Vladimir Nabokov

Adam's apple & prickly pear in Pale Fire

By Alexey Sklyarenko, 21 November, 2020

In Canto Four of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) describes shaving and compares his Adam’s apple to a prickly pear:

 

Since my biographer may be too staid

Or know too little to affirm that Shade

Shaved in his bath, here goes: "He'd fixed a sort

Of hinge-and-screw affair, a steel support

Running across the tub to hold in place

The shaving mirror right before his face

And with his toe renewing tap-warmth, he'd

Sit like a king there, and like Marat bleed."

The more I weigh, the less secure my skin;

In places it's ridiculously thin;

Thus near the mouth: the space between its wick

And my grimace, invites the wicked nick.

Or this dewlap: some day I must set free

The Newport Frill inveterate in me.

My Adam's apple is a prickly pear:

Now I shall speak of evil and despair

As none has spoken. Five, six, seven, eight,

Nine strokes are not enough. Ten. I palpate

Through strawberry-and-cream the gory mess

And find unchanged that patch of prickliness. (ll. 887-906)

 

In his story Sovershenstvo (“Perfection,” 1932) VN mentions Ivanov’s large kadyk (Adam’s apple):

 

Он отправлялся около трех пополудни на урок к Давиду, развинченной, подпрыгивающей  походкой, подняв голову, глотая молодой воздух раннего лета, и перекатывался его  большой, уже за  утро оперившийся  кадык. Однажды юноша в крагах, шедший по другой стороне, тихим свистом подозвал его рассеянный взгляд, и подняв вверх подбородок прошел так несколько шагов: исправляю своеобразность ближнего. Но Иванов не понял этой назидательной мимики, и, думая, что ему указывают явление в  небе, доверчиво посмотрел еще выше, чем  обычно,-- и действительно: дружно держась за руки, там плыли наискось три прелестных облака; третье понемногу отстало,-- и его очертание и очертание руки, еще к нему протянутой, медленно утратили свое изящное значение.

 

He would set out for his lesson with David at around three in the afternoon, with a somewhat unhinged, bouncing gait, his head held high. He would inhale avidly the young air of the early summer, rolling his large Adam’s apple, which in the course of the morning had already fledged. On one occasion a youth in leather leggings attracted Ivanov’s absent gaze from the opposite sidewalk by means of a soft whistle, and, throwing up his own chin, kept it up for a distance of a few steps: thou shouldst correct thy fellow man’s oddities. Ivanov, however, misinterpreted that didactic mimicry and, assuming that something was being pointed out to him overhead, looked trustingly even higher than was his wont—and, indeed, three lovely cloudlets, holding each other by the hand, were drifting diagonally across the sky; the third one fell slowly behind, and its outline, and the outline of the friendly hand still stretched out to it, slowly lost their graceful significance.

 

The characters in VN’s novel Bend Sinister (1947) include the philosopher Adam Krug, his son David and his friend Ember (Shakespeare’s translator). In the Middle East, where the myth survives that Shakespeare was, in fact, an Arab, he is still sometimes fondly referred to as Sheikh al-Zubair, meaning Sheikh ‘Prickly Pear’ in Arabic.

 

David’s tutor, Ivanov (the main character in VN’s story “Perfection”) tries to convince himself that his pupil is perfect:

 

И всё же Давид был нежен. Его равнодушие к необычному объяснялось так: я сам, должно быть, казался трезвым и суховатым отроком, ибо ни с кем не делился своими мечтами, любовью, страхами. Моё детство произнесло свой  маленький, взволнованный монолог про себя. Можно построить такой силлогизм: ребёнок -- самый совершенный вид человека; Давид  -- ребёнок; Давид -- совершенен. С такими глазами нельзя только думать о стоимости различных  машин или о том, как набрать побольше купончиков  в  лавке, чтобы даром получить товару на полтинник. Он копит и другое,--  яркие детские впечатления, оставляющие свою краску на перстах души. Молчит об этом, как и я молчал. Когда же, в каком-нибудь 1970 году (они похожи на телефонные номера, эти цифры еще далеких годов), ему попадется картина,-- Бонзо, пожирающий теннисный мяч,-- которая висит сейчас в его спальне, он почувствует толчок, свет, изумление пред жизнью. Иванов не ошибался,-- глаза Давида и впрямь не лишены были некоторой дымки. Но это была дымка затаённого озорства.

 

And yet David was not untender. His indifference to the unusual could be explained – for I, too, reflected Ivanov, must have appeared to be a stolid and dryish lad, I who never shared with anyone my loves, my fancies and fears. All that my childhood expressed was an excited little monologue addressed to itself. One might construct the following syllogism: a child is the most perfect type of humanity; David is a child; David is perfect. With such adorable eyes as he has, a boy cannot possibly keep thinking only about the prices of various mechanical gadgets or about how to save enough trading stamps to obtain fifty pfennigs’ worth of free merchandise at the store. He must be saving up something else too: bright childish impressions whose paint remains on the fingertips of the mind. He keeps silent about it just as I kept silent. But if several decades later – say, in 1970 (how they resemble telephone numbers, those distant years!), he will happen to see again that picture now hanging above his bed – Bonzo devouring a tennis ball – what a jolt he will feel, what light, what amazement at his own existence. Ivanov was not entirely wrong, David’s eyes, indeed, were not devoid of a certain dreaminess; but it was the dreaminess of concealed mischief.

 

David is a marble statue of the Biblical hero David by Michelangelo. In Lacon; Or, Many Things in Few Words: Addressed to Those Who Think (1822) Charles Colton cites the following anecdote about Michelangelo:

 

That writer who aspires to immortality, should imitate the sculptor, if he would make the labours of the pen as durable as those of the chisel. Like the sculptor, he should arrive at ultimate perfection, not by what he adds, but by what he takes away; otherwise all his energy may be hidden in the superabundant mass of his matter, as the finished form of an Apollo, in the unworked solidity of the block. A friend called on Michael Angelo, who was finishing a statue; some time afterwards he called again; the sculptor was still at his work; his friend looking at the figure, exclaimed, you have been idle since I saw you last; by no means, replied the sculptor, I have retouched this part, and polished that; I have softened this feature, and brought out this muscle; I have given more expression to this lip, and more energy to this limb: Well, well, said his friend, but all these are trifles; it may be so, replied Angelo, but recollect that trifles make perfection, and that perfection is no trifle.

 

At the end of Pushkin’s little tragedy Mozart and Salieri (1830) Salieri mentions sozdatel’ Vatikana (the Vatican's creator, i. e. Michelangelo):

 

Сальери. Ты заснёшь
Надолго, Моцарт! Но ужель он прав,
И я не гений? Гений и злодейство
Две вещи несовместные. Неправда:
А Бонаротти? Или это сказка
Тупой, бессмысленной толпы — и не был
Убийцею создатель Ватикана?

 

Salieri. You will sleep
For long, Mozart! But what if he is right?
I am no genius? "Genius and evildoing
Are incompatibles." That is not true:
And Buonarotti?.. Or is it a legend
Of the dull-witted, senseless crowd -- while really
The Vatican's creator was no murderer? (scene II)

 

In Pushkin’s little tragedy 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. (ibid.)

 

The “real” name of Shade, Kinbote (Shade’s mad commentator who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla) and Gradus (Shade’s murderer) seems to be Botkin, nikto b in reverse.

 

The last day of Shade’s life has passed in a sustained low hum of harmony:

 

Gently the day has passed in a sustained

Low hum of harmony. The brain is drained

And a brown ament, and the noun I meant

To use but did not, dry on the cement.

Maybe my sensual love for the consonne

D'appui, Echo's fey child, is based upon

A feeling of fantastically planned,

Richly rhymed life. I feel I understand

Existence, or at least a minute part

Of my existence, only through my art,

In terms of combinational delight;

And if my private universe scans right,

So does the verse of galaxies divine

Which I suspect is an iambic line. (ll. 963-976)

 

In Pushkin’s little tragedy Mozart calls himself and Salieri “two sons of harmony:”

 

Моцарт

За твоё

Здоровье, друг, за искренний союз,

Связующий Моцарта и Сальери,

Двух сыновей гармонии.

(Пьёт.)

 

Mozart

To your health,
My friend, and to the loyal bond

that binds together Mozart and Salieri,

two sons of harmony. (Scene II)

 

In his Pushkin speech, O naznachenii poeta (“On a Poet’s Destination,” 1921), Alexander Blok says that a poet is a son of harmony and quotes Mozart’s words (attributing them to Salieri):

 

Что такое поэт? Человек, который пишет стихами? Нет, конечно. Он называется поэтом не потому, что он пишет стихами; но он пишет стихами, то есть приводит в гармонию слова и звуки, потому что он - сын гармонии, поэт.

 

What is a poet? A man who writes in verse? Of course, not. He is called a poet not because he writes in verse; but he writes in verse, that is he brings into harmony words and sounds, because he is a son of harmony, a poet.

 

Нельзя сопротивляться могуществу гармонии, внесённой в мир поэтом; борьба с нею превышает и личные и соединённые человеческие силы. "Когда бы все так чувствовали силу гармонии!" - томится одинокий Сальери. Но её чувствуют все, только смертные - иначе, чем бог - Моцарт. От знака, которым поэзия отмечает на лету, от имени, которое она даёт, когда это нужно, - никто не может уклониться, так же как от смерти. Это имя даётся безошибочно.

 

According to Blok, everybody feels the power of harmony, but mortals feel it differently than god (Mozart) does.

 

In yabloko (Russian for “apple”) there is Blok.