Describing the king’s escape from Zembla, 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 matted elfinwood:
He sank down on the grass near a patch of matted elfinwood and inhaled the bright air. The panting dog lay down at his feet. Garh smiled for the first time. Zemblan mountain girls are as a rule mere mechanisms of haphazard lust, and Garh was no exception. As soon as she had settled beside him, she bent over and pulled over and off her tousled head the thick gray sweater, revealing her naked back and blancmange breasts, and flooded her embarrassed companion with ail the acridity of ungroomed womanhood. She was about to proceed with her stripping but he stopped her with a gesture and got up. He thanked her for all her kindness. He patted the innocent dog; and without turning once, with a springy step, the King started to walk up the turfy incline. (note to Line 149)
The German name of elfinwood is Krummholz. Visiting Joe Lavender’s Villa Libitina, Gradus (Shade’s murderer) meets Gordon, a musical prodigy and an amusing pet, son of Joseph Lavender's famous sister, Elvina Krummholz. (Index)
In Chapter One (XXXII: 9) of Eugene Onegin Pushkin mentions moy drug Elvina (dear Elvina):
Дианы грудь, ланиты Флоры
Прелестны, милые друзья!
Однако ножка Терпсихоры
Прелестней чем-то для меня.
Она, пророчествуя взгляду
Неоцененную награду,
Влечёт условною красой
Желаний своевольный рой.
Люблю её, мой друг Эльвина,
Под длинной скатертью столов,
Весной на мураве лугов,
Зимой на чугуне камина,
На зеркальном паркете зал,
У моря на граните скал.
Diana's bosom, Flora's cheeks, are charming,
dear friends! Nevertheless, for me
something about it makes more charming
the small foot of Terpsichore.
By prophesying to the gaze
an unpriced recompense,
with token beauty it attracts the willful
swarm of desires.
I like it, dear Elvina,
beneath the long napery of tables,
in springtime on the turf of meads,
in winter on the hearth's cast iron,
on mirrory parquet of halls,
by the sea on granite of rocks.
Pushkin’s EO begins with the death of Onegin’s uncle. According to Kinbote, on his deathbed the King’s uncle Conmal (Shakespeare’s translator into Zemblan) called him Karlik:
To return to the King: take for instance the question of personal culture. How often is it that kings engage in some special research? Conchologists among them can be counted on the fngers of one maimed hand. The last king of Zembla - partly under the influence of his uncle Conmal, the great translator of Shakespeare (see notes to lines 39 - 40 and 962), had become, despite frequent migraines, passionately addicted to the study of literature. At forty, not long before the collapse of his throne, he had attained such a degree of scholarship that he dared accede to his venerable uncle's raucous dying request: "Teach, Karlik!" (Kinbote's note to line 12)
In Russian karlik means “dwarf.” The Russian name of elfinwood is karlikovaya sosna (dwarf pine). Describing Onegin’s day in the country, Pushkin compares his hero to Byron’s Childe Harold and uses the phrase so sna (right after sleep), a full homonym of sosna (pine):
Прямым Онегин Чильд-Гарольдом
Вдался в задумчивую лень:
Со сна садится в ванну со льдом,
И после, дома целый день,
Один, в расчеты погруженный,
Тупым кием вооруженный,
Он на бильярде в два шара
Играет с самого утра.
Настанет вечер деревенский:
Бильярд оставлен, кий забыт,
Перед камином стол накрыт,
Евгений ждет: вот едет Ленский
На тройке чалых лошадей;
Давай обедать поскорей!
Onegin like a regular Childe Harold
lapsed into pensive indolence:
right after sleep he takes a bath with ice,
and then, at home all day,
alone, absorbed in calculations, armed
with a blunt cue,
using two balls,
ever since morn plays billiards.
The country evening comes; abandoned
are billiards, the cue is forgot.
Before the fireplace the table is laid;
Eugene waits; here comes Lenski,
borne by a troika of roan horses;
quick, let's have dinner!
Gordon Krummholz brings to mind George Gordon Byron. When Byron was born, he suffered from lameness and a twisted foot. After May Gray (Byron’s nurse) was fired, Byron was put in the care of a "trussmaker to the General hospital", a man named Lavender, in hopes that he could be cured; however, Lavender instead abused the boy and would occasionally use him as a servant. After Byron exposed Lavender as a fool, Gordon took her son to visit Doctor Matthew Baillie in London. They took up residence at Sloane Terrace during the summer of 1799, and there Byron started to receive treatment, such as specially designed boots.
Trussmaker makes orthopaedic boots. According to Kinbote (the author of a book on surnames), Botkin (Shade’s, Kinbote’s and Gradus’ “real” name) is one who makes bottekins (fancy footwear):
With commendable alacrity, Professor Hurley produced an Appreciation of John Shade's published works within a month after the poet's death. It came out in a skimpy literary review, whose name momentarily escapes me, and was shown to me in Chicago where I interrupted for a couple of days my automobile journey from New Wye to Cedarn, in these grim autumnal mountains.
A Commentary where placid scholarship should reign is not the place for blasting the preposterous defects of that little obituary. I have only mentioned it because that is where I gleaned a few meager details concerning the poet's parents. His father, Samuel Shade, who died at fifty, in 1902, had studied medicine in his youth and was vice-president of a firm of surgical instruments in Exton. His chief passion, however, was what our eloquent necrologist calls "the study of the feathered tribe," adding that "a bird had been named for him: Bombycilla Shadei" (this should be "shadei," of course). The poet's mother, née Caroline Lukin, assisted him in his work and drew the admirable figures of his Birds of Mexico, which I remember having seen in my friend's house. What the obituarist does not know is that Lukin comes from Luke, as also do Locock and Luxon and Lukashevich. It represents one of the many instances when the amorphous-looking but live and personal hereditary patronymic grows, sometimes in fantastic shapes, around the common pebble of a Christian name. The Lukins are an old Essex family. Other names derive from professions such as Rymer, Scrivener, Linner (one who illuminates parchments), Botkin (one who makes bottekins, fancy footwear) and thousands of others. My tutor, a Scotsman, used to call any old tumble-down building "a hurley-house." But enough of this. (note to Line 71)
Catherine Gordon (Byron’s mother) was a direct descendant of James I of Scotland. A "hurley-house" brings to mind pustynnyi pamyatnik tirana, zabven’yu broshennyi dvorets (forlorn memorial of a tyrant, a palace to oblivion cast), as in his ode Vol’nost’ (“Liberty,” 1817) Pushkin calls the Mikhaylovski castle where Paul I was murdered in March, 1801:
Когда на мрачную Неву
Звезда полуночи сверкает,
И беззаботную главу
Спокойный сон отягощает,
Глядит задумчивый певец
На грозно спящий средь тумана
Пустынный памятник тирана,
Забвенью брошенный дворец —
И слышит Клии страшный глас
За сими страшными стенами,
Калигуллы последний час
Он видит живо пред очами,
Он видит — в лентах и звездах,
Вином и злобой упое́нны
Идут убийцы потае́нны,
На лицах дерзость, в сердце страх.
When down upon the gloomy Neva
The star Polaris scintillates
And peaceful slumber overwhelms
The head that is devoid of cares,
The pensive poet contemplates
The grimly sleeping in the mist
Forlorn memorial of a tyrant,
A palace to oblivion cast,
And hears the dreadful voice of Clio
Above yon gloom-pervaded walls
And vividly before his eyes
He sees Caligula's last hours.
He sees: beribanded, bestarred,
With Wine and Hate intoxicated,
They come, the furtive assassins,
Their faces brazen, hearts afraid.
On Oct. 31, 1838 (Dostoevski’s seventeenth birthday), Dostoevski (a student of the Military Engineer School housed in the Mikhaylovski palace) wrote a letter to his brother Mikhail in which he twice used the word gradus (degree), said that Byron was an egoist and quoted the last two lines of Pushkin’s sonnet Poetu (“To a Poet,” 1830):
Друг мой! Ты философствуешь как поэт. И как не ровно выдерживает душа градус вдохновенья, так не ровна, не верна и твоя философия. Чтоб больше знать, надо меньше чувствовать, и обратно, правило опрометчивое, бред сердца.
My friend, you philosophize like a poet. And just because the soul cannot be forever in a state of exaltation, your philosophy is not true and not just. To know more one must feel less, and vice versa. Your judgment is featherheaded – it is a delirium of the heart.
Заметь, что поэт в порыве вдохновенья разгадывает Бога, следовательно, исполняет назначенье философии. Следовательно, поэтический восторг есть восторг философии... Следовательно, философия есть та же поэзия, только высший градус её!..
Remark that the poet, in the moment of inspiration, comprehends God and consequently does the philosopher's work. Consequently poetic inspiration is nothing less than poetical inspiration. Consequently philosophy is nothing but poetry, a higher degree of poetry!
Послушай! Мне кажется, что слава также содействует вдохновенью поэта. Байрон был эгоист: его мысль о славе — была ничтожна, суетна... Но одно помышленье о том, что некогда вслед за твоим былым восторгом вырвется из праха душа чистая, возвышенно-прекрасная, мысль, что вдохновенье как таинство небесное освятит страницы, над которыми плакал ты и будет плакатьг потомство, не думаю, чтобы эта мысль не закрадывалась в душу поэта и в самые минуты творчества. Пустой же крик толпы ничтожен. Ах! я вспомнил 2 стиха Пушкина, когда он описывает толпу и поэта:
И плюет (толпа) на алтарь, где твой огонь горит,
И в детской резвости колеблет твой треножник!..
And (the crowd) spits on the altar where your fire is burning,
and in childish playfulness shakes your tripod!..
Dostoevski is the author of Dvoynik (“The Double,” 1846). Shade’s poem is almost finished when the author is killed by Gradus. 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”).