Uncle Conmal – a Mason?

In his Index to Pale Fire Kinbote mentions a very courageous master builder who was poisoned in the royal kitchens, together with his three young apprentices, Yan, Yonny, and Angeling:

Shadows, the, a regicidal organization which commissioned Gradus (q.v.) to assassinate the self-banished king; its leader's terrible name cannot be mentioned, even in the Index to the obscure work of a scholar; his maternal grandfather, a well-known and very courageous master builder, was hired by
Thurgus the Turgid, around 1885, to make certain repairs in his quarters, and soon after that perished, poisoned in the royal kitchens, under mysterious circumstances, together with his three young apprentices whose pretty first names Yan, Yonny, and Angeling, are preserved in a ballad still to be heard in some of our wilder valleys.

Alexander Blok’s cycle Yamby (“The Iambs,” 1907-14) is dedicated to the memory of Angelina Aleksandrovna Blok (the poet’s half-sister, 1892-1918) and has for epigraph the lines from Juvenal’s Satires (I, 79): Fecit indignatio versum (Indignation gives inspiration to verse). The epigraph to Blok’s poem Vozmezdie (“Retribution,” 1910-21), Yunost’ – eto vozmezdie (Youth is retribution), is from Ibsen’s play “The Master Builder” (1892).

In the names Angeling and Angelina there is angel. Angel = angle. In geometry, gradus is Russian for "degree" (of an angle). In many English speaking countries, the Masonic Square and Compasses are depicted with the letter "G" in the center:

The letter has multiple meanings, representing different words depending on the context in which it is discussed. The most common is that the "G" stands for God. Another is that it stands for Geometry, and is to remind Masons that Geometry and Freemasonry are synonymous terms described as being the "noblest of sciences", and "the basis upon which the superstructure of Freemasonry and everything in existence in the entire universe is erected." In this context, it can also stand for Great Architect of the Universe (a non-denominational reference to God).

Saint Peter (the Apostle for whom VN’s home city was named) and his brother Saint Andrew were anglers (fishermen). Peter's execution was ordered by the Roman Emperor Nero, who blamed the city's Christians for a terrible fire that had ravaged Rome. Peter requested to be crucified upside down, as he felt unworthy to die in the same manner as Christ. The Roman letter V looks like the Masonic Compasses that stand on their head. According to Kinbote, Gradus (Shade's murderer) 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 it Vinogradus:

By an extraordinary coincidence (inherent perhaps in the contrapuntal nature of Shade's art) our poet seems to name here (gradual, gray) a man, whom he was to see for one fatal moment three weeks later, but of whose existence at the time (July 2) he could not have known. Jakob Gradus called himself variously Jack Degree or Jacques de Grey, or James de Gray, and also appears in police records as Ravus, Ravenstone, and d'Argus. 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 it 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. Martin Gradus died in 1920, and his widow moved to Strasbourg where she soon died, too. Another Gradus, an Alsatian merchant, who oddly enough was totally unrelated to our killer but had been a close business friend of his kinsmen for years, adopted the boy and raised him with his own children. It would seem that at one time young Gradus studied pharmacology in Zurich, and at another, traveled to misty vineyards as an itinerant wine taster. We find him next engaging in petty subversive activities - printing peevish pamphlets, acting as messenger for obscure syndicalist groups, organizing strikes at glass factories, and that sort of thing. Sometime in the forties he came to Zembla as a brandy salesman. There he married a publican's daughter. His connection with the Extremist party dates from its first ugly writhings, and when the revolution broke out, his modest organizational gifts found some appreciation in various offices. His departure for Western Europe, with a sordid purpose in his heart and a loaded gun in his pocket, took place on the very day that an innocent poet in an innocent land was beginning Canto Two of Pale Fire. We shall accompany Gradus in constant thought, as he makes his way from distant dim Zembla to green Appalachia, through the entire length of the poem, following the road of its rhythm, riding past in a rhyme, skidding around the corner of a run-on, breathing with the caesura, swinging down to the foot of the page from line to line as from branch to branch, hiding between two words (see note to line 596), reappearing on the horizon of a new canto, steadily marching nearer in iambic motion, crossing streets, moving up with his valise on the escalator of the pentameter, stepping off, boarding a new train of thought, entering the hall of a hotel, putting out the bedlight, while Shade blots out a word, and falling asleep as the poet lays down his pen for the night. (note to Line 17)

The Masonic Square resembles the tilted letter L (Lenin's initial). Kinbote mockingly calls Gradus "Vinogradus" and "Leningradus:"

All this is as it should be; the world needs Gradus. But Gradus should not kill things. Vinogradus should never, never provoke God. Leningradus should not aim his peashooter at people even in dreams, because if he does, a pair of colossally thick, abnormally hairy arms will hug him from behind and squeeze, squeeze, squeeze. (note to Line 171)

Leningrad was St. Petersburg's name in 1924-91. In Blok's poem Neznakomka (“The Stranger,” 1906) the tipplers with the pink eyes of rabbits shout “in vino veritas!” (in wine is truth):

А рядом у соседних столиков
Лакеи сонные торчат,
И пьяницы с глазами кроликов
"In vino veritas!" кричат.

And nearby, at other tables,
waiters drowsily hover,
and tipplers with the pink eyes of rabbits
shout: In vino veritas!

In vinograd (grape) there are vino (Russian for "wine") and grad (an archaic form of gorod, "city") .

Btw., the three main characters in Pale Fire, Shade, Kinbote and Gradus, make one think of a triangle (a geometric figure) or of three dots in a triangle (a Masonic emblem). Another Masonic emblem is an apron. In Tolstoy’s novel Voyna i mir (“War and Peace,” 1869) a white leathern apron is put on Pierre Bezukhov, when he becomes a member of the Masons. In his Commentary Kinbote quotes Shade's words about their common acquaintance, "The man is as corny as a cook-out chef apron:" 

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."

Talking of the vulgarity of a certain burly acquaintance of ours: "The man is as corny as a cook-out chef apron." Kinbote (laughing): "Wonderful!"

The subject of teaching Shakespeare at college level having been introduced: "First of all, dismiss ideas, and social background, and train the freshman to shiver, to get drunk on the poetry of Hamlet or Lear, to read with his spine and not with his skull." Kinbote: "You appreciate particularly the purple passages?" Shade: "Yes, my dear Charles, I roll upon them as a grateful mongrel on a spot of turf fouled by a Great Dane." (note to Line 172)

In his Open Letter to Stalin (dated August 17, 1939) Fyodor Raskolnikov (a Soviet diplomat, 1892-1939) famously calls Stalin "a chef preparing spicy dishes:" 

Вы - повар, готовящий острые блюда, для нормального человеческого желудка они не съедобны.

You are a chef preparing spicy dishes, for a normal human stomach they are not edible.

The terrible name of the leader of the Shadows that cannot be mentioned, even in the Index to the obscure work of a scholar, seems to be Stalin. Prishli i stali teni nochi (“The shadows of the night came and mounted guard at my door,” 1842) is a poem by Yakov Polonski.

On the other hand, Angeling seems to be a cross between Friedrich Engels (Engel is German for "angel") and Eleanor Aveling, Karl Marx's daughter who translated Flaubert's Madame Bovary (1856) into English. One of the three young apprentices of a well-known and very courageous master builder (the maternal grandfather of the leader of the Shadows), Yonny brings to mind Yonville, a larger market town to which Charles Bovary (Emma's husband, a doctor) moves his practice from the village of Tostes. When Emma leaves Tostes (or Tôtes, pronounced "tot") for Yonville, she is pregnant. Tot is German for "dead" and the Russian spelling of Thoth, an ancient Egyptian deity. In art, Thoth was often depicted as a man with the head of an ibis or a baboon, animals sacred to him. Thoth's Greek equivalent is Hermes. Hermes plays the role of the psychopomp or "soul guide"—a conductor of souls into the afterlife. 

Describing IPH (a lay Institute of Preparation for the Hereafter) in Canto Three of his poem, Shade calls his little daughter "a mere tot:"

L'if, lifeless tree! Your great Maybe, Rabelais:

The grand potato. I.P.H., a lay

Institute (I) of Preparation (P)

For the Hereafter (H), or If, as we

Called it - big if! - engaged me for one term

To speak on death ("to lecture on the Worm,"

Wrote President McAber). You and I,

And she, then a mere tot, moved from New Wye

To Yewshade, in another, higher state. (ll. 501-509)

"Big if" brings to mind "the big G" snubbed by the Institute:

While snubbing gods, including the big G,

Iph borrowed some peripheral debris

From mystic visions; and it offered tips

(The amber spectacles for life's eclipse) -

How not to panic when you're made a ghost:

Sidle and slide, choose a smooth surd, and coast,

Meet solid bodies and glissade right through,

Or let a person circulate through you.

How to locate in blackness, with a gasp,

Terra the Fair, an orbicle of jasp.

How to keep sane in spiral types of space.

Precautions to be taken in the case

Of freak reincarnation: what to do

On suddenly discovering that you

Are now a young and vulnerable toad

Plump in the middle of a busy road,

Or a bear cub beneath a burning pine,

Or a book mite in a revived divine. (ll. 549-566)

God is dog in reverse. Bunin's poem Odinochestvo ("Loneliness," 1903) ends in the line Khorosho by sobaku kupit' (It would be good to buy a dog). Ivan Bunin's second wife, Vera Muromtsev, called her husband "Yan."

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."

Talking of the vulgarity of a certain burly acquaintance of ours: "The man is as corny as a cook-out chef apron." Kinbote (laughing): "Wonderful!"

The subject of teaching Shakespeare at college level having been introduced: "First of all, dismiss ideas, and social background, and train the freshman to shiver, to get drunk on the poetry of Hamlet or Lear, to read with his spine and not with his skull." Kinbote: "You appreciate particularly the purple passages?" Shade: "Yes, my dear Charles, I roll upon them as a grateful mongrel on a spot of turf fouled by a Great Dane." (note to Line 172)

In Chekhov's story Sobytie ("An Incident," 1886) Nero, Uncle Petrusha's big black Great Dane (whom Vanya and Nina want to be the father of the cat's newly-born kittens), calmly swallows his "children:"

Но в это время входит Степан и со смехом объявляет:

— Барыня, Нера котят съела!

Нина и Ваня бледнеют и с ужасом глядят на Степана.

— Ей-богу-с… — смеется лакей. — Подошла к ящику и сожрала.

Детям кажется, что все люди, сколько их есть в доме, всполошатся и набросятся на злодея Неро. Но люди сидят покойно на своих местах и только удивляются аппетиту громадной собаки. Папа и мама смеются… Неро ходит у стола, помахивает хвостом и самодовольно облизывается… Обеспокоена одна только кошка. Вытянув свой хвост, она ходит по комнатам, подозрительно поглядывает на людей и жалобно мяукает.

— Дети, уже десятый час! Пора спать! — кричит мама.

Ваня и Нина ложатся спать, плачут и долго думают об обиженной кошке и жестоком, наглом, ненаказанном Неро.

But just then Stepan came into the room and announced with a smile:

"Madame, Nero has eaten the kittens!"

Nina and Vanya paled and looked at Stepan in horror.

"Indeed he has!" chuckled the butler. "He has found the box and eaten every one!"

The children imagined that every soul in the house would spring up in alarm and fling themselves upon that wicked Nero. But instead of this they all sat quietly in their places and only seemed surprised at the appetite of the great dog. Papa and mamma laughed. Nero walked round the table wagging his tail and licking his chops with great self-satisfaction. Only the cat was uneasy. With her tail in the air she roamed through the house, looking suspiciously at every one and mewing pitifully.

"Children, it's ten o'clock! Go to bed!" cried mamma.

Vanya and Nina went to bed crying and lay for a long time thinking about the poor, abused kitty and that horrid, cruel, unpunished Nero.

It is Kronos (in ancient Greek religion, god of the harvest and member of the Titans) who eats his children (Kinbote became a vegetarian for life after reading a story about an Italian despot,  who was eaten piecemeal by the angry crowd; one is also reminded of Shakespeare's Merchant of Venus). Sobytie ("The Event," 1938) is a play by VN. The action in it takes place on the fiftieth birthday of Antonina Pavlovna Opayashin, the lady writer. The name and patronymic of Troshcheykin's mother-in-law hints at Chekhov. Troshcheykin's wife Lyubov is a namesake of Lyubov Dmitrievna Blok (the poet's wife). Her father, Dmitri Mendeleev (1834-1907), was a chemist who formulated the Periodic Law and created a version of the periodic table of the elements. S, K and G (Shade's, Kinbote's and Gradus's initials) seem to hint at Sulfur, Potassium, Gallium and Germanium (S, K, Ga and Ge, the elements in the periodic table). In his Index to PF Kinbote mentions Kobaltana, a place in Zembla where the crown jewels are hidden. Kobaltana makes one think of Cobalt (Co), another element in the periodic table. In his memoirs Byloe i dumy ("The Bygones and Meditations") Herzen calls Karl Marx and his followers die Schwefelbande. Schwefel is German for "sulphur." The Great Dane brings to mind Niels Bohr (1885-1962), a Danish physicist after whom Bohrium (a synthetic chemical element with the symbol Bh) was named. It should not be confused with Boron (a chemical element with the symbol B and atomic number 5). In Vino Veritas (The Banquet) is a work (1845) by Søren Kierkegaard, a Danish philosopher. There are three terrible dogs in H. C. Andersen's fairy tale The Tinder-Box.

In his Foreword to “Retribution” Blok mentions those infinitely high qualities that once shone like luchshie almazy v chelovecheskoy korone (the best diamonds in man’s crown), such as humanism, virtues, impeccable honesty, rectitude, etc.:

Тема заключается в том, как развиваются звенья единой цепи рода. Отдельные отпрыски всякого рода развиваются до положенного им предела и затем вновь поглощаются окружающей мировой средой; но в каждом отпрыске зреет и отлагается нечто новое и нечто более острое, ценою бесконечных потерь, личных трагедий, жизненных неудач, падений и т. д.; ценою, наконец, потери тех бесконечно высоких свойств, которые в своё время сияли, как лучшие алмазы в человеческой короне (как, например, свойства гуманные, добродетели, безупречная честность, высокая нравственность и проч.)

In Chapter Three of “Retribution” Blok mentions Flaubert’s strange inheritance – Education sentimentale:

И жаль отца, безмерно жаль:

Он тоже получил от детства

Флобера странное наследство -

Education sentimentale.

And he felt sorry for his father, immensely sorry:

He too had received from childhood

Flaubert’s strange inheritance –

Education sentimentale.

L'Éducation sentimentale (“Sentimental Education,” 1869) is a novel by Flaubert. Sybil Swallow (as Kinbote calls Shade's wife, born Irondell) brings to mind L'Hirondelle, the diligence that transports Emma Bovary every Thursday to her ‘piano lessons’ in Rouen, where “she discovers in adultery all the platitudes of marriage.” Btw., when Emma leaves Tostes (or Tôtes) for Yonville, she is pregnant:

Un jour qu'en prévision de son départ elle faisait des rangements dans un tiroir, elle se piqua les doigts à quelque chose. C'était un fil de fer de son bouquet de mariage. Les boutons d'oranger étaient jaunes de poussière, et les rubans de satin, à liséré d'argent, s'effiloquaient par le bord. Elle le jeta dans le feu. Il s'enflamma plus vite qu'une paille sèche. Puis ce fut comme un buisson rouge sur les cendres, et qui se rongeait lentement. Elle le regarda brûler. Les petites baies de carton éclataient, les fils d'archal se tordaient, le galon se fondait ; et les corolles de papier, racornies, se balançant le long de la plaque comme des papillons noirs, enfin s'envolèrent dans la cheminée.

Quand on partit de Tostes, au mois de mars, Mme Bovary était enceinte.

One day when, in view of her departure, she was tidying a drawer, something pricked her finger. It was a wire of her wedding bouquet. The orange blossoms were yellow with dust and the silver bordered satin ribbons frayed at the edges. She threw it into the fire. It flared up more quickly than dry straw. Then it was, like a red bush in the cinders, slowly devoured. She watched it burn. The little pasteboard berries burst, the wire twisted, the gold lace melted; and the shriveled paper corollas, fluttering like black butterflies at the back of the stove, at lest flew up the chimney.

When they left Tostes at the month of March, Madame Bovary was pregnant. (Part I, Chapter 9)

Shade's daughter was "a mere tot," when he and his wife Sybil moved from New Why to Yewshade.

In his diary (the entry of Aug. 30, 1918) Blok mentions dvoyniki (the dopplegangers) whom he conjured up in 1901 (when he courted Lyubov Mendeleev, his future wife), drugoe ya (alter ego) and Botkinskiy period (the Botkin period) of his life:

К ноябрю началось явное моё колдовство, ибо я вызвал двойников  ("Зарево белое...", "Ты - другая, немая...").

Любовь Дмитриевна ходила на уроки к М. М. Читау, я же ждал её выхода, следил за ней и иногда провожал её до Забалканского с Гагаринской - Литейной (конец ноября, начало декабря). Чаще, чем со мной, она встречалась с кем-то - кого не видела и о котором я знал.

Появился мороз, "мятель", "неотвязный" и царица, звенящая дверь, два старца, "отрава" (непосланных цветов), свершающий и пользующийся плодами свершений ("другое я"), кто-то "смеющийся и нежный". Так кончился 1901 год.

Тут - Боткинский период.

The "real" name of the poet Shade, his commentator Kinbote and his murderer Gradus seems to be Botkin. An American scholar of Russian descent, Professor Vsevolod Botkin went mad and became Shade, Kinbote and Gradus after the tragic death of his daughter Nadezhda (Hazel Shade’s “real” name). Nadezhda means “hope.” 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, like Count Vorontsov ("half-milord, half-merchant, etc."), will be full again.