John Shade (the poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) and Charles Kinbote (Shade’s mad Commentator who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla) live in New Wye (a small University town). In his Foreword and Commentary to Shade’s poem Kinbote mentions Exton, a town near New Wye:
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 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)
The ultimate destiny of madmen's souls has been probed by many Zemblan theologians who generally hold the view that even the most demented mind still contains within its diseased mass a sane basic particle that survived death and suddenly expands, bursts out as it were, in peals of healthy and triumphant laughter when the world of timorous fools and trim blockheads has fallen away far behind. Personally, I have not known any lunatics; but have heard of several amusing cases in New Wye ("Even in Arcady am I," says Dementia, chained to her gray column). There was for instance a student who went berserk. There was an old tremendously trustworthy college porter who one day, in the Projection Room, showed a squeamish coed something of which she had no doubt seen better samples; but my favorite case is that of an Exton railway employee whose delusion was described to me by Mrs. H., of all people. There was a big Summer School party at the Hurleys', to which one of my second ping-pong table partners, a pal of the Hurley boys had taken me because I knew my poet was to recite there something and I was beside myself with apprehension believing it might be my Zembla (it proved to be an obscure poem by one of his obscure friends - my Shade was very kind to the unsuccessful). The reader will understand if I say that, at my altitude, I can never feel "lost" in a crowd, but it is also true that I did not know many people at the H.'s. As I circulated, with a smile on my face and a cocktail in my hand, through the crush, I espied at last the top of my poet's head and the bright brown chignon of Mrs. H. above the back of two adjacent chairs: At the moment I advanced behind them I heard him object to some remark she had just made: "That is the wrong word," he said. "One should not apply it to a person who deliberately peels off a drab and unhappy past and replaces it with a brilliant invention. That's merely turning a new leaf with the left hand."
I patted my friend on the head and bowed slightly to Eberthella H. The poet looked at me with glazed eyes. She said: "You must help us, Mr. Kinbote: I maintain that what's his name, old - the old man, you know, at the Exton railway station, who thought he was God and began redirecting the trains, was technically a loony, but John calls him a fellow poet."
"We all are, in a sense, poets, Madam," I replied, and offered a lighted match to my friend who had his pipe in his teeth and was beating himself with both hands on various parts of his torso.
I am not sure this trivial variant has been worth commenting; indeed, the whole passage about the activities of the IPH would be quite Hudibrastic had its pedestrian verse been one foot shorter. (note to Line 629)
The name of the letter X in English is “ex,” and of the letter Y “wye.” “Loony” (a word used by Eberthella H.) is a shortened form of “lunatic,” which originally referred mainly to epilepsy and madness, as diseases thought to be caused by the moon. Zinaida Hippius memoir essay on Alexander Blok is entitled Moy lunnyi drug ("My Lunar Friend," 1922). Blok is the author of Na zheleznoy doroge ("On the Railway," 1910). The name of Blok's country place in the Province of Moscow, Shakhmatovo, comes from shakhmaty (chess).
Describing Aunt Maud’s room in Canto One of his poem, Shade mentions her verse book opened at the Index (Moon, Moonrise, Moor, Moral):
I was brought up by dear bizarre Aunt Maud,
A poet and a painter with a taste
For realistic objects interlaced
With grotesque growths and images of doom.
She lived to hear the next babe cry. Her room
We've kept intact. Its trivia create
A still life in her style: the paperweight
Of convex glass enclosing a lagoon,
The verse book open at the Index (Moon,
Moonrise, Moor, Moral), the forlorn guitar,
The human skull; and from the local Star
A curio: Red Sox Beat Yanks 5-4
On Chapman's Homer, thumbtacked to the door. (ll. 86-98)
The New York Yankees ("Yanks") are an American professional baseball team based in the New York City borough of the Bronx. New Wye seems to be a cross between New York and New Moscow, as in his lecture on chess Ostap Bender (the main character in Ilf and Petrov’s "The Twelve Chairs," 1928, and "The Golden Calf," 1931) calls Vasyuki:
— Не беспокойтесь, — сказал Остап, — мой проект гарантирует вашему городу неслыханный расцвет производительных сил. Подумайте, что будет, когда турнир окончится и когда уедут все гости. Жители Москвы, стеснённые жилищным кризисом, бросятся в ваш великолепный город. Столица автоматически переходит в Васюки. Сюда переезжает правительство. Васюки переименовываются в Нью-Москву, а Москва — в Старые Васюки. Ленинградцы и харьковчане скрежещут зубами, но ничего не могут поделать. Нью-Москва становится элегантнейшим центром Европы, а скоро и всего мира.
"Don't worry," continued Ostap, "my scheme will guarantee the town an unprecedented boom in your production forces. Just think what will happen when the tournament is over and the visitors have left. The citizens of Moscow, crowded together on account of the housing shortage, will come flocking to your beautiful town. The capital will be automatically transferred to Vasyuki. The government will move here. Vasyuki will be renamed New Moscow, and Moscow will become Old Vasyuki. The people of Leningrad and Kharkov will gnash their teeth in fury but won't be able to do a thing about it. New Moscow will soon become the most elegant city in Europe and, soon afterwards, in the whole world." (“The Twelve Chairs,” Chapter 34 “The Interplanetary Chess Tournament”)
Kinbote mockingly calls Gradus (Shade's murderer) Leningradus. In his Commentary Kinbote mentions the moskovett, a cold wind that blows on Zemblan eastern shores throughout March:
I imagine, that during that period the Shades, or at least John Shade, experienced a sensation of odd instability as if parts of the everyday, smoothly running world had got unscrewed, and you became aware that one of your tires was rolling beside you, or that your steering wheel had come off. My poor friend could not help recalling the dramatic fits of his early boyhood and wondering if this was not a new genetic variant of the same theme, preserved through procreation. Trying to hide from neighbors these horrible and humiliating phenomena was not the least of Shade's worries. He was terrified, and he was lacerated with pity. Although never able to corner her, that flabby, feeble, clumsy and solemn girl, who seemed more interested than frightened, he and Sybil never doubted that in some extraordinary way she was the agent of the disturbance which they saw as representing (I now quote Jane P.) "an outward extension or expulsion of insanity." They could not do much about it, partly because they disliked modern voodoo-psychiatry, but mainly because they were afraid of Hazel, and afraid to hurt her. They had however a secret interview with old-fashioned and learned Dr. Sutton, and this put them in better spirits. They were contemplating moving into another house or, more exactly, loudly saying to each other, so as to be overheard by anyone who might be listening, that they were contemplating moving, when all at once the fiend was gone, as happens with the moskovett, that bitter blast, that colossus of cold air that blows on our eastern shores throughout March, and then one morning you hear the birds, and the flags hang flaccid, and the outlines of the world are again in place. The phenomena ceased completely and were, if not forgotten, at least never referred to; but how curious it is that we do not perceive a mysterious sign of equation between the Hercules springing forth from a neurotic child's weak frame and the boisterous ghost of Aunt Maud; how curious that our rationality feels satisfied when we plump for the first explanation, though, actually, the scientific and the supernatural, the miracle of the muscle and the miracle of the mind, are both inexplicable as are all the ways of Our Lord. (note to Line 230)
The Vasyuki chess enthusiasts imagine that Lasker arrives in Vasyuki descending by parachute:
Вдруг на горизонте была усмотрена чёрная точка. Она быстро приближалась и росла, превратившись в большой изумрудный парашют. Как большая редька, висел на парашютном кольце человек с чемоданчиком.
– Это он! – закричал одноглазый. – Ура! Ура! Ура! Я узнаю великого философа-шахматиста, доктора Ласкера. Только он один во всем мире носит такие зелёные носочки.
Suddenly a black dot was noticed on the horizon. It approached rapidly, growing larger and larger until it finally turned into a large emerald parachute. A man with an attache case was hanging from the harness, like a huge radish.
"Here he is!" shouted one-eye. "Hooray, hooray, I recognize the great philosopher and chess player Dr. Lasker. He is the only person in the world who wears those green socks." (Chapter 34 “The Interplanetary Chess Tournament”)
According to Kinbote, he arrived in America descending by parachute:
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)
The Baltimore Orioles are an American professional baseball team based in Baltimore. According to Shade, he never bounced a ball or swung a bat:
Asthmatic, lame and fat,
I never bounced a ball or swung a bat.
I was the shadow of the waxwing slain
By feigned remoteness in the windowpane.
I had a brain, five senses (one unique);
But otherwise I was a cloutish freak.
In sleeping dreams I played with other chaps
But really envied nothing - save perhaps
The miracle of a lemniscate left
Upon wet sand by nonchalantly deft
Bicycle tires. (ll. 129-138)
The infinity symbol ∞ is sometimes called “lemniscate.” In his poem ∞ included in Tikhie pesni (“Quiet Songs,” 1904) Nik. T-o (I. Annenski's penname) compares the infinity symbol to the numeral 8 toppled over:
Девиз Таинственной похож
На опрокинутое 8:
Она - отраднейшая ложь
Из всех, что мы в сознаньи носим.
В кругу эмалевых минут
Её свершаются обеты,
А в сумрак звёздами блеснут
Иль ветром полночи пропеты.
Но где светил погасших лик
Остановил для нас теченье,
Там Бесконечность - только миг,
Дробимый молнией мученья.
In his essay Ob Annenskom (“On Annenski,” 1921) Hodasevich compares Annenski to Ivan Ilyich Golovin (the main character in Tolstoy’s story “The Death of Ivan Ilyich,” 1886) and points out that Annenski regarded his penname Nik. T-o (“Mr. Nobody”) as a translation of Greek Outis (the pseudonym under which Odysseus conceals his identity from Polyphemus, the one-eyed Cyclops in Homer’s Odyssey):
Чего не додумал Иван Ильич, то знал Анненский. Знал, что никаким директорством, никаким бытом и даже никакой филологией от смерти по-настоящему не загородиться. Она уничтожит и директора, и барина, и филолога. Только над истинным его "я", над тем, что отображается в "чувствах и мыслях", над личностью -- у неё как будто нет власти. И он находил реальное, осязаемое отражение и утверждение личности -- в поэзии. Тот, чьё лицо он видел, подходя к зеркалу, был директор гимназии, смертный никто. Тот, чьё лицо отражалось в поэзии, был бессмертный некто. Ник. Т-о -- никто -- есть безличный действительный статский советник, которым, как видимой оболочкой, прикрыт невидимый некто. Этот свой псевдоним, под которым он печатал стихи, Анненский рассматривал как перевод греческого "утис", никто, -- того самого псевдонима, под которым Одиссей скрыл от циклопа Полифема своё истинное имя, свою подлинную личность, своего некто. Поэзия была для него заклятием страшного Полифема -- смерти. Но психологически это не только не мешало, а даже способствовало тому, чтобы его вдохновительницей, его Музой была смерть.
Leo Tolstoy died in November 1910 in Astapovo (a distant railway station), in the house of a station master. Blok's article on Tolstoy's eightieth anniversary is entitled Solntse nad Rossiey ("Sun above Russia," 1908). At the beginning of her memoir essay on Blok Zinaida Hippius says that friendship is always lunar, only love is solar:
Кто-то сказал, впрочем (какой-то француз), что дружба -- всегда лунная, и только любовь солнечная.
In his Afterword to Chekhov’s story Dushechka (“The Darling,” 1899) Leo Tolstoy says that love is no less sacred whether its object is Kukin or Spinoza, Pascal, Schiller:
Автор заставляет её любить смешного Кукина, ничтожного лесоторговца и неприятного ветеринара, но любовь не менее свята, будет ли её предметом Кукин, или Спиноза, Паскаль, Шиллер, и будут ли предметы её сменяться так же быстро, как у "Душечки", или предмет будет один во всю жизнь.
The author makes her love the absurd Kukin, the insignificant timber merchant, and the unpleasant veterinary surgeon, but love is no less sacred whether its object is Kukin or Spinoza, Pascal, Schiller, and whether the objects of it change as rapidly as with the Darling, or whether the object of it remains the same throughout the whole life.
Tolstoy’s Afterword to Chekhov’s story ends as follows:
Я учился ездить на велосипеде в манеже, в котором делаются смотры дивизиям. На другом конце манежа училась ездить дама. Я подумал о том, как бы мне не помешать этой даме, и стал смотреть на неё. И, глядя на нее, я стал невольно всё больше и больше приближаться к ней, и, несмотря на то, что она, заметив опасность, спешила удалиться, я наехал на неё и свалил, то есть сделал совершенно противоположное тому, что хотел, только потому, что направил на неё усиленное внимание.
То же самое, только обратное, случилось с Чеховым: он хотел свалить Душечку и обратил на неё усиленное внимание поэта и вознес её.
I learnt to ride a bicycle in a hall large enough to drill a division of soldiers. At the other end of the hall a lady was learning. I thought I must be careful to avoid getting into her way, and began looking at her. And as I looked at her I began unconsciously getting nearer and nearer to her, and in spite of the fact that, noticing the danger, she hastened to retreat, I rode down upon her and knocked her down— that is, I did the very opposite of what I wanted to do, simply because I concentrated my attention upon her.
The same thing has happened to Chekhov, but in an inverse sense: he wanted to knock the Darling down, and concentrating upon her the close attention of the poet, he raised her up.
Please note that the title of my recent post “A, B, C, D… W, X, Y, Z in Pale Fire” has become a little longer (and the post’s alphabetic symmetry has been restored).