In lines 27-28 of Pale Fire Shade mentions Sherlock Holmes:
Was he in Sherlock Holmes, the fellow whose
Tracks pointed back when he reversed his shoes?
In his note to Line 27 Kinbote says: “A hawk-nosed, lanky, rather likable private detective, the main character in various stories by Conan Doyle. I have no means to ascertain at the present time which of these is referred to here but suspect that our poet simply made up this Case of the Reversed Footprints.”
In Aldanov’s novel Bred (“Delirium,” 1955) Shell, as he speaks to Colonel No. 1, mentions Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson:
-- Есть и такие. Точнее, многие становятся морфиноманами, работа трудная. А когда они становятся морфиноманами, то им обычно грош цена. Меня всегда забавляло, что Конан Дойл сделал Шерлока Холмса кокаинистом. Это доказывает, что талантливый английский писатель ничего не понимал в полицейском деле. "Дедукции" Шерлока и вообще не очень убедительны, но если б он был кокаинистом, то скоро превратился бы в развалину и через год стал бы бездарнее самого доктора Ватсона...
-- Так вы работаете только для денег, -- сказал полковник с лёгким разочарованием. (chapter II)
Kinbote arrives in America 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)
According to Kinbote, during the reign of Charles the Beloved (the last king of Zembla) parachuting had become a popular sport. (note to Line 12)
In Aldanov’s Bred Shell (a professional spy) the American Colonel (“Colonel No. 1”), if the latter wants to deliver him to the USSR by parachute:
-- Вы, вероятно, хотите доставить меня на парашюте в СССР?
-- Мы никого на парашютах в СССР не отправляем, -- сказал очень холодно полковник. -- И никакими драматическими и страшными делами мы не занимаемся. (chapter II)
In Aldanov’s novel Klyuch (“The Key,” 1929) Fedosiev tells Braun that Sherlock Holmes and Porfiriy Petrovich (the investigator in Dostoevski’s Crime and Punishment) sit in all of us:
— Наша профессиональная черта, — пояснил, улыбаясь, Федосьев. — Ведь в каждом из нас сидят Шерлок Холмс и Порфирий Петрович… (Part Two, chapter XIV)
In the same conversation with Braun Fedosiev (the former head of political police who fears assassination) mentions the Niagara Falls into which people of the Pizarro type in our days throw themselves out of sheer boredom:
В Америке, например, таким людям совершенно нечего делать, прямо хоть в Ниагару бросайся. Но в Европе — у нас в особенности — судьба послала им в последний подарок революцию. Ведь романтика конспирации, восстаний, террора пьянит — увы! — не только мальчишек. Для современного Пизарро, прямо скажу, нет лучше способа «возродить себя к новой жизни». А если для этого, например, нужно отправить к праотцам такого злодея, как Сергей Федосьев, то уж, конечно, грех был бы стесняться. Этот спорт очень захватывает, Александр Михайлович. (ibid.)
According to Fedosiev, the sport of manhunt is very exciting.
The characters of PF include Andronnikov and Niagarin, two Soviet experts in quest of a buried treasure. In his poem Shade mentions Russian spies:
It was a year of Tempests: Hurricane
L o l i t a swept from Florida to Maine.
Mars glowed. Shahs married. Gloomy Russians spied.
Lang made your portrait. And one night I died. (ll. 679-82)
VN’s novel L o l i t a appeared in the same year as Aldanov’s Bred. The characters of L o l i t a include Shirley Holmes, the camp mistress, and her son Charlie who also works at camp and becomes Lo’s first lover.
According to Fedosiev, the romance of secrecy, insurrections, terror intoxicates not only the young. Jacob Gradus whom the Shadows (a regicidal organization) commissioned to assassinate the self-banished king of Zembla is not young. According to Kinbote, Gradus’ whole clan was in the liquor business:
Having a morbid affection for the ruddy Russia of the Soviet era, he contended that the real origin of his name should be sought in the Russian word for grape, vinograd, to which a Latin suffix had adhered, making in Vinogradus. His father, Martin Gradus, had been a Protestant minister in Riga, but except for him and a maternal uncle (Roman Tselovalnikov, police officer and part-time member of the Social-Revolutionary party), the whole clan seems to have been in the liquor business. (note to Line 17)
Btw., the name Tselovalnikov comes from tseloval’nik (inn-keeper, publican). In the forties Gradus came to Zembla as a brandy salesman and married there a publican’s daughter. (ibid.)
Colonel Peter Gusev (a pioneer parachutist) and Colonel Montacute (who piloted the plane from which Kinbote parachuted in America) seem to correspond to Colonel No. 1 and Colonel No. 2 in Aldanov’s Bred. The name Gusev comes from gus’ (goose). A chapter in Sergey Aksakov’s book on hunting that in Aldanov’s Bred the Soviet colonel (“Colonel No. 2”) is avidly reading is dedicated to geese. In Conan Doyle’s story The Blue Diamond the precious stone is concealed in a live goose.
“As many have noted, Shade didn't invent the backward-shoes image. It was Holmes himself who suggested the ruse as one way he might have left the impression that he had fallen over Reichenbach Falls together with Professor Moriarty.” (A. P. Socher, “Shades of Frost: A Hidden Source for Nabokov's Pale Fire”)
Alexey Sklyarenko