In a discarded variant John Shade (the poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) says that he likes his name:
John Shade and Sybil Swallow (see note to line 247) were married in 1919, exactly three decades before King Charles wed Disa, Duchess of Payn. Since the very beginning of his reign (1936-1958) representatives of the nation, salmon fishermen, non-union glaziers, military groups, worried relatives, and especially the Bishop of Yeslove, a sanguineous and saintly old man, had been doing their utmost to persuade him to give up his copious but sterile pleasures and take a wife. It was a matter not of morality but of succession. As in the case of some of his predecessors, rough alderkings who burned for boys, the clergy blandly ignored our young bachelor's pagan habits, but wanted him to do what an earlier and even more reluctant Charles had done: take a night off and lawfully engender an heir.
He saw nineteen-year-old Disa for the first time on the festive night of July the 5th, 1947, at a masked ball in his uncle's palace. She had come in male dress, as a Tirolese boy, a little knock-kneed but brave and lovely, and afterwards he drove her and her cousins (two guardsmen disguised as flowergirls) in his divine new convertible through the streets to see the tremendous birthday illumination, and the fackeltanz in the park, and the fireworks, and the pale upturned faces. He procrastinated for almost two years but was set upon by inhumanly eloquent advisors, and finally gave in. On the eve of his wedding he prayed most of the night locked up all alone in the cold vastness of the Onhava cathedral. Smug alderkings looked at him from the ruby-and-amethyst windows. Never had he so fervently asked God for guidance and strength (see further my note to lines 433-434).
After line 274 there is a false start in the draft:
I like my name: Shade, Ombre, almost "man"
In Spanish...
One regrets that the poet did not pursue this theme--and spare his reader the embarrassing intimacies that follow. (note to Line 275)
Ombre is almost hombre (‘man’ in Spanish). Lombernyi stol (Russ., “card table”) comes from lomber, the Russian name of l’Hombre, a card game whose name comes from hombre. In VN's novel Zashchita Luzhina (“The Luzhin Defense,” 1930) lombernyi stol (a card table) is mentioned:
На время он нашёл мнимое успокоение в складных картинах. Это были сперва простые, детские, состоявшие из больших кусков, вырезанных по краю круглыми зубцами, как бисквиты петибер, и сцеплявшихся так крепко, что, сложив картину, можно было поднимать, не ломая, целые части её. Но в тот год английская мода изобрела складные картины для взрослых,-- "пузеля", как называли их у Пето,-- вырезанные крайне прихотливо: кусочки всех очертаний, от простого кружка (часть будущего голубого неба) до самых затейливых форм, богатых углами, мысками, перешейками, хитрыми выступами, по которым никак нельзя было разобрать, куда они приладятся,-- пополнят ли они пегую шкуру коровы, уже почти доделанной, является ли этот тёмный край на зелёном фоне тенью от посоха пастуха, чьё ухо и часть темени ясно видны на более откровенном кусочке. И когда постепенно появлялся слева круп коровы, а справа, на зелени, рука с дудкой, и повыше небесной синевой ровно застраивалась пустота, и голубой кружок ладно входил в небосвод,-- Лужин чувствовал удивительное волнение от точных сочетаний этих пёстрых кусков, образующих в последний миг отчётливую картину. Были головоломки очень дорогие, состоявшие из нескольких тысяч частей; их приносила тётя, весёлая, нежная, рыжеволосая тётя,-- и он часами склонялся над ломберным столом в зале, проверяя глазами каждый зубчик раньше, чем попробовать, подходит ли он к выемке, и стараясь, по едва заметным приметам, определить заранее сущность картины. Из соседней комнаты, где шумели гости, тетя просила: "Ради Бога, не потеряй ничего!” Иногда входил отец, смотрел на кусочки, протягивал руку к столу, говорил: "Вот это, несомненно, должно сюда лечь", и тогда Лужин, не оборачиваясь, бормотал: "Глупости, глупости, не мешайте",- и отец, осторожно прикоснувшись губами к его хохолку, уходил,- мимо позолоченных стульев, мимо обширного зеркала, мимо копии с купающейся Фрины, мимо рояля, большого безмолвного рояля, подкованного толстым стеклом и покрытого парчовой попоной.
For a while he found an illusory relief in jigsaw puzzles. At first they were simple childish ones, consisting of large pieces cut out with rounded teeth at the edges, like petit-beurre cookies, which interlocked so tenaciously that it was possible to lift whole sections of the puzzle without breaking them. But that year there came from England the fad of jigsaw puzzles invented for adults — 'poozels' as they called them at the best toyshop in Petersburg — which were cut out with extraordinary ingenuity: pieces of all shapes, from a simple disk (part of a future blue sky) to the most intricate forms, rich in corners, capes, isthmuses, cunning projections, which did not allow you to tell where they were supposed to fit — whether they were to fill up the piebald hide of a cow, already almost completed, or whether this dark border on a green background was the shadow of the crook of a shepherd whose ear and part of whose head were plainly visible on a more outspoken piece. And when a cow's haunch gradually appeared on the left, and on the right, against some foliage, a hand with a shepherd's pipe, and when the empty space above became built up with heavenly blue, and the blue disk fitted smoothly into the sky Luzhin felt wonderfully stirred by the precise combinations of these vari-colored pieces that formed at the last moment an intelligible picture. Some of these brain-twisters were very expensive and consisted of several thousand pieces; they were brought by his young aunt, a gay, tender, red-haired aunt — and he would spend hours bent over a card table in the drawing room, measuring with his eyes each projection before trying if it would fit into this or that gap and attempting to determine by scarcely perceptible signs the essence of the picture in advance. From the next room, full of the noise of guests, his aunt would plead: 'For goodness' sake, don't lose any of the pieces!' Sometimes his father would come in, look at the puzzle and stretch out a hand tableward, saying: 'Look, this undoubtedly goes in here,' and then Luzhin without looking round would mutter: 'Rubbish, rubbish, don't interfere,' and his father would cautiously apply his lips to the tufted top of his son's head and depart — past the gilded chairs, past the vast mirror, past the reproduction of Phryne Taking Her Bath, past the piano — a large silent piano shod with thick glass and caparisoned with a brocaded cloth. (Chapter Two)
From childhood Luzhin is tormented by nightmares about a black-bearded peasant from the water mill:
Наконец, ещё через минуту, все гурьбой поднялись наверх,-- блестела лысина отца, птица на шляпе матери колебалась, как утка на бурном пруду, прыгал седой бобрик буфетчика; сзади, поминутно перегибаясь через перила, поднимались кучер, сторож и, почему-то, Акулина-молочница, да ещё чернобородый мужик с мельницы, обитатель будущих кошмаров. Он-то, как самый сильный, и понёс его с чердака до коляски.
Finally, after another minute had passed, they all went up in a posse — his father's bald head glistened, the bird on mother's hat swayed like a duck on a troubled pond, and the butler's gray crew cut bobbed up and down; at the rear, leaning at every moment over the balustrade, came the coachman, the watchman, and for some reason the milkmaid Akulina, and finally a blackbearded peasant from the water mill, future inhabitant of future nightmares. It was he, as the strongest, who carried Luzhin down from the attic to the carriage. (Chapter One)
In Tolstoy’s Anna Karenin (1875-77) Anna and Vronski have one and the same nightmare. They dream of a bearded Russian peasant who says in French: “Il faut le battre le fer, le broyer, le pétrir…” At the end of his novel Tolstoy mentions the Milky Way:
Уже совсем стемнело, и на юге, куда он смотрел, не было туч. Тучи стояли с противной стороны. Оттуда вспыхивала молния и слышался дальний гром. Лёвин прислушивался к равномерно падающим с лип в саду каплям и смотрел на знакомый ему треугольник звёзд и на проходящий в середине его Млечный Путь с его разветвлением. При каждой вспышке молнии не только Млечный Путь, но и яркие звёзды исчезали, но, как только потухала молния, опять, как будто брошенные какой-то меткой рукой, появлялись на тех же местах.
It was quite dark now, and in the south, where he was looking, there were no clouds. The storm had drifted on to the opposite side of the sky, and there were flashes of lightning and distant thunder from that quarter. Lyovin listened to the monotonous drip from the lime trees in the garden, and looked at the triangle of stars he knew so well, and the Milky Way with its branches that ran through its midst. At each flash of lightning the Milky Way, and even the bright stars, vanished, but as soon as the lightning died away, they reappeared in their places as though some hand had flung them back with careful aim. (Part Eight, chapter XIX)
In Canto One of his poem Shade mentions the Great Bear and the Milky Way:
That's Dr. Sutton's light. That's the Great Bear.
A thousand years ago five minutes were
Equal to forty ounces of fine sand.
Outstare the stars. Infinite foretime and
Infinite aftertime: above your head
They close like giant wings, and you are dead.
The regular vulgarian, I daresay,
Is happier: He sees the Milky Way
Only when making water. (ll. 119-127)
Bol’shaya medveditsa (Kovsh) (“The Great Bear (Dipper),” 1906) is a story by Tolstoy. In his memoir essay “Leo Tolstoy” (1919) Gorky describes his conversations with Tolstoy who mentioned E. T. A. Hoffmann, the German writer who had lombernye stoly (card tables) run about the streets:
И вдруг как будто рассердился, заговорил недовольно, строго, постукивая пальцем по колену.
— Ведь вы непьющий? И не похоже, чтоб вы пили много когда-нибудь. А в этих снах все-таки есть что-то пьяное. Был немецкий писатель Гофман, у него ломберные столы по улицам бегали, и всё в этом роде, так он был пьяница,— «калаголик», как говорят грамотные кучера. Пустые сапоги идут — это вправду страшно! Даже если вы и придумали,— очень хорошо! Страшно!
Неожиданно улыбнулся во всю бороду, так, что даже скулы засияли.
— А ведь представьте-ка; вдруг по Тверской бежит ломберный стол, эдакий — с выгнутыми ножками, доски у него прихлопывают и мелом пылят, даже ещё цифры на зелёном сукне видать,— это на нём акцизные чиновники трое суток напролет в винт играли, он не вытерпел больше и сбежал.
And suddenly he got angry, and said, irritably, sternly, rapping his knee with his finger: “But you’re not a drinking man? It’s unlikely that you ever drank much. And yet there’s something drunken in these dreams. There was a German writer, Hoffmann, who dreamt that card tables ran about the street and all that sort of thing, but then he was a drunkard — a ‘calaholic,’ as our literate coachmen say. Empty boots marching — that’s really terrible. Even if you did invent it, it’s good. Terrible!”
Suddenly he gave a broad smile, so that even his cheek bones beamed: “And imagine this: suddenly, in the Tverskaya Street, there runs a card table with its curved legs, its boards clap-clap, raising a chalky dust, and you can even still see the numbers on the green cloth — excise clerks playing whist on it for three days and nights on end — the table could not bear it any longer and ran away.” (XXXIV)
According to Gorky, in his white mushroom-like hat, riding a small Tartar horse, Tolstoy resembled a gnome:
В жаркий день он обогнал меня на нижней дороге; он ехал верхом в направлении к Ливадии; под ним была маленькая татарская спокойная лошадка. Серый, лохматый, в лёгонькой белой войлочной шляпе грибом, он был похож на гнома. (XXXVII)
Gorky’s real name, Peshkov comes from peshka (pawn). In the third sonnet of his Tri shakhmatnykh soneta (“Three Chess Sonnets,” 1924) VN mentions peshki (pawns) and gnom (the gnome):
Я не писал законного сонета,
хоть в тополях не спали соловьи,-
но, трогая то пешки, то ладьи,
придумывал задачу до рассвета.
И заключил в узор её ответа
всю нашу ночь, все возгласы твои,
и тень ветвей, и яркие струи
текучих звёзд, и мастерство поэта.
Я думаю, испанец мой, и гном,
и Филидор - в порядке кружевном
скупых фигур, играющих согласно,-
увидят всё,- что льётся лунный свет,
что я люблю восторженно и ясно,
что на доске составил я сонет.
I did not write a lawful sonnet,
Though in poplars the nightingales didn’t sleep.
But, touching now pawns, now rooks,
Thought out a problem until dawn.
And I put into the pattern of its solution
all our night, all your exclamations,
a shade of boughs, and the bright streams
of fluid stars, and a poet’s skill.
I think, my Spaniard and the gnome
and Philidor - in perfect lacy order
of spare chessmen playing harmoniously -
Will see everything, - that the moonlight flows,
That I love enthusiastically and lucidly,
That on a board I have composed a sonnet.
Shade’s poem is almost finished when the author is killed by Gradus. Shade’s mad commentator who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla, 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”) is a short novel (1846) by Dostoevski and a poem (1909) by Alexander Blok (the poet who to the question "does a sonnet need a coda" replied that he did not know what a coda is). In Dostoevski’s novella Khozyayka (“The Landlady,” 1847) Ordynov from childhood is haunted by zloy, skvernyi gnom (an evil bad gnome) who takes shape of every toy:
То как будто наступали для него опять его нежные, безмятежно прошедшие годы первого детства, с их светлою радостию, с неугасимым счастием, с первым сладостным удивлением к жизни, с роями светлых духов, вылетавших из-под каждого цветка, который срывал он, игравших с ним на тучном зеленом лугу перед маленьким домиком, окруженным акациями, улыбавшихся ему из хрустального необозримого озера, возле которого просиживал он по целым часам, прислушиваясь, как бьётся волна о волну, и шелестивших кругом него крыльями, любовно усыпая светлыми, радужными сновидениями маленькую его колыбельку, когда его мать, склоняясь над нею, крестила, целовала и баюкала его тихою колыбельною песенкой в долгие, безмятежные ночи. Но тут вдруг стало являться одно существо, которое смущало его каким-то недетским ужасом, которое вливало первый медленный яд горя и слёз в его жизнь; он смутно чувствовал, как неведомый старик держит во власти своей все его грядущие годы, и, трепеща, не мог он отвести него глаз своих. Злой старик за ним следовал всюду. Он выглядывал и обманчиво кивал ему головою из-под каждого куста в роще, смеялся и дразнил его, воплощался в каждую куклу ребенка, гримасничая и хохоча в руках его, как злой, скверный гном; он подбивал на него каждого из его бесчеловечных школьных товарищей или, садясь с малютками на школьную скамью, гримасничая, выглядывал из-под каждой буквы его грамматики. Потом, во время сна, злой старик садился у его изголовья... (Chapter II)
According to Kinbote, in a conversation with him Shade listed Dostoevski among Russian humorists:
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." (note to Line 172)
The characters of Ilf and Petrov’s novel Zolotoy telyonok (“The Golden Calf,” 1931) include Sinitsky, the old puzzle-maker who looks like a gnome:
В области ребусов, шарад, шарадоидов, логогрифов и загадочных картинок пошли новые веяния. Работа по старинке вышла из моды. Секретари газетных и журнальных отделов «В часы досуга» или «Шевели мозговой извилиной» не брали товара без идеологии. И пока великая страна шумела, пока строились тракторные заводы и создавались грандиозные зерновые фабрики, старик Синицкий, ребусник по профессии, сидел в своей комнате и, устремив остекленевшие глаза в потолок, сочинял шараду на модное слово «индустриализация».
У Синицкого была наружность гнома. Таких обычно изображают маляры на вывесках зонтичных магазинов. Вывесочные гномы стоят в красных колпаках и дружелюбно подмигивают прохожим, как бы приглашая их поскорее купить шелковый зонтик или трость с серебряным набалдашником в виде собачьей головы. Длинная желтоватая борода Синицкого опускалась прямо под стол, в корзину для бумаг.
Fresh winds are blowing in the field of riddles, charade-like puzzles, logogriphs, and other brainteasers. The old ways are out. The newspaper and magazine sections like At Your Leisure or Use Your Brain flatly refuse to accept non-ideological material. And while the great country was moving and shaking, building assembly lines for tractors and creating giant state farms, old man Sinitsky, a puzzle-maker by trade, sat in his room, his glazed eyes on the ceiling, and worked on a riddle based on the fashionable word “industrialisation.”
Sinitsky looked like a garden gnome. Such gnomes often appeared on the signs of umbrella stores. They wear pointy red hats and wink amicably at the passers-by, as if inviting them to hurry up and buy a silk parasol or a walking stick with a silver dog-head knob. Sinitsky's long yellowish beard descended below the desk right into the waste basket. (chapter 9)
Shade’s murderer, Gradus travels with a loosely folded umbrella in one hand:
Although Gradus availed himself of all varieties of locomotion - rented cars, local trains, escalators, airplanes - somehow the eye of the mind sees him, and the muscles of the mind feel him, as always streaking across the sky with black traveling bag in one hand and loosely folded umbrella in the other, in a sustained glide high over sea and land. The force propelling him is the magic action of Shade's poem itself, the very mechanism and sweep of verse, the powerful iambic motor. Never before has the inexorable advance of fate received such a sensuous form (for other images of that transcendental tramp's approach see note to line 17). (note to Line 131)
Sharadoidy (charade-like puzzles) and arifmomoidy (arithmetic riddles) in Ilf and Petrov’s novel bring to mind tigroidy (tigroid monsters) mentioned by the narrator at the end of VN’s story Istreblenie tiranov (“Tyrants Destroyed,” 1936):
Смех, собственно, и спас меня. Пройдя все ступени ненависти и отчаяния, я достиг той высоты, откуда видно как на ладони смешное. Расхохотавшись, я исцелился, как тот анекдотический мужчина, у которого "лопнул в горле нарыв при виде уморительных трюков пуделя". Перечитывая свои записи, я вижу, что, стараясь изобразить его страшным, я лишь сделал его смешным,-- и казнил его именно этим-- старым испытанным способом. Как ни скромен я сам в оценке своего сумбурного произведения, что-то, однако, мне говорит, что написано оно пером недюжинным. Далёкий от литературных затей, но зато полный слов, которые годами выковывались в моей яростной тишине, я взял искренностью и насыщенностью чувств там, где другой взял бы мастерством да вымыслом. Это есть заклятье, заговор, так что отныне заговорить рабство может каждый. Верю в чудо. Верю в то, что каким-то образом, мне неизвестным, эти записи дойдут до людей, не сегодня и не завтра, но в некое отдалённое время, когда у мира будет денёк досуга, чтоб заняться раскопками,-- накануне новых неприятностей, не менее забавных, чем нынешние. И вот, как знать... допускаю мысль, что мой случайный труд окажется бессмертным и будет сопутствовать векам,-- то гонимый, то восхваляемый, часто опасный и всегда полезный. Я же, "тень без костей", буду рад, если плод моих забытых бессонниц послужит на долгие времена неким тайным средством против будущих тиранов, тигроидов, полоумных мучителей человека.
Laughter, actually, saved me. Having experienced all the degrees of hatred and despair, I achieved those heights from which one obtains a bird’s-eye view of the ludicrous. A roar of hearty mirth cured me, as it did, in a children’s storybook, the gentleman “in whose throat an abscess burst at the sight of a poodle’s hilarious tricks.” Rereading my chronicle, I see that, in my efforts to make him terrifying, I have only made him ridiculous, thereby destroying him — an old, proven method. Modest as I am in evaluating my muddled composition, something nevertheless tells me that it is not the work of an ordinary pen. Far from having literary aspirations, and yet full of words formed over the years in my enraged silence, I have made my point with sincerity and fullness of feeling where another would have made it with artistry and inventiveness. This is an incantation, an exorcism, so that henceforth any man can exorcise bondage. I believe in miracles. I believe that in some way, unknown to me, this chronicle will reach other men, neither tomorrow nor the next day, but at a distant time when the world has a day or so of leisure for archeological diggings, on the eve of new annoyances, no less amusing than the present ones. And, who knows — I may be right not to rule out the thought that my chance labor may prove immortal, and may accompany the ages, now persecuted, now exalted, often dangerous, and always useful. While I, a “boneless shadow,” un fantôme sans os, will be content if the fruit of my forgotten insomnious nights serves for a long time as a kind of secret remedy against future tyrants, tigroid monsters, half-witted torturers of man. (chapter 17)
The phrase fantôme sans os (rendered as ten’ bez kostey, “boneless shadow,” by the narrator of VN’s story) occurs in a sonnet by Ronsard that VN translated into Russian in 1922:
Quand vous serez bien vieille, au soir à la chandelle,
Assise auprès du feu, dévidant et filant,
Direz chantant mes vers, en vous émerveillant :
«Ronsard me célébrait du temps que j’étais belle.»
Lors vous n’aurez servante oyant telle nouvelle,
Déjà sous le labeur à demi sommeillant,
Qui au bruit de Ronsard ne s’aille réveillant,
Bénissant votre nom de louange immortelle.
Je serai sous la terre, et fantôme sans os
Par les ombres myrteux je prendrai mon repos;
Vous serez au foyer une vieille accroupie,
Regrettant mon amour et votre fier dédain.
Vivez, si m’en croyez, n’attendez à demain:
Cueilllez dès aujourd’hui les roses de la vie.
Когда на склоне лет и в час вечерний, чарам
стихов моих дивясь и грезя у огня,
вы скажете, лицо над пряжею склоня:
весна моя была прославлена Ронсаром, --
при имени моём, служанка в доме старом,
уже дремотою работу заменя, --
очнётся, услыхав, что знали вы меня,
вы, -- озарённая моим бессмертным даром.
Я буду под землёй, и, призрак без костей,
покой я обрету средь миртовых теней.
Вы будете, в тиши, склонённая, седая,
жалеть мою любовь и гордый холод свой.
Не ждите -- от миртовых дней, цените день живой,
спешите розы взять у жизненного мая.
At the end of his Commentary Kinbote says that he may turn up yet, on another campus, as an old, happy, healthy heterosexual Russian, a writer in exile, sans fame, sans future, sans audience, sans anything but his art:
"And you, what will you be doing with yourself, poor King, poor Kinbote?" a gentle young voice may inquire.
God will help me, I trust, to rid myself of any desire to follow the example of two other 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, healthy, 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 principals: 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)
At the end of his famous monologue in Shakespeare’s As You Like It (Act II, Scene 7) Jaques repeats the word “sans” four times:
All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms.
Then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress’ eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon’s mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lined,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slippered pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank, and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.
Man's seven ages bring to mind Belosnezhka i sem' gnomov, the Russian title of Brothers Grimm's fairy tale about Schneewittchen (Snow White). Let us suppose that Life is Snow White and it will remind us of Dickens' aphorism quoted by Tolstoy in a conversation with Gorky:
— Диккенс очень умно сказал: «Нам дана жизнь с непременным условием храбро защищать её до последней минуты». Вообще же это был писатель сентиментальный, болтливый и не очень умный. Впрочем, он умел построить роман, как никто, и уж, конечно, лучше Бальзака. Кто-то слазал: «Многие одержимы страстью писать книги, но редкие стыдятся их потом». Бальзак не стыдился, и Диккенс тоже, а оба написали не мало плохого. А все-таки Бальзак — гений, то есть то самое, что нельзя назвать иначе,— гений...
“Dickens said a very clever thing: ‘Life is given to us on the definite understanding that we boldly defend it to the last.’ On the whole, he was a sentimental, loquacious, and not very clever writer, but he knew how to construct a novel as no one else could, certainly better than Balzac. Some one has said: ‘Many are possessed by the passion for writing books, but few are ashamed of them afterwards.’ Balzac was not ashamed, nor was Dickens, and both of them wrote quite a number of bad books. Still, Balzac is a genius. Or at any rate, the thing which you can only call genius . . . .” (XXXI)
In VN's novel Lolita (1955) Mona Dahl (Lolita's friend at Beardsley) asks Humbert Humbert to tell her about Ball Zack:
I am anticipating a little, but I cannot help running my memory all over the keyboard of that school year. In meeting my attempts to find out what kind of boys Lo knew, Miss Dahl was elegantly evasive. Lo who had gone to play tennis at Linda’s country club had telephoned she might be a full half hour late, and so, would I entertain Mona who was coming to practice with her a scene from The Taming of the Shrew. Using all the modulations, all the allure of manner and voice she was capable of and staring at me with perhaps - could I be mistaken? - a faint gleam of crystalline irony, beautiful Mona replied: “Well, sir, the fact is Dolly is not much concerned with mere boys. Fact is, we are rivals. She and I have a crush on the Reverend Rigger.” (This was a joke - I have already mentioned that gloomy giant of a man, with the jaw of a horse: he was to bore me to near murder with his impressions of Switzerland at a tea party for parents that I am unable to place correctly in terms of time.)
How had the ball been? Oh, it had been a riot. A what? A panic. Terrific, in a word. Had Lo danced a lot? Oh, not a frightful lot, just as much as she could stand. What did she, languorous Mona, think of Lo? Sir? Did she think Lo was doing well at school? Gosh, she certainly was quite a kid. But her general behavior was -? Oh, she was a swell kid. But still? “Oh, she’s a doll,” concluded Mona, and sighed abruptly, and picked up a book that happened to lie at hand, and with a change of expression, falsely furrowing her brow, inquired: “Do tell me about Ball Zack, sir. Is he really that good?” She moved up so close to my chair that I made out through lotions and creams her uninteresting skin scent. A sudden odd thought stabbed me: was my Lo playing the pimp? If so, she had found the wrong substitute. Avoiding Mona’s cool gaze, I talked literature for a minute. Then Dolly arrived - and slit her pale eyes at us. I left the two friends to their own devices. One of the latticed squares in a small cobwebby casement window at the turn of the staircase was glazed with ruby, and that raw wound among the unstained rectangles and its asymmetrical position - a knight’s move from the top - always strangely disturbed me. (2.9)
There is Mona in Desdemona, Othello's wife in Shakespeare's Othello. Duchess of Payn, of Great Payn and Mone, Queen Disa (the wife of Charles the Beloved) seems to blend Leonardo's Mona Lisa with Shakespeare's Desdemona. The "real" name of Sybil Shade (the poet's wife) and Queen Disa seems to be Sofia Botkin, born Lastochkin. Sofia was the name of Tolstoy's wife.
In his essay "On a Book Entitled Lolita" (1956) VN pairs Balzac with Gorky and Thomas Mann (the author of Zauberberg):
No writer in a free country should be expected to bother about the exact demarcation between the sensuous and the sensual; this is preposterous; I can only admire but cannot emulate the accuracy of judgment of those who pose the fair young mammals photographed in magazines where the general neckline is just low enough to provoke a past master's chuckle and just high enough not to make a postmaster frown. I presume there exist readers who find titillating the display of mural words in those hopelessly banal and enormous novels which are typed out by the thumbs of tense mediocrities and called "powerful" and "stark" by the reviewing hack. There are gentle souls who would pronounce Lolita meaningless because it does not teach them anything. I am neither a reader nor a writer of didactic fiction, and, despite John Ray's assertion, Lolita has no moral in tow. For me a work of fiction exists only insofar as it affords me what I shall bluntly call aesthetic bliss, that is a sense of being somehow, somewhere, connected with other states of being where art (curiosity, tenderness, kindness, ecstasy) is the norm. There are not many such books. All the rest is either topical trash or what some call the Literature of Ideas, which very often is topical trash corning in huge blocks of plaster that are carefully transmitted from age to age until somebody comes along with a hammer and takes a good crack at Balzac, at Gorki, at Mann.
The three main characters of Pale Fire, Shade, Kinbote and Gradus represent three different aspects of Professor Botkin's personality. It seems that not only Gradus, but also Shade and Kinbote are gnomes. Btw., Kinbote's conversations with Shade are a parody of Gorky's conversations with Tolstoy (whom Gorky compares to a gnome).