In Canto Three of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) mentions his collection of essays The Untamed Seahorse that appeared shortly before (or soon after) his daughter’s death:
Later came minutes, hours, whole days at last,
When she'd be absent from our thoughts, so fast
Did life, the wooly caterpillar run.
We went to Italy. Sprawled in the sun
On a white beach with other pink or brown
Americans. Flew back to our small town.
Found that my bunch of essay The Untamed
Seahorse was "universally acclaimed"
(It sold three hundred copies in one year). (ll. 665-673)
As Kinbote (who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla) points out in his Commentary, the title of Shade’s book was taken from Browning’s poem My Last Duchess:
See Browning's My Last Duchess.
See it and condemn the fashionable device of entitling a collection of essays or a volume of poetry--or a long poem, alas--with a phrase lifted from a more or less celebrated poetical work of the past. Such titles possess a specious glamor acceptable maybe in the names of vintage wines and plump courtesans but only degrading in regard to the talent that substitutes the easy allusiveness of literacy for original fancy and shifts onto a bust's shoulders the responsibility for ornateness since anybody can flip through a Midsummer-Night's Dream or Romeo and Juliet, or, perhaps, the Sonnets and take his pick. (note to Lines 671-672)
At the end of Browning’s poem the Duke of Ferrara mentions Neptune taming a sea-horse:
‘Notice Neptune, though,
Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity,
Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me!’
A sea-horse resembles a chess knight. In a game of chess described by Shade in Canto Three of his poem one of the players says that his (or her) knight is pinned:
"What is that funny creaking - do you hear?"
"It is the shutter on the stairs, my dear."
"If you're not sleeping, let's turn on the light.
I hate that wind! Let's play some chess." "All right."
"I'm sure it's not the shutter. There - again."
"It is a tendril fingering the pane."
"What glided down the roof and made that thud?"
"It is old winter tumbling in the mud."
"And now what shall I do? My knight is pinned."
Who rides so late in the night and the wind?
It is the writer's grief. It is the wild
March wind. It is the father with his child. (ll. 653- 664)
In VN’s novel The Real Life of Sebastian Knight (1941) Sebastian Knight used to draw a small black chess knight to sign his stories. In Canto Four of his poem Shade mentions his second collection of poetry Night Rote, whose title seems to be a play on “Knight Wrote:”
Dim Gulf was my first book (free verse); Night Rote
Came next; then Hebe's Cup, my final float
In that damp carnival, for now I term
Everything "Poems," and no longer squirm.
(But this transparent thingum does require
Some moondrop title. Help me, Will! Pale Fire.) (ll. 957-962)
In his Commentary Kinbote writes:
I remember one little poem from Night Rote (meaning "the nocturnal sound of the sea") that happened to be my first contact with the American poet Shade. A young lecturer on American Literature, a brilliant and charming boy from Boston, showed me that slim and lovely volume in Onhava, in my student days. The following lines opening this poem, which is entitled "Art," pleased me by their catchy lilt and jarred upon the religious sentiments instilled in me by our very "high" Zemblan church.
From mammoth hunts and Odysseys
And Oriental charms
To the Italian goddesses
With Flemish babes in arms. (note to Line 957)
In The Dry Salvages (No. 3 of “The Four Quartets”) T. S. Eliot (whose name Kinbote reads backward: “toilest”) mentions not only “the distant rote in the granite teeth,” but also “a strong brown god—sullen, untamed and intractable:”
I do not know much about gods; but I think that the river
Is a strong brown god—sullen, untamed and intractable,
Patient to some degree, at first recognised as a frontier;
Useful, untrustworthy, as a conveyor of commerce;
Then only a problem confronting the builder of bridges.
According to Eliot, “the river is within us, the sea is all about us.” In his poem Kak okean ob’yemlet shar zemnoy… (“Just as the ocean embraces the globe,” 1830) Tyutchev mentions stikhiya (the waters) that beat in roaring waves against the shore:
Как океан объемлет шар земной,
Земная жизнь кругом объята снами;
Настанет ночь - и звучными волнами
Стихия бьет о берег свой.
То глас ее; он нудит нас и просит...
Уж в пристани волшебный ожил челн;
Прилив растет и быстро нас уносит
В неизмеримость темных волн.
Небесный свод, горящий славой звездной,
Таинственно глядит из глубины,-
И мы плывем, пылающею бездной
Со всех сторон окружены.
Just as the ocean cradles our earth's orb,
This earthly life's by dreams surrounded;
Night falls, against the shore
The waters beat in roaring waves.
This is its voice: it beckons us and calls . . .
The magic bark is stirring in its mooring;
The tide swells up and sweeps us rapidly away
Into the fathomless dark waves.
The heavenly vault, ablaze with glorious stars,
Gazes inscrutably out of the depths
And we sail on, surrounded on all sides
By the abyss in flames.
In stikhiya (element) there are stikhi (verses). Kon’ morskoy (“The Seahorse,” 1830) is a poem by Tyutchev. In the last stanza of his poem Vesennyaya groza (“The Spring Thunderstorm,” 1828) Tyutchev mentions vetrenaya Geba (capricious Hebe) who spilled on Earth a thunder-boiling goblet:
Ты скажешь: ветреная Геба,
Кормя Зевесова орла,
Громокипящий кубок с неба,
Смеясь, на землю пролила.
You’d say: capricious Hebe,
feeding Zeus’ eagle,
had spilled on Earth, laughing,
a thunder-boiling goblet.
Tyutchev's poem Silentium! (1833) brings to mind E. A. Poe's "Sonnet - Silence" (1829) in which sea and shore are mentioned. Shade borrowed the title of his first book, Dim Gulf, from E. A. Poe’s poem To One in Paradise (1843):
Ah, dream too bright to last!
Ah, starry Hope! that didst arise
But to be overcast!
A voice from out the Future cries,
“On! on!”—but o’er the Past
(Dim gulf!) my spirit hovering lies
Mute, motionless, aghast!
Starry Hope reminds one of "a small mad hope" nursed by Shade's poor daughter and of nadezhd razbitykh gruz (a load of broken hopes) mentioned by Lermontov in his poem Net, ya ne Bayron, ya drugoy… (“No, I’m not Byron, I’m another…” 1832):
Нет, я не Байрон, я другой,
Ещё неведомый избранник,
Как он, гонимый миром странник,
Но только с русскою душой.
Я раньше начал, кончу ране,
Мой ум немного совершит;
В душе моей, как в океане,
Надежд разбитых груз лежит.
Кто может, океан угрюмый,
Твои изведать тайны? Кто
Толпе мои расскажет думы?
Я — или Бог — или никто!
No, I'm not Byron, I’m another
yet unknown chosen man,
like him, a persecuted wanderer,
but only with a Russian soul.
I started sooner, I will end sooner,
my mind won’t achieve much;
in my soul, as in the ocean,
lies a load of broken hopes.
Gloomy ocean, who can
find out your secrets? Who
will tell to the crowd my thoughts?
Myself – or God – or none at all!
The last word in Lermontov’s poem is nikto (nobody). Nik. T-o was I. Annenski’s penname. One of the essays in Annenski’s Kniga otrazheniy (“The Book of Reflections,” 1906) is entitled Yumor Lermontova (“Lermontov’s Humor”). According to Kinbote, in a conversation with him Shade mentioned 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)
In his essay Problema Gamleta (“The Problem of Hamlet”) included in “The Second Book of Reflections” (1909) Annenski says that an artist’s envy is not like other people’s envy and compares Hamlet to Salieri (the envious composer in Pushkin’s little tragedy “Mozart and Salieri,” 1830):
Видите ли: зависть художника не совсем то, что наша...
Для художника это - болезненное сознание своей ограниченности и желание делать творческую жизнь свою как можно полнее. Истинный художник и завистлив и жаден... я слышу возражение - пушкинский Моцарт. - Да! Но ведь Гамлет не Сальери. Моцарта же Пушкин, как известно, изменил: его короткая жизнь была отнюдь не жизнью праздного гуляки, а сплошным творческим горением. Труд его был громаден, не результат труда, а именно труд.
In “Mozart and Salieri” (1830) Mozart uses the phrase nikto b (none would):
Когда бы все так чувствовали силу
Гармонии! Но нет: тогда б не мог
И мир существовать; никто б не стал
Заботиться о нуждах низкой жизни;
Все предались бы вольному искусству.
If all could feel like you the power
of harmony! But no: the world
could not go on then. None would
bother about the needs of lowly life;
All would surrender to free art. (Scene II)
Nikto b is Botkin (Shade’s, Kinbote’s and Gradus’ “real” name) in reverse. 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 of Kinbote’s Commentary). The characters in VN’s novel Dar (“The Gift,” 1937) include Alexander Yakovlevich Chernyshevski who went mad after the suicide of his son Yasha. Shade's conversations with Kinbote in Pale Fire bring to mind Fyodor's imaginary dialogues with Koncheyev (the rival poet) in "The Gift." In Zhizn’ Chernyshevskogo (“The Life of Chernyshevski”), Chapter Four of “The Gift,” Fyodor mentions Nadezhdin (a critic whom Pushkin called Nevezhdin, “Mr. Ignoramus”) and points out that Chernyshevski (a radical critic) repeated Count Vorontsov’s words about Pushkin:
Говоря, что Пушкин был «только слабым подражателем Байрона», Чернышевский чудовищно точно воспроизводил фразу графа Воронцова: «Слабый подражатель лорда Байрона». Излюбленная мысль Добролюбова, что «у Пушкина недостаток прочного, глубокого образования» – дружеское аукание с замечанием того же Воронцова: «Нельзя быть истинным поэтом, не работая постоянно для расширения своих познаний, а их у него недостаточно». «Для гения недостаточно смастерить Евгения Онегина», – писал Надеждин, сравнивая Пушкина с портным, изобретателем жилетных узоров, и заключая умственный союз с Уваровым, министром народного просвещения, сказавшим по случаю смерти Пушкина: «Писать стишки не значит ещё проходить великое поприще».
When Chernyshevski said that Pushkin was “only a poor imitator of Byron,” he reproduced with monstrous accuracy the definition given by Count Vorontsov (Pushkin’s boss in Odessa): “A poor imitator of Lord Byron.” Dobrolyubov’s favorite idea that “Pushkin lacked a solid, deep education” is in friendly chime with Vorontsov’s remark: “One cannot be a genuine poet without constantly working to broaden one’s knowledge, and his is insufficient.” “To be a genius it is not enough to have manufactured Eugene Onegin,” wrote the progressive Nadezhdin, comparing Pushkin to a tailor, an inventor of waistcoat patterns, and thus concluding an intellectual pact with the reactionary Count Uvarov, Minister of Education, who remarked on the occasion of Pushkin’s death: “To write jingles does not mean yet to achieve a great career.”
The surname Nadezhdin comes from nadezhda (hope). In his famous epigram (1824) on Vorontsov Pushkin mentions nadezhda:
Полу-милорд, полу-купец,
Полу-мудрец, полу-невежда,
Полу-подлец, но есть надежда,
Что будет полным наконец.
Half-milord, half-merchant,
Half-sage, half-ignoramus,
Half-scoundrel, but there is hope
That he will be a full one at last.
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, will be full at last.
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”). Dvoynik (“The Double”) is a short novel (1846) by Dostoevski and a poem (1909) by Alexander Blok. According to G. Ivanov, to his question “does a sonnet need a coda” Blok replied that he did not know what a coda is. In his fragment Rim (“Rome,” 1842) Gogol describes a carnival in Rome, mentions the Italian sonetto colla coda and in a footnote explains that in Italian poetry there is a kind of poem known as sonet s khvostom (sonnet with a tail, con la coda), when the idea cannot be expressed in fourteen lines and entails an appendix which is often longer than the sonnet itself:
В италиянской поэзии существует род стихотворенья, известного под именем сонета с хвостом (con la coda), когда мысль не вместилась и ведёт за собою прибавление, которое часто бывает длиннее самого сонета.
Not only Line 1001, but Kinbote's entire Foreword, Commentary and Index can thus be regarded as a coda of Shade's poem.
In his sonnet The Grave of Keats (1881) Oscar Wilde compares Keats (who died and was buried in Rome) to St. Sebastian:
RID of the world's injustice, and his pain,
He rests at last beneath God's veil of blue:
Taken from life when life and love were new
The youngest of the martyrs here is lain,
Fair as Sebastian, and as early slain.
No cypress shades his grave, no funeral yew,
But gentle violets weeping with the dew
Weave on his bones an ever-blossoming chain.
O proudest heart that broke for misery!
O sweetest lips since those of Mitylene!
O poet-painter of our English Land!
Thy name was writ in water----it shall stand:
And tears like mine will keep thy memory green,
As Isabella did her Basil-tree.
Keats' Ode on a Grecian Urn (1819) ends in the lines:
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."
E. A. Poe's story The Thousand-and-Second Tale of Scheherazade (1845) has for the epigraph an old saying: "truth is stranger than fiction." In E. A. Poe's story William Wilson (1839) the title character meets his double and namesake at a masquerade during the carnival in Rome:
It was at Rome, during the carnival of 18-- , that I attended a masquerade in the palazzo of the Neapolitan Duke Di Broglio. I had indulged more freely than usual in the excesses of the wine-table; and now the suffocating atmosphere of the crowded rooms irritated me beyond endurance. The difficulty, too, of forcing my way through the mazes of the company contributed not a little to the ruffling of my temper; for I was anxiously seeking, let me not say with what unworthy motive, the young, the gay, the beautiful wife of the aged and doting Di Broglio. With a too unscrupulous confidence she had previously communicated to me the secret of the costume in which she would be habited, and now, having caught a glimpse of her person, I was hurrying to make my way into her presence. At this moment I felt a light hand placed upon my shoulder, and that ever-remembered, low, damnable whisper within my ear.
William Wilson and his doppelgänger were born on the same date (January 19, Poe's own birthday). Shade's birthday, July 5, is also the birthday of Kinbote and Gradus (while Shade was born in 1898, Kinbote and Gradus were born in 1915).
At the end of Poe's story William Wilson kills his double:
Thus it appeared, I say, but was not. It was my antagonist -- it was Wilson, who then stood before me in the agonies of his dissolution. Not thread in all the raiment -- not a line in all the marked and singular lineaments of that face which was not, even identically, mine own! His mask and cloak lay where he had thrown them, upon the floor.
It was Wilson; but he spoke no longer in a whisper; and I could have fancied that I myself was speaking while he said --
"You have conquered, and I yield. Yet henceforward art thou also dead -- dead to the world and its hopes. In me didst thou exist -- and, in my death, see by this image, which is thine own, how utterly thou hast murdered thyself."
It seems that that the odd dark word employed by Kinbote's gardener with respect to Gradus is thou (see my recent post "odd dark word in PF"):
He had worked for two years as a male nurse in a hospital for Negroes in Maryland. He was hard up. He wanted to study landscaping, botany and French ("to read in the original Baudelaire and Dumas"). I promised him some financial assistance. He started to work at my place the very next day. He was awfully nice and pathetic, and all that, but a little too talkative and completely impotent which I found discouraging. Otherwise he was a strong strapping fellow, and I hugely enjoyed the aesthetic pleasure of watching him buoyantly struggle with earth and turf or delicately manipulate bulbs, or lay out the flagged path which may or may not be a nice surprise for my landlord, when he safely returns from England (where I hope no bloodthirsty maniacs are stalking him!). How I longed to have him (my gardener, not my landlord) wear a great big turban, and shalwars, and an ankle bracelet. I would certainly have him attired according to the old romanticist notion of a Moorish prince, had I been a northern king – or rather had I still been a king (exile becomes a bad habit). You will chide me, my modest man, for writing so much about you in this note, but I feel I must pay you this tribute. After all, you saved my life. You and I were the last people who saw John Shade alive, and you admitted afterwards to a strange premonition which made you interrupt your work as you noticed us from the shrubbery walking toward the porch where stood – (Superstitiously I cannot write out the odd dark word you employed.) (note to Line 998)