Talking over the ’phone to Joe Lavender, Gradus (Shade’s murderer in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) pronounces the word “what” as “vot:”
They had now reached the swimming pool. Gradus, in deep thought, sank down on a canvas stool. He should wire headquarters at once. No need to prolong this visit. On the other hand, a sudden departure might look suspicious. The stool creaked under him and he looked around for another seat. The young woodwose had now closed his eyes and was stretched out supine on the pool's marble margin; his Tarzan brief had been cast aside on the turf. Gradus spat in disgust and walked back towards the house. Simultaneously the elderly footman came running down the steps of the terrace to tell him in three languages that he was wanted on the telephone. Mr. Lavender could not make it after all but would like to talk to Mr. Degré. After an exchange of civilities there was a pause and Lavender asked: "Sure you aren't a mucking snooper from that French rag?"
"A what?" said Gradus, pronouncing the last word as "vot."
"A mucking snooping son of a bitch?"
Gradus hung up. (note to Line 408)
Shade's mad commentator who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla, Kinbote is Shade’s dangerous neighbor in New Wye. The author of Opasnyi sosed (“The Dangerous Neighbor,” 1811), Vasiliy Lvovich Pushkin was nicknamed Vot in the Arzamas Society. In a letter of Sept. 9, 1830, to Pletnyov (to whom Eugene Onegin is dedicated) Pushkin quotes the last words of his uncle Vasiliy Lvovich (who died on Aug. 20, 1830): Kak skuchny statyi Katenina! (How boring are the articles of Katenin!):
Бедный дядя Василий! знаешь ли его последние слова? приезжаю к нему, нахожу его в забытьи, очнувшись, он узнал меня, погоревал, потом, помолчав: как скучны статьи Катенина! и более ни слова. Каково? вот что значит умереть честным воином, на щите, le cri de guerre a la bouche!
In a letter of May 16, 1835, to Pushkin Katenin says that the names like Kukolnik (a very mediocre poet, Gogol’s schoolmate) strongly smack of Perrault and plays on a line from Canto Four of Boileau’s L'Art poétique (1674), Il n'est point de degré du médiocre au pire (there is no degree from mediocre to worst):
Судя по твоим, увы! слишком правдоподобным словам, ты умрёшь (дай бог тебе много лет здравствовать!) Вениямином русских поэтов, юнейшим из сынов Израиля, а новое поколение безъимянное; ибо имена, подобные Кукольнику, sentent fort le Perrault. Где ему до Шаховского? У того везде кое-что хорошо. Своя Семья мила, в Аристофане целая идея, и будь всё как второй акт, вышла бы в своём роде хорошая комедия; князь не тщательный художник и не великий поэт, но вопреки Boileau:
Il est bien des degrés du médiocre au pire
сиречь до Кукольника; и какими стихами, с тех пор как они взбунтовались противу всех правил, они пишут!
According to Katenin (who quotes Pushkin’s prediction that he, Pushkin, will die as the Benjamin of Russian poets, the youngest of Israel’s sons), there are many degrees from mediocre to worst. One of Gradus’ aliases, d’Argus, hints at Argus (a giant with 100 eyes, set to guard the heifer Io). In his poem Vsevolozhskomu (“To Vsevolozhski,” 1819) Pushkin mentions groznye Argusy (“the severe guards”) and nadezhda (hope):
Но вспомни, милый: здесь одна,
Тебя всечасно ожидая,
Вздыхает пленница младая;
Весь день уныла и томна,
В своей задумчивости сладкой
Тихонько плачет под окном
От грозных Аргусов украдкой,
И смотрит на пустынный дом,
Где мы так часто пировали
С Кипридой, Вакхом и тобой,
Куда с надеждой и тоской
Её желанья улетали. (ll. 47-58)
The surname Vsevolozhski comes from Vsevolod (a male given name). Shade’s, Kinbote’s and Gradus’ “real” name seems to be Vsevolod Botkin. An American scholar of Russian descent, Prof. Botkin went mad after the tragic death of his daughter Nadezhda (Hazel Shade of Kinbote’s Commentary). Kinbote (who never saw Shade’s daughter) admits that Hazel Shade resembles him in certain respects (note to Lines 347-348). According to Kinbote, the name Zembla is a corruption not of the Russian zemlya, but of Semblerland, a land of reflections, of "resemblers" (note to Line 894).
The name Gradus brings to mind Gradus ad Parnassum, a theoretical and pedagogical work sometimes shortened to Gradus. In a letter of Dec. 28, 1816, to his uncle Pushkin calls Vasiliy Lvovich groznyi Vot (formidable Vot) and says that Vasiliy Lvovich (who, in a letter to his nephew, called him «my brother») is his uncle even at Parnassus:
Тебе, о Нестор Арзамаса,
В боях воспитанный поэт, —
Опасный для певцов сосед
На страшной высоте Парнаса,
Защитник вкуса, грозный Вот!
Тебе, мой дядя, в новый год
Веселья прежнего желанье
И слабый сердца перевод —
В стихах и прозою посланье.
В письме Вашем Вы называли меня братом; но я не осмелился назвать Вас этим именем, слишком для меня лестным.
Я не совсем ещё рассудок потерял
От рифм бахических, шатаясь на Пегасе.
Я не забыл себя, хоть рад, хотя не рад,
Нет, нет — вы мне совсем не брат,
Вы дядя мой и на Парнасе.
Leaving the poolside, Gradus spits in disgust. Plyunut' (to spit) is the last word in Pushkin's preface to the second edition (1828) of Ruslan and Lyudmila (Pushkin alludes to Dmitriev’s remark in a letter of Oct. 20, 1820, to Vyazemski, "La mère en défendra la lecture à sa fille”):
Долг искренности требует также упомянуть и о мнении одного из увенчанных, первоклассных отечественных писателей, который, прочитав Руслана и Людмилу, сказал: я тут не вижу ни мыслей, ни чувства; вижу только чувственность. Другой (а может быть, и тот же) увенчанный, первоклассный отечественный писатель приветствовал сей первый опыт молодого поэта следующим стихом:
Мать дочери велит на эту сказку плюнуть.
“A first-rate national writer crowned with bays greeted this effort of a young poet with the following verse: Mother tells daughter to ignore [Russ. idiom: “to spit on”] this tale.”
After his wife had left him with a gypsy lover, Gradus lived in sin with his mother-in-law:
At his hotel the beaming proprietress handed him a telegram. It chided him in Danish for leaving Geneva and told him to undertake nothing until further notice. It also advised him to forget his work and amuse himself. But what (save dreams of blood) could be his amusements? He was not interested in sightseeing or seasiding. He had long stopped drinking. He did not go to concerts. He did not gamble. Sexual impulses had greatly bothered him at one time but that was over. After his wife, a beader in Radugovitra, had left him (with a gypsy lover), he had lived in sin with his mother-in-law until she was removed, blind and dropsical, to an asylum for decayed widows. Since then he had tried several times to castrate himself, had been laid up at the Glassman Hospital with a severe infection, and now, at forty-four, was quite cured of the lust that Nature, the grand cheat, puts into us to inveigle us into propagation. No wonder the advice to amuse himself infuriated him. I think I shall break this note here. (note to Line 697)
In a letter of Sept. 29, 1830, to Pletnyov Pushkin mentions his mother-in-law who kept postponing the wedding because of the dowry and quotes the old Gypsy’s words in his poem Tsygany (“The Gypsies,” 1824):
Вот в чём было дело: тёща моя отлагала свадьбу за приданым, а уж, конечно, не я. Я бесился. Тёща начинала меня дурно принимать и заводить со мною глупые ссоры; и это бесило меня. Хандра схватила, и чёрные мысли мной овладели. Неужто я хотел иль думал отказаться? но я видел уж отказ и утешался чем ни попало. Всё, что ты говоришь о свете, справедливо; тем справедливее опасения мои, чтоб тётушки, да бабушки, да сестрицы не стали кружить голову молодой жене моей пустяками. Она меня любит, но посмотри, Алеко Плетнев, как гуляет вольная луна, etc.
“She [my bride] loves me, but look, Aleko Pletnyov, how vol’naya luna (the free moon) walks, etc.” (Pletnyov's first name was Pyotr, Aleko is the main character of "The Gypsies.")
In his EO Commentary VN calls “The Gypsies” a frankly Byronic poem. A musical prodigy and amusing pet who entertains Gradus at Joe Lavender’s villa Libitina, Gordon Krummholz brings to mind George Gordon Byron. According to Kinbote (the author of a book on surnames), Botkin is one who makes bottekins (fancy footwear). When Byron was born, he suffered from lameness and a twisted foot. After May Gray (Byron's nurse) was fired, Byron was put in the care of a "trussmaker to the General hospital", a man named Lavender, in hopes that he could be cured; however, Lavender instead abused the boy and would occasionally use him as a servant. After Byron exposed Lavender as a fool, Gordon took her son to visit Doctor Matthew Baillie in London. They took up residence at Sloane Terrace during the summer of 1799, and there Byron started to receive treatment, such as specially designed boots.
Elvina Krummholz (Gordon's famous mother) brings to mind moy drug Elvina (my dear Elvina) mentioned by Pushkin in Chapter One (XXXII: 9) of Eugene Onegin:
Дианы грудь, ланиты Флоры
Прелестны, милые друзья!
Однако ножка Терпсихоры
Прелестней чем-то для меня.
Она, пророчествуя взгляду
Неоцененную награду,
Влечёт условною красой
Желаний своевольный рой.
Люблю её, мой друг Эльвина,
Под длинной скатертью столов,
Весной на мураве лугов,
Зимой на чугуне камина,
На зеркальном паркете зал,
У моря на граните скал.
Diana's bosom, Flora's cheeks, are charming,
dear friends! Nevertheless, for me
something about it makes more charming
the small foot of Terpsichore.
By prophesying to the gaze
an unpriced recompense,
with token beauty it attracts the willful
swarm of desires.
I like it, dear Elvina,
beneath the long napery of tables,
in springtime on the turf of meads,
in winter on the hearth's cast iron,
on mirrory parquet of halls,
by the sea on granite of rocks.
In his ode Exegi monumentum (3.30) Horace mentions Libitina (the Roman goddess of corpses and tombs):
Non omnis moriar multaque pars mei
vitabit Libitinam; usque ego postera
crescam laude recens, dum Capitolium
scandet cum tacita virgine pontifex.
I shall not wholly die and a greater part of me
will evade Libitina; continually I,
newly arisen, may be strengthened with ensuing praise so long
as the high priest climbs the Capitoline with the silent maiden. (ll. 6-10)
Horace’s ode was imitated by Derzhavin. In Canto Six (VII: 12) of EO Pushkin compares Zaretski (Lenski’s second who plants cabbages) to Horace. In Canto Eight (II: 3-4) of EO Pushkin mentions old Derzhavin who “noticed us and blessed us while descending to his grave” (in the next line of the fair copy Pushkin says that Dmitriev was not his detractor). In his EO Commentary (vol. II, pp. 310-311) VN points out that in his great poem Ya pamyatnkik sebe vozdvig… (“Exegi monumentum,” 1836) Pushkin stanza for stanza parodies Derzhavin’s Pamyatnik (1796). The poem's last line, i ne osporivay gluptsa (and do not contradict the fool), although ostensibly referring to reviewers, slyly implies that only fools proclaim their immortality. In line 8 of his Pushkin uses the obsolete word piit (poet):
Нет, весь я не умру — душа в заветной лире
Мой прах переживёт и тленья убежит —
И славен буду я, доколь в подлунном мире
Жив будет хоть один пиит.
No, I’ll not wholly die. My soul in the sacred lyre
Is to survive my dust and flee decay;
And I’ll be famed while there remains alive
In the sublunar world at least one poet.
In his “Ode to Count Khvostov” (1825) written in a mockingly archaic style Pushkin calls himself nevedomyi piita (an obscure poet) and Khvostov (whom Pushkin in jest compares to “Beyron”) piita znamenityi (the famous poet):
А я, неведомый Пиита,
В восторге новом воспою
Во след Пиита знаменита
Правдиву похвалу свою,
Моляся кораблю бегущу,
Да Бейрона он узрит кущу7,
И да блюдут твой мирный сон8
Нептун, Плутон, Зевс, Цитерея,
Гебея, Псиша, Крон, Астрея,
Феб, Игры, Смехи, Вакх, Харон.
In the last three lines Pushkin lists Neptune, Pluto, Zeus, Cytherea (Venus), Hebe, Psyche, Chronos, Astraea, Phoebus, Games, Laughs, Bacchus and Charon. Pushkin appended eight footnotes to his mock ode. In the last of them Pushkin mentions Geba (Hebe) who raises her kubok (cup) to Khvostov’s health:
Здесь поэт, увлекаясь воображением, видит уже Великого нашего лирика, погруженного в сладкий сон и приближающегося к берегам благословенной Эллады. Нептун усмиряет пред ним продерзкие волны; Плутон исходит из преисподней бездны, дабы узреть того, кто ниспошлет ему в непродолжительном времени богатую жатву теней поклонников Лжепророка; Зевес улыбается ему с небес; Цитерея (Венера) осыпает цветами своего любимого певца; Геба подъемлет кубок за здравие его; Псиша, в образе Иполита Богдановича, ему завидует; Крон удерживает косу, готовую разить; Астрея предчувствует возврат своего царствования; Феб ликует; Игры, Смехи, Вакх и Харон веселою толпою следуют за судном нашего бессмертного Пииты.
In Canto Four of his poem Shade says that his third collection of poetry was entitled Hebe’s Cup:
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. 957-962)
In the last stanza of his poem Vesennyaya groza (“The Spring Thunderstorm,” 1829) Tyutchev mentions vetrenaya Geba (frivolous Hebe) who spilled on Earth her gromokipyashiy kubok (thunder-boiling cup). Tyutchev’s poem begins as follows:
Lyublyu grozu v nachale maya…
(I love a thunderstorm at the beginning of May…)
The beginning of May brings to mind May Gray (Byron’s nurse).
The name Khvostov comes from khvost (tail). Oda (Russian for “ode”) rhymes with coda (which means in Italian “tail”). Shade’s poem consists of 999 lines and is almost finished when the author is killed by Gradus. Kinbote believes that, to be completed, Shade’s 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”). Dvoynik (“The Double”) is a short novel (1846) by Dostoevski and a poem (1909) by Alexander Blok (who, according to G. Ivanov, did not know what a coda is).
In a letter of Oct. 31, 1838 (Dostoevski's seventeenth birthday), to his brother Dostoevski twice repeats the word gradus (degree), mentions nadezhda (hope) and says that Byron was an egoist:
Послушай! Мне кажется, что слава также содействует вдохновенью поэта. Байрон был эгоист: его мысль о славе — была ничтожна, суетна... Но одно помышленье о том, что некогда вслед за твоим былым восторгом вырвется из праха душа чистая, возвышенно-прекрасная, мысль, что вдохновенье как таинство небесное освятит страницы, над которыми плакал ты и будет плакать потомство, не думаю, чтобы эта мысль не закрадывалась в душу поэта и в самые минуты творчества. Пустой же крик толпы ничтожен. Ах! я вспомнил 2 стиха Пушкина, когда он описывает толпу и поэта:
И плюет (толпа) на алтарь, где твой огонь горит,
И в детской резвости колеблет твой треножник!..
Dostoevski quotes the two last lines of Pushkin's sonnet Poetu ("To a Poet," 1830):
And [let the crowd] spit on the altar, where your fire burns
And shake your tripod in childish playfulness!
Koleblemyi trenozhnik ("The Shaken Tripod," 1921) is the title of Hodasevich's Pushkin speech. In his obituary essay O Khodaseviche (“On Hodasevich,” 1939) VN mentions a parachute:
Правительственная воля, беспрекословно требующая ласково-литературного внимания к трактору или парашюту, к красноармейцу или полярнику, т. е. некой внешности мира, значительно могущественнее, конечно, наставления здешнего, обращённого к миру внутреннему, едва ощутимого для слабых, презираемого сильными, побуждавшего в двадцатых годах к рифмованной тоске по ростральной колонне, а ныне дошедшего до религиозных забот, не всегда глубоких, не всегда искренних.
The will of the government which implicitly demands a writer's affectionate attention toward a parachute, a farm tractor, a Red Army soldier, or the participant in some polar venture (i.e., toward this or that externality of the world) is naturally considerably more powerful than the injunction of exile, addressed to man's inner world. The latter precept is barely sensed by the weak and is scorned by the strong. In the nineteen twenties it induced nostalgic rhymes about St. Petersburg's rostral columns, and now, in the late thirties, it has evolved rhymed religious concerns, not always deep but always honest.
In his apology of suicide Kinbote describes the ideal drop and mentions a packed parachute left behind:
The ideal drop is from an aircraft, your muscles relaxed, your pilot puzzled, your packed parachute shuffled off, cast off, shrugged off - farewell, shootka (little chute)! (note to Line 493)
According to Kinbote, he arrived in America descending by parachute:
John Shade's heart attack (Oct. 17, 1958) practically coincided with the disguised king's arrival in America where he descended by parachute from a chartered plane piloted by Colonel Montacute, in a field of hay-feverish, rank-flowering weeds, near Baltimore whose oriole is not an oriole. (note to Line 691)
In Ilf and Petrov’s novel Dvenadtsat’ stuliev (“The Twelve Chairs,” 1928) Lasker arrives in Vasyuki (as imagined by the Vasyuki chess enthusiasts) descending by parachute:
Вдруг на горизонте была усмотрена чёрная точка. Она быстро приближалась и росла, превратившись в большой изумрудный парашют. Как большая редька, висел на парашютном кольце человек с чемоданчиком.
– Это он! – закричал одноглазый. – Ура! Ура! Ура! Я узнаю великого философа-шахматиста, доктора Ласкера. Только он один во всем мире носит такие зелёные носочки.
Suddenly a black dot was noticed on the horizon. It approached rapidly, growing larger and larger until it finally turned into a large emerald parachute. A man with an attache case was hanging from the harness, like a huge radish.
"Here he is!" shouted one-eye. "Hooray, hooray, I recognize the great philosopher and chess player Dr. Lasker. He is the only person in the world who wears those green socks." (Chapter 34 “The Interplanetary Chess Tournament”)
Lasker’s izumrudnyi parashyut (emerald parachute) brings to mind Izumrudov, one of the greater Shadows who visits Gradus in Nice and tells him the ex-king's address:
He was a merry, perhaps overmerry, fellow, in a green velvet jacket. Nobody liked him, but he certainly had a keen mind. His name, Izumrudov, sounded rather Russian but actually meant “of the Umruds,” an Eskimo tribe sometimes seen paddling their umyaks (hide-lined boats) on the emerald waters of our northern shores. Grinning, he said friend Gradus must get together his travel documents, including a health certificate, and take the earliest available jet to New York. Bowing, he congratulated him on having indicated with such phenomenal acumen the right place and the right way. Yes, after a thorough perlustration of the loot that Andron and Niagarushka had obtained from the Queen's rosewood writing desk (mostly bills, and treasured snapshots, and those silly medals) a letter from the King did turn up giving his address which was of all places -- Our man, who interrupted the herald of success to say he had never -- was bidden not to display so much modesty. A slip of paper was now produced on which Izumudrov, shaking with laughter (death is hilarious), wrote out for Gradus their client's alias, the name of the university where he taught, and that of the town where it was situated. No, the slip was not for keeps. He could keep it only while memorizing it. This brand of paper (used by macaroon makers) was not only digestible but delicious. The gay green vision withdrew - to resume his whoring no doubt. How one hates such men! (note to Line 741)
Andron and Niagarushka mentioned by Kinbote are Andronnikov and Niagarin, the two Soviet experts hired by the new Zemblan government to find the crown jewels. In “The Twelve Chairs” Bender tells Vorob'yaninov plyun'te (not give a damn; literally: spit) on the jewelry hidden in a chair by Mme Petukhov (Vorob'yaninov's mother-in-law):
Взволнованный Ипполит Матвеевич очнулся только от голоса Остапа.
— Выбор неплохой. Камни, я вижу, подобраны со вкусом. Сколько вся эта музыка стоила?
— Тысяч семьдесят — семьдесят пять.
— Мгу... Теперь, значит, стоит полтораста тысяч.
— Неужели так много? — обрадованно спросил Воробьянинов.
— Не меньше. Только вы, дорогой товарищ из Парижа, плюньте на все это.
— Как плюнуть?!
— Слюной, — ответил Остап, — как плевали до эпохи исторического материализма. Ничего не выйдет.
The sound of Ostap's voice brought the excited Ippolit Matveyevich back to earth.
"Not a bad choice. The stones have been tastefully selected, I see. How much did all this jazz cost?"
"Seventy to seventy-five thousand." "Hm . . . Then it's worth a hundred and fifty thousand now."
"Really as much as that?" asked Ippolit Matveyevich jubilantly.
"Not less than that. However, if I were you, dear friend from Paris, I wouldn't give a damn about it."
"What do you mean, not give a damn?" "Just that. Like they used to before the advent of historical materialism." (Chapter Six: "The Diamond Haze")
Bender’s lecture on chess in the Vasyuki club Kartonazhnik (Cardboard Worker) is a parody of Valentin Katayev's story Lektsiya Niagarova (“A Lecture of Niagarov,” 1926) that appeared in Smekhach (a satiric magazine that came out in Moscow and Leningrad in 1924-28). The magazine’s name was borrowed from Khlebnikov’s poem Zaklyatie smekhom (“Incantation by Laughter,” 1909), in which the word smekhachi (pl. of smekhach, Khlebnikov’s neologism from smekh, “laughter”) is repeated five times. In his poem Tam, gde zhili sviristeli (“There, where the waxwings lived…” 1908) Khlebnikov mentions besporyadok dikiy teney (a wild confusion of shadows). At the beginning (and, presumably, at the end) of his poem Shade calls himself “the shadow of the waxwing.”
Andronnikov is a character in Dostoevski's novel Podrostok ("The Adolescent," 1875). In his speech on Dostoevski (delivered on the hundredth anniversary of the writer's birth) Lunacharski (the minister of education in Lenin's government) takes the example of water in order to explain Dostoevski’s treatment of man’s psyche and mentions a fantastic Niagara Falls, a hundred times more grandiose than the real one:
Чтобы понять, что делает Достоевский с психикой - возьмём хотя бы такой пример - вода. Для того, чтобы дать человеку полное представление о воде, заставить его объять все её свойства, надо ему показать воду, пар, лёд, разделить воду на составные части, показать, что такое тихое озеро, величаво катящая свои волны река, водопад, фонтан и проч. Словом - ему нужно показать все свойства, всю внутреннюю динамику воды. И, однако, этого всё-таки будет мало. Может быть, для того, чтобы понять динамику воды, нужно превысить данные возможности и фантастически представить человеку Ниагару, в сотню раз грандиознейшую, чем подлинная. Вот Достоевский и стремится превозмочь реальность и показать дух человеческий со всеми его неизмеримыми высотами и необъяснимыми глубинами со всех сторон. Как Микель Анджело скручивает человеческие тела в конвульсиях, в агонии, так Достоевский дух человеческий то раздувает до гиперболы, то сжимает до полного уничтожения, смешивает с грязью, низвергает его в глубины ада, то потом вдруг взмывает в самые высокие эмпиреи неба. Этими полётами человеческого духа Достоевский не только приковывает наше внимание, захватывает нас, открывает нам новые неизведанные красоты, но даёт очень много и нашему познанию, показывая нам неподозреваемые нами глубины души.
According to Lunacharski, Dostoevski shows to us the soul’s depths whose existence we did not even suspect. In Pale Fire VN does the same thing (but much more artistically).
According to Kinbote, in a conversation with him Shade listed Dostoevski among Russian humorists:
Speaking of the Head of the bloated Russian Department, Prof. Pnin, a regular martinet in regard to his underlings (happily, Prof. Botkin, who taught in another department, was not subordinated to that grotesque "perfectionist"): "How odd that Russian intellectuals should lack all sense of humor when they have such marvelous humorists as Gogol, Dostoevski, Chekhov, Zoshchenko, and those joint authors of genius Ilf and Petrov." (note to Line 172)
Let me draw your attention to the updated full version of my previous post: “FLATMAN, FLEUR DE FYLER & QUEEN BLENDA IN PALE FIRE.”