According to 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), in police records Gradus also appears as Ravus, Ravenstone and d’Argus:
Jakob Gradus called himself variously Jack Degree or Jacques de Grey, or James de Gray, and also appears in police records as Ravus, Ravenstone, and d'Argus. Having a morbid affection for the ruddy Russia of the Soviet era, he contended that the real origin of his name should be sought in the Russian word for grape, vinograd, to which a Latin suffix had adhered, making in Vinogradus. His father, Martin Gradus, had been a Protestant minister in Riga, but except for him and a maternal uncle (Roman Tselovalnikov, police officer and part-time member of the Social-Revolutionary party), the whole clan seems to have been in the liquor business. Martin Gradus died in 1920, and his widow moved to Strasbourg where she soon died, too. (note to Line 17)
While ravus is Latin for “grey,” a ravenstone is a place of execution, akin to gallows. In both “ravenstone” and ravenstvo (Russ., equality) there is “raven.” The Raven (1845) is a poem by E. A. Poe. In VN's novel Podvig ("Glory," 1932) Martin Edelweiss describes to Sonia Zoorland (a northern country that resembles Kinbote's Zembla) and mentions ravenstvo golov (equality of heads):
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 потрясенный 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 все тает, и все очень водянисто, и на снегу - точки вроде копоти, вообще, знаешь, я все 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.
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. (chapter 34)
In Pushkin’s poem Kleopatra (“Cleopatra,” 1828) Cleopatra tells to her guests that she can restore ravenstvo (accented here on the second syllable, to rhyme with blazhenstvo, “bliss”) between her and her subjects and offers to buy her night:
И пышный пир как будто дремлет:
Безмолвны гости. Хор молчит.
Но вновь она чело подъемлет
И с видом ясным говорит:
- В моей любви для вас блаженство.
Блаженство можно вам купить...
Внемлите ж мне: могу равенство
Меж нами я восстановить.
Кто к торгу страстному приступит?
Свою любовь я продаю;
Скажите: кто меж вами купит
Ценою жизни ночь мою?
And the magnificent feast is like dozing:
silent are the guests. The chorus is silent.
But she raises her brow again
and speaks with a bright look:
- There is a bliss in my love for you.
You can buy this bliss...
Listen to my words: I can restore
The equality between us.
Who will start the passionate bargaining?
I’m selling my love;
tell me: Who among you will buy
my night at the cost of your life?
Cleopatra warns her lovers that after the night of love they will be beheaded:
Клянусь, о матерь наслаждений,
Тебе неслыханно служу,
На ложе страстных искушений
Простой наемницей всхожу.
Внемли же, мощная Киприда,
И вы, подземные цари,
О боги грозного Аида,
Клянусь - до утренней зари
Моих властителей желанья
Я сладострастно утомлю
И всеми тайнами лобзанья
И дивной негой утолю.
Но только утренней порфирой
Аврора вечная блеснет,
Клянусь - под смертною секирой
Глава счастливцев отпадет.
I swear, o mother of pleasures,
I serve you unprecedentedly,
I mount the bed of passionate temptations
like a simple concubine.
Listen to me, powerful Cypris,
And you, the underground kings,
o gods of formidable Hades,
I swear, until the morning dawn
I will voluptuously tire
the desires of my lords
and quench them with all secrets of kisses
And wondrous mollitude.
But, as the eternal Aurora
flashes her morning purple,
I swear, the head of a lucky lover
will fall under the mortal sword.
Pushkin planned to insert this poem about three immolated lovers in his unfinished novella Egipetskie nochi (“The Egyptian Nights,” 1835). In Lunacharski (the minister of education in Lenin’s government) there are luna (moon) and Charski (a character in “The Egyptian Nights”). In his speech on Dostoevski (delivered on the hundredth anniversary of the writer’s birth) Lunacharski, in order to explain Dostoevski’s treatment of man’s psyche, takes the example of water:
Чтобы понять, что делает Достоевский с психикой - возьмём хотя бы такой пример - вода. Для того, чтобы дать человеку полное представление о воде, заставить его объять все её свойства, надо ему показать воду, пар, лёд, разделить воду на составные части, показать, что такое тихое озеро, величаво катящая свои волны река, водопад, фонтан и проч. Словом - ему нужно показать все свойства, всю внутреннюю динамику воды. И, однако, этого всё-таки будет мало. Может быть, для того, чтобы понять динамику воды, нужно превысить данные возможности и фантастически представить человеку Ниагару, в сотню раз грандиознейшую, чем подлинная. Вот Достоевский и стремится превозмочь реальность и показать дух человеческий со всеми его неизмеримыми высотами и необъяснимыми глубинами со всех сторон. Как Микель Анджело скручивает человеческие тела в конвульсиях, в агонии, так Достоевский дух человеческий то раздувает до гиперболы, то сжимает до полного уничтожения, смешивает с грязью, низвергает его в глубины ада, то потом вдруг взмывает в самые высокие эмпиреи неба. Этими полётами человеческого духа Достоевский не только приковывает наше внимание, захватывает нас, открывает нам новые неизведанные красоты, но даёт очень много и нашему познанию, показывая нам неподозреваемые нами глубины души.
According to Lunacharski, to understand the dynamics of water one must imagine a fantastic Niagara Falls, a hundred times more grandiose than the real one. Dinamika vody (the dynamics of water) brings to mind a certain stupendous Dynamo goalkeeper whose mannerisms Niagarin (one of the two Soviet experts hired by the new Zemblan government to find the crown jewels) could imitate to perfection:
All this is the rule of a supernal game, all this is the immutable fable of fate, and should not be construed as reflecting on the efficiency of the two Soviet experts - who, anyway, were to be marvelously successful on a later occasion with another job (see note to line 747). Their names (probably fictitious) were Andronnikov and Niagarin. One has seldom seen, at least among waxworks, a pair of more pleasant, presentable chaps. Everybody admired their clean-shaven jaws, elementary facial expressions, wavy hair, and perfect teeth. Tall handsome Andronnikov seldom smiled but the crinkly little rays of his orbital flesh bespoke infinite humor while the twin furrows descending from the sides of his shapely nostrils evoked glamorous associations with flying aces and sagebrush heroes. Niagarin, on the other hand, was of comparatively short stature, had somewhat more rounded, albeit quite manly features, and every now and then would flash a big boyish smile remindful of scoutmasters with something to hide, or those gentlemen who cheat in television quizzes. It was delightful to watch the two splendid Sovietchiks running about in the yard and kicking a chalk-dusty, thumping-tight soccer ball (looking so large and bald in such surroundings). Andronnikov could tap-play it on his toe up and down a dozen times before punting it pocket straight into the melancholy, surprised, bleached, harmless heavens; and Niagarin could imitate to perfection the mannerisms of a certain stupendous Dynamo goalkeeper. They used to hand out to the kitchen boys Russian caramels with plums or cherries depicted on the rich luscious six-cornered wrappers that enclosed a jacket of thinner paper with the mauve mummy inside; and lustful country girls were known to creep up along the drungen (bramble-choked footpaths) to the very foot of the bulwark when the two silhouetted against the now flushed sky sang beautiful sentimental military duets at eventide on the rampart. Niagarin had a soulful tenor voice, and Andronnikov a hearty baritone, and both wore elegant jackboots of a soft black leather, and the sky turned away showing its ethereal vertebrae. (note to line 681)
Andronnikov is a character in Dostoevski’s novel Podrostok (“The Adolescent,” 1875). In a letter of Oct. 31, 1838 (Dostoevski's seventeenth birthday), to his brother Dostoevski twice repeats the word gradus (degree). 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)
Ilf and Petrov used to sign their stories F. Tolstoevski. In his poem “Tolstoy” (1928) VN mentions Pushkin and his whole life, ot Delii litseyskoy (from school-day Delia) do vystrela v moroznyi den’ dueli (to the pistol shot, that chill day of the duel):
Картина в хрестоматии: босой
старик. Я поворачивал страницу;
мое воображенье оставалось
холодным. То ли дело - Пушкин:
плащ,
скала, морская пена... Слово "Пушкин"
стихами обрастает, как плющом,
и муза повторяет имена,
вокруг него бряцающие: Дельвиг,
Данзас, Дантес, - и сладостно-звучна
вся жизнь его - от Делии лицейской
до выстрела в морозный день дуэли.
A picture in a school anthology:
an old man, barefoot. As I turned the page,
unkindled still was my imagination.
With Pushkin things are different: there’s the cloak,
the cliff, the foaming surf… The surname “Pushkin”
grows over, ivylike, with poetry,
and repetitiously the muse cites names
that echo noisily around him: Delvig,
Danzas, d'Anthès—and his whole life has a
romantic ring, from school-day Delia to
the pistol shot, that chill day of the duel.
Shade’s murderer, Gradus is also known as d’Argus. In his poem K Delii (“To Delia,” 1813-17) Pushkin mentions Argus (Delia’s husband):
О Делия драгая!
Спеши, моя краса;
Звезда любви златая
Взошла на небеса;
Безмолвно месяц покатился;
Спеши, твой Аргус удалился,
И сон сомкнул его глаза.
O dear Delia!
Hurry, my beauty;
The golden star of love
Raised in the sky;
The moon rolled off silently;
Hurry, your Argus departed,
And the sleep closed his eyes.
In his poem Vsevolozhskomu (“To Vsevolozhski,” 1819) Pushkin mentions groznye Argusy (“the severe guards”) and nadezhda (hope):
Но вспомни, милый: здесь одна,
Тебя всечасно ожидая,
Вздыхает пленница младая;
Весь день уныла и томна,
В своей задумчивости сладкой
Тихонько плачет под окном
От грозных Аргусов украдкой,
И смотрит на пустынный дом,
Где мы так часто пировали
С Кипридой, Вакхом и тобой,
Куда с надеждой и тоской
Её желанья улетали. (ll. 47-58)
The surname Vsevolozhski comes from Vsevolod (a male given name). Shade’s, Kinbote’s and Gradus’ “real” name seems to be Vsevolod Botkin. An American scholar of Russian descent, Professor Botkin went mad after the tragic death of his daughter Nadezhda (Hazel Shade of Kinbote's Commentary). 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.
According to Kinbote, Gradus contended that the real origin of his name should be sought in the Russian word for grape, vinograd, to which a Latin suffix had adhered, making in Vinogradus. Vinograd ("The Grapes," 1824) is a poem by Pushkin:
Не стану я жалеть о розах,
Увядших с легкою весной;
Мне мил и виноград на лозах,
В кистях созревший под горой,
Краса моей долины злачной,
Отрада осени златой,
Продолговатый и прозрачный,
Как персты девы молодой.
I won't regret about roses
that withered with the light spring.
The grapes on the vines that in bunches
ripened at the hillside are also dear to me.
The beauty of my lush valley,
the joy of the golden autumn,
as elongated and transparent
as are the fingers of a girl.