At the end of his Commentary Kinbote (in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962, Shade’s mad commentator who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla) quotes a Zemblan saying that, as a child, he has heard from his nurse:
Many years ago--how many I would not care to say--I remember my Zemblan nurse telling me, a little man of six in the throes of adult insomnia: "Minnamin, Gut mag alkan, Pern dirstan" (my darling, God makes hungry, the Devil thirsty). Well, folks, I guess many in this fine hall are as hungry and thirsty as me, and I'd better stop, folks, right here.
Yes, better stop. My notes and self are petering out. Gentlemen, I have suffered very much, and more than any of you can imagine. I pray for the Lord's benediction to rest on my wretched countrymen. My work is finished. My poet is dead.
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)
Shade’s murderer, Gradus is a member of the Shadows (a regicidal organization). The poems in Bryusov’s collection Zerkalo teney (“The Mirror of Shadows,” 1912) include Bessonnitsa (“Insomnia”). In his poem Demon samoubiystva (“The Demon of Suicide”) also included in “The Mirror of Shadows” Bryusov mentions shest’ tonkikh gilz s bezdymnym porokhom (six thin cartridges with smokeless powder):
В лесу, когда мы пьяны шорохом,
Листвы и запахом полян,
Шесть тонких гильз с бездымным порохом
Кладёт он, молча, в барабан.
In his memoir essay "Bryusov" (1925) Hodasevich tells about the suicide of Bryusov's mistress Nadezhda Lvov and points out that the revolver was given to Lvov by Bryusov. Hodasevich speaks of Bryusov's hope to direct Russian literature under the Bolsheviks and uses the word gradusov (Gen. pl. of gradus, “degree”):
Брюсову представлялось возможным прямое влияние на литературные дела; он мечтал, что большевики откроют ему долгожданную возможность «направлять» литературу твёрдыми административными мерами. Если бы это удалось, он мог бы командовать писателями, без интриг, без вынужденных союзов с ними, — единым окриком. А сколько заседаний, уставов, постановлений! А какая надежда на то, что в истории литературы будет сказано: «в таком-то году повернул русскую литературу на столько-то градусов».
…And what hope that in the history of literature it will be said: “in the year of grace so-and-so Bryusov has turned Russian literature to so-and-so many degrees.”
According to Kinbote, Gradus is a half-man who is half mad:
I have considered in my earlier note (I now see it is the note to line 171) the particular dislikes, and hence the motives, of our "automatic man," as I phrased it at a time when he did not have as much body, did not offend the senses as violently as now; was, in a word, further removed from our sunny, green, grass-fragrant Arcady. But Our Lord has fashioned man so marvelously that no amount of motive hunting and rational inquiry can ever really explain how and why anybody is capable of destroying a fellow creature (this argument necessitates, I know, a temporary granting to Gradus of the status of man), unless he is defending the life of his son, or his own, or the achievement of a lifetime; so that in final judgment of the Gradus versus the Crown case I would submit that if his human incompleteness be deemed insufficient to explain his idiotic journey across the Atlantic just to empty the magazine of his gun; we may concede, doctor, that our half-man was also half mad. (note to Line 949)
Half-man half mad brings to mind "a collection of half droll, half sad chapters," as in the Prefatory Piece Pushkin calls his Eugene Onegin:
Не мысля гордый свет забавить,
Вниманье дружбы возлюбя,
Хотел бы я тебе представить
Залог достойнее тебя,
Достойнее души прекрасной,
Святой исполненной мечты,
Поэзии живой и ясной,
Высоких дум и простоты;
Но так и быть — рукой пристрастной
Прими собранье пёстрых глав,
Полусмешных, полупечальных,
Простонародных, идеальных,
Небрежный плод моих забав,
Бессониц, лёгких вдохновений,
Незрелых и увядших лет,
Ума холодных наблюдений
И сердца горестных замет.
Not thinking to amuse the haughty world,
having grown fond of friendship's heed,
I wish I could present you with a gage
that would be worthier of you —
be worthier of a fine soul
full of a holy dream,
of live and limpid poetry,
of high thoughts and simplicity.
But so be it. With partial handing
take this collection of pied chapters:
half droll, half sad,
plain-folk, ideal,
the careless fruit of my amusements,
insomnias, light inspirations,
unripe and withered years,
the intellect's cold observations,
and the heart's sorrowful remarks.
According to Pushkin, his EO is a fruit of bessonnits, lyogkikh vdokhnoveniy (insomnias, light inspirations). Pushkin’s novel in verse is dedicated to Pletnyov (Pushkin’s friend and publisher to whom the Prefatory Piece is addressed). 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.
Shade, Kinbote (aka Charles the Beloved) and Gradus seem to represent three aspects of Botkin’s personality. 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 of Kinbote’s Commentary). There is nadezhda (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 (a target of Pushkin’s epigrams, “half-milord, half-merchant, etc."), will be full again.
Gradus being Latin for “step,” the name of Shade's murderer also brings to mind ne otkhodya ni shagu proch’ (not moving a step away), line 8 of EO’s first stanza:
“Мой дядя самых честных правил,
Когда не в шутку занемог,
Он уважать себя заставил
И лучше выдумать не мог.
Его пример другим наука;
Но, боже мой, какая скука
С больным сидеть и день и ночь,
Не отходя ни шагу прочь!
Какое низкое коварство
Полуживого забавлять,
Ему подушки поправлять,
Печально подносить лекарство,
Вздыхать и думать про себя:
Когда же чёрт возьмёт тебя!”
“My uncle has most honest principles:
when he was taken gravely ill,
he forced one to respect him
and nothing better could invent.
To others his example is a lesson;
but, good God, what a bore to sit
by a sick man day and night,
not moving a step away!
what base perfidiousness
to entertain one half-alive,
adjust for him his pillows,
sadly serve him his medicine,
sigh — and think inwardly
when will the devil take you?”
Note poluzhivogo (one half-alive) in the stanza’s line 10 and chyort (the devil) in line 14. Bozhe moy (good God) in line 6 seems to correlate to a Russian ejaculation twice repeated by Gradus:
Gradus returned to the Main Desk.
"Too bad," said the girl, "I just saw him leave."
"Bozhe moy, Bozhe moy," muttered Gradus, who sometimes at moments of stress used Russian ejaculations.
"You'll find him in the directory," she said pushing it towards him, and dismissing the sick man's existence to attend to the wants of Mr. Gerald Emerald who was taking out a fat bestseller in a cellophane jacket.
Moaning and shifting from one foot to the other, Gradus started leafing through the college directory but when he found the address, he was faced with the problem of getting there.
"Dulwich Road," he cried to the girl. "Near? Far? Very far, probably?"
"Are you by any chance Professor Pnin's new assistant?" asked Emerald.
"No," said the girl. "This man is looking for Dr. Kinbote, I think. You are looking for Dr. Kinbote, aren't you?"
"Yes, and I can’t any more,” said Gradus.
“I thought so,” said the girl. “Doesn’t he live somewhere near Mr. Shade, Gerry?”
“Oh, definitely,” said Gerry, and turned to the killer: “I can drive you there if you like. It is on my way.”
Did they talk in the car, these two characters, the man in green and the man in brown? Who can say? They did not. After all, the drive took only a few minutes (it took me, at the wheel of my powerful Kramler, four and a half).
“I think I’ll drop you here,” said Mr. Emerald. “It’s that house up there.”
One finds it hard to decide what Gradus alias Grey wanted more at that minute: discharge his gun or rid himself of the inexhaustible lava in his bowels. As he began hurriedly fumbling at the car door, unfastidious Emerald leaned, close to him, across him, almost merging with him, to help him open it—and then, slamming it shut again, whizzed on to some tryst in the valley. My reader will, I hope appreciate all the minute particulars I have taken such trouble to present to him after a long talk I had with the killer; he will appreciate them even more if I tell him that, according to the legend spread later by the police, Jack Grey had been given a lift, all the way from Roanoke, or somewhere, by a lonesome trucker! One can only hope that an impartial search will turn up the trilby forgotten in the Library—or in Mr. Emerald’s car. (note to Line 949)
Zemblan for “devil,” Pern seems to hint at Perun (the Slavic god of thunder mentioned by Pushkin in his “Song of Wise Oleg,” 1822). In Pushkin’s Podrazhaniya koranu (“Imitations of the Koran,” 1824), a cycle of nine poems, the last poem begins as follows:
И путник усталый на Бога роптал:
Он жаждой томился и тени алкал.
And the tired traveler grumbled at God:
he was thirsty and craved for a shade (teni alkal).
Pushkin is the author of a homoerotic poem Podrazhanie arabskomu (“Imitation of the Arabic,” 1835):
Отрок милый, отрок нежный,
Не стыдись, навек ты мой;
Тот же в нас огонь мятежный,
Жизнью мы живём одной.
Не боюся я насмешек:
Мы сдвоились меж собой,
Мы точь в точь двойной орешек
Под единой скорлупой.
Sweet lad, tender lad,
Have no shame, you’re mine for good;
We share a sole insurgent fire,
We live in boundless brotherhood.
I do not fear the gibes of men;
One being split in two we dwell,
The kernel of a double nut
Embedded in a single shell.
(transl. Michael Green)
The poem’s first line, Otrok milyi, otrok nezhnyi (Sweet lad, tender lad) brings to mind kot or (“what is the time” in Zemblan):
A handshake, a flash of lightning. As the King waded into the damp, dark bracken, its odor, its lacy resilience, and the mixture of soft growth and steep ground reminded him of the times he had picnicked hereabouts - in another part of the forest but on the same mountainside, and higher up, as a boy, on the boulderfield where Mr. Campbell had once twisted an ankle and had to be carried down, smoking his pipe, by two husky attendants. Rather full memories, on the whole. Wasn't there a hunting box nearby - just beyond Silfhar Falls? Good capercaillie and woodcock shooting - a sport much enjoyed by his late mother, Queen Blenda, a tweedy and horsy queen. Now as then, the rain seethed in the black trees, and if you paused you heard your heart thumping, and the distant roar of the torrent. What is the time, kot or? He pressed his repeater and, undismayed, it hissed and tinkled out ten twenty-one. (note to Line 149)
Kot or hints at kotoryi chas (“what is the time” in Russian), and the King’s repeater recalls Onegin’s Bréguet:
Ещё бокалов жажда просит
Залить горячий жир котлет,
Но звон брегета им доносит,
Что новый начался балет.
Театра злой законодатель,
Непостоянный обожатель
Очаровательных актрис,
Почётный гражданин кулис,
Онегин полетел к театру,
Где каждый, вольностью дыша,
Готов охлопать entrechat,
Обшикать Федру, Клеопатру,
Моину вызвать (для того,
Чтоб только слышали его).
Thirst is still clamoring for beakers
to drown the hot fat of the cutlets;
but Bréguet's chime reports to them
that a new ballet has begun.
The theater's unkind
lawgiver; the inconstant
adorer of enchanting actresses;
an honorary citizen of the coulisses,
Onegin has flown to the theater,
where, breathing criticism,
each is prepared to clap an entrechat,
hiss Phaedra, Cleopatra,
call out Moëna — for the purpose
merely of being heard. (One: XVII)
On the other hand, kot or brings to mind kot uchyonyi (the learned cat) that night and day walks to and fro on a golden chain around the green oak in the Introductory poem (1828) of Pushkin's Ruslan and Lyudmila. The green oak tree in the poem's first line suggests "the man in green" (Gerald Emerald) and "the man in brown" (Gradus). I dnyom i noch'yu (day and night), a phrase used by Pushkin in the first stanza of EO and in the Introductory poem of Ruslan and Lyudmila, reminds one of Dr. Nattochdag, the head of Kinbote's department at Wordsmith University whose name means in Swedish "night and day." In the second stanza of EO Pushkin calls his readers druz'ya Lyudmily i Ruslana (friends of Lyudmila and Ruslan) and says that North is harmful to him. Kinbote's Zembla is a distant Northern land.
In Scene I of Pushkin's little tragedy Mozart and Salieri (1830) Mozart mentions bessonnitsa (insomnia) and in Scene II uses a phrase nikto b (none would), Botkin in reverse.
As a boy of six, the hero of VN's story Signs and Symbols (1948) suffered from insomnia like a grown-up man:
The boy, aged six—that was when he drew wonderful birds with human hands and feet, and suffered from insomnia like a grown-up man. (2)
In Line 1 (and in Line 1000) of his poem Shade (whose parents were ornithologists) compares himself to the shadow of the waxwing.
The open ending of Pale Fire resembles that of Signs and Symbols:
They sat down to their unexpected, festive midnight tea. He sipped noisily; his face was flushed; every now and then he raised his glass with a circular motion, so as to make the sugar dissolve more thoroughly. The vein on the side of his bald head stood out conspicuously, and silvery bristles showed on his chin. The birthday present stood on the table. While she poured him another glass of tea, he put on his spectacles and reexamined with pleasure the luminous yellow, green, and red little jars. His clumsy, moist lips spelled out their eloquent labels—apricot, grape, beach plum, quince. He had got to crab apple when the telephone rang again. (3)
Crab apple brings to mind "a cross between bat and crab" (as Kinbote calls Gradus). Letuchaya mysh' ("The Bat," 1895) is a poem by Bryusov.