In Canto One of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) compares our world to a cage and says that “we are most artistically caged:”
My picture book was at an early age
The painted parchment papering our cage:
Mauve rings around the moon; blood-orange sun;
Twinned Iris; and that rare phenomenon
The iridule - when, beautiful and strange,
In a bright sky above a mountain range
One opal cloudlet in an oval form
Reflects the rainbow of a thunderstorm
Which in a distant valley has been staged -
For we are most artistically caged. (ll. 105-114)
In his poem Khudozhnik ("The Artist," 1913) Alexander Blok mentions kletka (a cage) in which he shuts up the free bird that flew to take away death and save his soul:
В жаркое лето и в зиму метельную,
В дни ваших свадеб, торжеств, похорон,
Жду, чтоб спугнул мою скуку смертельную
Лёгкий, доселе не слышанный звон.
Вот он — возник. И с холодным вниманием
Жду, чтоб понять, закрепить и убить.
И перед зорким моим ожиданием
Тянет он еле приметную нить.
С моря ли вихрь? Или сирины райские
В листьях поют? Или время стоит?
Или осыпали яблони майские
Снежный свой цвет? Или ангел летит?
Длятся часы, мировое несущие.
Ширятся звуки, движенье и свет.
Прошлое страстно глядится в грядущее.
Нет настоящего. Жалкого — нет.
И, наконец, у предела зачатия
Новой души, неизведанных сил,-
Душу сражает, как громом, проклятие:
Творческий разум осилил — убил.
И замыкаю я в клетку холодную
Лёгкую, добрую птицу свободную,
Птицу, хотевшую смерть унести,
Птицу, летевшую душу спасти.
Вот моя клетка — стальная, тяжёлая,
Как золотая, в вечернем огне.
Вот моя птица, когда-то весёлая,
Обруч качает, поет на окне.
Крылья подрезаны, песни заучены.
Любите вы под окном постоять?
Песни вам нравятся. Я же, измученный,
Нового жду — и скучаю опять.
In summer, hot, and winter, snow-clad,
In days you bury, wed, or feast at home,
I wait for easy, never ever heard
Ringing -- to free myself of devastating boredom.
It has arisen! With attention, strong,
I wait – to understand, pin down, and kill that.
Before my waiting, such resolved and long,
It stretches thin and faintly seemed a thread.
Is it a sea wind? Are the Eden’s birds,
Singing midst leaves? Is time detained here, quit?
Or, may be, apple-trees of spring have fully lost
Their snowy veil. Is this the angel’s flight?
Time passes by, it’s bearing the world.
Light, sounds, movement -- immensely expand,
The fervent past looks at the future, bold.
There’s no present. And the pitiful is dead.
And on the threshold of the birth, at last,
Of a new soul, of unknown strengths,
A curse strikes down soul, like sky blasts:
Creative reason put it to its death.
And I shut up in a cage, such small and cold,
The airy, kind and free of fetters bird,
The bird that flew to take away my death,
The bird that flew to save my soul’s breath.
Here is my cage – a steel and heavy net,
It seems the golden in the sunset’s eve,
Here is my bird – once gay, and now sad,
Swinging and singing by the window grieve.
Its wing are cut, its songs are learnt by heart.
Have any wish to be here detained?
You like these songs. But I, after my plight,
Wait for the new, and feel boredom again.
(tr. E. Bonver)
Siriny rayskie (the Eden’s birds) in the third stanza of Blok’s poem bring to mind VN’s Russian nom de plume, Sirin. In his poem Na smert’ A. Bloka (“On the Death of Alexander Blok,” 1921) VN compares Pushkin (one of the four poets who meet in paradise the soul of Alexander Blok) to raduga po vsey zemle (a rainbow over the whole Earth):
Пушкин - радуга по всей земле,
Лермонтов - путь млечный над горами,
Тютчев - ключ, струящийся во мгле,
Фет - румяный луч во храме.
Pushkin is a rainbow over the whole Earth,
Lermontov is the Milky Way over the mountains,
Tyutchev is a spring flowing in the dark,
Fet is a ruddy ray in the temple. (II)
The author of Lastochki (“The Swallows,” 1884) and Alter Ego (1878), Afanasiy Fet was married to Maria Botkin. The “real” name of Sybil Shade (the poet’s wife) and of Queen Disa (the wife of Charles the Beloved) seems to be Sofia Botkin (born Lastochkin). The author of a book on surnames, Kinbote (Shade’s mad commentator who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla) says that Botkin (Shade’s, Kinbote’s an Gradus’ “real” name) is one who makes bottekins (fancy footwear) and Limner is one who illuminates parchments:
Commentary where placid scholarship should reign is not the place for blasting the preposterous defects of that little obituary. I have only mentioned it because that is where I gleaned a few meager details concerning the poet's parents. His father, Samuel Shade, who died at fifty, in 1902, had studied medicine in his youth and was vice-president of a firm of surgical instruments in Exton. His chief passion, however, was what our eloquent necrologist calls "the study of the feathered tribe," adding that "a bird had been named for him: Bombycilla Shadei" (this should be "shadei," of course). The poet's mother, née Caroline Lukin, assisted him in his work and drew the admirable figures of his Birds of Mexico, which I remember having seen in my friend's house. What the obituarist does not know is that Lukin comes from Luke, as also do Locock and Luxon and Lukashevich. It represents one of the many instances when the amorphous-looking but live and personal hereditary patronymic grows, sometimes in fantastic shapes, around the common pebble of a Christian name. The Lukins are an old Essex family. Other names derive from professions such as Rymer, Scrivener, Limner (one who illuminates parchments), Botkin (one who makes bottekins, fancy footwear) and thousands of others. My tutor, a Scotsman, used to call any old tumble-down building "a hurley-house." But enough of this. (note to Line 71)
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.
According to G. Ivanov, to his question “does a sonnet need a coda” Blok replied that he did not know what a coda is. Kinbote believes that, to be completed, Shade's almost finished 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”).