In his Commentary to Shade’s poem 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 Repburg, a landscaper of genius:
Line 49: shagbark
A hickory. Our poet shared with the English masters the noble knack of transplanting trees into verse with their sap and shade. Many years ago Disa, our King's Queen, whose favorite trees were the jacaranda and the maidenhair, copied out in her album a quatrain from John Shade's collection of short poems Hebe's Cup, which I cannot refrain from quoting here (from a letter I received on April 6, 1959, from southern France):
THE SACRED TREE
The gingko leaf, in golden hue, when shed,
A muscat grape,
Is an old-fashioned butterfly, ill-spread
In shape.
When the new Episcopal church in New Wye (see note to line 549) was built, the bulldozers spared an arc of those sacred trees planted by a landscaper of genius (Repburg) at the end of the so-called Shakespeare Avenue, on the campus. I do not know if it is relevant or not but there is a cat-and-mouse game in the second line, and "tree" in Zemblan is grados.
Repburg seems to blend Ilya Repin (1844-1930), a Russian realist painter, with Dirk van der Burg (1721-73), a Dutch landscape painter and watercolorist. In his essay Zametki perevodchika ("Translator's Notes," 1957) VN mentions khudozhnik Repin ("the painter Repin," instead of starik Derzhavin, "aged Derzhavin") who noticed us (an allusion to the well-known lines in Chapter Eight, II: 3-4, of Pushkin's Eugene Onegin):
Художник Репин нас заметил:
Александр Бенуа остроумно сравнивал фигуру молодого Пушкина на исключительно скверной картине "Лицейский экзамен" (репродукция которой переползает из издания в издание полных сочинений Пушкина) с Яворской в роли Орлёнка. За эту картину Общество им. Куинджи удостоило Репина золотой медали и 3000 рублей, - кажется, главным образом потому, что на Репина "нападали декаденты".
VN quotes Alexander Benois who wittily compared the figure of young Pushkin in Repin's painting "The Lyceum Examination" to Rostand's l'Aiglon as played by Lydia Yavorski. The surname Yavorski comes from yavor (obs., white maple tree, sycamore). At the beginning of his poem Lilith (1928) VN mentions yavory i stavni (the sycamores and shutters):
Я умер. Яворы и ставни
горячий теребил Эол
вдоль пыльной улицы. Я шёл,
и фавны шли, и в каждом фавне
я мнил, что Пана узнаю:
"Добро, я, кажется, в раю".
I died. The sycamores and shutters
along the dusty street were teased
by torrid Aeolus. I walked,
and fauns walked, and in every faun
god Pan I seemed to recognize:
Good. I must be in Paradise.
In his Commentary Kinbote mentions Arnor's sculpture Lilith Calling Back Adam:
Our Prince was fond of Fleur as of a sister but with no soft shadow of incest or secondary homosexual complications. She had a small pale face with prominent cheekbones, luminous eyes, and curly dark hair. It was rumored that after going about with a porcelain cup and Cinderella's slipper for months, the society sculptor and poet Arnor had found in her what he sought and had used her breasts and feet for his Lilith Calling Back Adam; but I am certainly no expert in these tender matters. Otar, her lover, said that when you walked behind her, and she knew you were walking behind her, the swing and play of those slim haunches was something intensely artistic, something Arab girls were taught in special schools by special Parisian panders who were afterwards strangled. Her fragile ankles, he said, which she placed very close together in her dainty and wavy walk, were the "careful jewels" in Arnor's poem about a miragarl ("mirage girl"), for which "a dream king in the sandy wastes of time would give three hundred camels and three fountains.
/ / / /
On sagaren werem tremkin tri stana
/ / / /
Verbalala wod gev ut tri phantana
(I have marked the stress accents.) (note to Line 80)
Queen Disa’s favorite lady-in-waiting, Fleur de Fyler has a sister Fifalda. As pointed out by Matt Roth, fifalda is Old English for “butterfly.” According to Shade, "the ginkgo leaf, in golden hue, when shed... is an old-fashioned butterfly, ill-spread in shape."
Dobro, ya, kazhetsya, v rayu (Good. I must be in Paradise), a line in VN’s poem Lilith, brings to mind Dobro, stroitel’ chudotvornyi (All right, you wondrous builder), a line Pushkin’s Mednyi vsadnik (“The Bronze Horseman,” 1833). The Bronze Horseman is Falconet’s equestrian statue of Peter the First in St. Petersburg. Describing Shade’s murder by Gradus, Kinbote compares himself to a stone king on a stone charger in the Tessera Square of Onhava (the capital of Zembla):
His first bullet ripped a sleeve button off my black blazer, another sang past my ear. It is evil piffle to assert that he aimed not at me (whom he had just seen in the library - let us be consistent, gentlemen, ours is a rational world after all), but at the gray-locked gentleman behind me. Oh, he was aiming at me all right but missing me every time, the incorrigible bungler, as I instinctively backed, bellowing and spreading my great strong arms (with my left hand still holding the poem, "still clutching the inviolable shade," to quote Matthew Arnold, 1822-1888), in an effort to halt the advancing madman and shield John, whom I feared he might, quite accidentally, hit, while he, my sweet, awkward old John, kept clawing at me and pulling me after him, back to the protection of his laurels, with the solemn fussiness of a poor lame boy trying to get his spastic brother out of the range of the stones hurled at them by schoolchildren, once a familiar sight in all countries. I felt - I still feel - John's hand fumbling at mine, seeking my fingertips, finding them, only to abandon them at once as if passing to me, in a sublime relay race, the baton of life.
One of the bullets that spared me struck him in the side and went through his heart. His presence behind me abruptly failing me caused me to lose my balance, and, simultaneously, to complete the farce of fate, my gardener's spade dealt gunman Jack from behind the hedge a tremendous blow on the pate, felling him and sending his weapon flying from his grasp. Our savior retrieved it and helped me to my feet. My coccyx and right wrist hurt badly but the poem was safe. John, though, lay prone on the ground, with a red spot on his white shirt. I still hoped he had not been killed. The madman sat on the porch step, dazedly nursing with bloody hands a bleeding head. Leaving the gardener to watch over him I hurried into the house and concealed the invaluable envelope under a heap of girls' galoshes, furred snowboots and white wellingtons heaped at the bottom of a closet, from which I exited as if it had been the end of the secret passage that had taken me all the way out of my enchanted castle and right from Zembla to this Arcady. I then dialed 11111 and returned with a glass of water to the scene of the carnage. The poor poet had now been turned over and lay with open dead eyes directed up at the sunny evening azure. The armed gardener and the battered killer were smoking side by side on the steps. The latter, either because he was in pain, or because he had decided to play a new role, ignored me as completely as if I were a stone king on a stone charger in the Tessera Square of Onhava; but the poem was safe. (note to Line 1000)
The name of Zemblan capital, Onhava seems to point at heaven. In his sonnet Shakespeare Matthew Arnold says that Shakespeare made the heaven of heavens his dwelling-place.
According to Kinbote, Gradus kills Shade by mistake. In his Eugene Onegin Commentary (note to Six: XXIX: 9) VN says that in Ilya Repin’s most famous and execrable picture of the Lenski-Onegin duel, in which everything, including the attitudes and positions of the combatants, is ludicrously wrong, Guillot [Onegin’s valet and second], whom a puny sliver does not screen, is in the line of Onegin’s fire and in danger of sharing the fate of a second who was shot in a bungled duel, on a Wednesday morning in November, on Bagshot Heath (as recorded by the Morning Chronicle, Nov. 26, 1821). It is doubtful that the “great” Russian painter had read Pushkin’s novel (although he certainly had seen the opera by the “great” composer) when he painted his Duel of Onegin with Lenski (1899). As in the opera, everything in the picture insults Pushkin’s masterpiece. The two duelists, two stolid dummies, stand stockstill, one foot thrust forward, la taille cambrée, pointing their dummy pistols at each other. Lenski is in the same pose as young Pushkin reading his verses to Derzhavin, in another ridiculous picture (1911) by the same painter. These ignoble daubs are lovingly reproduced in all illustrated editions of Pushkin’s works. (vol. III, p. 42)
Describing the famous Duel of the Four (Zavadovski & Griboedov vs. Sheremetev & Yakubovich) in his EO Commentary (vol. II, pp. 88-89), VN quotes Kaverin's words to Sheremetev (who was mortally wounded by Zavadovski): vot tebe i repka (that's the end of your little turnip). A diminutive of repa (turnip), repka brings to mind Repburg. Young Count Sheremetev was the protector of Dunyasha Istomina (the ballerina). In Chapter One (XX: 5-14) of EO Pushkin compares Istomina to the fluff flying from Eol's lips:
Блистательна, полувоздушна,
Смычку волшебному послушна,
Толпою нимф окружена,
Стоит Истомина; она,
Одной ногой касаясь пола,
Другою медленно кружит,
И вдруг прыжок, и вдруг летит,
Летит, как пух от уст Эола;
То стан совьёт, то разовьёт
И быстрой ножкой ножку бьёт.
Resplendent, half ethereal,
obedient to the magic bow,
surrounded by a throng of nymphs,
Istómina stands: she,
while touching with one foot the floor,
gyrates the other slowly,
and lo! a leap, and lo! she flies,
she flies like fluff from Eol's lips,
now twines and now untwines her waist
and beats one swift small foot against the other.
In Lilith the sycamores and shutters along the dusty street were teased by goryachiy Eol (torrid Aeolus). In Canto Three of his poem Shade describes IPH (a lay Institute of Preparation for the Hereafter) and mentions a widower's second love, with instep bare in ballerina black:
We give advice
To widower. He has been married twice:
He meets his wives; both loved, both loving, both
Jealous of one another. Time means growth,
And growth means nothing in Elysian life.
Fondling a changeless child, the flax-haired wife
Grieves on the brink of a remembered pond
Full of a dreamy sky. And, also blond,
But with a touch of tawny in the shade,
Feet up, knees clasped, on a stone balustrade
The other sits and raises a moist gaze
Toward the blue impenetrable haze.
How to begin? Which first to kiss? What toy
To give the babe? Does that small solemn boy
Know of the head-on crash which on a wild
March night killed both the mother and the child?
And she, the second love, with instep bare
In ballerina black, why does she wear
The earrings from the other's jewels case?
And why does she avert her fierce young face? (ll. 569-588)
The "real" name of both Sybil Shade (the poet's wife) and Queen Disa (the wife of Charles the Beloved) seems to be Sofia Botkin, born Lastochkin. Lastochki ("The Swallows," 1884) is a poem by Afanasiy Fet (who was married to Maria Botkin). On the other hand, at the end of his poem Lastochka ("The Swallow," 1794) Derzhavin compares his soul to a swallow and wonders if in the ethereal abyss he would ever see his deceased wife:
Душа моя! гостья ты мира:
Не ты ли перната сия? -
Воспой же бессмертие, лира!
Восстану, восстану и я, -
Восстану, - и в бездне эфира
Увижу ль тебя я, Пленира?
My soul! You are a guest of the world:
Isn't you this feathered creature?
So sing of immortality, my lyre!
I too, I too will arise,
I will arise and in the abyss of ether
Will I see you, my Plenyra?
One of the participants in the Duel of the Four was Griboedov. The characters in Griboedov's play in verse Gore ot uma ("Woe from Wit," 1824) include Sofia (Famusov's daughter with whom Chatski is in love) and Colonel Skalozub. The name Skalozub is an anagram of zuboskal (scoffer; mocker). A similar transposition of syllables in 'Kinbote' gives Botkine (the surname Botkin in French spelling). According to Skalozub, he was in His Highness’ Novozemlyansk regiment of musketeers:
Хлёстова (сидя)
Вы прежде были здесь… в полку… в том… гренадёрском?
Скалозуб (басом)
В Его Высочества, хотите вы сказать,
Новоземлянском мушкетёрском.
Хлёстова
Не мастерица я полки-та различать.
Скалозуб
А форменные есть отлички:
В мундирах выпушки, погончики, петлички.
Mme K h l y o s t o v (sitting)
You were here... in the regiment of . . . grenadiers?
S k a l o z u b (in a bass voice)
You mean, His Highness’ Novozemlyansk regiment of musketeers?
Mme K h l y o s t o v
I’m not skilled in distinguishing regiments.
S k a l o z u b
There is a difference in uniforms,
The shoulder loops, the tabs and shirts. (Act Three, scene 12)
According to Kinbote, Professor Pardon (American History) is confusing him with some refugee from Nova Zembla:
Professor Pardon now spoke to me: "I was under the impression that you were born in Russia, and that your name was a kind of anagram of Botkin or Botkine?"
Kinbote: "You are confusing me with some refugee from Nova Zembla” [sarcastically stressing the "Nova"]. (note to Line 894)
On a photograph found by Gerald Emerald the young Zemblan King wears a fancy uniform:
In the meantime, at the other end of the room, young Emerald had been communing with the bookshelves. At this point he returned with the the T-Z volume of an illustrated encyclopedia.
"Well," said he, "here he is, that king. But look, he is young and handsome" ("Oh, that won't do," wailed the German visitor.) "Young, handsome, and wearing a fancy uniform," continued Emerald. "Quite the fancy pansy, in fact."
"And you," I said quietly, "are a foul-minded pup in a cheap green jacket."
"But what have I said?" the young instructor inquired of the company, spreading out his palms like a disciple in Leonardo's Last Supper.
"Now, now," said Shade. "I'm sure, Charles, our young friend never intended to insult your sovereign and namesake."
"He could not, even if he had wished," I observed placidly, turning it all into a joke.
Gerald Emerald extended his hand - which at the moment of writing still remains in that position. (ibid.)
At the end of Zametki perevodchika II (“Translator’s Notes. Part Two,” 1957) VN mentions tysyacha i odno primechanie (a thousand and one notes):
Так скажут историк и словесник; но что может сказать бедный переводчик? «Симилар ту э уингед лили, балансинг энтерс Лалла Рух»? Всё потеряно, всё сорвано, все цветы и серёжки лежат в лужах — и я бы никогда не пустился в этот тусклый путь, если бы не был уверен, что внимательному чужеземцу всю солнечную сторону текста можно подробно объяснить в тысяче и одном примечании.
According to VN, he would have never attempted to translate Eugene Onegin into English, had he not been certain that to the attentive foreigner the entire sunny side of the text can be in detail explained in a thousand and one notes.
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. In Dostoevski’s novel The Idiot (1869) general Ivolgin mentions (the non-existent) Novozemlyansk regiment:
— Ещё бы! — вскричал генерал. — Суд разошёлся, ничего не решив. Дело невозможное! Дело даже, можно сказать, таинственное: умирает штабс-капитан Ларионов, ротный командир; князь на время назначается исправляющим должность; хорошо. Рядовой Колпаков совершает кражу, — сапожный товар у товарища, — и пропивает его; хорошо. Князь, — и заметьте себе, это было в присутствии фельдфебеля и капрального, — распекает Колпакова и грозит ему розгами. Очень хорошо. Колпаков идёт в казармы, ложится на нары и через четверть часа умирает. Прекрасно, но случай неожиданный, почти невозможный. Так или этак, а Колпакова хоронят; князь рапортует, и затем Колпакова исключают из списков. Кажется чего бы лучше? Но ровно через полгода, на бригадном смотру, рядовой Колпаков, как ни в чём ни бывало, оказывается в третьей роте второго баталиона Новоземлянского пехотного полка, той же бригады и той же дивизии!
"I should think so indeed!" cried the latter. "The court-martial came to no decision. It was a mysterious, an impossible business, one might say! Captain Larionov, commander of the company, had died; his command was handed over to the prince for the moment. Very well. This soldier, Kolpakov, stole some leather from one of his comrades, intending to sell it, and spent the money on drink. Well! The prince—you understand that what follows took place in the presence of the sergeant-major, and a corporal—the prince rated Kolpakov soundly, and threatened to have him flogged. Well, Kolpakov went back to the barracks, lay down on a camp bedstead, and in a quarter of an hour was dead: you quite understand? It was, as I said, a strange, almost impossible, affair. In due course Kolpakov was buried; the prince wrote his report, the deceased's name was removed from the roll. All as it should be, is it not? But exactly three months later at the inspection of the brigade, the man Kolpakov was found in the third company of the second battalion of infantry, Novozemlyanski division, just as if nothing had happened!" (Part One, chapter VIII)
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 mentions sonetto colla coda and in a footnote explains that in Italian poetry there is a kind of poem known as “sonnet with the tail” (con la coda), when the idea cannot not be expressed in fourteen lines and entails an appendix that can be 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.
Like Repin (the author of Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks to Sultan Mehmed IV of the Ottoman Empire), Gogol (the author of Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka, 1832) was born in Ukraine. Living in Rome, Gogol (a friend of Alexander Ivanov, the author of The Appearence of Christ Before the People) met many Russian painters.