In VN's story The Vane Sisters (1951) the spirit of Leo Tolstoy appears at a sèance arranged by Cynthia (Sybil’s elder sister):
I am sorry to say that not content with these ingenious fancies Cynthia showed a ridiculous fondness for spiritualism. I refused to accompany her to sittings in which paid mediums took part: I knew too much about that from other sources. I did consent, however, to attend little farces rigged up by Cynthia and her two poker-faced gentlemen friends of the printing shop. They were podgy, polite, and rather eerie old fellows, but I satisfied myself that they possessed considerable wit and culture. We sat down at a light little table, and crackling tremors started almost as soon as we laid our fingertips upon it. I was treated to an assortment of ghosts that rapped out their reports most readily though refusing to elucidate anything that I did not quite catch. Oscar Wilde came in and in rapid garbled French, with the usual anglicisms, obscurely accused Cynthia's dead parents of what appeared in my jottings as "plagiatisme." A brisk spirit contributed the unsolicited information that he, John Moore, and his brother Bill had been coal miners in Colorado and had perished in an avalanche at "Crested Beauty" in January 1883. Frederic Myers, an old hand at the game, hammered out a piece of verse (oddly resembling Cynthia's own fugitive productions) which in part reads in my notes:
What is this-- a conjuror's rabbit,
Or a flawy but genuine gleam--
Which can check the perilous habit
And dispel the dolorous dream?
Finally, with a great crash and all kinds of shuddering and jiglike movements on the part of the table, Leo Tolstoy visited our little group and, when asked to identify himself by specific traits of terrene habitation, launched upon a complex description of what seemed to be some Russian type of architectural woodwork ("figures on boards -- man, horse, cock, man, horse, cock"), all of which was difficult to take down, hard to understand, and impossible to verify. (chapter 5)
As has been pointed out before, “man, horse, cock, man, horse, cock” is a reference to an architectural detail on the balustrade boards on the porch of Tolstoy’s home Yasnaya Polyana. In his essay O tom, chto nazyvayut iskusstvom (“On What They Call Art,” publ. in 1939) Tolstoy mentions vyrezushka na karnize (a decorative ornament on the ledge):
Я вижу вырезушку на карнизе и испытываю то же самое чувство симметрии, интереса к рисунку, забавы, которое испытывал тот, кто задумал и вырезал их. То же самое я испытываю то самое чувство, которое испытывал тот, кто задумывал и вырезал фигуру на корабле. То же самое происходит при слушании рассказа о разлуке с матерью, когда он повторяет ее речи. То же при звуках перезвона и трепака на доске, когда я слушаю их. То же чувство я испытываю при слушании венгерского чардаша, симфонии, при чтении Гомера, Дикенса, при созерцании Микель-Анджело, Парфенона и всякого какого бы то ни было художественного произведения. Забава и удовольствие получения художественного произведения состоит в том, что я познаю непосредственно, не через рассказ, а через непосредственное заражение то же чувство, которое испытывал художник и которое я без него не узнал бы.
In his essay Pushkin (1896) Merezhkovski mentions neyasnyi shyopot Sibilly (the unclear whisper of the Sybil) in Baratynski's verses that Leo Tolstoy has turned into a thunderous war cry:
Наконец сомнения в благах западной культуры - неясный шёпот сибиллы у Баратынского - Лев Толстой превратил в громовый воинственный клич; любовь к природе Лермонтова, его песни о безучастной красоте моря и неба - в "четыре упряжки", в полевую работу; христианство Достоевского и Гоголя, далекое от действительной жизни, священный огонь, пожиравший их сердца, - в страшный циклопический молот, направленный против главных устоев современного общества.
In a letter of April 11, 1831, to Pletnyov (to whom Eugene Onegin is dedicated) Pushkin calls Pletnyov ten’ vozlyublennaya (the beloved shade) and asks Pletnyov (who did not respond to Pushkin’s letters for a long time), if he is already dead, to bow to Derzhavin and to embrace Delvig (who died at the beginning of 1831):
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.
Derzhavin is the author of Lastochka (“The Swallow,” 1792-94), a poem written after the death of ‘Plenyra’ (Derzhavin’s first wife). In the poem’s closing lines Derzhavin compares his soul to a swallow:
Душа моя! гостья ты мира:
Не ты ли перната сия? —
Воспой же бессмертие, лира!
Восстану, восстану и я, —
Восстану, — и в бездне эфира
Увижу ль тебя я, Пленира?
My soul! You are a guest of the world:
is you not that feathered creature?
Sing of immortality, my lyre!
I too, I too will resurrect,
I’ll resurrect – and in the abyss of ether
will I see you, my Plenyra?
In VN’s novel Pale Fire (1962) Kinbote (Shade’s mad commentator who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla) calls the poet’s wife “Sybil Swallow:”
John Shade and Sybil Swallow (see note to line 247) were married in 1919, exactly three decades before King Charles wed Disa, Duchess of Payn. Since the very beginning of his reign (1936-1958) representatives of the nation, salmon fishermen, non-union glaziers, military groups, worried relatives, and especially the Bishop of Yeslove, a sanguineous and saintly old man, had been doing their utmost to persuade him to give up his copious but sterile pleasures and take a wife. It was a matter not of morality but of succession. As in the case of some of his predecessors, rough alderkings who burned for boys, the clergy blandly ignored our young bachelor's pagan habits, but wanted him to do what an earlier and even more reluctant Charles had done: take a night off and lawfully engender an heir. (note to Line 275)
At the beginning (and at the end) of his poem K lastochke (“To a Swallow,” 1820) Delvig mentions blednaya Tsintiya (pale Cynthia):
Что мне делать с тобой, докучная ласточка!
Каждым утром меня — едва зарумянится
Небо алой зарёй и бледная Цинтия
Там в туманы покатится, —
Каждым утром меня ты криком безумолкным
Будишь, будто назло!
Я проснулся — вдали едва зарумянилось
Небо алой зарёй, и бледная Цинтия
Там в туманы скатилася.
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. The characters in Griboedov’s play in verse Gore ot uma (“Woe from Wit,” 1824) include Sofia, Famusov’s daughter with whom Chatski is in love, and Colonel Skalozub whose name hints at zuboskal (scoffer). Sofia Andreevna was the name and patronymic of Tolstoy’s wife. In a letter of June 11, 1831, to Vyazemski Pushkin asks Vyazemski if Sofia Karamzin (the historian's daughter) reigns on the saddle and quotes King Richard's words (the epigraph to Vyazemski's poem "A Ride in the Steppe," 1831) in Shakespeare’s Richard III (Act V, scene 4):
Что Софья Николаевна? царствует на седле? A horse, a horse! My kingdom for a horse!
A character in Richard III, Richmond says (Act V, scene 2):
True hope is swift, and flies with swallow’s wings.
Kings it makes gods, and meaner creatures kings.