear whisper of the Sybil) in Baratynski's verses and quotes Pushkin's poem Ne day mne Bog soyti s uma... ("The Lord Forbid my Going Mad…" 1833):

 

Наконец сомнения в благах западной культуры - неясный шёпот сибиллы у Баратынского - Лев Толстой превратил в громовый воинственный клич; любовь к природе Лермонтова, его песни о безучастной красоте моря и неба - в "четыре упряжки", в полевую работу; христианство Достоевского и Гоголя, далекое от действительной жизни, священный огонь, пожиравший их сердца, - в страшный циклопический молот, направленный против главных устоев современного общества. Но всего замечательнее, что это русское возвращение к природе - русский бунт против культуры, первый выразил Пушкин, величайший гений культуры среди наших писателей:

 

Когда б оставили меня
На воле, как бы резво я
Пустился в тёмный лес!

Я пел бы в пламенном бреду,
Я забывался бы в чаду
Нестройных, чудных грез,

И силен, волен был бы я,
Как вихорь, роющий поля,
Ломающий леса.

И я б заслушивался волн,
И я глядел бы, счастья полн,
В пустые небеса.

 

At the end of his poem Eyo glaza (“Her Eyes,” 1828) Pushkin says that, when Annette Olenin raises her eyes, “Raphael’s angel thus contemplates divinity.” In Shakespeare’s play Romeo and Juliet Mercutio mentions Benvolio’s hazel eyes:

 

Thou wilt quarrel with a man for cracking nuts, having no other reason but because thou hast hazel eyes. (Act III, scene 1)

 

In a letter of May 21, 1830, to Pushkin Pletnyov mentions Mercutio and Benvolio (the unceremonious friends):

 

Хотелось бы мне, чтоб ты ввернул в трактат о Шекспире любимые мои две идеи: 1) Спрашивается, зачем перед публикой позволять действующим лицам говорить непристойности? Отвечается: эти лица и не подозревают о публике; они решительно одни, как любовник с любовницей, как муж с женой, как Меркутио с Бенволио (нецеремонные друзья). Пракситель, обделывая формы статуи, заботится об истине всех частей её (вот его коран!), а не о тех, кто будет прогуливаться мимо выставленной его статуи. 2) Для чего в одном произведении помещать прозу, полустихи (т. е. стихи без рифм) и настоящие стихи (по понятию простонародному)? Потому, что в трагедии есть лица, над которыми все мы смеялись бы, если бы кто вздумал подозревать, что они способны к поэтическому чувству; а из круга людей, достойных поэзии, иные бывают на степени поэзии драматической, иные же, а иногда и те же, на степени поэзии лирической: там дипломатическая музыка, а здесь военная.

 

In the same letter Pletnyov tells Pushkin about the birth of his daughter:

 

Не дивись, милый, что аккуратный человек так неаккуратно тебе отвечает: у меня на неделе столкнулись разные хлопоты. Теперь, слава богу, всё пришло, кажется, в свою колею. Родилась у меня дочь, которая теперь стала у нас известна под именем Ольги. Её привели сегодня в христианскую веру. Пройдет ещё денька два — и надеюсь, жена подымется на ноги: тогда опять я сделаюсь твоим аккуратнейшим корреспондентом. К делу!

 

The “real” name of Hazel Shade (the poet’s daughter) seems to be Nadezhda Botkin. Sybil Shade's and Queen Disa's "real" name is Sofia Botkin (born Lastochkin). Lastochki ("The Swallows," 1884) is a poem by Fet and a poem (1895) by Merezhkovski. An American scholar of Russian descent, Professor Vsevolod Botkin went mad and became Shade, Kinbote and Gradus (the poet’s murderer) after the tragic death of his daughter. There is nadezhda (a hope) that, when Kinbote completes his work on Shade's poem and commits suicide (on Oct. 19, 1959, the anniversary of Pushkin's Lyceum), Botkin, like Count Vorontsov (a target of Pushkin's epigrams, "half-milord, half-merchant, etc."), will be full again.

 

Polu-milord, polu-kupets (half-milord, half-merchant) brings to mind pol-tsarstva za konya (half of my kingdom for a horse), King Richard’s words “A horse, a horse! My kingdom for a horse!” (Richard III, Act V, scene 4) in a classical Russian translation. In a letter of June 11, 1831, to Vyazemski Pushkin asks Vyazemski if Sofia Karamzin (the historian's daughter) reigns on the saddle and quotes King Richard's words (the epigraph to Vyazemski's poem Progulka v stepi, "A Ride in the Steppe," 1831):

 

Что Софья Николаевна? царствует на седле? A horse, a horse! My kingdom for a horse!

 

Kinbote believes that, to be completed, Shade’s almost finished poem needs but one line (Line 1000, identical to Line 1: “I was the shadow of the waxwing slain”). But it seems that, like some sonnets, Shade’s poem also needs a coda (Line 1001: “By its own double in the windowpane”). One of Pushkin’s sonnets, Madonna (1830), is addressed to his bride, Natal’ya Goncharov:

 

Не множеством картин старинных мастеров
Украсить я всегда желал свою обитель,
Чтоб суеверно им дивился посетитель,
Внимая важному сужденью знатоков.

 

В простом углу моём, средь медленных трудов,
Одной картины я желал быть вечно зритель,
Одной: чтоб на меня с холста, как с облаков,
Пречистая и наш божественный спаситель –

 

Она с величием, он с разумом в очах –
Взирали, кроткие, во славе и в лучах,
Одни, без ангелов, под пальмою Сиона.

 

Исполнились мои желания. Творец
Тебя мне ниспослал, тебя, моя Мадонна,
Чистейшей прелести чистейший образец.

 

Not by old masters, rich on crowded walls,
My house I ever sought to ornament,
That gaping guests might marvel while they bent
To connoisseurs with condescending drawls.
 

Amidst slow labors, far from garish halls,
Before one picture I would fain have spent
Eternity: where the calm canvas thralls
As though the Virgin and our Saviour leant
 

From regnant clouds, the Glorious and the Wise,
The meek and hallowed, with unearthly eyes,
Beneath the palm of Zion, these alone. . . .
 

My wish is granted: God has shown thy face
To me; here, my Madonna, thou shalt throne:
Most pure exemplar of the purest grace.

(transl. Deutsch & Yarmolinski)

 

Odnoy (Gen. sing. of odna, feminine form of odin, “one”), a word repeated twice in the sonnet’s second quatrain, and odni (alone), a word that occurs in the sonnet’s first tercet, bring to mind eshchyo odno poslednee skazan’ye (one last tale) mentioned by Pimen (the old monk and chronicler) in Pushkin’s drama Boris Godunov (1825) and orudie odno (only tools), a phrase used by Pushkin in Chapter Two (XIV: 7) of Eugene Onegin. According to Pushkin, the millions of two-legged creatures for us are only tools (orudie odno). Odno = Odon = Nodo (Odon’s half-brother, a cardsharp and despicable traitor). At the end of his Commentary Kinbote mentions Odon (a world-famous actor and Zemblan patriot who helps the king to escape from Zembla), history and a million photographers:

 

God will help me, I trust, to rid myself of any desire to follow the example of the other two characters in this work. I shall continue to exist. I may assume other disguises, other forms, but I shall try to exist. I may turn up yet, on another campus, as an old, happy, health heterosexual Russian, a writer in exile, sans fame, sans future, sans audience, sans anything but his art. I may join forces with Odon in a new motion picture: Escape from Zembla (ball in the palace, bomb in the palace square). I may pander to the simple tastes of theatrical critics and cook up a stage play, an old-fashioned melodrama with three principles: a lunatic who intends to kill an imaginary king, another lunatic who imagines himself to be that king, and a distinguished old poet who stumbles by chance into the line of fire, and perishes in the clash between the two figments. Oh, I may do many things! History permitting, I may sail back to my recovered kingdom, and with a great sob greet the gray coastline and the gleam of a roof in the rain. I may huddle and groan in a madhouse. But whatever happens, wherever the scene is laid, somebody, somewhere, will quietly set out--somebody has already set out, somebody still rather far away is buying a ticket, is boarding a bus, a ship, a plane, has landed, is walking toward a million photographers, and presently he will ring at my door--a bigger, more respectable, more competent Gradus. (note to Line 1000)

 

According to Pushkin, in his poem Graf Nulin ("Count Null," 1825) he parodied history and The Rape of Lucrece, a rather weak poem by Shakespeare:

 

В конце 1825 года находился я в деревне. Перечитывая «Лукрецию», довольно слабую поэму Шекспира, я подумал: что если б Лукреции пришла в голову мысль дать пощёчину Тарквинию? быть может, это охладило б его предприимчивость и он со стыдом принуждён был отступить? Лукреция б не зарезалась. Публикола не взбесился бы, Брут не изгнал бы царей, и мир и история мира были бы не те.
Итак, республикою, консулами, диктаторами, Катонами, Кесарем мы обязаны соблазнительному происшествию, подобному тому, которое случилось недавно в моём соседстве, в Новоржевском уезде.
Мысль пародировать историю и Шекспира мне представилась. Я не мог воспротивиться двойному искушению и в два утра написал эту повесть.
Я имею привычку на моих бумагах выставлять год и число. «Граф Нулин» писан 13 и 14 декабря. Бывают странные сближения.

 

"I am accustomed to date my papers. Count Nulin was written on 13 and 14 December. History does repeat itself strangely."

 

In his essay Pouchkine ou le vrai et le vraisemblable (1937) VN points out that, had Pushkin lived a couple of years longer, we would have had his photograph. In his Foreword to Shade’s poem Kinbote mentions his favorite photograph of Shade:

 

I have one favorite photograph of him. In this color snapshot taken by a onetime friend of mine, on a brilliant spring day, Shade is seen leaning on a sturdy cane that had belonged to his aunt Maud (see line 86). I am wearing a white windbreaker acquired in a local sports shop and a pair of lilac slacks hailing from Cannes. My left hand is half raised--not to pat Shade on the shoulder as seems to be the intention, but to remove my sunglasses which, however, it never reached in that life, the life of the picture; and the library book under my right arm is a treatise on certain Zemblan calisthenics in which I proposed to interest that young roomer of mine who snapped the picture. A week later he was to betray my trust by taking sordid advantage of my absence on a trip to Washington whence I returned to find that he had been entertaining a fiery-haired whore from Exton who had left her combings and reek in all three bathrooms. Naturally, we separated at once, and through a chink in the window curtains I saw bad Bob standing rather pathetically, with his crewcut, and shabby valise, and the skis I had given him, all forlorn on the roadside, waiting for a fellow student to drive him away forever. I can forgive everything save treason.

 

“Bad Bob” brings to mind  E. A. Poe’s story The Literary Life of Thingum Bob, Esq. (1850). At the beginning of his story Poe mentions Shakespeare:

 

I am now growing in years, and – since I understand that Shakespeare and Mr. Emmons are deceased – it is not impossible that I may even die.

 

In his poem To One in Paradise (1843) E. A. Poe mentions “starry Hope” and compares the Past to a dim gulf:

 

Ah, dream too bright to last!
Ah, starry Hope! that didst arise
But to be overcast!
A voice from out the Future cries,
“On! on!”—but o’er the Past
(Dim gulf!) my spirit hovering lies
Mute, motionless, aghast!

 

In Canto Four of Pale Fire Shade (whose first book was entitled Dim Gulf) calls his last poem “transparent thingum:”

 

Dim Gulf was my first book (free verse); Night Rote
Came next; then Hebe's Cup, my final float
in that damp carnival, for now I term
Everything "Poems," and no longer squirm.
(But this transparent thingum does require
Some moondrop title. Help me, Will! Pale Fire.) (ll. 957-952)

 

In his Commentary Kinbote writes:

 

Paraphrased, this evidently means: Let me look in Shakespeare for something I might use for a title. And the find is "pale fire." But in which of the Bard's works did our poet cull it? My readers must make their own research. All I have with me in a tiny vest pocket edition of Timon of Athens--in Zemblan! It certainly contains nothing that could be regarded as an equivalent of "pale fire" (if it had, my luck would have been a statistical monster). (note to Line 962)

 

Shade borrows the title of his poem from Timon of Athens (Act IV, Scene 3, Timon speaking to the thieves):

 

The sun's a thief, and with his great attraction
Robs the vast sea: the moon's an arrant thief,

And her pale fire she snatches from the sun:
The sea's a thief…

 

In his essay Sud’ba Pushkina (“The Fate of Pushkin,” 1897) Vladimir Solovyov mentions Shakespeare’s Timon Afinskiy (Timon of Athens):

 

Действительность, данная в житейском опыте, несомненно находится в глубоком противоречии с тем идеалом жизни, который открывается вере, философскому умозрению и творческому вдохновению. Из этого противоречия возможны три определённые исхода. Можно прямо отречься от идеала как от пустого вымысла и обмана и признать факт, противоречащий идеальным требованиям как окончательную и единственную действительность. Это есть исход нравственного  скептицизма и мизантропии - взгляд, который может быть почтенным, когда искренен, как, например, у Шекспирова Тимона Афинского, но который не выдерживает логической критики. (IV)

 

Shade asks Shakespeare (“Will”) to help him find the title for his poem. But “will” is also a noun. In “The Fate of Pushkin” Solovyov mentions bezumnaya mirovaya volya (the mindless world-will), as in Schopenhauer’s Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung (The World as Will and Representation, 1819):

 

В  житейских разговорах и в текущей литературе слово «судьба» сопровождается обыкновенно эпитетами более или менее порицательными: "враждебная" судьба, "слепая", "беспощадная", "жестокая" и т. д. Менее резко, но всё-таки с некоторым неодобрением говорят о "насмешках" и об "иронии" судьбы. Все эти выражения предполагают, что наша жизнь зависит от какой-то силы, иногда равнодушной, или безразличной, а иногда и прямо неприязненной и злобной. В первом случае понятие судьбы сливается с ходячим понятием о природе, для которой равнодушие служит обычным эпитетом:

 

И пусть у гробового входа

Младая будет жизнь играть,

И равнодушная природа

Красою вечною сиять.

 

Когда в понятии судьбы подчеркивается это свойство - равнодушие, то под судьбою разумеется собственно не более как закон физического мира.

Во  втором  случае,-  когда говорится о судьбе как враждебной силе,- понятие судьбы сближается с понятием демонического, адского начала в мире, представляется ли оно в виде злого духа религиозных систем или в виде безумной мировой воли, как у Шопенгауэра. (II)

 

Fet’s poem Izmuchen zhizn’yu, kovarstvom nadezhdy… (“By life tormented, and by cunning hope…” 1864) has the epigraph from Schopenhauer:

 

Die Gleichmäβigkeit des Laufes der Zeit it in allen Köpfen beweist mehr, als irgend etwas, das wir alle in denselben Traum versenkt sind, ja das es ein Wesen ist, welches ihn träumt.

 

The evenness of the passage of time in all heads demonstrates more clearly than anything else that we all are immersed in the same dream and that in fact it is one Being that dreams it.

 

The three main characters in Pale Fire, Shade, Kinbote and Gradus are immersed in the same dream and one Being that dreams it is Botkin. In Moi vospominaniya (“My Reminiscences,” 1890) Afanasiy Fet (a poet who was married to Maria Botkin) speaks of the three Tolstoy brothers and mentions Timon of Athens:

 

...я убеждён, что основной тип всех трёх братьев Толстых тождествен, как тождествен тип кленовых листьев, невзирая на всё разнообразие их очертаний. И если бы я задался развить эту мысль, то показал бы, в какой степени у всех трёх братьев присуще то страстное увлечение, без которого в одном из них не мог бы проявиться поэт Л. Толстой. Разница их отношений к жизни состоит в том, с чем каждый из них уходил от неудавшейся мечты. Николай охлаждал свои порывы скептической насмешкой, Лев отходил от несбывшейся мечты с безмолвным укором, а Сергей - с болезненной мизантропией. Чем больше у подобных характеров первоначальной любви, тем сильнее хотя на время сходство с Тимоном Афинским.

 

According to Fet, the basic type of all three brothers Tolstoy is identical, just as the type of maple leaves, despite all variety of their outlines, is identical. Describing the campus of Wordsmith University, Kinbote mentions the famous avenue to all the trees mentioned by Shakespeare:

 

After winding for about four miles in a general eastern direction through a beautifully sprayed and irrigated residential section with variously graded lawns sloping down on both sides, the highway bifurcates: one branch goes left to New Wye and its expectant airfield; the other continues to the campus. Here are the great mansions of madness, the impeccably planned dormitories - bedlams of jungle music - the magnificent palace of the Administration, the brick walls, the archways, the quadrangles blocked out in velvet green and chrysoprase, Spencer House and its lily pond, the Chapel, New Lecture Hall, the Library, the prisonlike edifice containing our classrooms and offices (to be called from now on Shade Hall), the famous avenue to all the trees mentioned by Shakespeare, a distant droning sound, the hint of a haze, the turquoise dome of the Observatory, wisps and pale plumes of cirrus, and the poplar-curtained Roman-tiered football field, deserted on summer days except for a dreamy-eyed youngster flying - on a long control line in a droning circle - a motor-powered model plane. (note to Lines 47-48)

 

At the end of his poem Shade mentions some neighbor's gardener:

 

And through the flowing shade and ebbing light

A man, unheedful of the butterfly -

Some neighbor's gardener, I guess - goes by

Trundling an empty barrow up the lane. (ll. 996-999) 

 

According to Kinbote, Shade saw his black gardener (first met by Kinbote in the Shakespeare avenue of trees):

 

Some neighbor's! The poet had seen my gardener many times, and this vagueness I can only assign to his desire (noticeable elsewhere in his handling of names, etc.) to give a certain poetical patina, the bloom of remoteness, to familiar figures and things - although it is just possible he might have mistaken him in the broken light for a stranger working for a stranger. This gifted gardener I discovered by chance one idle spring day, when I was slowly wending my way home after a maddening and embarrassing experience at the college indoor swimming pool. He stood at the top of a green ladder attending to the sick branch of a grateful tree in one of the most famous avenues in Appalachia. His red flannel shirt lay on the grass. We conversed, a little shyly, he above, I below. I was pleasantly surprised at his being able to refer all his patients to their proper habitats. It was spring, and we were alone in that admirable colonnade of trees which visitors from England have photographed from end to end. I can enumerate here only a few kinds of those trees: Jove's stout oak and two others: the thunder-cloven from Britain, the knotty-entrailed from a Mediterranean island; a weatherfending line (now lime), a phoenix (now date palm), a pine and a cedar (Cedrus), all insular; a Venetian sycamore tree (Acer); two willows, the green, likewise from Venice, the hoar-leaved from Denmark; a midsummer elm, its barky fingers enringed with ivy; a midsummer mulberry, its shade inviting to tarry; and a clown's sad cypress from Illyria. (note to Line 998)

 

Kinbote dubbed his gardener “Balthasar, Prince of Loam” (note to Line 62). Balthasar was one of the three Magi who visited the infant Jesus after he was born. Volkhvy ("The Magi," 1888) is a historical novel by Vsevolod Solovyov (the philosopher's brother). Botkin's first name seems to be Vsevolod.

 

According to Kinbote (the author of a book on surnames), Botkin is one who makes bottekins (fancy footwear). Vladimir Solovyov is the author of an epigram on Tolstoy and Repin beginning: Nekogda nekto izryok: "sapogi sut' vyshe Shekspira..." ("Sometime someone has said: 'the boots are higher than Shakespeare...'" 1897):

 

Некогда некто изрёк «Сапоги суть выше Шекспира».
Дабы по слову сему превзойти британца, сапожным
Лев Толстой мастерством занялся, и славы достигнул.
Льзя ли дальше идти, россияне, в искании славы?
Вящую Репин стяжал, когда: «Сапоги, как такие,
Выше Шекспира, — он рёк, — сапоги, уснащенные ваксой,
Выше Толстого». И вот, сосуд с блестящим составом
Взявши, Толстого сапог он начал чистить усердно.

 

In his essay Zametki perevodchika ("Translator's Notes," 1957) VN mentions khudozhnik Repin (the painter Repin, instead of "aged Derzhavin") who noticed us:

 

Художник Репин нас заметил:

Александр Бенуа остроумно сравнивал фигуру молодого Пушкина на исключительно скверной картине "Лицейский экзамен" (репродукция которой переползает из издания в издание полных сочинений Пушкина) с Яворской в роли Орлёнка. За эту картину Общество им. Куинджи удостоило Репина золотой медали и 3000 рублей, - кажется, главным образом потому, что на Репина "нападали декаденты".

 

VN quotes Alexander Benois who wittily compared the figure of young Pushkin in Repin's painting "The Lyceum Examination" to Rostand's l'Aiglon as played by Lydia Yavorski. The name Yavorski comes from yavor (obs., maple tree). At the beginning of his poem Lilith (1928) VN mentions yavory i stavni (the sycamores and shutters):

 

Я умер. Яворы и ставни
горячий теребил Эол
вдоль пыльной улицы. Я шёл,
и фавны шли, и в каждом фавне
я мнил, что Пана узнаю:
"Добро, я, кажется, в раю".

 

I died. The sycamores and shutters

along the dusty street were teased

by torrid Aeolus. I walked,

and fauns walked, and in every faun

god Pan I seemed to recognize:

Good. I must be in Paradise.

 

In his Commentary Kinbote mentions Arnor's sculpture Lilith Calling Back Adam:

 

Our Prince was fond of Fleur as of a sister but with no soft shadow of incest or secondary homosexual complications. She had a small pale face with prominent cheekbones, luminous eyes, and curly dark hair. It was rumored that after going about with a porcelain cup and Cinderella's slipper for months, the society sculptor and poet Arnor had found in her what he sought and had used her breasts and feet for his Lilith Calling Back Adam; but I am certainly no expert in these tender matters. Otar, her lover, said that when you walked behind her, and she knew you were walking behind her, the swing and play of those slim haunches was something intensely artistic, something Arab girls were taught in special schools by special Parisian panders who were afterwards strangled. (note to Line 80)

 

At the end of Zametki perevodchika II (“Translator’s Notes. Part Two,” 1957) VN mentions tysyacha i odno primechanie (a thousand and one notes):

 

Так скажут историк и словесник; но что может сказать бедный переводчик? «Симилар ту э уингед лили, балансинг энтерс Лалла Рух»? Всё потеряно, всё сорвано, все цветы и серёжки лежат в лужах — и я бы никогда не пустился в этот тусклый путь, если бы не был уверен, что внимательному чужеземцу всю солнечную сторону текста можно подробно объяснить в тысяче и одном примечании.

 

According to VN, he would have never attempted to translate Eugene Onegin into English, had he not been sure that to the attentive foreigner the entire sunny side of the text can be in detail explained in a thousand and one notes.