In his Commentary Kinbote (in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962, Shade's mad commentator who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla) mentions his great-great-gradmother, Queen Yaruga, and her lover Hodinski (also known as Hodyna), the author of a celebrated pastiche:
When I was a child, Russia enjoyed quite a vogue at the court of Zembla but that was a different Russia--a Russia that hated tyrants and Philistines, injustice and cruelty, the Russia of ladies and gentlemen and liberal aspirations. We may add that Charles the Beloved could boast of some Russian blood. In medieval times two of his ancestors had married Novgorod princesses. Queen Yaruga (reigned 1799-1800) his great-great-granddam, was half Russian; and most historians believe that Yaruga's only child Igor was not the son of Uran the Last (reigned 1798-1799) but the fruit of her amours with the Russian adventurer Hodinski, her goliart (court jester) and a poet of genius, said to have forged in his spare time a famous old Russian chanson de geste, generally attributed to an anonymous bard of the twelfth century. (note to Line 681)
Yaruga is an old Russian word for “ravine.” In Slovo o polku Igoreve (“The Song of Igor’s Campaign”) Wild Bull Vsevolod (Igor’s brother) mentions yarugy (the ravines):
И рече ему Буй-Туръ Всеволодъ: "Одинъ братъ, одинъ свЪтъ свЪтлый - ты, Игорю! Оба есвЪ Святъславличя! СЪдлай, брате, свои бързыи комони, а мои ти готови, осЪдлани у Курьска напереди. А мои ти куряни - свЪдоми къмети: подъ трубами повити, подъ шеломы възлелЪяны, конець копия въскръмлени; пути имь вЪдоми, яругы имъ знаеми, луци у нихъ напряжени, тули отворени, сабли изъострени. Сами скачють, акы сЪрыи влъци въ полЪ, ищучи себе чти, а князю славЪ".
And Wild Bull Vsevolod [arrives and]
says to him:
"My one brother, one bright brightness,
you Igor!
We both are Svyatoslav's sons.
Saddle, brother, your swift steeds.
As to mine, they are ready,
saddled ahead, near Kursk;
as to my Kurskers, they are famous
knights –
swaddled under war-horns,
nursed under helmets,
fed from the point of the lance;
to them the trails are familiar,
to them the ravines are known,
the bows they have are strung tight,
the quivers, unclosed,
the sabers, sharpened;
themselves, like gray wolves,
they lope in the field,
seeking for themselves honor,
and for their prince glory." (ll. 72-90, VN’s translation)
In Drugie berega (“Other Shores,” 1954), the Russian version of his autobiography Speak, Memory (1951), VN describes his entomological discoveries and mentions those severe and beautiful regions where vse tropy i yarugi (all paths and ravines) are familiar to him:
Далеко я забрёл, - однако былое у меня всё под боком, и частица грядущего тоже со мной. В цветущих зарослях аризонских каньонов, высоко на рудоносных склонах Сан-Мигуэльских Гор, на озёрах Тетонского урочища и во многих других суровых и прекрасных местностях, где все тропы и яруги мне знакомы, каждое лето летают и будут летать мною открытые, мною описанные виды и подвиды. "Именем моим названа" - нет, не река, а бабочка в Аляске, другая в Бразилии, третья в Ютахе, где я взял её высоко в горах, на окне лыжной гостиницы - та Eupithecia nabokovi McDunnough, которая таинственно завершает тематическую серию, начавшуюся в петербургском лесу. Признаюсь, я не верю в мимолетность времени - лёгкого, плавного, персидского времени! Этот волшебный ковёр я научился так складывать, чтобы один узор приходился на другой. Споткнётся или нет дорогой посетитель, это его дело. И высшее для меня наслаждение - вне дьявольского времени, но очень даже внутри божественного пространства - это наудачу выбранный пейзаж, все равно в какой полосе, тундровой или полынной, или даже среди остатков какого-нибудь старого сосняка у железной дороги между мертвыми в этом контексте Олбани и Скенектеди (там у меня летает один из любимейших моих крестников, мой голубой samuelis) - словом, любой уголок земли, где я могу быть в обществе бабочек и кормовых их растений. Вот это - блаженство, и за блаженством этим есть нечто, не совсем поддающееся определению. Это вроде какой-то мгновенной физической пустоты, куда устремляется, чтобы заполнить её, всё, что я люблю в мире. Это вроде мгновенного трепета умиления и благодарности, обращенной, как говорится в американских официальных рекомендациях, to whom it may concern - не знаю, к кому и к чему,- гениальному ли контрапункту человеческой судьбы или благосклонным духам, балующим земного счастливца.
I confess I do not believe in time. I like to fold my magic carpet, after use, in such a way as to superimpose one part of the pattern upon another. Let visitors trip. And the highest enjoyment of timelessness—in a landscape selected at random—is when I stand among rare butterflies and their food plants. This is ecstasy, and behind the ecstasy is something else, which is hard to explain. It is like a momentary vacuum into which rushes all that I love. A sense of oneness with sun and stone. A thrill of gratitude to whom it may concern—to the contrapuntal genius of human fate or to tender ghosts humoring a lucky mortal. (Chapter Six, 6)
Moy goluboy samuelis (my blue samuelis) brings to mind Samuel Shade (the poet’s father in Pale Fire). According to VN, this butterfly (Lycaeides melissa samuelis Nabokov 1944?) is one of his lyubimeyshikh krestnikov (favorite god-children). Pushkin’s maternal great-grandfather, Abram Petrovich Gannibal was of African descent and krestnik (a god-son) of the tsar Peter I. In Chapter One (L: 8-14) of Eugene Onegin Pushkin says that 'tis time to leave the dreary shore and to sigh for somber Russia beneath the sky of his Africa:
Пора покинуть скучный брег
Мне неприязненной стихии,
И средь полуденных зыбей,
Под небом Африки моей,11
Вздыхать о сумрачной России,
Где я страдал, где я любил,
Где сердце я похоронил.
'Tis time to leave the dreary shore
of the element inimical to me,
and 'mid meridian ripples
beneath the sky of my Africa,
to sigh for somber Russia,
where I suffered, where I loved,
where I buried my heart.
In Speak, Memory (Chapter Three, 5) VN paraphrases these lines:
And finally: I reserve for myself the right to yearn after an ecological niche:
...Beneath the sky
Of my America to sigh
For one locality in Russia.
In January 1837 (less than three weeks before his fatal duel) Pushkin received from K. T. Khlebnikov who had lived in America (where he had first read Pushkin's works) a letter offering Pushkin, the editor of Sovremennik (The Contemporary), Khlebnikov's "Introduction into a Historical Review of Russian [Colonial] Possessions in America:"
Милостивый государь Александр Сергеевич.
Один из здешних литераторов, будучи у меня в квартире, прочитал писанное мной для себя введение в историческое обозрение российских владений в Америке и, не знаю почему одобрив его, советовал напечатать в Вашем или другом журнале, принимая на себя труд передать мою рукопись. Не привыкши к посредничеству, я решился представить Вам, милостивый государь, эту записку и если Вы удостоите её прочесть и найдете достойною поместить в Вашем журнале, тогда предоставляю её в Ваше полное распоряжение с покорнейшею просьбою поправить не исправный слог человека, не готовившегося быть писателем и почти полудикаря. Если бы случилось, что некоторые мысли мои будут противны Вашим, тогда их можно уничтожить; но буде Вам угодно будет на что либо пояснения, тогда по первой повестке за особенную честь себе поставлю явиться к Вам, или куда назначите, для ответа.
Извините меня, милостивый государь, что осмелился беспокоить Вас вызовом моим с представлением ничтожного маранья. Моё дело было и есть удивляться Вашим образцовым произведениям, с которыми ознакомился, проживая в новом свете, и которые обязали меня быть к Вам всегда с полным уважением и преданностию милостивый государь покорнейшим слугой Кирил Хлебников
Января 7 дня 1837 года
The name of Pushkin's "American" correspondent brings to mind the poet Velimir Khlebnikov who mentions besporyadok dikiy teney (a wild confusion of shadows) in his poem Tam, gde zhili sviristeli (“There where the waxwings lived,” 1908). At the beginning (and presumably at the end) of his poem Shade calls himself “the shadow of the waxwing.” Like Samuel Shade (the poet’s father), the father of Velimir Khlebnikov was a celebrated ornithologist.
Khlebnikov was a futurist poet. In Canto One of his poem Shade speaks of his dead parents and mentions a preterist (one who collects cold nests):
I was an infant when my parents died.
They both were ornithologists. I've tried
So often to evoke them that today
I have a thousand parents. Sadly they
Dissolve in their own virtues and recede,
But certain words, chance words I hear or read,
Such as "bad heart" always to him refer,
And "cancer of the pancreas" to her.
A preterist: one who collects cold nests.
Here was my bedroom, now reserved for guests. (ll. 71-80)
Describing the battle of Poltava in Canto Three of his poem Poltava (1928) Pushkin mentions ptentsy gnezda Petrova (the fledglings of Peter's nest):
И он промчался пред полками,
Могущ и радостен, как бой.
Он поле пожирал очами.
За ним вослед неслись толпой
Сии птенцы гнезда Петрова -
В пременах жребия земного,
В трудах державства и войны
Его товарищи, сыны:
И Шереметев благородный,
И Брюс, и Боур, и Репнин,
И, счастья баловень безродный,
Полудержавный властелин.
He tore ahead of all the ranks,
Enraptured, mighty as the battle.
His eyes devoured the martial field.
The fledglings of Peter's nest
Surged after him, a loyal throng-
Through all the shifts of worldly fate,
In trials of policy and war,
These men, these comrades, were like sons:
The noble Sheremetev,
And Bryus, and Bour, and Repnin,
And, fortune's humble favorite,
The mighty half-sovereign.
(trans. Ivan Eubanks)
One of the fledglings of Peter's nest, Repnin is the ancestor of Ivan Pnin (1773-1805), a poet and president of The Free Society of Lovers of
Literature, Sciences and Arts (an illegitimate son of Prince Repnin). Na smert' Pnina ("On the Death of Pnin," 1805) is a poem by Batyushkov. In his Commentary Kinbote mentions Prof. Pnin, the Head of the bloated Russian Department at Wordsmith University, and Professor Botkin (who taught in another department):
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)
Shade's, Kinbote's and Gradus' "real" name seems to be Vsevolod Botkin (an American scholar of Russian descent, Professor Botkin went mad and became Shade, Kinbote and Gradus after the tragic death of his daughter Nadezhda). In "The Song of Igor's Campaign" Svyatoslav (Igor's father, the great Prince of Kiev) addresses Vsevolod, the great prince of Vladimir surnamed Bolshoe Gnezdo (the Big Nest):
Великый княже Всеволоде!
Не мыслию ти прелетети издалеча,
отня злата стола поблюсти?
Ты бо можеши Волгу веслы раскропити,
а Донъ шеломы выльяти!
Аже бы ты былъ,
то была бы чага по ногате,
а кощей по резане.
Ты бо можеши посуху
живыми шереширы стреляти -
удалыми сыны Глебовы.
Great prince Vsevolod!
Do you not think of flying here from afar
to safeguard the paternal golden throne?
For you can with your oars
scatter in drops the Volga,
and with your helmets
scoop dry the Don.
If you were here,
a female slave would fetch
one nogata,
and a male slave,
one rezana;
for you can shoot on land live bolts —
[these are] the bold sons of Gleb! (ll. 497-510)
One of the poets who translated Slovo into modern Russian was Balmont. At the end of his poem Nash tsar’ (“Our Tsar,” 1907) written for the tenth anniversary of the coronation of Nicholas II Balmont says that he who started reigning with Hodynka (the Khodynka tragedy, a human stampede that occurred on 30 May, 1896, on Khodynka Field in Moscow, during the festivities following the coronation of Nicholas II) will finish standing at the scaffold:
Наш царь - Мукден, наш царь - Цусима,
Наш царь - кровавое пятно,
Зловонье пороха и дыма,
В котором разуму - темно...
Наш царь - убожество слепое,
Тюрьма и кнут, подсуд, расстрел,
Царь-висельник, тем низкий вдвое,
Что обещал, но дать не смел.
Он трус, он чувствует с запинкой,
Но будет, час расплаты ждёт.
Кто начал царствовать - Ходынкой,
Тот кончит - встав на эшафот.
Our tsar is Mukden, tsar - Tsushima,
Our tsar is the stain of blood,
The stench of gunpowder and reek smoke,
In which the intellect feels - dark...
Our tsar is a blind-sighted squalor,
prison and whip, the judge, the shoot,
The king - the gallows, double low,
And what he promised, he dared not.
He is a coward, fumble feeling,
But hour of reckoning will come.
Who started reigning with - Hodynka,
will finish - at the scaffold stand.
The last Russian tsar, Nicholas II was executed with his entire family in July, 1918, in Ekaterinburg. Among the people who were executed with him was Doctor Evgeniy Botkin.
Shade's poem is written in heroic couplets. In his essay Bal’mont liricheskiy poet (“Balmont the Lyric Poet”) included in Kniga otrazheniy (“The Book of Reflections,” 1906) Innokentiy Annenski (who published his book under the penname Nik. T-o, “Mr. Nobody”) mentions samye geroicheskie razmery (the most heroic meters):
Но ещё хуже обстоят дела поэзии, если стихотворение покажется читателю неморальным, точно мораль то же, что добродетель, и точно блюдение оной на словах, хотя бы в самых героических размерах, имеет что-нибудь общее с подвигом и даже доброй улыбкой. Поэтическое искусство, как и все другие, определяется прежде всего тем, что одарённый человек стремится испытывать редкое и высокое наслаждение творчеством. Само по себе творчество - аморально, и наслаждаться им ли или чем другим отнюдь не значит жертвовать и ограничивать самого себя ради ближних, сколько бы блага потом они ни вынесли из нашего наслаждения. (II)
In the preceding paragraph Annenski mentions algebra:
На словах поэзия будет для нас, пожалуй, и служение, и подвиг, и огонь, и алтарь, и какая там ещё не потревожена эмблема, а на деле мы всё ещё ценим в ней сладкий лимонад, не лишённый, впрочем, и полезности, которая даже строгим и огорчённым русским читателем очень ценится. Разве можно думать над стихами? Что же тогда останется для алгебры? (II)
In words poetry will be for us devotion, and heroic deed, and fire, and altar, and whatever other emblem is affected, but actually we still love in it sweet lemonade not devoid of usefulness very much appreciated by the austere and embittered Russian reader. How can one brood over verses? What will then remain for algebra?
In Pushkin’s little tragedy “Mozart and Salieri” (1830) Salieri says that he cut music like a corpse and measured harmony by algebra, and Mozart mentions harmony and uses the phrase nikto b (none would), Botkin in reverse:
Когда бы все так чувствовали силу
Гармонии! Но нет: тогда б не мог
И мир существовать; никто б не стал
Заботиться о нуждах низкой жизни;
Все предались бы вольному искусству.
If only all so quickly felt the power
of harmony! But no, in that event
the world could not exist; none would care
about the needs of ordinary life,
all would give themselves to free art. (Scene II)
The last day of Shade's life has passed in a sustained low hum of harmony:
Gently the day has passed in a sustained
Low hum of harmony. The brain is drained
And a brown ament, and the noun I meant
To use but did not, dry on the cement.
Maybe my sensual love for the consonne
D'appui, Echo's fey child, is based upon
A feeling of fantastically planned,
Richly rhymed life. I feel I understand
Existence, or at least a minute part
Of my existence, only through my art,
In terms of combinational delight;
And if my private universe scans right,
So does the verse of galaxies divine
Which I suspect is an iambic line. (ll. 963-976)
In Rifma ("Rhyme," 1830), Pushkin's poem written in hexameter, Rhyme is the daughter of Echo, a sleepless nymph, and Phoebus:
Эхо, бессонная нимфа, скиталась по брегу Пенея.
Феб, увидев её, страстию к ней воспылал.
Нимфа плод понесла восторгов влюбленного бога;
Меж говорливых наяд, мучась, она родила
Милую дочь. Её прияла сама Мнемозина.
Резвая дева росла в хоре богинь-аонид,
Матери чуткой подобна, послушна памяти строгой,
Музам мила; на земле Рифмой зовётся она.
According to Pushkin, it was Mnemosyne (the goddess of memory, mother of the Muses) who delivered the baby (Rhyme). In his Foreword to Speak, Memory VN says that he planned to entitle the British edition of his autobiography Speak, Mnemosyne:
Although I had been composing these chapters in the erratic sequence reflected by the dates of first publication given above, they had been neatly filling numbered gaps in my mind which followed the present order of chapters. That order had been established in 1936, at the placing of the cornerstone which already held in its hidden hollow various maps, timetables, a collection of matchboxes, a chip of ruby glass, and even—as I now realize—the view from my balcony of Geneva lake, of its ripples and glades of light, black-dotted today, at teatime, with coots and tufted ducks. I had no trouble therefore in assembling a volume which Harper & Bros. of New York brought out in 1951, under the title Conclusive Evidence; conclusive evidence of my having existed. Unfortunately, the phrase suggested a mystery story, and I planned to entitle the British edition Speak, Mnemosyne but was told that “little old ladies would not want to ask for a book whose title they could not pronounce.” I also toyed with The Anthemion which is the name of a honeysuckle ornament, consisting of elaborate interlacements and expanding clusters, but nobody liked it; so we finally settled for Speak, Memory (Gollancz, 1951, and The Universal Library, N.Y., 1960). Its translations are: Russian, by the author (Drugie Berega, The Chekhov Publishing House, N.Y., 1954), French, by Yvonne Davet (Autres Rivages, Gallimard, 1961), Italian, by Bruno Oddera (Parla, Ricordo, Mondadori, 1962), Spanish, by Jaime Piñeiro Gonzáles (¡Habla, memoria!, 1963) and German, by Dieter E. Zimmer (Rowohlt, 1964). This exhausts the necessary amount of bibliographic information, which jittery critics who were annoyed by the note at the end of Nabokov’s Dozen will be, I hope, hypnotized into accepting at the beginning of the present work.
In one of his poems dedicated to Zina Mertz Fyodor Godunov-Cherdyntsev (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Dar, “The Gift,” 1937) calls her polu-Mnemozina (half-Mnemosyne) and poluvidenie (half-fantasy) and mentions polu-mertsanie (a half-shimmer) in her surname:
Как звать тебя? Ты полу-Мнемозина, полу-мерцанье в имени твоём, – и странно мне по сумраку Берлина с полувиденьем странствовать вдвоём. Но вот скамья под липой освещенной… Ты оживаешь в судорогах слез: я вижу взор сей жизнью изумленный и бледное сияние волос. Есть у меня сравненье на примете, для губ твоих, когда целуешь ты: нагорный снег, мерцающий в Тибете, горячий ключ и в инее цветы. Ночные наши, бедные владения, – забор, фонарь, асфальтовую гладь – поставим на туза воображения, чтоб целый мир у ночи отыграть! Не облака – а горные отроги; костёр в лесу, – не лампа у окна… О поклянись, что до конца дороги ты будешь только вымыслу верна…
What shall I call you? Half-Mnemosyne? There’s a half-shimmer in your surname too. In dark Berlin, it is so strange to me to roam, oh, my half-fantasy, with you. A bench stands under the translucent tree. Shivers and sobs reanimate you there, and all life’s wonder in your gaze I see, and see the pale fair radiance of your hair. In honor of your lips when they kiss mine I might devise a metaphor some time: Tibetan mountain-snows, their glancing shine, and a hot spring near flowers touched with rime. Our poor nocturnal property—that wet asphaltic gloss, that fence and that street light—upon the ace of fancy let us set to win a world of beauty from the night. Those are not clouds—but star-high mountain spurs; not lamplit blinds—but camplight on a tent! O swear to me that while the heartblood stirs, you will be true to what we shall invent. (Chapter Three)
In his epigram (1824) on Count Vorontsov Pushkin calls Vorontsov polu-milord, polu-kupets... (half-milord, half-merchant, etc.):
Полу-милорд, полу-купец,
Полу-мудрец, полу-невежда,
Полу-подлец, но есть надежда,
Что будет полным наконец.
Half-milord, half-merchant,
Half-sage, half-ignoramus,
Half-scoundrel, but there's a hope
Thet he will be a full one at last.
There is 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 will be “full” again.
In Canto Three of his poem Shade mentions Hurricane Lolita that swept from Florida to Maine. In the Russian version (1967) of VN's novel Lolita (1955) the title of Humbert's essay on "Mimir and Memory" is Mimir i Mnemozina ("Mimir and Mnemosyne"):
Я бы не отметил этого случая, если бы с него не начался ход мыслей, в результате коих я напечатал в ученом журнале "Кантрип", что по-шотландски значит "колдовство", этюд, озаглавленный "Мимир и Мнемозина", в котором я наметил теорию (показавшуюся оригинальной и значительной благосклонным читателям этого великолепного ежемесячника) "перцепционального времени", основанную на "чувстве кровообращения" и концепционально зависящую (очень кратко говоря) от особых свойств нашего разума, сознающего не только вещественный мир, но и собственную сущность, отчего устанавливается постоянное взаимоотношение между двумя пунктами: будущим (которое можно складировать) и прошлым (уже отправленным на склад).
I would not have mentioned this incident had it not started a chain of ideas that resulted in my publishing in the Cantrip Review an essay on “Mimir and Memory,” in which I suggested among other things that seemed original and important to that splendid review’s benevolent readers, a theory of perceptual time based on the circulation of the blood and conceptually depending (to fill up this nutshell) on the mind’s being conscious not only of matter but also of its own self, thus crating a continuous spanning of two points (the storable future and the stored past). (2.26)
At the end of his manuscript Humbert mentions aurochs and angels, the secret of durable pigments and prophetic sonnets:
Thus, neither of us is alive when the reader opens this book. But while the blood still throbs through my writing hand, you are still as much part of blessed matter as I am, and I can still talk to you from here to Alaska. Be true to your Dick. Do not let other fellows touch you. Do not talk to strangers. I hope you will love your baby. I hope it will be a boy. That husband of yours, I hope, will always treat you well, because otherwise my specter shall come at him, like black smoke, like a demented giant, and pull him apart nerve by nerve. And do not pity C.Q. One had to choose between him and H.H., and one wanted H.H. to exist at least a couple of months longer, so as to have him make you live in the minds of later generations. I am thinking of aurochs and angels, the secret of durable pigments, prophetic sonnets, the refuge of art. And this is the only immortality you and I may share, my Lolita. (2.36)
It seems that Humbert has in mind Shakespeare's Sonnet 14:
Not from the stars do I my judgement pluck,
And yet methinks I have astronomy,
But not to tell of good or evil luck,
Of plagues, of dearths, or seasons' quality;
Nor can I fortune to brief minutes tell,
Pointing to each his thunder, rain and wind,
Or say with princes if it shall go well
By oft predict that I in heaven find:
But from thine eyes my knowledge I derive,
And, constant stars, in them I read such art
As truth and beauty shall together thrive
If from thy self to store thou wouldst convert:
Or else of thee this I prognosticate,
Thy end is truth's and beauty's doom and date.
Describing the death of his uncle Conmal (Zemblan translator of Shakespeare), Kinbote mentions Shakespeare's Sonnets and reproductions of Altamira animals (cave paintings of contemporary local fauna in Cantabria, N Spain) on Conmal's splendid painted bed ceil:
English was not taught in Zembla before Mr. Campbell's time. Conmal mastered it all by himself (mainly by learning a lexicon by heart) as a young man, around 1880, when not the verbal inferno but a quiet military career seemed to open before him, and his first work (the translation of Shakespeare's Sonnets) was the outcome of a bet with a fellow officer. He exchanged his frogged uniform for a scholar's dressing gown and tackled The Tempest. A slow worker, he needed half a century to translate the works of him whom he called "dze Bart," in their entirety. After this, in 1930, he went on to Milton and other poets, steadily drilling through the ages, and had just completed Kipling's "The Rhyme of the Three Sealers" ("Now this is the Law of the Muscovite that he proved with shot and steel") when he fell ill and soon expired under his splendid painted bed ceil with its reproductions of Altamira animals, his last words in his last delirium being "Comment dit-on 'mourir' en anglais?"--a beautiful and touching end. (note to Line 962)
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”). In one of his poems Balmont says: Est' u kazhdogo dvoynik (Everybody has a double). In his sonnet Predveshchanie ("Portent," 1899) Balmont calls himself vsemu i vsem sochuvstvennyi dvoynik (a sympathetic double of everybody):
Мне всё равно: царём ли быть могучим,
Иль мудрецом, средь отречённых книг,
Иль облаком, бегущим к дальним тучам,
Чтоб засветиться молнией на миг.
Всему и всем сочувственный двойник,
Я ввысь иду по лабиринтным кручам,
Судьба зовёт, покой пустынь велик,
И стих в душе звучит ключом гремучим.
Туда, туда! За грани вечных гор!
Вершины спят. Лазурь, покой, простор.
Властительны невидимые чары.
В предсмертной мгле дрожит одна звезда,
Над дольней тьмой, где дымные пожары.
Вершины спят. Скорей! Туда, туда!
According to Balmont, it does not matter to him whether he is a powerful king, a sage among his books or a cloud flashed by a lightning.
Coda rhymes with soda. In Lolita Humbert and Lolita have breakfast in the township of Soda, pop. 1001:
We had breakfast in the township of Soda, pop. 1001.
“Judging by the terminal figure,” I remarked, “Fatface is already here.”
“Your humor,” said Lo, “is sidesplitting, deah fahther.” (2.18)
A little earlier Lolita draws Humbert’s attention to the three nines changing into the next thousand in the odometer:
“If he’s really a cop,” she said shrilly but not illogically, “the worst thing we could do, would be to show him we are scared. Ignore him, Dad.”
“Did he ask where we were going?”
“Oh, he knows that” (mocking me).
“Anyway,” I said, giving up, “I have seen his face now. He is not pretty. He looks exactly like a relative of mine called Trapp.”
“Perhaps he is Trapp. If I were you - Oh, look, all the nines are changing into the next thousand. When I was a little kid,” she continued unexpectedly, “I used to think they’d stop and go back to nines, if only my mother agreed to put the car in reverse.”
It was the first time, I think, she spoke spontaneously of her pre-Humbertian childhood; perhaps, the theatre had taught her that trick; and silently we traveled on, unpursued. (ibid.)