In VN’s novel Pale Fire (1962) John Shade’s poem begins as follows:
I was the shadow of the waxwing slain
By the false azure in the windowpane;
I was the smudge of ashen fluff - and I
Lived on, flew on, in the reflected sky. (ll. 1-4)
Shade’s parents were ornithologists. In his poem Tam, gde zhili sviristeli (“There where the waxwings lived…” 1908) Velimir Khlebnikov (whose father was a celebrated ornithologist) mentions besporyadok dikiy teney (a wild confusion of shadows):
Там, где жили свиристели,
Где качались тихо ели,
Пролетели, улетели
Стая лёгких времирей.
Где шумели тихо ели,
Где поюны крик пропели,
Пролетели, улетели
Стая легких времирей.
В беспорядке диком теней,
Где, как морок старых дней,
Закружились, зазвенели
Стая лёгких времирей.
Стая лёгких времирей!
Ты поюнна и вабна,
Душу ты пьянишь, как струны,
В сердце входишь, как волна!
Ну же, звонкие поюны,
Славу легких времирей!
In his essay “Andrey Bely” (1927) Titsian Tabidze mentions Alvek’s literary pamphlet Nakhlebniki Khlebnikova (“The Dependents of Khlebnikov”):
Недавно сообщалось, что выходит литературный памфлет Альвэка "Нахлебники Хлебникова"; по всей вероятности, автор будет пытаться доказать, что футуристы всех формаций -- "Нахлебники Хлебникова", т. е. идут от него. Однако это трудно будет доказать, во-первых, потому, что сам Хлебников косноязычным ушёл в могилу, не успев выявить поэтические замыслы, которых у него безусловно было в достатке, а во-вторых, очень сомнительна продукция оставшихся футуристов, чтобы в них искать кристаллизацию мутного начала Хлебникова.
Nakhlebniki ("The Dependents," 1886) is a story by Chekhov. Alvek brings to mind Alfin the Vague (the father of Charles the Beloved, the last king of Zembla). Before he came to Zembla, one of the activities of Gradus (Shade’s murderer) had been printing peevish pamphlets:
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. (note to Line 17 and Line 29)
Like his nakhlebniki (Mayakovski and co.), Khlebnikov was a futurist poet. In Canto One of his poem Shade speaks of his dead parents and mentions a preterist (one who collects cold nests):
I was an infant when my parents died.
They both were ornithologists. I've tried
So often to evoke them that today
I have a thousand parents. Sadly they
Dissolve in their own virtues and recede,
But certain words, chance words I hear or read,
Such as "bad heart" always to him refer,
And "cancer of the pancreas" to her.
A preterist: one who collects cold nests.
Here was my bedroom, now reserved for guests. (ll. 71-80)
Nakhlebnik and Khlebnikov both have khlebnik (obs., baker) in them. Pyotr Khlebnik (“Peter the Baker,” 1894) is a play by Leo Tolstoy. In Eugene Onegin (One: XXXV: 9-14) Pushkin mentions khlebnik, nemets akkuratnyi (the baker, a punctual German) opening his vasisdas (“a small spy-window or transom with a mobile screen or grate”):
Проснулся утра шум приятный.
Открыты ставни; трубный дым
Столбом восходит голубым,
И хлебник, немец аккуратный,
В бумажном колпаке, не раз
Уж отворял свой васисдас.
Morn's pleasant hubbub has awoken,
unclosed are shutters, chimney smoke
ascends in a blue column, and the baker,
a punctual German in a cotton cap,
has more than once already
opened his vasisdas.
Nakhlebnik can be also translated as “hanger-on, parasite.” According to Kinbote (Shade’s mad commentator who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla), Sybil Shade (the poet’s wife) used to call him “the monstrous parasite of a genius:”
From the very first I tried to behave with the utmost courtesy toward my friend's wife, and from the very first she disliked and distrusted me. I was to learn later that when alluding to me in public she used to call me "an elephantine tick; a king-sized botfly; a macaco worm; the monstrous parasite of a genius." I pardon her--her and everybody. (note to Line 247)
Describing a conversation at the Faculty Club, Kinbote mentions Professor Pardon (American History):
Pictures of the King had not infrequently appeared in America during the first months of the Zemblan Revolution. Every now and then some busybody on the campus with a retentive memory, or one of the clubwomen who were always after Shade and his eccentric friend, used to ask me with the inane meaningfulness adopted in such cases if anybody had told me how much I resembled that unfortunate monarch. I would counter with something on the lines of "all Chinese look alike" and change the subject. One day, however, in the lounge of the Faculty Club where I lolled surrounded by a number of my colleagues, I had to put up with a particularly embarrassing onset. A visiting German lecturer from Oxford kept exclaiming, aloud and under his breath, that the resemblance was "absolutely unheard of," and when I negligently observed that all bearded Zemblans resembled one another - and that, in fact, the name Zembla is a corruption not of the Russian zemlya, but of Semblerland, a land of reflections, of "resemblers" - my tormentor said: "Ah, yes, but King Charles wore no beard, and yet it is his very face! I had [he added] the honor of being seated within a few yards of the royal box at a Sport Festival in Onhava which I visited with my wife, who is Swedish, in 1956. We have a photograph of him at home, and her sister knew very well the mother of one of his pages, an interesting woman. Don't you see [almost tugging at Shade's lapel] the astounding similarity of features - of the upper part of the face, and the eyes, yes, the eyes, and the nose bridge?"
"Nay, sir" [said Shade, refolding a leg and slightly rolling in his armchair as wont to do when about to deliver a pronouncement] "there is no resemblance at all. I have seen the King in newsreels, and there is no resemblance. Resemblances are the shadows of differences. Different people see different similarities and similar differences."
Good Netochka, who had been looking singularly uncomfortable during this exchange, remarked in his gentle voice how sad it was to think that such a "sympathetic ruler" had probably perished in prison.
A professor of physics now joined in. He was a so-called Pink, who believed in what so-called Pinks believe in (Progressive Education, the Integrity of anyone spying for Russia, Fall-outs occasioned solely by US-made bombs, the existence in the near past of a McCarthy Era, Soviet achievements including Dr. Zhivago, and so forth): "Your regrets are groundless" [said he]. "That sorry ruler is known to have escaped disguised as a nun; but whatever happens, or has happened to him, cannot interest the Zemblan people. History has denounced him, and that is his epitaph."
Shade: "True, sir. In due time history will have denounced everybody. The King may be dead, or he may be as much alive as you and Kinbote, but let us respect facts. I have it from him [pointing to me] that the widely circulated stuff about the nun is a vulgar pro-Extremist fabrication. The Extremists and their friends invented a lot of nonsense to conceal their discomfiture; but the truth is that the King walked out of the palace, and crossed the mountains, and left the country, not in the black garb of a pale spinster but dressed as an athlete in scarlet wool."
"Strange, strange," said the German visitor, who by some quirk of alderwood ancestry had been alone to catch the eerie note that had throbbed by and was gone.
Shade [smiling and massaging my knee]: "Kings do not die--they only disappear, eh, Charles?"
"Who said that?" asked sharply, as if coming out of a trance, the ignorant, and always suspicious, Head of the English Department.
"Take my own case," continued my dear friend ignoring Mr. H. "I have been said to resemble at least four people: Samuel Johnson; the lovingly reconstructed ancestor of man in the Exton Museum; and two local characters, one being the slapdash disheveled hag who ladles out the mash in the Levin Hall cafeteria."
"The third in the witch row," I precised quaintly, and everybody laughed.
"I would rather say," remarked Mr. Pardon--American History--"that she looks like Judge Goldsworth" ("One of us," interposed Shade inclining his head), "especially when he is real mad at the whole world after a good dinner."
"I heard," hastily began Netochka, "that the Goldsworths are having a wonderful time--"
"What a pity I cannot prove my point," muttered the tenacious German visitor. "If only there was a picture here. Couldn't there be somewhere--"
"Sure," said young Emerald and left his seat.
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)
In the first of the two stanzas of his poem On Translating "Eugene Onegin" (1955) written after the meter and rhyme scheme of the EO stanza VN mentions the parasites who are pardoned, if he (VN) has Pushkin’s pardon:
What is translation? On a platter
A poets pale and glaring head,
A parrot's screech, a monkey's chatter,
And profanation of the dead.
The parasites you were so hard on
Are pardoned if I have your pardon,
O, Pushkin, for my stratagem:
I traveled down your secret stem,
And reached the root, and fed upon it;
Then, in a language newly learned,
I grew another stalk and turned
Your stanza patterned on a sonnet,
Into my honest roadside prose--
All thorn, but cousin to your rose.
Reflected words can only shiver
Like elognated lights that twist
In the black mirror of a river
Between the city and the mist.
Elusive Pushkin! Persevering,
I still pick up Tatiana’s earring,
Still travel with your sullen rake.
I find another man’s mistake,
I analyze alliterations
That grace your feasts and haunt the great
Fourth stanza of your Canto Eight.
This is my task–a poet’s patience
And scholastic passion blent:
Dove-droppings on your monument.
In his poem Kormlenie golubya (“Feeding a Pigeon,” 1919-20) Khlebnikov mentions a flock of orioles, the mirrors of morning seas and the singing of kings:
Вы пили тёплое дыхание голубки,
И, вся смеясь, вы наглецом его назвали
А он, вложив горбатый клюв в накрашенные губки
И трепеща крылом, считал вас голубем?
Едва ли!
И стая иволог летела,
Как треугольник зорь, на тело
Скрывая сумраком бровей
Зеркала утренних морей
Те низко падали, как пение царей.
За их сияющей соломой,
Как воздухом погоды золотой,
Порою вздрагивал знакомый
Холма на землю лёт крутой.
И голубя малиновые лапки
В причёске пышной утопали.
Он прилетел, осенне-зябкий.
Он у товарищей в опале.
Describing the ex-King’s arrival in America, Kinbote says that Baltimore’s oriole is not an oriole:
John Shade's heart attack (Oct. 17, 1958) practically coincided with the disguised king's arrival in America where he descended by parachute from a chartered plane piloted by Colonel Montacute, in a field of hay-feverish, rank-flowering weeds, near Baltimore whose oriole is not an oriole. (note to Line 691)
On Oct. 7, 1849, E. A. Poe died in Baltimore. In his essay “Andrey Bely” Titsian Tabidze mentions the not yet studied biologiya teney (biology of shades) and compares Bely to Edgar Poe who said [in his essay “The Philosophy of Composition,” 1846] that a poem can be written from end to beginning, just as the Chinese build a house in reverse:
Из всех русских поэтов последних лет Андрей Белый больше всех занят формой. Ему принадлежат многочисленные труды о природе русского стиха; он на самом деле "проверял алгеброй музыку", ведь недаром он сын профессора математики и сам не на шутку учился математике, хотя знает, "что биология теней еще не изучена"! Ведь и он мог сказать, как Эдгар По, что поэму можно написать с конца, как китайцы строят дом наоборот!
According to Tabidze, Bely has really “checked up music with algebra.” In Pushkin’s little tragedy “Mozart and Salieri” (1830) Salieri says that he cut music, like a corpse, and with algebra checked up harmony and Mozart uses the phrase nikto b (none would), Botkin in reverse. The “real” name of Shade, Kinbote and Gradus seems to be Botkin. 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’s “real” name). Nadezhda means “hope.” 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.
Kinbote believes that, to be completed, Shade’s 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”). Dvoynik (“The Double”) is a short novel (1846) by Dostoevski and a poem (1909) by Alexander Blok (who said, when asked “does a sonnet need a coda,” that he did not know what a coda is). In Blok’s poem Osenniy vecher byl... (“It was an autumnal evening,” 1912), with the epigraph from Poe’s “Raven,” the poet’s visitor (the gentleman with a shaggy dog) mentions Linor bezumnogo Edgara (Lenore of mad Edgar):
«Но в старости — возврат и юности, и жара...» -
Так начал я... но он настойчиво прервал:
«Она — всё та ж: Линор безумного Эдгара.
Возврата нет. — Ещё? Теперь я всё сказал».
In “Andrey Bely” Tabidze pairs Bely with Blok:
Андрей Белый и Александр Блок -- "два трепетных крыла" русского символизма. Недаром воспоминания Андрея Белого о Блоке разрастаются в эпопею1 и объемлют историю русской поэзии начала века. Это -- не воспоминания в обычном смысле слова, а разговор с самим собой, наедине. В этой эпопее Андрей Белый вспоминает необычайную историю встречи двух поэтов, историю сиамских близнецов, которым потом пришлось вынести на своих плечах последующую поэзию; здесь в качестве действующих лиц выступают: петербургские туманы, снежная Москва и шахматовские зори.
According to Tabidze, Andrey Bely and Alexander Blok are "two palpitating wings" of the Russian Symbolism. The phrase dva trepetnykh kryla (two palpitating wings) occurs in the first line of a sonnet by Vyacheslav Ivanov:
Мечты одной два трепетных крыла
И два плеча одной склоненной выи,
Мы понесли восторги огневые,
Всю боль земли и всю пронзенность зла.
В одном ярме, упорных два вола,
Мы плуг влекли чрез целины живые,
Доколь в страду и полдни полевые
Единого, щадя, не отпрягла
Хозяина прилежная забота.
Так двум была работой красота
Единая, как мёд двойного сота.
И тению единого креста
Одних молитв слияли два полёта
Мы, двух теней скорбящая чета.
Vyacheslav Ivanov's sonnet ends in the line My, dvukh teney skorbyashchaya cheta (We, a grieving pair of two shades). V. Ivanov is the author of Rimskie sonety ("Roman sonnets," 1924), a cycle of nine sonnets. In his fragment Rim (“Rome,” 1842) Gogol describes a carnival in Rome, mentions the Italian sonetto colla coda and in a footnote explains that in Italian poetry there is a kind of poem known as sonet s khvostom (sonnet with a tail, con la coda), 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.
In E. A. Poe's story William Wilson (1839) the title character meets his double and namesake at a masquerade during the carnival in Rome:
It was at Rome, during the carnival of 18-- , that I attended a masquerade in the palazzo of the Neapolitan Duke Di Broglio. I had indulged more freely than usual in the excesses of the wine-table; and now the suffocating atmosphere of the crowded rooms irritated me beyond endurance. The difficulty, too, of forcing my way through the mazes of the company contributed not a little to the ruffling of my temper; for I was anxiously seeking, let me not say with what unworthy motive, the young, the gay, the beautiful wife of the aged and doting Di Broglio. With a too unscrupulous confidence she had previously communicated to me the secret of the costume in which she would be habited, and now, having caught a glimpse of her person, I was hurrying to make my way into her presence. At this moment I felt a light hand placed upon my shoulder, and that ever-remembered, low, damnable whisper within my ear.
In his memoirs Mezhdu dvukh revolyutsiy (“Between the Two Revolutions,” 1934) Andrey Bely mentions Vyacheslav Ivanov’s verses about 333 embraces:
Не любил я привздохов таких, после них пуще прежнего изобличая политику группочки; гневы мои заострились напрасно на Г. И. Чулкове; в прямоте последнего не сомневался; кричал благим матом он; очень бесили "молчальники", тайно мечтавшие на чулковских плечах выплыть к славе, хотя бы под флагом мистического анархизма; открыто признать себя "мистико-анархистами" они не решались; по ним я и бил, обрушиваясь на Чулкова, дававшего повод к насмешкам по поводу лозунгов, которые компрометировали для меня символизм; примазь уличной мистики и дешевого келейного анархизма казались мне профанацией; каждый кадетский присяжный поверенный в эти месяцы, руки засунув в штаны, утверждал: "Я, ведь, собственно... гм... анархист!" Я писал: Чехов более для меня символист, чем Морис Метерлинк; а тут - нате: "неизречённость" вводилась в салон; а анархия становилась свержением штанов под девизами "нового" культа; этого Чулков не желал; но писал неумно; вот "плоды" - лесбианская повесть Зиновьевой-Аннибал и педерастические стихи Кузмина; они вместе с программной лирикой Вячеслава Иванова о "333" объятиях брались слишком просто в эротическом, плясовом, огарочном бреде; "оргиазм" В. Иванова на языке желтой прессы понимался упрощенно: "свальным грехом"; почтенный же оргиаст лишь хитренько помалкивал: "Понимайте, как знаете!"
333 × 3 = 999. In its unfinished form Shade’s poem has 999 lines:
Pale Fire, a poem in heroic couplets, of nine hundred ninety-nine lines, divided into four cantos, was composed by John Francis Shade (born July 5, 1898, died July 21, 1959) during the last twenty days of his life, at his residence in New Wye, Appalachia, U.S.A. The manuscript, mostly a Fair Copy, from which the present text has been faithfully printed, consists of eighty medium-sized index cards, on each of which Shade reserved the pink upper line for headings (canto number, date) and used the fourteen light-blue lines for writing out with a fine nib in a minute, tidy, remarkably clear hand, the text of his poem, skipping a line to indicate double space, and always using a fresh card to begin a new canto. (Foreword)