In Canto Three of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) describes IPH (a lay Institute of Preparation for the Hereafter) and mentions a widower who lost two wives and who meets them again after his death:
We give advice
To widower. He has been married twice:
He meets his wives; both loved, both loving, both
Jealous of one another. Time means growth,
And growth means nothing in Elysian life.
Fondling a changeless child, the flax-haired wife
Grieves on the brink of a remembered pond
Full of a dreamy sky. And, also blond,
But with a touch of tawny in the shade,
Feet up, knees clasped, on a stone balustrade
The other sits and raises a moist gaze
Toward the blue impenetrable haze.
How to begin? Which first to kiss? What toy
To give the babe? Does that small solemn boy
Know of the head-on crash which on a wild
March night killed both the mother and the child?
And she, the second love, with instep bare
In ballerina black, why does she wear
The earrings from the other's jewels case?
And why does she avert her fierce young face? (ll. 569-588)
In their old age Van and Ada, the main characters in VN’s novel Ada (1969), translate Shade’s poem into Russian:
She insisted that if there were no future, then one had the right of making up a future, and in that case one’s very own future did exist, insofar as one existed oneself. Eighty years quickly passed — a matter of changing a slide in a magic lantern. They had spent most of the morning reworking their translation of a passage (lines 569-572) in John Shade’s famous poem:
...Sovetï mï dayom
Kak bït’ vdovtsu: on poteryal dvuh zhyon;
On ih vstrechaet — lyubyashchih, lyubimïh,
Revnuyushchih ego drug k druzhke...
(...We give advice
To widower. He has been married twice:
He meets his wives, both loved, both loving, both
Jealous of one another...)
Van pointed out that here was the rub — one is free to imagine any type of hereafter, of course: the generalized paradise promised by Oriental prophets and poets, or an individual combination; but the work of fancy is handicapped — to a quite hopeless extent — by a logical ban: you cannot bring your friends along — or your enemies for that matter — to the party. The transposition of all our remembered relationships into an Elysian life inevitably turns it into a second-rate continuation of our marvelous mortality. Only a Chinaman or a retarded child can imagine being met, in that Next-Installment World, to the accompaniment of all sorts of tail-wagging and groveling of welcome, by the mosquito executed eighty years ago upon one’s bare leg, which has been amputated since then and now, in the wake of the gesticulating mosquito, comes back, stomp, stomp, stomp, here I am, stick me on.
She did not laugh; she repeated to herself the verses that had given them such trouble. The Signy brain-shrinkers would gleefully claim that the reason the three ‘boths’ had been skipped in the Russian version was not at all, oh, not at all, because cramming three cumbersome amphibrachs into the pentameter would have necessitated adding at least one more verse for carrying the luggage.
‘Oh, Van, oh Van, we did not love her enough. That’s whom you should have married, the one sitting feet up, in ballerina black, on the stone balustrade, and then everything would have been all right — I would have stayed with you both in Ardis Hall, and instead of that happiness, handed out gratis, instead of all that we teased her to death!’ (5.6)
“Three cumbersome amphibrachs” mentioned by Van, obeikh is Gen. pl. of oba (both), a word used by Fyodor Godunov-Cherdyntsev, the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Dar (“The Gift,” 1937), in one of his poems:
Последним выступил Годунов-Чердынцев. Он прочел из сочиненных за лето стихотворений те, которые Елизавета Павловна так любила, - русское:
Берёзы жёлтые немеют в небе синем...
и берлинское, начинающееся строфой:
Здесь всё так плоско, так непрочно,
так плохо сделана луна,
хотя из Гамбурга нарочно
она сюда привезена...
и то, которое больше всего её трогало, хотя она как-то не связывала его с памятью молодой женщины, давно умершей, которую Фёдор в шестнадцать лет любил:
Однажды мы под вечер оба
стояли на старом мосту.
Скажи мне, спросил я, до гроба
запомнишь - вон ласточку ту?
И ты отвечала: ещё-бы!
И как мы заплакали оба,
как вскрикнула жизнь налету...
До завтра, навеки, до гроба, --
однажды, на старом мосту...
In the English version the word oba (that rhymes with do groba, “till we die,” and eshchyo by, “of course, I will”) is skipped and lastochka (swallow) becomes “swift:”
Last to appear was Godunov-Cherdyntsev. From the poems written during the summer he read those which Elizaveta Pavlovna liked so much—on Russia:
The yellow birches, mute in the blue sky…
and on Berlin, beginning with the stanza:
Things here are in a sorry state;
Even the moon is much too rough
Though it is rumored to come straight
From Hamburg where they make the stuff…
and the one which moved her most of all, although she did not think to connect it with the memory of a young woman, long dead, whom Fyodor had loved when sixteen:
One night between sunset and river
On the old bridge we stood, you and I.
Will you ever forget it, I queried,—
That particular swift that went by?
And you answered, so earnestly: Never!
And what sobs made us suddenly shiver,
What a cry life emitted in flight!
Till we die, till tomorrow, for ever,
You and I on the old bridge one night. (Chapter Two)
The “real” name of both Sybil Shade (the poet’s wife in Pale Fire) and Queen Disa (the wife of Charles the Beloved) seems to be Sofia Botkin (born Lastochkin). According to Kinbote (Shade’s mad commentator who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla), the maiden name of Shade’s wife, Irondell, comes from the French word for “swallow:”
John Shade's wife, née Irondell (which comes not from a little valley yielding iron ore but from the French for "swallow"). She was a few months his senior. I understand she came of Canadian stock, as did Shade's maternal grandmother (a first cousin of Sybil's grandfather, if I am not greatly mistaken).
From the very first I tried to behave with the utmost courtesy toward my friend's wife, and from the very first she disliked and distrusted me. I was to learn later that when alluding to me in public she used to call me "an elephantine tick; a king-sized botfly; a macaco worm; the monstrous parasite of a genius." I pardon her - her and everybody. (note to Line 247)
In Van’s and Ada’s jingles that they compose in “Ardis the First” mon Adèle rhymes with l’hirondelle and ma Lucile, with l’hirondelle agile:
Oh! qui me rendra, mon Adèle,
Et ma montagne et l’hirondelle
Oh! qui me rendra ma Lucile,
La Dore et l’hirondelle agile? (1.22)
When Van revisits Ardis four years later, Ada tells him that she has given up all that stuff:
‘My teacher,’ she said, ‘at the Drama School thinks I’m better in farces than in tragedy. If they only knew!’
‘There is nothing to know,’ retorted Van. ‘Nothing, nothing has changed! But that’s the general impression, it was too dim down there for details, we’ll examine them tomorrow on our little island: "My sister, do you still recall..."’
‘Oh shut up!’ said Ada. ‘I’ve given up all that stuff — petits vers, vers de soie...’
‘Come, come,’ cried Van, ‘some of the rhymes were magnificent arcrobatics on the part of the child’s mind: "Oh! qui me rendra, ma Lucile, et le grand chêne and zee big hill." Little Lucile,’ he added in an effort to dissipate her frowns with a joke, ‘little Lucile has become so peachy that I think I’ll switch over to her if you keep losing your temper like that. I remember the first time you got cross with me was when I chucked a stone at a statue and frightened a finch. That’s memory!’ (1.31)
On the last day of their long lives Ada tells Van that he should have married Lucette (“the one sitting feet up, in ballerina black, on the stone balustrade”), Van’s and Ada’s half-sister whom they teased to death.
Let me draw your attention to the revised version of my previous post, “poor old man Swift & Russian humorists in Pale Fire.”