In his Commentary to Shade's poem 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) quotes the beginning of a sonnet that Conmal (the king’s uncle, Zemblan translator of Shakespeare) composed directly in English:
English being Conmal's prerogative, his Shakspere remained invulnerable throughout the greater part of his long life. The venerable Duke was famed for the nobility of his work; few dared question its fidelity. Personally, I had never the heart to check it. One callous Academician who did, lost his seat in result and was severely reprimanded by Conmal in an extraordinary sonnet composed directly in colorful, if not quite correct, English, beginning:
I am not slave! Let be my critic slave.
I cannot be. And Shakespeare would not want thus.
Let drawing students copy the acanthus,
I work with Master on the architrave! (note to Line 962)
In Canto Four of his poem Shade describes shaving and mentions slaves who make hay as he shaves the space between his mouth and nose:
And while the safety blade with scrap and screak
Travels across the country of my cheek,
Cars on the highway pass, and up the steep
Incline big trucks around my jawbone creep,
And now a silent liner docks, and now
Sunglassers tour Beirut, and now I plough
Old Zembla's fields where my gray stubble grows,
And slaves make hay between my mouth and nose. (ll. 931-938)
Kinbote does not conceal his disappointment after reading these lines:
I am a weary and sad commentator today. Parallel to the left-hand side of this card (his seventy-sixth) the poet has written, on the eve of his death, a line (from Pope's Second Epistle of the Essay on Man) that he may have intended to cite in a footnote:
At Greenland, Zembla, or the Lord knows where
So this is all treacherous old Shade could say about Zembla--my Zembla? While shaving his stubble off? Strange, strange... (note to Line 937)
As he speaks of shaving, Kinbote mentions two English poets whose name is Alfred:
Alfred Housman (1859-1939), whose collection The Shropshire Lad vies with the In Memoriam of Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892) in representing, perhaps (no, delete this craven "perhaps"), the highest achievement of English poetry in a hundred years, says somewhere (in a foreword?) exactly the opposite: The bristling of thrilled little hairs obstructed his barbering; but since both Alfreds certainly used an Ordinary Razor, and John Shade an ancient Gillette, the discrepancy may have been due to the use of different instruments. (note to Line 920)
In his Russian version of Tennyson’s poem The Lotos-Eaters (1840), Vkushayushchie lotos (1897), Balmont mentions akant (the acanthus):
Но здесь, где амарант и моли пышным цветом
Везде раскинулись кругом,
Где дышат небеса лазурью и приветом
И веют легким ветерком,
Где искристый поток напевом колыбельным
Звенит, с пурпурных гор скользя, -
Как сладко здесь вкушать в покое беспредельном
Восторг, что выразить нельзя.
Как нежны голоса, зовущие оттуда,
Где шлёт скала привет скале,
Как нежен цвет воды с окраской изумруда,
Как мягко льнёт акант к земле,
Как сладко здесь дремать, покоясь под сосною,
И видеть, как простор морей
Уходит без конца широкой пеленою,
Играя светом янтарей.
But, propt on beds of amaranth and moly,
How sweet (while warm airs lull us, blowing lowly)
With half-dropt eyelid still,
Beneath a heaven dark and holy,
To watch the long bright river drawing slowly
His waters from the purple hill--
To hear the dewy echoes calling
From cave to cave thro' the thick-twined vine--
To watch the emerald-colour'd water falling
Thro' many a wov'n acanthus-wreath divine!
Only to hear and see the far-off sparkling brine,
Only to hear were sweet, stretch'd out beneath the pine. (VII)
In his “Inscriptions on the Book Quiet Songs” (1904), to K. D. Balmont, I. Annenski mentions arkhitrav (the architrave) and his penname Nik. T-o (“Mr. Nobody”):
Тому, кто зиждет архитрав
Над гулкой залой новой речи,
Поэту «Придорожных Трав»
Никто — взамен банальной встречи.
To the one who builds the architrave
Above the sonorous hall of new speech,
To the poet of “Roadside Weeds”
Nobody – instead of a banal meeting.
Shade's poem is written in heroic couplets. In his essay Bal’mont-lirik (“Balmont the Lyric Poet”) included in Kniga otrazheniy (“The Book of Reflections,” 1906) Annenski 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 his essay Problema Gamleta (“The Problem of Hamlet”) included in Vtoraya kniga otrazheniy ("The Second Book of Reflections,” 1909) Annenski mentions Pushkin's Mozart and says that Hamlet is not Salieri:
Видите ли: зависть художника не совсем то, что наша...
Для художника это - болезненное сознание своей ограниченности и желание делать творческую жизнь свою как можно полнее. Истинный художник и завистлив и жаден... я слышу возражение - пушкинский Моцарт. - Да! Но ведь Гамлет не Сальери. Моцарта же Пушкин, как известно, изменил: его короткая жизнь была отнюдь не жизнью праздного гуляки, а сплошным творческим горением. Труд его был громаден, не результат труда, а именно труд.
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 (Shade’s, Kinbote’s and Gradus’ “real” name) 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)
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 poem (1904) by Annenski and a poem (1912) by Balmont. 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!
See also the updated full version of my previous post, “QUEEN YARUGA, HODINSKI & SAMUEL SHADE IN PALE FIRE.”