In his Foreword to Shade’s poem 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) describes Shade destroying his drafts and mentions the wind-borne black butterflies of that backyard auto-da-fé:
This batch of eighty cards was held by a rubber band which I now religiously put back after examining for the last time their precious contents. Another, much thinner, set of a dozen cards, clipped together and enclosed in the same manila envelope as the main batch, bears some additional couplets running their brief and sometimes smudgy course among a chaos of first drafts. As a rule, Shade destroyed drafts the moment he ceased to need them: well do I recall seeing him from my porch, on a brilliant morning, burning a whole stack of them in the pale fire of the incinerator before which he stood with bent head like an official mourner among the wind-borne black butterflies of that backyard auto-da-fé. But he saved those twelve cards because of the unused felicities shining among the dross of used draftings. Perhaps, he vaguely expected to replace certain passages in the Fair Copy with some of the lovely rejections in his files, or, more probably, a sneaking fondness for this or that vignette, suppressed out of architectonic considerations, or because it had annoyed Mrs. S., urged him to put off its disposal till the time when the marble finality of an immaculate typescript would have confirmed it or made the most delightful variant seem cumbersome and impure. And perhaps, let me add in all modesty, he intended to ask my advice after reading his poem to me as I know he planned to do.
In the first stanza of his poem Moy al’bom, gde strast’ skvozit bez mery… (“My album where excessive passion shows through,” 1918) Gumilyov says that his album was saved from auto-da-fé by a wondrous protection of Venus:
Мой альбом, где страсть сквозит без меры
В каждой мной отточенной строфе,
Дивным покровительством Венеры
Спасся он от ауто-да-фэ.
The Roman Goddess of love, Venus is also a planet. In “a dazzling synthesis of sun and star” (as in line 184 of his poem Shade calls the little scissors with which he pares his fingernails) star seems to be the planet Venus (the shy star of love eclipsed by the sun of marriage). Na dalyokoy zvezde Venere… (“On the distant star Venus,” 1921) is believed to be Gumilyov’s last poem.
The author of Put’ konkvistadorov (“The Way of Conquistadors,” 1905), Gumilyov was a soldier-poet. According to Kinbote, during the reign of Charles the Beloved Mars (the Roman God of war) never marred the record:
That King's reign (1936-1958) will be remembered by at least a few discerning historians as a peaceful and elegant one. Owing to a fluid system of judicious alliances, Mars in his time never marred the record. Internally, until corruption, betrayal, and Extremism penetrated it, the People's Place (parliament) worked in perfect harmony with the Royal Council. Harmony, indeed, was the reign's password. The polite arts and pure sciences flourished. Technicology, applied physics, industrial chemistry and so forth were suffered to thrive. A small skyscraper of ultramarine glass was steadily rising in Onhava. The climate seemed to be improving. Taxation had become a thing of beauty. The poor were a little richer, and the rich a little poorer (in accordance with what may be known some day as Kinbote's Law). Medical care was spreading to the confines of the state; less and less often, on his tour of the country, every autumn, when the rowans hung coral-heavy and the puddles tinkled with Muscovy glass, the friendly and eloquent monarch would be interrupted by a pertussal "backdraucht" in a crowd of schoolchildren. Parachuting had become a popular sport. Everybody, in a word, was content--even the political mischiefmakers who were contentedly making mischief paid by a contented Sosed (Zembla's gigantic neighbor). But let us not pursue this tiresome subject. (note to Line 12)
In Canto Three of his poem Shade mentions Mars (the planet):
It was a year of Tempests: Hurricane
Lolita swept from Florida to Maine.
Mars glowed. Shahs married. Gloomy Russians spied.
Lang made your portrait. And one night I died. (ll. 679-82)
In his postscript to Lolita, “On a Book Entitled Lolita” (1956), VN says that he nearly burnt his novel:
The book developed slowly, with many interruptions and asides. It had taken me some forty years to invent Russia and Western Europe, and now I was faced by the task of inventing America. The obtaining of such local ingredients as would allow me to inject a modicum of average “reality” (one of the few words which mean nothing without quotes) into the brew of individual fancy, proved at fifty a much more difficult process than it had been in the Europe of my youth when receptiveness and retention were at their automatic best. Other books intervened. Once or twice I was on the point of burning the unfinished draft and had carried my Juanita Dark as far as the shadow of the leaning incinerator on the innocent lawn, when I was stopped by the thought that the ghost of the destroyed book would haunt my files for the rest of my life.
In his poem Zabludivshiysya tramvay (“The Lost Tram,” 1921) Gumilyov mentions lyudi i teni (people and shades) who stand at the entrance to a zoological park of planets:
Понял теперь я: наша свобода
Только оттуда бьющий свет,
Люди и тени стоят у входа
В зоологический сад планет.
Now I understand: our freedom
Is only a light from the other world,
People and shades stand at the entrance
To a zoological park of planets.
In another stanza of “The Lost Tram” Gumilyov mentions the poor old man who had died in Beirut a year ago:
И, промелькнув у оконной рамы,
Бросил нам вслед пытливый взгляд
Нищий старик, - конечно, тот самый,
Что умер в Бейруте год назад.
And slipping by the window frame,
A poor old man threw us an inquisitive glance -
The very same old man, of course,
Who had died in Beirut a year ago.
In Canto Four of his poem Shade describes shaving and mentions Beirut:
And while the safety blade with scrap and screak
Travels across the country of my cheek,
Cars on the highway pass, and up the steep
Incline big trucks around my jawbone creep,
And now a silent liner docks, and now
Sunglassers tour Beirut, and now I plough
Old Zembla's fields where my gray stubble grows,
And slaves make hay between my mouth and nose. (ll. 931-938)
Describing his favorite photograph of Shade, Kinbote mentions his sunglasses:
I have one favorite photograph of him. In this color snapshot taken by a onetime friend of mine, on a brilliant spring day, Shade is seen leaning on a sturdy cane that had belonged to his aunt Maud (see line 86). I am wearing a white windbreaker acquired in a local sports shop and a pair of lilac slacks hailing from Cannes. My left hand is half raised--not to pat Shade on the shoulder as seems to be the intention, but to remove my sunglasses which, however, it never reached in that life, the life of the picture; and the library book under my right arm is a treatise on certain Zemblan calisthenics in which I proposed to interest that young roomer of mine who snapped the picture. A week later he was to betray my trust by taking sordid advantage of my absence on a trip to Washington whence I returned to find that he had been entertaining a fiery-haired whore from Exton who had left her combings and reek in all three bathrooms. Naturally, we separated at once, and through a chink in the window curtains I saw bad Bob standing rather pathetically, with his crewcut, and shabby valise, and the skis I had given him, all forlorn on the roadside, waiting for a fellow student to drive him away forever. I can forgive everything save treason. (Foreword)
“Bad Bob” brings to mind E. A. Poe’s story The Literary Life of Thingum Bob, Esq. (1850). In Canto Four of Pale Fire Shade calls his last poem “this transparent thingum:”
Dim Gulf was my first book (free verse); Night Rote
Came next; then Hebe's Cup, my final float
in that damp carnival, for now I term
Everything "Poems," and no longer squirm.
(But this transparent thingum does require
Some moondrop title. Help me, Will! Pale Fire.) (ll. 957-952)
In his poem To One in Paradise (1843) E. A. Poe compares the Past to a dim gulf:
Ah, dream too bright to last!
Ah, starry Hope! that didst arise
But to be overcast!
A voice from out the Future cries,
“On! on!”—but o’er the Past
(Dim gulf!) my spirit hovering lies
Mute, motionless, aghast!
In E. A. Poe’s story Ligeia (1838) the hero loses two wives (Ligeia and Lady Rowena). In Canto Three of his poem Shade describes IPH (a lay Institute of Preparation for the Hereafter where he lectured on the Worm), mentions a widower who lost two wives and says that he tore apart the fantasies of Poe:
I tore apart the fantasies of Poe,
And dealt with childhood memories of strange
Nacreous gleams beyond the adults' range. (ll. 632-634)
At the end of his poem “My album where excessive passion shows through” Gumilyov mentions togdashnie Ligei (the future Ligeias):
И когда тогдашние Лигейи,
С взорами, где ангелы живут,
Со щеками лепестка свежее,
Прочитают сей почтенный труд,
Каждая подумает уныло,
Легкого презренья не тая:
«Я б американца не любила,
А любила бы поэта я».
After reading Gumilyov’s biography,
Every [girl] will think dolefully,
Not concealing her contempt:
“I would not love the American,
I would love the poet.”
In his poem Ya vezhliv s zhizn’yu sovremennoyu… (“I am polite with modern life…” 1913) Gumilyov mentions pobeda (victory), slava (glory), podvig (heroic deed) – the pale words that are lost nowadays:
Победа, слава, подвиг — бледные
Слова, затерянные ныне,
Гремят в душе, как громы медные,
Как голос Господа в пустыне.
Victory, glory, heroic deeds – the pale
words that are lost nowadays
are thundering in my soul,
like God’s voice in the desert.
In VN's novel Podvig ("Glory," 1932) the bête noire of Martin's Uncle Henry is the twentieth century:
Ещё одна последняя излучина, и вот – берег. Берег, к которому Мартын пристал, был очень хорош, ярок, разнообразен. Он знал, однако, что, например, дядя Генрих твердо уверен, что эти три года плавания по кембриджским водам пропали даром, оттого что Мартын побаловался филологической прогулкой, не Бог весть какой дальней, вместо того чтобы изучить плодоносную профессию. Мартын же, по совести, не понимал, чем знаток русской словесности хуже инженера путей сообщения или купца. Оказалось, что в зверинце у дяди Генриха, – а зверинец есть у каждого, – имелся, между прочим, и тот зверёк, который по-французски зовется "чёрным", и этим чёрным зверьком был для дяди Генриха двадцатый век. Мартына это удивило, ибо ему казалось, что лучшего времени, чем то, в которое он живёт, прямо себе не представишь. Такого блеска, такой отваги, таких замыслов не было ни у одной эпохи. Все то, что искрилось в прежних веках, – страсть к исследованию неведомых земель, дерзкие опыты, подвиги любознательных людей, которые слепли или разлетались на мелкие части, героические заговоры, борьба одного против многих, – все это проявлялось теперь с небывалой силой. То, что человек, проигравший на бирже миллион, хладнокровно кончал с собой, столь же поражало воображение Мартына, как, скажем, вольная смерть полководца, павшего грудью на меч. Автомобильная реклама, ярко алеющая в диком и живописном ущелье, на совершенно недоступном месте альпийской скалы, восхищала его до слез. Услужливость, ласковость очень сложных и очень простых машин, как, например, трактор или линотип, приводили его к мысли, что добро в человечестве так заразительно, что передается металлу. Когда над городом, изумительно высоко в голубом небе, аэроплан величиной с комарика выпускал нежные, молочно-белые буквы во сто крат больше него самого, повторяя в божественных размерах росчерк фирмы, Мартын проникался ощущением чуда. А дядя Генрих, подкармливая своего черного зверька, с ужасом и отвращением говорил о закате Европы, о послевоенной усталости, о нашем слишком трезвом, слишком практическом веке, о нашествии мертвых машин; в его представлении была какая-то дьявольская связь между фокстротом, небоскребами, дамскими модами и коктэйлями. Кроме того, дяде Генриху казалось, что он живет в эпоху страшной спешки, и было особенно смешно, когда он об этой спешке беседовал в летний день, на краю горной дороги, с аббатом, – меж тем как тихо плыли облака, и старая, розовая аббатова лошадь, со звоном отряхиваясь от мух, моргая белыми ресницами, опускала голову полным невыразимой прелести движением и сочно похрустывала придорожной травой, вздрагивая кожей и переставляя изредка копыто, и если разговор о безумной спешке наших дней, о власти доллара, об аргентинцах, соблазнивших всех девушек в Швейцарии, слишком затягивался, а наиболее нежные стебли уже оказывались в данном месте съеденными, она слегка подвигалась вперед, причем со скрипом поворачивались высокие колеса таратайки, и Мартын не мог оторвать взгляд от добрых седых лошадиных губ, от травинок, застрявших в удилах. "Вот, например, этот юноша, – говорил дядя Генрих, указывая палкой на Мартына, – вот он кончил университет, один из самых дорогих в мире университетов, а спросите его, чему он научился, на что он способен. Я совершенно не знаю, что он будет дальше делать. В мое время молодые люди становились врачами, офицерами, нотариусами, а вот он, вероятно, мечтает быть летчиком или платным танцором". Мартыну было невдомек, чего именно он служил примером, но аббат, по-видимому, понимал парадоксы дяди Генриха и сочувственно улыбался. Иногда Мартына так раздражали подобные разговоры, что он был готов сказать дяде – и, увы, отчиму – грубость, но вовремя останавливался, заметив особое выражение, которое появлялось на лице у Софьи Дмитриевны всякий раз, как Генрих впадал в красноречие. Тут была и едва проступавшая ласковая насмешка, и какая-то грусть, и бессловесная просьба простить чудаку, – и еще что-то неизъяснимое, очень мудрое. И Мартын молчал, втайне отвечая дяде Генриху примерно так: "Неправда, что я в Кембридже занимался пустяками. Неправда, что я ничему не научился. Колумб, прежде чем взяться через западное плечо за восточное ухо, отправился инкогнито для получения кое-каких справок в Исландию, зная, что тамошние моряки – народ дошлый и дальноходный. Я тоже собираюсь исследовать далёкую землю".
One last bend, and there was the shore. The shore on which Martin landed was very fair, very bright and full of variety. He knew, though, that for example Uncle Henry remained firmly convinced that these three years of aquatics in Cambridge had gone to waste, because Martin had indulged in a philological cruise, and not even a very distant one, instead of learning a useful profession. But Martin in all honesty did not understand why it was worse to be an expert in Russian letters than a transportation engineer or a merchant. Actually, Uncle Henry's menagerie - and everybody has one - housed among other creatures a little black beast and that bête noire was to him the twentieth century. Now this amazed Martin, since in his opinion one could not even imagine a better century than the one in which he lived. No other epoche had such brilliance, such daring, such projects. Everything that had glimmered in the previous ages - the passion for exploration of unknown lands, the audacious experiments, the glorious exploits of disinterested curiosity, the scientists who went blind or were blown into bits, the heroic conspiracies, the struggle of one against many - now emerged with unprecedented force. The cool suicide of a man who lost millions on the stock market struck Martin's imagination as much as, for instance, the death of a Roman general falling on his sword. The automobile advertisement, brightly beckoning in a wild, picturesque gorge from an absolutely inaccessible spot on an alpine cliff thrilled him to tears. The complaisant and affectionate nature of very complicated or very simple machines, like the tractor or the linotype, for example, induced him to reflect that good in mankind was so contagious that it infected metal. When, at an amazing height in the blue sky above the city a mosquito-sized airplane emitted fluffy, milk-white letters a hundred times as big as it, repeating in divine dimensions the flourish of a firm's name, Martin was filled with a sense of marvel and awe. But Uncle Henry, as if throwing tidbits to his black beastie, spoke with horror and revulsion about the twilight of Europe, about post-war fatigue, about our practical age, about the invasion of inanimate machines; in his imagination there existed some diabolical connection between the fox-trot and skyscrapers on one side and women's fashions and cocktails on the other. Furthermore, Uncle Henry had the impression he lived in an age of terrible haste, and it was particularly funny when he chatted about this haste, on a summer day, at the edge of a mountain road, with the local priest, while the clouds sailed serenely and the abbé's old pink horse, shaking off flies with a tinkle, blinking its white eyelashes, would lower its head in a movement full of ineffable charm and munch succulently on the roadside grass, with its skin twitching or a hoof shifting now and then, and, if the talk about the mad haste of our days, about the almighty dollar, about the Argentineans who seduced all the girls of Switzerland dragged on too long, and the last tender stalk among the coarser ones had been eaten at a given spot, it would move ahead a little, accompanied by the creak of the gig's high wheels. And Martin could not take his eyes off the gentle equine lips and the blades of grass caught in the bit.
'Here, this young man, for example,' Uncle Henry would say, indicating Martin with his walking stick, 'he has finished college, one of the most expensive colleges in the world, and you ask him what he has learned, what he is prepared for. I absolutely don't know what he is going to do next. In my time young men became doctors, soldiers, notaries, while he is probably dreaming of being an aviator or a gigolo.'
Martin had no idea what exactly he served as an example of, but the abbé apparently understood Uncle Henry's paradoxes and smiled commiseratingly. Sometimes Martin was so irritated by talk of this kind that he was ready to say something rude to his uncle—who was also, alas, his stepfather—but would stop in time, for he had noticed the look that appeared on his mother’s face whenever Henry waxed eloquent at dinner. That look contained a faint trace of friendly raillery, and a certain sadness, and a mute appeal to forgive the crank, and yet something else inexpressible but very wise. Martin would keep still, mentally answering Uncle Henry like this, for example: “It’s not true that I devoted my time to trifles at Cambridge. It’s not true that I did not learn anything. Columbus, before trying to take hold of his east ear across his west shoulder, traveled to Iceland incognito to gather certain information, knowing that the sailors there were a canny and far-ranging breed. I, too, plan to explore a distant land.” (chapter 29)
A distant land that Martin plans to explore, Zoorland has a lot in common with Kinbote's Zembla (a distant Northern land). Playing Zoorland with Martin, Sonia Zilanov mentions Savan-na-rylo ("Savior-and-Mauler"), a chieftain whose soubriquet hints at Savonarola (a monk and preacher who was burned in 1498 in Florence):
С этого дня началась между ними по случайному поводу серия особенных разговоров. Мартын, решив поразить Сонино воображение, очень туманно намекнул на то, что вступил в тайный союз, налаживающий кое-какие операции разведочного свойства. Правда, союзы такие существовали, правда, общий знакомый, поручик Мелких, по слухам пробирался дважды кое-куда, правда и то, что Мартын все искал случая поближе с ним сойтись (раз даже угощал его ужином) и все жалел, что не встретился в Швейцарии с Грузиновым, о котором упомянул Зиланов, и который, по наведенным справкам, оказался человеком больших авантюр, террористом, заговорщиком, руководителем недавних крестьянских восстаний. "Я не знала, что ты о таких вещах думаешь. Но только, знаешь, если ты правда вступил в организацию, очень глупо об этом сразу болтать". "Ах, я пошутил", - сказал Мартын и загадочно прищурился для того, чтобы Соня подумала, что он нарочно обратил это в шутку. Но она этой тонкости не заметила; валяясь на сухой, хвойными иглами устланной земле, под соснами, стволы которых были испещрены солнцем, она закинула голые руки за голову, показывая прелестные впадины подмышек, недавно выбритые и теперь словно заштрихованные карандашом, - и сказала, что это странно, - она тоже об этом часто думает: вот есть на свете страна, куда вход простым смертным воспрещен: "Как мы ее назовем?" - спросил Мартын, вдруг вспомнив игры с Лидой на крымском лукоморье. "Что-нибудь такое - северное, - ответила Соня. - Смотри, белка". Белка, играя в прятки, толчками поднялась по стволу и куда-то исчезла. "Например - Зоорландия, - сказал Мартын. - О ней упоминают норманны". "Ну, конечно - Зоорландия", - подхватила Соня, и он широко улыбнулся, несколько потрясённый неожиданно открывшейся в ней способностью мечтать. "Можно снять муравья?" - спросил он в скобках. "Зависит откуда". "С чулка". "Убирайся, милый", - обратилась она к муравью, смахнула его сама и продолжала: "Там холодные зимы и сосулищи с крыш, - целая система, как, что ли, органные трубы, - а потом всё тает, и всё очень водянисто, и на снегу - точки вроде копоти, вообще, знаешь, я всё могу тебе рассказать, вот, например, вышел там закон, что всем жителям надо брить головы, и потому теперь самые важные, самые такие влиятельные люди - парикмахеры". "Равенство голов", - сказал Мартын. "Да. И конечно лучше всего лысым. И, знаешь - ” “Бубнов был бы счастлив", - в шутку вставил Мартын. На это Соня почему-то обиделась и вдруг иссякла. Всё же с того дня она изредка соизволяла играть с ним в Зоорландию, и Мартын терзался мыслью, что она, быть может, изощрённо глумится над ним и вот-вот заставит его оступиться, доведя его незаметно до черты, за которой бредни становятся безвкусны, и внезапным хохотом разбудив босого лунатика, который видит вдруг и карниз, на котором висит, и свою задравшуюся рубашку, и толпу на панели, глядящую вверх, и каски пожарных. Но если это был со стороны Сони обман, - всё равно, всё равно, его прельщала возможность пускать перед ней душу свою налегке. Они изучали зоорландский быт и законы, страна была скалистая, ветреная, и ветер признан был благою силой, ибо, ратуя за равенство, не терпел башен и высоких деревьев, а сам был только выразителем социальных стремлений воздушных слоев, прилежно следящих, чтобы вот тут не было жарче, чем вот там. И конечно искусства и науки объявлены были вне закона, ибо слишком обидно и раздражительно для честных невежд видеть задумчивость грамотея и его слишком толстые книги. Бритоголовые, в бурых рясах, зоорландцы грелись у костров, в которых звучно лопались струны сжигаемых скрипок, а иные поговаривали о том, что пора пригладить гористую страну, взорвать горы, чтобы они не торчали так высокомерно. 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".
Something they discussed that day happened to lead to a series of quite special exchanges between them. With the intent of striking Sonia’s imagination, Martin vaguely alluded to his having joined a secret group of anti-Bolshevist conspirators that organized reconnaissance operations. It was perfectly true that such a group did exist; in fact, a common friend of theirs, one Lieutenant Melkikh, had twice crossed the border on dangerous missions; it was also true that Martin kept looking for an opportunity to make friends with him (once he had even invited him to dinner) and always regretted that while in Switzerland he had not met the mysterious Gruzinov, whom Zilanov had mentioned, and who, according to information Martin had gathered, emerged as a man of great adventures, a terrorist, a very special spy, and the mastermind of recent peasant revolts against the Soviet rule.
“It never occurred to me,” said Sonia, “that you thought about things like that. Only, you know, if you really have joined that organization, it’s very naive to start blabbing about it right away.”
“Oh, I was only joking,” said Martin, and slit his eyes enigmatically so as to make Sonia believe he had deliberately turned it into a joke. She, however, did not catch that nuance; stretched out on the dry, needle-strewn ground, beneath the pines whose trunks the sun blotched with color, she put her bare arms behind her head, exposing her lovely armpits which she had recently started to shave and which were now shaded as if with a pencil, and said it was a strange thing, but she too had often thought about it—about there being a land where ordinary mortals were not admitted.
“What shall we call that land?” asked Martin, suddenly recollecting his games with Lida on the Crimean fairy-tale shore.
“Some northern name,” answered Sonia. “Look at that squirrel.” The squirrel, playing hide-and-seek, jerkily climbed a tree trunk and vanished amidst the foliage.
“Zoorland, for example,” said Martin. “A Norman mariner mentions it.”
“Yes, of course—Zoorland,” Sonia concurred, and he grinned broadly, somewhat astounded by her unexpectedly revealed capacity for daydreaming.
"May I remove an ant?” he asked parenthetically.
“Depends where.”
“Stocking.”
“Scram, chum” (addressing the ant). She brushed it off and continued, as if reciting, “Winters are cold there, a law that all inhabitants must shave their heads, so that now the most important, most influential people are the barbers.”
“Equality of heads,” said Martin.
“Yes. And of course the bald ones are best off. And you know——”
“Bubnov would have a grand time there,” Martin interjected facetiously.
For some reason Sonia took offense and dried up. Yet from that day on she occasionally condescended to play Zoorland with him, and Martin was tormented by the thought that she might be making sophisticated fun of him and that any moment she might cause him to take a false step, prodding him toward the boundary beyond which phantasmata become tasteless—and the dreamwalker is jolted into seeing the roof edge from which he is dangling, his own hiked-up nightshirt, the crowd looking up from the sidewalk, the firemen’s helmets. But even if this was a form of derision on Sonia’s part, no matter, no matter, he enjoyed the opportunity to let himself go in her presence. They studied Zoorlandian customs and laws. The region was rocky and windy, and the wind was recognized as a positive force since by championing equality in not tolerating towers and tall trees, it only subserved the public aspirations of atmospheric strata that kept diligent watch over the uniformity of the temperature. And, naturally, pure arts, pure science were outlawed, lest the honest dunces be hurt to see the scholar’s brooding brow and offensively thick books. Shaven-headed, wearing brown cassocks, the happy Zoorlanders warmed themselves by bonfires as the strings of burning violins snapped with loud reports, and discussed plans to level the land by blowing up mountains that stuck up too presumptuously. 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)
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».
Describing a conversation at the Faculty Club, Kinbote mentions Leonardo's Last Supper:
Professor Pardon now spoke to me: "I was under the impression that you were born in Russia, and that your name was a kind of anagram of Botkin or Botkine?"
Kinbote: "You are confusing me with some refugee from Nova Zembla [sarcastically stressing the "Nova"].
"Didn't you tell me, Charles, that kinbote means regicide in your language?" asked my dear Shade.
"Yes, a king's destroyer," I said (longing to explain that a king who sinks his identity in the mirror of exile is in a sense just that).
Shade [addressing the German visitor]: "Professor Kinbote is the author of a remarkable book on surnames. I believe [to me] there exists an English translation?"
"Oxford, 1956," I replied.
"You do know Russian, though?" said Pardon. "I think I heard you, the other day, talking to--what's his name--oh, my goodness" [laboriously composing his lips].
Shade: "Sir, we all find it difficult to attack that name" [laughing].
Professor Hurley: "Think of the French word for 'tire': punoo."
Shade: "Why, sir, I am afraid you have only punctured the difficulty" [laughing uproariously].
"Flatman," quipped I. "Yes," I went on, turning to Pardon, "I certainly do speak Russian. You see, it was the fashionable language par excellence, much more so than French, among the nobles of Zembla at least, and at its court. Today, of course, all this has changed. It is now the lower classes who are forcibly taught to speak Russian."
"Aren't we, too trying to teach Russian in our schools?" said Pink.
In the meantime, at the other end of the room, young Emerald had been communing with the bookshelves. At this point he returned with the the T-Z volume of an illustrated encyclopedia.
"Well," said he, "here he is, that king. But look, he is young and handsome" ("Oh, that won't do," wailed the German visitor.) "Young, handsome, and wearing a fancy uniform," continued Emerald. "Quite the fancy pansy, in fact."
"And you," I said quietly, "are a foul-minded pup in a cheap green jacket."
"But what have I said?" the young instructor inquired of the company, spreading out his palms like a disciple in Leonardo's Last Supper.
"Now, now," said Shade. "I'm sure, Charles, are young friend never intended to insult your sovereign and namesake."
"He could not, even if he had wished," I observed placidly, turning it all into a joke.
Gerald Emerald extended his hand--which at the moment of writing still remains in that position. (note to Line 894)
Duchess of Payn, of Great Payn and Moan, Queen Disa (the wife of Charles the Beloved) seems to blend Leonardo’s Mona Lisa with Desdemona, Othello's wife in Shakespeare’s Othello. Desdemona (1913) is a sonnet by Gumilyov:
Когда вступила в спальню Дездемона,
Там было тихо, душно и темно,
Лишь месяц любопытный к ней в окно
Заглядывал с чужого небосклона.
И страшный мавр со взорами дракона,
Весь вечер пивший кипрское вино,
К ней подошёл, — он ждал её давно, —
Он не оценит девичьего стона.
Напрасно с безысходною тоской
Она ловила тонкою рукой
Его стальные руки — было поздно.
И, задыхаясь, думала она:
«О, верно, в день, когда шумит война,
Такой же он загадочный и грозный!»
In his essay Taynyi smysl tragedii “Otello” (“The Secret Meaning of the Tragedy Othello,” 1919) Alexander Blok (who died less than three weeks before Gumilyov's execution) says that Desdemona is a harmony, Desdemona is a soul, and the soul can not but saves from the Chaos:
Дездемона - это гармония, Дездемона - это душа, а душа не может не спасать от хаоса.
Describing the reign of Charles the Beloved, Kinbote says that harmony was the reign's password (see a quote above). The last day of Shade's life passed in a sustained low hum of harmony:
Gently the day has passed in a sustained
Low hum of harmony. The brain is drained
And a brown ament, and the noun I meant
To use but did not, dry on the cement.
Maybe my sensual love for the consonne
D'appui, Echo's fey child, is based upon
A feeling of fantastically planned,
Richly rhymed life. I feel I understand
Existence, or at least a minute part
Of my existence, only through my art,
In terms of combinational delight;
And if my private universe scans right,
So does the verse of galaxies divine
Which I suspect is an iambic line. (ll. 963-976)
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”).
The three main characters in Pale Fire, Shade, Kinbote and Gradus (the poet's murderer) seem to represent three different 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 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.
The "real" name of both Sybil Shade (the poet's wife) and Queen Disa (the wife of Charles the Beloved) seems to be Sofia Botkin (born Lastochkin). In "Glory" Sofia is the name of both Martin's mother and the girl with whom he is in love.