At the end of his poem (and life) John Shade (the poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) says that he understands existence only through his art:
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.
I'm reasonably sure that we survive
And that my darling somewhere is alive,
As I am reasonably sure that I
Shall wake at six tomorrow, on July
The twenty-second, nineteen fifty-nine,
And that they day will probably be fine;
So this alarm clock let me set myself,
Yawn, and put back Shade's "Poems" on their shelf. (ll. 967-984)
At the end of his Commentary Kinbote (Shade’s mad commentator who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla) says that he will continue to exist and mentions his art:
"And you, what will you be doing with yourself, poor King, poor Kinbote?" a gentle young voice may inquire.
God will help me, I trust, to rid myself of any desire to follow the example of the other two characters in this work. I shall continue to exist. I may assume other disguises, other forms, but I shall try to exist. I may turn up yet, on another campus, as an old, happy, healthy heterosexual Russian, a writer in exile, sans fame, sans future, sans audience, sans anything but his art. I may join forces with Odon in a new motion picture: Escape from Zembla (ball in the palace, bomb in the palace square). I may pander to the simple tastes of theatrical critics and cook up a stage play, an old-fashioned melodrama with three principles: a lunatic who intends to kill an imaginary king, another lunatic who imagines himself to be that king, and a distinguished old poet who stumbles by chance into the line of fire, and perishes in the clash between the two figments. Oh, I may do many things! History permitting, I may sail back to my recovered kingdom, and with a great sob greet the gray coastline and the gleam of a roof in the rain. I may huddle and groan in a madhouse. But whatever happens, wherever the scene is laid, somebody, somewhere, will quietly set out--somebody has already set out, somebody still rather far away is buying a ticket, is boarding a bus, a ship, a plane, has landed, is walking toward a million photographers, and presently he will ring at my door--a bigger, more respectable, more competent Gradus. (note to Line 1000)
In his poem Kol’tso sushchestvovan’ya tesno (“The ring of existence is tight…” 1909) Alexander Blok quotes the saying “all roads lead to Rome:”
Кольцо существованья тесно:
Как все пути приводят в Рим,
Так нам заранее известно,
Что всё мы рабски повторим.
И мне, как всем, всё тот же жребий
Мерещится в грядущей мгле:
Опять — любить Её на небе
И изменить ей на земле.
The ring of existence is tight:
just as all roads lead to Rome,
thus we know beforehand
that we shall slavishly repeat everything.
And I, like everybody, see the same lot
shimmer in the future mist:
again – to love her in heaven
and be unfaithful to her on earth.
Note the consonne d'appui (intrusive consonant) in the rhyme Rim - povtorim (Rome - [we'll] repeat). The saying omnes viae Romam ducunt (all roads lead to Rome) quoted by Blok in his poem brings to mind the proverbial words in Ovid’s Metamorphoses (XV, 165): Omnes mutantur, nihil interit (everything changes, nothing vanishes). According to Kinbote, he may assume other disguises, other forms, but he will try to exist.
In his poem Pod znoem florentiyskoy leni (“Under the heat of the Florentine idleness”) from the cycle Ital’yanskie stikhi (“The Italian Verses,” 1909) Blok says that only in a light boat of art one can sail away from the boredom of the world:
Под зноем флорентийской лени
Ещё беднее чувством ты:
Молчат церковные ступени,
Цветут нерадостно цветы.
Так береги остаток чувства,
Храни хоть творческую ложь:
Лишь в лёгком челноке искусства
От скуки мира уплывёшь.
Under the heat of the Florentine idleness
you are even poorer with feeling:
the church steps are silent,
the flowers are in a joyless bloom.
So take care of the remnant of feeling,
keep at least the creative lie:
only in a light boat of art
you can sail away from the boredom of the world.
Shade’s poem is almost finished when the author is killed by dull 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,” 1846) is a short novel by Dostoevski and a poem (1909) by Blok. In his memoirs Peterburgskie zimy (“The St. Petersburg Winters”) G. Ivanov describes his first visit to Blok in the fall of 1909 and says that, to his question "does a sonnet need a coda," Blok replied that he did not know what a coda is:
Зачем Блок писал длинные письма или вёл долгие разговоры со мной, желторотым подростком, с вечными вопросами о технике поэзии на языке? Время от времени какой-нибудь такой вопрос с моего языка срывался.
— Александр Александрович, нужна ли кода к сонету? — спросил я как-то. К моему изумлению, Блок, знаменитый «мэтр», вообще не знал, что такое кода…
G. Ivanov quotes an entry in Blok’s diary:
В дневнике Блока 1909 г. есть запись: "говорил с Георгием Ивановым о Платоне. Он ушёл от меня другим человеком". В этой записи, быть может, объяснение и писем и разговоров. Должно быть, Блок не замечал моего возраста и не слушал моих наивных реплик. Должно быть, он говорил не столько со мной, сколько с самим собой. Случай — я был перед ним, в его орбите, — и он посылал мне свои туманные лучи, почти не видя меня.
“I talked with Georgiy Ivanov about Plato. When he left me, he was a different man.”
In his fragment Rim (“Rome,” 1842) Gogol describes a carnival in Rome, mentions sonetto colla coda and in a footnote explains that in Italian poetry there is a kind of poem known as “a sonnet with the tail” (con la coda), when the idea cannot not 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.
In his Foreword to N. V. Gogol. Povesti (“Tales,” NY, the Chekhov Publishing House, 1952) VN mentions Blok and his poem Nochnaya Fialka ("The Night Violet," 1906):
От скромной фиалки на дне чичиковской табакерки до "Ночной Фиалки" Блока один лишь шаг - по животворной, чмокающей мочежине (с которой, между прочим, немало перешло и в толстовский ягдташ).
From the modest violet at the bottom of Chichikov's snuff-box it is but one step - on the life-giving, smacking moss bog (which, incidentally, yielded a lot to Tolstoy's Jagdtasche) - to Blok's Night Violet.
Blok's poem Noch'. Ulitsa. Fonar'. Apteka ("Night, street, lamp, drugstore," 1912) brings to mind the Latin saying (quoted by Professor Serebryakov in Chekhov's play "Uncle Vanya," 1898) omnes una manet nox ("one night awaits everyone," from Horace's Odes). At end of his brief note to Oswin Bretwit (Zemblan former consul in Paris who is visited by Gradus) Baron B. quotes the Latin proverb verba volant, scripta manent (spoken words fly away, written words remain):
Here are some precious papers belonging to your family. I cannot do better than place them in the hands of the son of the great man who was my fellow student in Heidelberg and my teacher in the diplomatic service. Verba volant, scripta manent. (note to Line 286)
The characters in VN's novel Ada (1969) include Violet Knox, old Van's typist who marries Mr. Ronald Oranger (old Van's secretary, the editor of Ada) after Van's and Ada's death. Ada's birthday, July 21, is the day of Shade's death. At the end of their long lives (even on the last day of their lives) Van and Ada translate a passage from Shade's poem into Russian:
She insisted that if there were no future, then one had the right of making up a future, and in that case one’s very own future did exist, insofar as one existed oneself. Eighty years quickly passed — a matter of changing a slide in a magic lantern. They had spent most of the morning reworking their translation of a passage (lines 569-572) in John Shade’s famous poem:
...Sovetï mï dayom
Kak bït’ vdovtsu: on poteryal dvuh zhyon;
On ih vstrechaet — lyubyashchih, lyubimïh,
Revnuyushchih ego drug k druzhke...
(...We give advice
To widower. He has been married twice:
He meets his wives, both loved, both loving, both
Jealous of one another...)
Van pointed out that here was the rub — one is free to imagine any type of hereafter, of course: the generalized paradise promised by Oriental prophets and poets, or an individual combination; but the work of fancy is handicapped — to a quite hopeless extent — by a logical ban: you cannot bring your friends along — or your enemies for that matter — to the party. The transposition of all our remembered relationships into an Elysian life inevitably turns it into a second-rate continuation of our marvelous mortality. Only a Chinaman or a retarded child can imagine being met, in that Next-Installment World, to the accompaniment of all sorts of tail-wagging and groveling of welcome, by the mosquito executed eighty years ago upon one’s bare leg, which has been amputated since then and now, in the wake of the gesticulating mosquito, comes back, stomp, stomp, stomp, here I am, stick me on. (5.6)
Despite his promise to continue to exist, Kinbote commits suicide immediately after completing his work on Shade's poem (on Oct. 19, 1959, the anniversary of Pushkin's lyceum). There is a hope that, after Kinbote's death, Botkin (Shade's, Kinbote's and Gradus' "real" name), like Count Vorontsov (a target of Pushkin’s epigrams, “half-milord, half-merchant, etc.”), will be full again. In his diary (the entry of Aug. 30, 1918) Blok mentions dvoyniki (the dopplegangers) whom he conjured up in 1901 (when he courted Lyubov Mendeleev, his future wife), drugoe ya (alter ego) and Botkinskiy period (the Botkin period) of his life:
К ноябрю началось явное моё колдовство, ибо я вызвал двойников ("Зарево белое...", "Ты - другая, немая...").
Любовь Дмитриевна ходила на уроки к М. М. Читау, я же ждал её выхода, следил за ней и иногда провожал её до Забалканского с Гагаринской - Литейной (конец ноября, начало декабря). Чаще, чем со мной, она встречалась с кем-то - кого не видела и о котором я знал.
Появился мороз, "мятель", "неотвязный" и царица, звенящая дверь, два старца, "отрава" (непосланных цветов), свершающий и пользующийся плодами свершений ("другое я"), кто-то "смеющийся и нежный". Так кончился 1901 год.
Тут - Боткинский период.
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's "real" name). Blok's poem Okna vo dvor ("The Windows onto the Courtyard," 1906) begins with the line Odna mne ostalas' nadezhda ("One hope is left to me"):
Одна мне осталась надежда:
Смотреться в колодезь двора.
Светает. Белеет одежда
В рассеянном свете утра....
One hope is left to me:
to look into the well of the courtyard.
It dawns. The clothes turn white
in the diffused light of the morning....
The poem's first word, odna is feminine gender of odin (one). Odon (with whom Kinbote may join forces in a new motion picture: Escape from Zembla) is an anagram of odno (neut. of odin). In Eugene Onegin (Two: XIV: 5-7) Pushkin mentions the millions of two-legged creatures who for us are orudie odno (only tools):
Но дружбы нет и той меж нами.
Все предрассудки истребя,
Мы почитаем всех нулями,
А единицами - себя.
Мы все глядим в Наполеоны;
Двуногих тварей миллионы
Для нас орудие одно;
Нам чувство дико и смешно.
Сноснее многих был Евгений;
Хоть он людей, конечно, знал
И вообще их презирал, -
Но (правил нет без исключений)
Иных он очень отличал
И вчуже чувство уважал.
But in our midst there’s even no such friendship:
Having destroyed all the prejudices,
We deem all people naughts
And ourselves units.
We all expect to be Napoleons;
the millions of two-legged creatures
for us are only tools;
feeling to us is weird and ludicrous.
More tolerant than many was Eugene,
though he, of course, knew men
and on the whole despised them;
but no rules are without exceptions:
some people he distinguished greatly
and, though estranged from it, respected feeling.
The millions of two-legged creatures bring to mind a million photographers mentioned by Kinbote at the end of his Commentary.