Golconda in one's cuff links, beader in Radugovitra & Rippleson Caves in Pale Fire

Describing his contacts with publishers, Kinbote (Shade’s mad commentator who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla) compares himself to an exiled prince who is unaware of the Golconda in his cuff links:

 

Imagine a soft, clumsy giant; imagine a historical personage whose knowledge of money is limited to the abstract billions of a national debt; imagine an exiled prince who is unaware of the Golconda in his cuff links! This is to say - oh, hyperbolically - that I am the most impractical fellow in the world. Between such a person and an old fox in the book publishing business, relations are at first touchingly carefree and chummy, with expansive banterings and all sorts of amiable tokens. I have no reason to suppose that anything will ever happen to prevent this initial relationship with good old Frank, my present publisher, from remaining a permanent fixture. (Foreword)

 

Golconda is a ruined city in Southern India known for its diamond industry. In a letter of Dec. 16, 1831, to his wife Pushkin mentions golkondskie almazy (the Golconda diamonds) and busy (the beads):

 

Голкондских алмазов дожидаться не намерен, и в новый год вывезу тебя в бусах.

I’m not going to wait for the Golconda diamonds [Natalie’s pawned dowry] and on New Year’s Day will bring you out in the beads.

 

In his Commentary Kinbote mentions Gradus’ wife, a beader in Radugovitra who left her husband with a gypsy lover:

 

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)

 

Radugovitra sounds as if it were a place in India. In "Fragments of Onegin's Journey" [IX] Pushkin describes the Makariev Market and mentions pearls brought by the Hindu:

 

. . . . . . . перед ним
Макарьев суетно хлопочет,
Кипит обилием своим.
Сюда жемчуг привёз индеец,
Поддельны вины европеец,
Табун бракованных коней
Пригнал заводчик из степей,
Игрок привёз свои колоды
И горсть услужливых костей,
Помещик — спелых дочерей,
А дочки — прошлогодни моды.
Всяк суетится, лжёт за двух,
И всюду меркантильный дух.

 

. . . . . . . . . . . . before him

Makariev bustlingly bestirs itself,

with its abundance seethes.

Here the Hindu brought pearls,

the European, spurious wines,

the breeder from the steppes

drove a herd of cast steeds,

the gamester brought his decks,

fistful of complaisant dice,

the landowner ripe daughters,

and daughterlings, the fashions of last year;

each bustles, lies enough for two,

and everywhere there's a mercantile spirit.

 

In his Commentary Kinbote mentions a Hindu member of the Extremist party:

 

When the Zemblan Revolution broke out (May 1, 1958), she [Queen Disa] wrote the King a wild letter in governess English, urging him to come and stay with her until the situation cleared up. The letter was intercepted by the Onhava police, translated into crude Zemblan by a Hindu member of the Extremist party, and then read aloud to the royal captive in a would-be ironic voice by the preposterous commandant of the palace. There happened to be in that letter one - only one, thank God - sentimental sentence: "I want you to know that no matter how much you hurt me, you cannot hurt my love," and this sentence (if we re-English it from the Zemblan) came out as: "I desire you and love when you flog me." He interrupted the commandant, calling him a buffoon and a rogue, and insulting everybody around so dreadfully that the Extremists had to decide fast whether to shoot him at once or let him have the original of the letter. (note to Lines 433-434)

 

In a letter of Sept. 29, 1830, to Pletnyov (Pushkin’s friend and publisher) 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 real name was Pyotr, Aleko is the main character of "The Gypsies.")

 

In his poem Na smert’ A. Bloka (“On the Death of Alexander Blok,” 1921) VN mentions luna (the moon) and compares Pushkin to raduga po vsey zemle (a rainbow over the whole Earth):

 

За туманами плыли туманы,

за луной расцветала луна...

Воспевал он лазурные страны,

где поёт неземная весна.

 

И в туманах Прекрасная Дама

проплывала, звала вдалеке,

словно звон отдалённого храма,

словно лунная зыбь на реке. (I)

 

Пушкин - радуга по всей земле,

Лермонтов - путь млечный над горами,

Тютчев - ключ, струящийся во мгле,

Фет - румяный луч во храме.

 

Все они, уплывшие от нас

в рай, благоухающий широко,

собрались, чтоб встретить в должный час

душу Александра Блока. (II)

 

Lazurnye strany (the azure lands) of which Blok sang bring to mind "by the false azure in the windowpane," the second line of Shade's poem. The rare Rippleson panes mentioned by Kinbote in his Commentary seem to hint at lunnaya zyb’ na reke (a moonshine ripple on the river) in VN's poem on Blok's death:

 

Neither had Gradus been informed that he would be assisted in his quest by the Soviet sportsmen, Andronnikov and Niagarin, whom he had casually met once or twice on the Onhava Palace grounds when re-paning a broken window and checking for the new government the rare Rippleson panes in one of the ex-royal hothouses; and next moment he had lost the thread end of recognition as he settled down with the prudent wriggle of a short-legged person in the back seat of an old Cadillac and asked to be taken to a restaurant between Pellos and Cap Turc. (note to Line 697)

 

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), in order to explain Dostoevski’s treatment of man’s psyche, takes the example of water and mentions the Niagara:

 

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, to understand the dynamics of water, one must imagine a fantastic Niagara Falls, a hundred times more grandiose than the real one. 

 

Dostoevski is the author of Zolotoy vek v karmane (“The Golden Age in one’s Pocket,” 1876), an article in “A Writer’s Diary” that brings to mind Golconda in one’s cuff links.

 

According to Kinbote, the King left Zembla in a powerful motorboat prepared for him in the Rippleson Caves (note to Line 149). In his poem V severnom more (“In a Northern Sea”) from the cycle Vol'nye mysli ("Free Thoughts," 1907) Blok describes a sea voyage in a big-bellied and funny motorboat and mentions mnogotsventaya ryab’ (many-colored ripples) on the water:

 

И с длинного, протянутого в море,
Подгнившего, сереющего мола,
Прочтя все надписи: "Навек с тобой",
"Здесь были Коля с Катей", "Диодор
Иеромонах и послушник Исидор
Здесь были. Дивны божии дела", -
Прочтя все надписи, выходим в море
В пузатой и смешной моторной лодке.

 

Бензин пыхтит и пахнет. Два крыла
Бегут в воде за нами. Вьётся быстрый след,
И, обогнув скучающих на пляже,
Рыбачьи лодки, узкий мыс, маяк,
Мы выбегаем многоцветной рябью
В просторную ласкающую соль.

 

In his poem Blok compares a lantern on the yacht’s thin mast to the stone of a precious ferronnière:

 

Над морем - штиль. Под всеми парусами
Стоит красавица - морская яхта.
На тонкой мачте - маленький фонарь,
Что камень драгоценной фероньеры,
Горит над матовым челом небес…

 

И, снова обогнув их, мы глядим
С молитвенной и полною душою
На тихо уходящий силуэт
Красавицы под всеми парусами...
На драгоценный камень фероньеры,
Горящий в смуглых сумерках чела.

 

Alexander Bryullov portrayed Pushkin’s wife Natalie wearing her ferronnière and long earrings. La belle ferronnière is a portrait of a lady, usually attributed to Leonardo da Vinci, in the Louvre. Duchess of Payn, of Great Payn and Moan, Queen Disa (the wife of Charles the Beloved) seems to blend Leonardo’s Mona Lisa with Shakespeare’s Desdemona. In his poem Ezerski (1832) Pushkin (who had African blood) asks:

 

Зачем арапа своего
Младая любит Дездемона,
Как месяц любит ночи мглу?

 

Why does young Desdemona love

her blackamoor as the moon loves

the gloom of night? (XIII: 8-10)

 

Pushkin’s poem begins: Nachnyom ab ovo (Let’s start ab ovo). The Latin phrase ab ovo is a reference to one of the twin eggs from which Helen of Troy was born. The eggs were laid by Leda after mating with Zeus disguised as a swan. In a letter of Sept. 24, 1820, to his brother Pushkin uses the phrase nachinayu s yaits Ledy (I begin with Leda’s eggs):

 

Милый брат, я виноват перед твоею дружбою, постараюсь загладить вину мою длинным письмом и подробными рассказами. Начинаю с яиц Леды.

 

In the same letter to his brother Pushkin describes his stay in the Caucasus and in the Crimea and mentions Napoleon's chimeric plan with regard to conquering India:

 

Должно надеяться, что эта завоёванная сторона, до сих пор не приносившая никакой существенной пользы России, скоро сблизит нас с персиянами безопасною торговлею, не будет нам преградою в будущих войнах — и, может быть, сбудется для нас химерический план Наполеона в рассуждении завоевания Индии.

 

In his poem Zabludivshiysya tramvay (“The Lost Tram,” 1921) Gumilyov mentions Indiya Dukha (the India of Spirit):

 

Где я? Так томно и так тревожно

Сердце моё стучит в ответ:

"Видишь вокзал, на котором можно

В Индию Духа купить билет?"

 

Where am I? So languid and troubled

The beat of my heart responds:

"Do you see the station where you can buy

A ticket to the India of Spirit?"

 

In his poem Florentsiya (“Florence,” 1913) Gumilyov mentions Leonardo’s lost painting Leda and the Swan and Savonarola:

 

Тебе нужны слова иные.
Иная, страшная пора.
…Вот грозно встала Синьория
И перед нею два костра.

Один, как шкура леопарда,
Разнообразьем вечно нов.
Там гибнет «Леда» Леонардо
Средь благовоний и шелков.

Другой, зловещий и тяжёлый,
Как подобравшийся дракон,
Шипит: «Вотще Савонароллой
Мой дом державный потрясён».

 

Playing Zoorland with Martin (the main character in VN’s novel Podvig, “Glory,” 1932), Sonya mentions Savan-na-rylo ("Savior-and-Mauler"), a chieftain whose soubriquet hints at Savonarola:

 

Иногда среди общей беседы, за столом, например, - Соня вдруг поворачивалась к нему и быстро шептала: "Ты слышал, вышел закон, запретили гусеницам окукляться", - или: "Я забыла тебе сказать, что Саван-на-рыло" (кличка одного из вождей) "приказал врачам лечить все болезни одним способом, а не разбрасываться".

 

Sometimes during the general conversation-at table, for instance-Sonia would suddenly turn to him and quickly whisper, "Have you heard, there's a new law forbidding caterpillars to pupate," or "I forgot to tell you, Savior-and-Mauler" (the sobriquet of one of the chieftains) "has ordered physicians to stop casting around and to treat all illnesses in exactly the same way." (chapter 34)

 

Shade’s murderer, Jakob Gradus is the son of Martin Gradus, a Protestant minister in Riga. At end of “Glory” Martin leaves Berlin for Riga and then crosses the Soviet-Latvian border. Sofia Dmitrievna (Martin’s mother) keeps receiving her son’s letters (mailed to Darwin from Riga) even after Martin’s death in Zoorland (a country that has a lot in common with Kinbote's Zembla).

 

Describing Martin's stay in the Crimea, VN mentions lunnaya stezya (a full moon's wake) on the sea water:

 

Погодя Мартын встал, разминая ноги, и, взойдя по чёрному муравчатому скату, подошел к краю обрыва. Сразу под ногами была широкая темная бездна, а за ней – как будто близкое, как будто приподнятое море с цареградской стезей посредине, лунной стезей, суживающейся к горизонту. Слева, во мраке, в таинственной глубине, дрожащими алмазными огнями играла Ялта.

 

Presently Martin stood up, stretched his legs, ascended a dark turfy slope, and walked to the edge of the precipice. Right under his feet he saw a broad black abyss, and beyond it the sea, which seemed to be raised and brought closer, with a full moon’s wake, the “Turkish Trail” spreading in the middle and narrowing as it approached the horizon. To the left, in the murky, mysterious distance, shimmered the diamond lights of Yalta. (chapter 5)

 

Gradus learns the King’s address from Izumrudov (one of the greater Shadows):

 

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. (note to Line 741)

 

According to Kinbote, Gradus attempted to castrate himself. In Pushkin’s poem K kastratu raz prishyol skrypach… ("The Violinist Once Visited the Eunuch..." 1835) the rich castrated singer mentions his almazy, izumrudy (“diamonds, emeralds”) and asks the poor violinist what does he do when he is bored:

 

К кастрату раз пришёл скрыпач,
Он был бедняк, а тот богач.
«Смотри, сказал певец <безмудый>, —
Мои алмазы, изумруды —
Я их от скуки разбирал.
А! кстати, брат, — он продолжал, —
Когда тебе бывает скучно,
Ты что творишь, сказать прошу».
В ответ бедняга равнодушно:
— Я? я <муде> себе чешу.

 

The poor fellow replies: “I scratch my testicles.” In his epigram on Boileau, Sravnenie (“Comparison,” 1813-17), Pushkin explains the difference between himself and the author of L'Art poétique:

 

Не хочешь ли узнать, моя драгая,
Какая разница меж Буало и мной?
У Депрео была лишь запятая,
А у меня две точки с запятой.

 

My dear, do you want to know
the difference between Boileau and me?
Desprèaux had only a comma [,]
And I have a colon with a comma [: ,].

 

In a letter of May 16, 1835, to Pushkin Katenin says that the names like Kukolnik (a 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. Gradus is also known as Jack Degree, de Grey, d'Argus, Leningradus, Vinogradus, etc.; a Jack of small trades and a killer. (Index)

 

Canto Four of Boileau’s L'Art poétique begins as follows:

 

Dans Florence, jadis, vivait un médecin,
Savant hâbleur, dit-on, et célèbre assassin.

 

In Florence once lived a physician,
skilful boaster, they say, and celebrated killer.

 

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, Professor Botkin went mad after the tragic death of his daughter Nadezhda (Hazel Shade of Kinbote's Commentary).

 

In a letter of Jan. 4, 1835, to Pushkin Katenin says that he began the New Year with a sonnet:

 

Sonnet... c'est un sonnet. Да, любезнейший Александр Сергеевич, я обновил 1835-й год сонетом, не милым, как Оронтов, не во вкусе петраркистов, a разве несколько в роде Казы; и как étrenne посылаю к тебе с просьбою: коли ты найдёшь его хорошим, напечатать в "Библиотеке для чтения"; а поелику мне, бедняку, дарить богатого Смирдина грех, то продай ему NB как можно дороже.

 

Katenin's sonnet ends in the line:

 

И чем прискорбней жизнь, тем радостней могила.

And the more lamentable life is, the more joyful is the grave.

 

At the beginning of his memoir essay Vospominaniya o F. M. Dostoevskom (“Reminiscences of F. M. Dostoevski,” 1881) Vsevolod Solovyov (a son of the celebrated historian and brother of the celebrated philosopher) mentions mogila (the grave):

 

Человек только что опущен в могилу.

The man was just lowered into the grave.

 

In a letter of Oct. 31, 1838 (Dostoevski’s seventeenth birthday), to his brother Dostoevski twice uses the word gradus (degree) and mentions bred serdtsa (delirium of the heart):

 

Философию не надо полагать простой математической задачей, где неизвестное - природа... Заметь, что поэт в порыве вдохновенья разгадывает бога, следовательно, исполняет назначенье философии. Следовательно, поэтический восторг есть восторг философии... Следовательно, философия есть та же поэзия, только высший градус её!..

Philosophy should not be regarded as a mere equation where nature is the unknown quantity… Remark that the poet, in the moment of inspiration, comprehends God, and consequently does the philosopher’s work. Consequently poetic inspiration is nothing less than philosophical inspiration. Consequently philosophy is nothing but poetry, a higher degree of poetry!..

 

Друг мой! Ты философствуешь как поэт. И как не ровно выдерживает душа градус вдохновенья, так не ровна, не верна и твоя философия. Чтоб больше знать, надо меньше чувствовать, и обратно, правило опрометчивое, бред сердца.

My friend, you philosophize like a poet. And just because the soul cannot be forever in a state of exaltation, your philosophy is not true and not just. To know more one must feel less, and vice versa. Your judgment is featherheaded – it is a delirium of the heart.

 

Bred (“Delirium,” 1955) is a novel by Aldanov. In Aldanov's novel Begstvo ("The Escape," 1930) Kremeneysky mentions Golconda:

 

 - Не знаю, право, как вас благодарить за вашу любезность.- Неужели вам не совестно?.. Я вам говорю, мы целую Голконду получили. Хотим даже по сему случаю устроить пир на весь мир, то есть позвать на обед вас и ещё двух-трёх друзей... Предупреждаю, обед и с Голкондой будет скверный: минули дни счастливые Аранжуэца! Попили их кровушки, правда, Маруся?.. Очень, очень вас просим... И Вите будет так приятно. (Part One, chapter 1)

 

Aldanov is the author of Peshchera ("The Cave," 1932) and Mogila voina ("A Soldier's Grave," 1938). The epigraph to the latter novel is the last stanza of Byron's last poem On this Day I Complete my Thirty-Sixth Year (1824):

Seek out -- less often sought than found
A soldier's grave, for thee the best,
Then look around and choose thy ground,
And take thy rest.

 

In the poem's first stanza Byron says that he cannot be beloved:

 

'Tis time this heart should be unmoved,

Since others it hath ceased to move:

Yet though I cannot be beloved,

Still let me love!

 

In a letter of April 11, 1831, to Pletnyov Pushkin calls Pletnyov ten’ vozlyublennaya (the beloved shade):

 

Воля твоя, ты несносен: ни строчки от тебя не дождёшься. Умер ты, что ли? Если тебя уже нет на свете, то, тень возлюбленная, кланяйся от меня Державину и обними моего Дельвига.

 

In his parodic "Ode to Count Khvostov" (1825) Pushkin in jest compares Khvostov to Byron:

 

Вам с Бейроном шипела злоба,
Гремела и правдива лесть.
Он лорд - граф ты! Поэты оба!
Се, мнится, явно сходство есть. -
Никак! Ты с верною супругой
Под бременем Судьбы упругой
Живёшь в любви - и наконец
Глубок он, но единобразен,
А ты глубок, игрив и разен.
И в шалостях ты впрям певец.

 

The name Khvostov comes from khvost (tail). According to Vsevlod Solovyov, in a conversation with him Dostoevski mentioned khvostiki (“little tails”):

 

-- Успех, продолжал он больше и больше оживляясь, успех одного служит успехом для многих. На чужом успехе многие строют свои планы и достигают кое-чего: и им перепадает кусочек... Стоит человеку получить большой, решительный успех, популярность настоящую, с которой уж нельзя спорить, которую уж никаким хитростями не уничтожишь, не уменьшишь,-- и смотришь: за этим человеком непременно хвостики... хвостики! "Возле видного человека и меня дескать заметят". О, сколько в таких случаях можно сделать интересных наблюдений! только тот, за кем эти "хвостики", таких наблюдений не сделает, ибо вдруг теряет чувство меры... Да, только что же об этом -- поживёте, много такого увидите!.. (X)

 

By khvostiki Dostoevski means people who make their plans and base their career on the success of others. The publisher and commentator of Shade’s last poem, Kinbote is Shade’s khvostik. In his fragment Rim (“Rome,” 1842) Gogol describes a carnival in Rome, mentions the Italian sonetto colla coda (“sonnet with a tail,” con la coda) and in a footnote explains that in Italian poetry there is a kind of poem known as sonet s khvostom (tailed sonnet), when the idea cannot be expressed in fourteen lines and entails an appendix which is often longer than the sonnet itself:

 

В италиянской поэзии существует род стихотворенья, известного под именем сонета с хвостом (con la coda), когда мысль не вместилась и ведёт за собою прибавление, которое часто бывает длиннее самого сонета.

 

Shade’s poem is almost finished when the author is killed by Gradus. Kinbote believes that, to be completed, Shade’s poem needs only 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," 1846) is a short novel by Dostoevski and a poem (1909) by Alexander Blok. According to G. Ivanov, to his question "does a sonnet need a coda" Blok replied that he did not know what a coda is. Not only (the unwritten) Line 1001, but Kinbote's entire Foreword, Commentary and Index can be regarded as a coda of Shade's poem.

 

In his poem Kak v Gretsiyu Bayron, o, bez sozhalen'ya... ("Like Byron to Greece, oh, without regret..." 1927) G. Ivanov (the author of an offensive article on VN in the Paris émigré review Numbers) mentions blednyi ogon' (pale fire):

 

Как в Грецию Байрон, о, без сожаленья,
Сквозь звзёды и розы, и тьму,
На голос бессмысленно-сладкого пенья…
— И ты не поможешь ему.

Сквозь звёзды, которые снятся влюблённым,
И небо, где нет ничего,
В холодную полночь — платком надушённым.
— И ты не удержишь его.

На голос бессмысленно-сладкого пенья,
Как Байрон за бледным огнём,
Сквозь полночь и розы, о, без сожаленья…
— И ты позабудешь о нём.

 

A major theme in G. Ivanov's poetry is suicide. At the beginning of one of his poems (in which a funeral is described) G. Ivanov's repeats the word padali (were falling) three times:

 

Листья падали, падали, падали.
И никто им не мог помешать…
От гниющих цветов, как от падали,
Тяжело становилось дышать.

И неслось светозарное пение
Над плескавшей в тумане рекой,
Обещая в блаженном успении
Отвратительный вечный покой.

 

According to Kinbote, "of the not very many ways known of shedding one's body, falling, falling, falling is the supreme method" (note to Line 493). Kinbote adds that, if he were a poet, he would certainly make an ode to the sweet urge to close one's eyes and surrender utterly unto the perfect safety of wooed death. Hodasevich’s poem Zhiv Bog! Umyon, a ne zaumen… (“God alive! I’m not beyond coherence…” 1923) ends in the lines:

 

О, если б мой предсмертный стон

Облечь в отчётливую оду!

 

Oh, if I could make an articulate ode

Of my last expiring groan!

 

Another poem from Hodasevich’s collection Evropeyskaya noch’ (“European Night”) ends in the lines:

 

Счастлив, кто падает вниз головой:

Мир для него хоть на миг – а иной.

 

Happy is the one who falls head down:

If only for a moment, the world looks different to him.

 

In his 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.

 

Describing the ideal drop, Kinbote 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)

 

Russian for "joke," shutka (pronounced shootka) is an anagram of shtuka ("thing; trick," etc.). In Griboedov’s play in verse Gore ot uma (“Woe from Wit,” 1824) Famusov, as he speaks to Chatski (who suddenly arrived in Moscow after a three-year absence), uses the phrases vykinul shtuku (played a trick) and gryanul vdrug kak s oblakov (suddenly arrived as if falling from the clouds):

 

Ну выкинул ты штуку!

Три года не писал двух слов!

И грянул вдруг как с облаков.

 

Oh what a trick you've played! You see,

For three long years we haven't heard from you,

And now you're here, out of the blue. (Act One, scene 9)

 

In her Russian translation of Pale Fire Vera Nabokov renders "a beader from Radugovitra" as bisershchitsa iz Radugovitry. Bisershchitsa (female beader) comes from biser (the beads). In a letter of the end of January, 1825, to Bestuzhev Pushkin offers his criticism of Griboedov's comedy and uses the phrase metat' biser (to cast pearls):

 

Теперь вопрос. В комедии «Горе от ума» кто умное действующее лицо? ответ: Грибоедов. А знаешь ли, что такое Чацкий? Пылкий, благородный и добрый малый, проведший несколько времени с очень умным человеком (именно с Грибоедовым) и напитавшийся его мыслями, остротами и сатирическими замечаниями. Всё, что говорит он, очень умно. Но кому говорит он всё это? Фамусову? Скалозубу? На бале московским бабушкам? Молчалину? Это непростительно. Первый признак умного человека — с первого взгляду знать, с кем имеешь дело, и не метать бисера перед Репетиловыми и тому под.

 

According to Pushkin, a clever person would not cast pearls before Repetilov (a character in "Woe from Wit") and his likes. At the beginning of his letter Pushkin says that Ryleev (the master of Batovo, a country place that later belonged to the Nabokovs; according to VN, le Chemin du Pendu in the park of Batovo received its name after Ryleev, one of the five Decembrists who were hanged) will bring to Bestuzhev a manuscript copy of "The Gypsies:"

 

Рылеев доставит тебе моих «Цыганов». Пожури моего брата за то, что он не сдержал своего слова — я не хотел, чтоб эта поэма известна была прежде времени — теперь нечего делать — принуждён её напечатать, пока не растаскают её по клочкам.

 

In Chapter Eight of Eugene Onegin Pushkin compares Onegin to Chatski:

 

Он возвратился и попал,
Как Чацкий, с корабля на бал.

 

He returned and found himself,

Like Chatski, come from boat to ball. (Eight: XIII: 13-14)

 

In "The Golden Age in one's Pocket" Dostoevski describes a ball:

 

А впрочем, мне было и скучно, то есть не скучно, а немного досадно. Кончился детский бал и начался бал отцов, и боже, какая, однако, бездарность! Все в новых костюмах, и никто не умеет носить костюм; все веселятся, и никто не весел; все самолюбивы, и никто не умеет себя показать; все завистливы, и все молчат и сторонятся. Даже танцевать не умеют.

 

Dostoevski died in 1881, a month before the assassination of Alexander II (a tsar who was killed by a terrorist's bomb). At the end of his Commentary Kinbote mentions "ball in the palace, bomb in the palace square" (in Odon's film Escape from Zembla) and says that, history permitting, he may sail back to his recovered kingdom:

 

God will help me, I trust, to rid myself of any desire to follow the example of the other two characters in this work. I shall continue to exist. I may assume other disguises, other forms, but I shall try to exist. I may turn up yet, on another campus, as an old, happy, health heterosexual Russian, a writer in exile, sans fame, sans future, sans audience, sans anything but his art. I may join forces with Odon in a new motion picture: Escape from Zembla (ball in the palace, bomb in the palace square). I may pander to the simple tastes of theatrical critics and cook up a stage play, an old-fashioned melodrama with three principles: a lunatic who intends to kill an imaginary king, another lunatic who imagines himself to be that king, and a distinguished old poet who stumbles by chance into the line of fire, and perishes in the clash between the two figments. Oh, I may do many things! History permitting, I may sail back to my recovered kingdom, and with a great sob greet the gray coastline and the gleam of a roof in the rain. I may huddle and groan in a madhouse. But whatever happens, wherever the scene is laid, somebody, somewhere, will quietly set out--somebody has already set out, somebody still rather far away is buying a ticket, is boarding a bus, a ship, a plane, has landed, is walking toward a million photographers, and presently he will ring at my door--a bigger, more respectable, more competent Gradus. (note to Line 1000)

 

Actually, Kinbote knows that he will never return to Zembla (a distant northern land that exists only in his imagination). Kinbote's Foreword to Shade's poem is dated Oct. 19, 1959. Pushkin destroyed Chapter Ten of Eugene Onegin on October 19, 1830 (the Lyceum anniversary). In a letter of October 19, 1836, to Chaadaev Pushkin several times uses the word histoire (history):

 

Et Pierre le Grand qui à lui seul est une histoire universelle!

 

Quoique personnellement attaché de coeur à l’empereur, je suis loin d’admirer tout ce que je vois autour de moi; comme homme de lettre, je suis aigri; comme homme à préjugés, je suis froissé — mais je vous jure sur mon honneur, que pour rien au monde je n’aurais voulu changer de patrie, ni avoir d’autre histoire que celle de nos ancêtres, telle que Dieu nous l’a donnée.

 

According to Pushkin, he would never want to change his motherland or have a history other than that of our ancestors as God gave it to us.

 

Unlike Shade (an atheist who shaves every morning), Kinbote is a bearded Roman Catholic. In the same letter to Chaadaev (who disliked Orthodox Church and converted to Roman Catholicism) Pushkin agrees that contemporary Orthodox clergy is backward but it is only because the priests are bearded:

 

Le clergé russe, jusqu’à Théophane, a été respectable, il ne s’est jamais soulié des infamies du papisme et certes n’aurait jamais provoqué la réformation, au moment ou l’humanité avait le plus besoin d’unité. Je conviens que notre clergé actuel est en retard. En voulez-vous savoir la raison? c’est qu’il est barbu; voilà tout.

 

Kinbote was nicknamed "the great beaver" because of his brown beard:

 

One day I happened to enter the English Literature office in quest of a magazine with the picture of the Royal Palace in Onhava, which I wanted my friend to see, when I overheard a young instructor in a green velvet jacket, whom I shall mercifully call Gerald Emerald, carelessly saying in answer to something the secretary had asked: "I guess Mr. Shade has already left with the Great Beaver." Of course, I am quite tall, and my brown beard is of a rather rich tint and texture; the silly cognomen evidently applied to me, but was not worth noticing, and after calmly taking the magazine from a pamphlet-cluttered table, I contented myself on my way out with pulling Gerald Emerald's bow-tie loose with a deft jerk of my fingers as I passed by him. (Foreword)

 

Gimn borode (“A Hymn to the Beard,” 1757) is a poem by Lomonosov, the author of Pis’mo o pol’ze stekla (“Letter on the Use of Glass,” 1752). Vitrum (cf. Radugovitra) is Latin for "glass." According to Kinbote, Gradus was in the glass business:

 

Gradus never became a real success in the glass business to which he turned again and again between his win-eselling and pamphlet printing jobs. He started as a maker of Cartesian devils--imps of bottle glass bobbing up and down in methylate-filled tubes hawked during Catkin Week on the boulevards. He also worked as a teazer, and later as a flasher, at governmental factories--and was, I believe, more or less responsible for the remarkably ugly red-and-amber windows in the great public lavatory at rowdy but colorful Kalixhaven where the sailors are. He claimed to have improved the glitter and rattle of the so-called feuilles-d'alarme used by the grape growers and orchardmen to scare the birds. I have staggered the notes referring to him in such a fashion that the first (see note to line 17 where some of his other activities are adumbrated) is the vaguest while those that follow become gradually clearer as gradual Gradus approaches in space and time. (note to Line 171)

 

In Chapter One of EO Pushkin describes Onegin’s day in St. Petersburg and (in One: XVI: 4) mentions Onegin’s bobrovyi vorotnik (beaver collar):

 

Уж тёмно: в санки он садится.
"Пади, пади!" - раздался крик;
Морозной пылью серебрится
Его бобровый воротник.

К Talon помчался: он уверен,
Что там уж ждёт его Каверин.

Вошёл: и пробка в потолок,
Вина кометы брызнул ток,
Пред ним roast-beef окровавленный,
И трюфли, роскошь юных лет,
Французской кухни лучший цвет,
И Стразбурга пирог нетленный
Меж сыром Лимбургским живым
И ананасом золотым.

 

It’s already dark. He gets into a sleigh.

The cry “Way, way!” resounds.

With frostdust silvers

his beaver collar.

To Talon's he has dashed off: he is certain

that there already waits for him [Kaverin];

has entered – and the cork goes ceilingward,

the flow of comet wine has spurted,

a bloody roast beef is before him,

and truffles, luxury of youthful years,

the best flower of French cookery,

and a decayless Strasbourg pie

between a living Limburg cheese

and a golden ananas.

 

After the death of Gradus' father his widow moved to Strasbourg:

 

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. (note to Line 17)

 

According to Kinbote, Shade began writing Canto Two of Pale Fire early in the morning of July 5, 1959 (Shade's, Kinbote's and Gradus' birthday; Shade was born in 1898, Kinbote and Gradus were born in 1915). Pushkin's poem Iz Pindemonti ("From Pindemonte") is dated in the draft July 5, 1836. In his poem Exegi monumentum (dated in the draft August 21, 1836) Pushkin says: Net, ves' ya ne umru ("No, I'll not wholly die;" cf. the Umruds, an Eskimo tribe mentioned by Kinbote). Botkin does not wholly die when, on July 21, 1959, Shade is killed by Gradus. On October 19, 1959, Kinbote completes his work on Shade's poem and commits suicide. There is a hope that, after Kinbote's death, Botkin, like Count Vorontsov (a target of Pushkin's epigrams, "half-milord, half-merchant, etc."), will be full again.

 

Яго + Блок + ода + конец = яблоко + кода + гонец = ягодка + бок + Олонец = око + глянец + Набоков + еда - Нева/вена/Вена = Голконда + оборванец + янтарь + Ева - вратарь - Нева

 

Яго – Iago (a character in Shakespeare’s Othello)

Блок – Blok

ода – ode

конец – end

яблоко – apple

кода – coda

гонец – courier; herald

ягодка – little berry (diminutive of yagoda); in VN’s Soglyadatay (“The Eye,” 1930) Smurov mentions yadovitaya sovetskaya yagodka (“poisonous Soviet berry”), a Soviet spy exposed by Weinstock

бок – side

Олонец – Olonets (a city in the North Russia); Derzhavin wrote his great ode Vodopad (“The Waterfall”) when he was a governor of the Province of Olonets; Hodasevich is the author of a book (1931) on Derzhavin

око – eye

глянец – gloss, luster

Набоков – Nabokov

еда – food

Нева – the Neva

вена – vein

Вена – Vienna

Голконда – Golconda

оборванец – ragamuffin

янтарь – amber; according to Kinbote, Mrs. Goldsworth's intellectual interests were fully developed, going as they did from Amber to Zen (the Russian word for “amber” begins with ya, the last letter of the alphabet)

Ева – Eve; cf. The Three Faces of Eve (1957), a film based on a case of multiple personality

вратарь – goalkeeper; at Cambridge VN was a goalkeeper of his College’s football team