Describing King Alfin’s passion for flying apparatuses, 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) mentions his constant "aerial adjutant" Colonel Peter Gusev:
King's Alfin's absent-mindedness was strangely combined with a passion for mechanical things, especially for flying apparatuses. In 1912, he managed to rise in an umbrella-like Fabre "hydroplane" and almost got drowned in the sea between Nitra and Indra. He smashed two Farmans, three Zemblan machines, and a beloved Santos Dumont Demoiselle. A very special monoplane, Blenda IV, was built for him in 1916 by his constant "aerial adjutant" Colonel Peter Gusev (later a pioneer parachutist and, at seventy, one of the greatest jumpers of all time), and this was his bird of doom. On the serene, and not too cold, December morning that the angels chose to net his mild pure soul, King Alfin was in the act of trying solo a tricky vertical loop that Prince Andrey Kachurin, the famous Russian stunter and War One hero, had shown him in Gatchina. Something went wrong, and the little Blenda was seen to go into an uncontrolled dive. Behind and above him, in a Caudron biplane, Colonel Gusev (by then Duke of Rahl) and the Queen snapped several pictures of what seemed at first a noble and graceful evolution but then turned into something else. At the last moment, King Alfin managed to straighten out his machine and was again master of gravity when, immediately afterwards, he flew smack into the scaffolding of a huge hotel which was being constructed in the middle of a coastal heath as if for the special purpose of standing in a king's way. This uncompleted and badly gutted building was ordered razed by Queen Blenda who had it replaced by a tasteless monument of granite surmounted by an improbable type of aircraft made of bronze. The glossy prints of the enlarged photographs depicting the entire catastrophe were discovered one day by eight-year-old Charles Xavier in the drawer of a secretary bookcase. In some of these ghastly pictures one could make out the shoulders and leathern casque of the strangely unconcerned aviator, and in the penultimate one of the series, just before the white-blurred shattering crash, one distinctly saw him raise one arm in triumph, and reassurance. The boy had hideous dreams after that but his mother never found out that he had seen those infernal records. (note to Line 71)
King Alfin brings to mind Alvek, the author of Nakhlebniki Khlebnikova (“The Dependents of Khlebnikov”), a literary pamphlet mentioned by Titsian Tabidze in his essay “Andrey Bely” (1927):
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.
At the beginning of his essay Tabidze pairs Bely with Blok:
Андрей Белый и Александр Блок -- "два трепетных крыла" русского символизма. Недаром воспоминания Андрея Белого о Блоке разрастаются в эпопею 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. Blok is the author of Aviator (“The Aviator,” 1910-12):
Летун отпущен на свободу,
Качнув две лопасти свои,
Как чудище морское — в воду,
Скользнул в воздушные струи.
Его винты поют, как струны...
Смотри: недрогнувший пилот
К слепому солнцу над трибуной
Стремит свой винтовой полет...
Уж в вышине недостижимой
Сияет двигателя медь...
Там, еле слышный и незримый,
Пропеллер продолжает петь...
Потом — напрасно ищет око;
На небе не найдешь следа:
В бинокле, вскинутом высоко,
Лишь воздух — ясный, как вода...
А здесь, в колеблющемся зное,
В курящейся над лугом мгле,
Ангары, люди, всё земное —
Как бы придавлено к земле...
Но снова в золотом тумане
Как будто — неземной аккорд...
Он близок, миг рукоплесканий
И жалкий мировой рекорд!
Всё ниже спуск винтообразный,
Всё круче лопастей извив,
И вдруг... нелепый, безобразный
В однообразьи перерыв...
И зверь с умолкшими винтами
Повис пугающим углом...
Ищи отцветшими глазами
Опоры в воздухе... пустом!
Уж поздно: на траве равнины
Крыла измятая дуга...
В сплетеньи проволок машины
Рука — мертвее рычага...
Зачем ты в небе был, отважный,
В свой первый и последний раз?
Чтоб львице светской и продажной
Поднять к тебе фиалки глаз?
Или восторг самозабвенья
Губительный изведал ты,
Безумно возалкал паденья
И сам остановил винты?
Иль отравил твой мозг несчастный
Грядущих войн ужасный вид:
Ночной летун, во мгле ненастной
Земле несущий динамит?
The flyer is released to freedom,
Having swung his two blades, as a beast
Into the water of the sea,
He slipped into the air streams.
His blades are singing, as the strings...
Look: he, without trembling, speeds
His flight, trying the blind sun reach,
Above the tribune mute and still.
And there in the height unreachable
Shines copper of the working engine...
And there hardly even seen, or
Heard - the propeller's going to sing...
After that vainly you were looking -
You failed to find a trace of it;
In your field-glass, raised up, you surely
Would find only the air - clear...
And here, in the heat, which's throbbing
Above the wide field and smoking,
There are the hangers, people - earthly -
All as if pressed near to earth.
But once again in gold haze there,
As if the heaven's hord is heard...
The moment of the applauses - near,
And a rather poor world record!
And lower is the spiral descent,
And streeper is the curl of blades,
And suddenly...Such an event ridiculous,
And ugly in the constant flow- break...
The beast with stopped screws has hung awkwardly
At corner terrible... The searching eyes
Can't find that time the point over
The sky, the clear empty sky!
And it is late: on grass there's lying
The bow of the crumpled wing...
And in the net of mashine wires
There is a hand - as dead as thing...
Why for you've been in sky, the brave man
For your first time, for your last time?
Is that for purpose to a court lioness
To glance at you with violet eyes?
Or the delight of self-oblivion
You've just experienced to end,
And thence you craved for the fall immediate
By stopping crews by own self?
Or you were poisoned in a whole
With images of future wars:
The flyer in the night, who is going
To throw dinamit on earth?
(tr. L. Purgina)
Nakhlebniki ("The Dependents," 1886) and Gusev (1890) are stories by Chekhov. The hero of “The Dependents” is seventy-year-old:
Мещанин Михаил Петров Зотов, старик лет семидесяти, дряхлый и одинокий, проснулся от холода и старческой ломоты во всем теле. В комнате было темно, но лампадка перед образом уже не горела. Зотов приподнял занавеску и
поглядел в окно. Облака, облегавшие небо, начинали уже подергиваться белизной, и воздух становился прозрачным,- стало быть, был пятый час, не больше.
MIKHAIL PETROVICH ZOTOV, a decrepit and solitary old man of seventy, belonging to the artisan class, was awakened by the cold and the aching in his old limbs. It was dark in his room, but the little lamp before the ikon was no longer burning. Zotov raised the curtain and looked out of the window. The clouds that shrouded the sky were beginning to show white here and there, and the air was becoming transparent, so it must have been nearly five, not more.
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). In his memoirs Mezhdu dvukh revolyutsiy (“Between the Two Revolutions,” 1934) Andrey Bely says that for him Chekhov was more a Symbolist than Maurice Maetterlinck and 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)
At the beginning of his poem Shade compares himself to the shadow of the waxwing and mentions the false azure in the windowpane:
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)
Zoloto v lazuri (“Sun in the Azure,” 1904) is the first collection of poetry by Andrey Bely. In his essay “Andrey Bely” 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 (the poet's murderer) 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.
Shade’s parents were ornithologists. In his poem Tam, gde zhili sviristeli (“Where the Waxwings Lived…” 1908) Velimir Khlebnikov (a son of the celebrated ornithologist) mentions besporyadok dikiy teney (a wild confusion of shadows):
Там, где жили свиристели,
Где качались тихо ели,
Пролетели, улетели
Стая легких 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 легких времирей.
Стая легких времирей!
Ты поюнна и вабна,
Душу ты пьянишь, как струны,
В сердце входишь, как волна!
Ну же, звонкие поюны,
Славу легких времирей!
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)
Cold nests bring to mind ptentsy gnezda Petrova (the fledglings of Peter’s nest) mentioned by Pushkin in Canto Three of Poltava (1828):
За ним вослед неслись толпой
Сии птенцы гнезда Петрова ―
В пременах жребия земного
В трудах державства и войны
Его товарищи, сыны:
И Шереметев благородный,
И Брюс, и Боур, и Репнин,
И, счастья баловень безродный,
Полудержавный властелин.
The fledglings of the Peter’s nest
Surged after him, a loyal throng―
Through all the shifts of worldly fate,
In trials of policy and war,
These men, these comrades, were like sons:
The noble Sheremetev,
And Bryus, and Bour, and Repnin,
And, fortune’s humble favorite,
The mighty, quasi-sovereign.
(tr. Ivan Eubanks)
While in Repnin there is Pnin (the title character of a novel by VN, Pnin also appears in PF), there is Bryus in Bryusov. In a poem addressed to Valeriy Bryusov Sergey Solovyov says that, in the book of Russian verse, Pushkin is alpha and Bryusov omega:
Пушкин - альфа, ты - омега
В книге русского стиха.
The poet’s daughter, Hazel Shade drowned in Lake Omega:
Higher up on the same wooded hill stood, and still stands I trust, Dr. Sutton’s old clapboard house and, at the very top, eternity shall not dislodge Professor C.’s ultramodern villa from whose terrace one can glimpse to the south the larger and sadder of the three conjoined lakes called Omega, Ozero, and Zero (Indian names garbled by early settlers in such a way as to accommodate specious derivations and commonplace allusions). (note to Lines 47-48)
In the same note of his Commentary Kinbote mentions Alphina, the youngest of Judge Goldsworth’s four daughters:
Judge Goldsworth had a wife and four daughters. Family photographs met me in the hallway and pursued me from room to room, and although I am sure that Alphina (9), Betty (10), Candida (12), and Dee (14) will soon change from horribly cute little schoolgirls to smart young ladies and superior mothers, I must confess that their pert pictures irritated me to such an extent that finally I gathered them one by one and dumped them all in a closet under the gallows row of their cellophane-shrouded winter clothes.