When Charles the Beloved (the last self-exiled King of Zembla) visits his wife, Queen Disa, at her Mediterranean villa, he brings her a bouquet of flowers-of-the-gods:
Eventually he managed to inform her that he was confined to the palace. Valiant Disa hurriedly left the Riviera and made a romantic but fortunately ineffectual attempt to return to Zembla. Had she been permitted to land, she would have been forthwith incarcerated, which would have reacted on the King's flight, doubling the difficulties of escape. A message from the Karlists containing these simple considerations checked her progress in Stockholm, and she flew back to her perch in a mood of frustration and fury (mainly, I think, because the message had been conveyed to her by a cousin of hers, good old Curdy Buff, whom she loathed). Several weeks passed and she was soon in a state of even worse agitation owing to rumors that her husband might be condemned to death. She left Cap Turc again. She had traveled to Brussels and chartered a plane to fly north, when another message, this time from Odon, came, saying that the King and he were out of Zembla, and that she should quietly regain Villa Disa and await there further news. In the autumn of the same year she was informed by Lavender that a man representing her husband would be coining to discuss with her certain business matters concerning property she and her husband jointly owned abroad. She was in the act of writing on the terrace under the jacaranda a disconsolate letter to Lavender when the tall, sheared and bearded visitor with the bouquet of flowers-of-the-gods who had been watching her from afar advanced through the garlands of shade. She looked up – and of course no dark spectacles and no make-up could for a moment fool her. (note to Lines 433-434)
In her Russian translation of Pale Fire Vera Nabokov renders “flowers-of-the-gods” as orkhidei Disa uniflora (orchids Disa uniflora). This species is occasionally referred to by its old name Disa grandiflora. In Pushkin’s story Pikovaya dama (“The Queen of Spades,” 1833) Hermann imagines the three as a magnificent grandiflora:
Две неподвижные идеи не могут вместе существовать в нравственно природе, так же, как два тела не могут в физическом мире занимать одно и то же место. Тройка, семёрка, туз - скоро заслонили в воображении Германна образ мёртвой старухи. Тройка, семёрка, туз - не выходили из его головы и шевелились на его губах. Увидев молодую девушку, он говорил: "Как она стройна!.. Настоящая тройка червонная". У него спрашивали: "который час", он отвечал: "без пяти минут семёрка". Всякий пузатый мужчина напоминал ему туза. Тройка, семёрка, туз - преследовали его во сне, принимая все возможные виды: тройка цвела перед ним в образе пышного грандифлора, семёрка представлялась готическими воротами, туз огромным пауком. Все мысли его слились в одну, - воспользоваться тайной, которая дорого ему стоила. Он стал думать об отставке и о путешествии. Он хотел в открытых игрецких домах Парижа вынудить клад у очарованной фортуны. Случай избавил его от хлопот.
Two fixed ideas are not able to exist together in the spiritual world, just as two bodies in the physical world are not able to occupy the same space. The three, seven and ace soon obscured the image of the dead old woman in the imagination of Hermann. The three, seven and ace - they did not leave his head or move from his lips. On seeing a young woman, he would say: "How elegant she is!... Just like the three of hearts". If he was asked: "what is the time", he would reply: "five minutes to seven". Each fat bellied man reminded him of the ace. The three, seven and ace pursued him in his sleep, taking all possible forms. The three bloomed in front of him in the image of a magnificent grandiflora, the seven appeared as a Gothic archway, the ace as a huge spider. All his thoughts united on one thing, - to take advantage of the secret which had cost him so dearly. He started to think about retirement and travel. He wanted in the public gaming houses of Paris to extort his treasure from enchanted fortune. Chance delivered him from his troubles. (Chapter 6)
A question Hermann was asked, kotoryi chas (“what is the time”), brings to mind kot or (“what is the time” in Zemblan):
A handshake, a flash of lightning. As the King waded into the damp, dark bracken, its odor, its lacy resilience, and the mixture of soft growth and steep ground reminded him of the times he had picnicked hereabouts - in another part of the forest but on the same mountainside, and higher up, as a boy, on the boulderfield where Mr. Campbell had once twisted an ankle and had to be carried down, smoking his pipe, by two husky attendants. Rather dull memories, on the whole. Wasn't there a hunting box nearby - just beyond Silfhar Falls? Good capercaillie and woodcock shooting - a sport much enjoyed by his late mother, Queen Blenda, a tweedy and horsy queen. Now as then, the rain seethed in the black trees, and if you paused you heard your heart thumping, and the distant roar of the torrent. What is the time, kot or? He pressed his repeater and, undismayed, it hissed and tinkled out ten twenty-one. (note to Line 149)
Bez pyati minut semyorka (five minutes to seven), Hermann’s reply to the question “what is the time,” reminds one of Semyorka (Seven), a character in Anya v strane chudes (1923), VN's Russian version of Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865):
- Будь осторожнее, Пятёрка! Ты меня всего обрызгиваешь краской.
- Я нечаянно, - ответил Пятёрка кислым голосом. - Меня под локоть толкнул Семёрка.
Семёрка поднял голову и пробормотал:
- Так, так, Пятёрка! Всегда сваливай вину на другого.
- Ты уж лучше молчи, - сказал Пятёрка. - Я ещё вчера слышал, как Королева говорила, что недурно было бы тебя обезглавить. (Глава 8. Королева играет в крокет)
'Look out now, Five! Don't go splashing paint over me like that!'
'I couldn't help it,' said Five, in a sulky tone; 'Seven jogged my elbow.'
On which Seven looked up and said, 'That's right, Five! Always lay the blame on others!'
'You'd better not talk!' said Five. 'I heard the Queen say only yesterday you deserved to be beheaded!' (Chapter VIII. The Queen's Croquet-Ground)
VN is the author of Korol', dama, valet ("King, Queen, Knave," 1928) and Priglashenie na kazn' ("Invitation to a Beheading," 1935). In VN's novel Ada (1969) Van tells Ada that playing croquet with her should be rather like using flamingoes and hedgehogs:
A pointer of sunlight daubed with greener paint a long green box where croquet implements were kept; but the balls had been rolled down the hill by some rowdy children, the little Erminins, who were now Van's age and had grown very nice and quiet.
'As we all are at that age,' said Van and stooped to pick up a curved tortoiseshell comb - the kind that girls use to hold up their hair behind; he had seen one, exactly like that, quite recently, but when, in whose hairdo?
'One of the maids,' said Ada. 'That tattered chapbook must also belong to her, Les Amours du Docteur Mertvago, a mystical romance by a pastor.'
'Playing croquet with you,' said Van, 'should be rather like using flamingoes and hedgehogs.'
'Our reading lists do not match,' replied Ada. 'That Palace in Wonderland was to me the kind of book everybody so often promised me I would adore, that I developed an insurmountable prejudice toward it.'
Have you read any of Mlle Larivière’s stories? Well, you will. She thinks that in some former Hindooish state she was a boulevardier in Paris; and writes accordingly. We can squirm from here into the front hall by a secret passage, but I think we are supposed to go and look at the grand chêne which is really an elm.’ Did he like elms? Did he know Joyce’s poem about the two washerwomen? He did, indeed. Did he like it? He did. In fact he was beginning to like very much arbors and ardors and Adas. They rhymed. Should he mention it? (1.8)
Darkbloom ('Notes to Ada'): Les amours du Dr Mertvago: play on ‘Zhivago’ (‘zhiv’ means in Russian ‘alive’ and ‘mertv’ dead).
grand chêne: big oak.
Charles the Beloved escapes from the palace by a secret passage. The surname Erminin (of the twins Greg and Grace) hints at Erminia, a character in Torquato Tasso's La Gerusalemme liberata (“Jerusalem Delivered,” 1581) and the nickname of Pushkin's friend Eliza Khitrovo (Kutuzov’s daughter). Umirayushiy Tass ("The Dying Tasso," 1817) is an elegy by Batyushkov. In Mandelshtam's poem Net, ne luna, a svetlyi tsiferblat… (No, not the moon, but a bright dial," 1912) mad Batyushkov to the question kotoryi chas replies vechnost' (eternity):
Нет, не луна, а светлый циферблат
Сияет мне, - и чем я виноват,
Что слабых звёзд я осязаю млечность?
И Батюшкова мне противна спесь:
Который час, его спросили здесь,
А он ответил любопытным: вечность!
No, not the moon, but a clock's dial lit brightly
Shines upon me; must the blame be mine to bear
If I detect the weakest stars' lacticity?
Thus, Batyushkov's airs cannot fail to rile me:
"What is the time, please, Sir?" they asked him here,
And he replied to the curious: "Eternity!"
(transl. Philip Nikolayev)
In Chapter One (XLVIII: 14) of Eugene Onegin Pushkin mentions napev torkvatovykh oktav (the strain of Torquato’s octaves):
С душою, полной сожалений,
И опершися на гранит,
Стоял задумчиво Евгений,
Как описал себя пиит.
Всё было тихо; лишь ночные
Перекликались часовые,
Да дрожек отдаленный стук
С Мильонной раздавался вдруг;
Лишь лодка, вёслами махая,
Плыла по дремлющей реке:
И нас пленяли вдалеке
Рожок и песня удалая...
Но слаще, средь ночных забав,
Напев Торкватовых октав!
With soul full of regrets,
and leaning on the granite,
Eugene stood pensive―
as his own self the Poet has described.
’Twas stillness all; only the night
sentries to one another called,
and the far clip-clop of some droshky
from the Mil’onnaya resounded all at once;
only a boat, oars swinging,
swam on the dozing river,
and, in the distance, captivated us
a horn and a daredevil song.
But, sweeter ’mid the pastimes of the night
is the strain of Torquato’s octaves.
The strain of Torquato’s octaves brings to mind "torquated beauty" mentioned by Shade in Canto One of his poem:
And then the gradual and dual blue
As night unites the viewer and the view,
And in the morning, diamonds of frost
Express amazement: Whose spurred feet have crossed
From left to right the blank page of the road?
Reading from left to right in winter's code:
A dot, an arrow pointing back; repeat:
Dot, arrow pointing back... A pheasant's feet!
Torquated beauty, sublimated grouse,
Finding your China right behind my house.
Was he in Sherlock Holmes, the fellow whose
Tracks pointed back when he reversed his shoes? (ll. 17-28)
In his note to Line 27 Kinbote (Shade’s mad commentator who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla) writes:
A hawk-nosed, lanky, rather likable private detective, the main character in various stories by Conan Doyle. I have no means to ascertain at the present time which of these is referred to here but suspect that our poet simply made up this Case of the Reversed Footprints.
In VN's novel Otchayanie ("Despair," 1934) Hermann mentions Conan Doyle:
Поговорим о преступлениях, об искусстве преступления, о карточных фокусах, я очень сейчас возбужден. Конан Дойль! Как чудесно ты мог завершить свое творение, когда надоели тебе герои твои! Какую возможность, какую тему ты профукал! Ведь ты мог написать еще один последний рассказ – заключение всей Шерлоковой эпопеи, эпизод, венчающий все предыдущие: убийцей в нем должен был бы оказаться не одноногий бухгалтер, не китаец Чинг и не женщина в красном, а сам Пимен всей криминальной летописи, сам доктор Ватсон, – чтобы Ватсон был бы, так сказать, виноватсон… Безмерное удивление читателя! Да что Дойль, Достоевский, Леблан, Уоллес, что все великие романисты, писавшие о ловких преступниках, что все великие преступники, не читавшие ловких романистов! Все они невежды по сравнению со мной. Как бывает с гениальными изобретателями, мне, конечно, помог случай (встреча с Феликсом), но этот случай попал как раз в формочку, которую я для него уготовил, этот случай я заметил и использовал, чего другой на моем месте не сделал бы. Мое создание похоже на пасьянс, составленный наперед: я разложил открытые карты так, чтобы он выходил наверняка, собрал их в обратном порядке, дал приготовленную колоду другим, – пожалуйста, разложите, – ручаюсь, что выйдет! Ошибка моих бесчисленных предтечей состояла в том, что они рассматривали самый акт как главное и уделяли больше внимания тому, как потом замести следы, нежели тому, как наиболее естественно довести дело до этого самого акта, ибо он только одно звено, одна деталь, одна строка, он должен естественно вытекать из всего предыдущего, – таково свойство всех искусств. Если правильно задумано и выполнено дело, сила искусства такова, что, явись преступник на другой день с повинной, ему бы никто не поверил, – настолько вымысел искусства правдивее жизненной правды.
Let us discuss crime, crime as an art; and card tricks. I am greatly worked up just at present. Oh, Conan Doyle! How marvelously you could have crowned your creation when your two heroes began boring you! What an opportunity, what a subject you missed! For you could have written one last tale concluding the whole Sherlock Holmes epic; one last episode beautifully setting off the rest: the murderer in that tale should have turned out to be not the one-legged bookkeeper, not the Chinaman Ching and not the woman in crimson, but the very chronicler of the crime stories, Dr. Watson himself--Watson, who, so to speak, knew what was Whatson. A staggering surprise for the reader.
But what are they--Doyle, Dostoevsky, Leblanc, Wallace--what are all the great novelists who wrote of nimble criminals, what are all the great criminals who never read the nimble novelists--what are they in comparison with me? Blundering fools! As in the case of inventive geniuses, I was certainly helped by chance (my meeting Felix), but that piece of luck fitted exactly into the place I had made for it; I pounced upon it and used it, which another in my position would not have done.
My accomplishment resembles a game of patience, arranged beforehand; first I put down the open cards in such a manner as to make its success a dead certainty; then I gathered them up in the opposite order and gave the prepared pack to others with the perfect assurance it would come out.
The mistake of my innumerable forerunners consisted of their laying principal stress upon the act itself and in their attaching more importance to a subsequent removal of all traces, than to the most natural way of leading up to that same act which is really but a link in the chain, one detail, one line in the book, and must be logically derived from all previous matter; such being the nature of every art. If the deed is planned and performed correctly, then the force of creative art is such, that were the criminal to give himself up on the very next morning, none would believe him, the invention of art containing far more intrinsical truth than life's reality. (Chapter Seven)
In "Despair" Hermann kills Felix, a tramp whom Hermann believes to be his perfect double. 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 (1904) by Nik. T-o (I. Annenski’s penname). In Pushkin's little tragedy “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 with 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 and brings to mind The Case of Reversed Footprints. According to Kinbote (the author of a book on surnames), Botkin is the 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)
Kinbote's Scottish tutor is Mr. Campbell (who had once twisted an ankle on the boulderfield and had to be carried down, smoking his pipe, by two husky attendants).