Describing the forty days between Queen Blenda's death and his coronation, 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 an old psychiatrist so thoroughly bribed by Countess de Fyler as to look, even on the outside, like a putrid pear:
The forty days between Queen Blenda's death and his coronation was perhaps the most trying stretch of time in his life. He had had no love for his mother, and the hopeless and helpless remorse he now felt degenerated into a sickly physical fear of her phantom. The Countess, who seemed to be near him, to be rustling at his side, all the time, had him attend table-turning séances with an experienced American medium, séances at which the Queen's spirit, operating the same kind of planchette she had used in her lifetime to chat with Thormodus Torfaeus and A. R. Wallace, now briskly wrote in English: "Charles take take cherish love flower flower flower." An old psychiatrist so thoroughly bribed by the Countess as to look, even on the outside, like a putrid pear, assured him that his vices had subconsciously killed his mother and would continue "to kill her in him" if he did not renounce sodomy. A palace intrigue is a special spider that entangles you more nastily at every desperate jerk you try. Our Prince was young, inexperienced, and half-frenzied with insomnia. He hardly struggled at all. The Countess spent a fortune on buying his kamergrum (groom of the chamber), his bodyguard, and even the greater part of the Court Chamberlain. She took to sleeping in a small antechamber next to his bachelor bedroom, a splendid spacious circular apartment at the top of the high and massive South West Tower. This had been his father's retreat and was still connected by a jolly chute in the wall with a round swimming pool in the hall below, so that the young Prince could start the day as his father used to start it by slipping open a panel beside his army cot and rolling into the shaft whence he whizzed down straight into bright water. For other needs than sleep Charles Xavier had installed in the middle of the Persian rug-covered floor a so-called patifolia, that is, a huge, oval, luxuriously flounced, swansdown pillow the size of a triple bed. It was in this ample nest that Fleur now slept, curled up in its central hollow, under a coverlet of genuine giant panda fur that had just been rushed from Tibet by a group of Asiatic well-wishers on the occasion of his ascension to the throne. The antechamber, where the Countess was ensconced, had its own inner staircase and bathroom, but also communicated by means of a sliding door with the West Gallery. I do not know what advice or command her mother had given Fleur; but the little thing proved a poor seducer. She kept trying, as one quietly insane, to mend a broken viola d'amore or sat in dolorous attitudes comparing two ancient flutes, both sad-tuned and feeble. Meantime, in Turkish garb, he lolled in his father's ample chair, his legs over its arm, flipping through a volume of Historia Zemblica, copying out passages and occasionally fishing out of the nether recesses of his seat a pair of old-fashioned motoring goggles, a black opal ring, a ball of silver chocolate wrapping, or the star of a foreign order. (note to Line 80)
Grusha being Russian for “pear,” a putrid pear brings to mind Grushnitski, a character in Knyazhna Meri (Princess Mary), the fourth novella in Lermontov’s Geroy nashego vremeni (“A Hero of Our Time,” 1840). In his Commentary Kinbote compares himself to Pechorin (the main character in Lermontov’s novel who kills Grushnitski in a pistol duel) and to Marcel (the narrator and main character in Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu):
Windows, as well known, have been the solace of first-person literature throughout the ages. But this observer never could emulate in sheer luck the eavesdropping Hero of Our Time or the omnipresent one of Time Lost. (note to Lines 47-48)
At the beginning of Princess Mary Pechorin mentions vodyanoe obshchestvo (the spa society):
11-го мая.
Вчера я приехал в Пятигорск, нанял квартиру на краю города, на самом высоком месте, у подошвы Машука: во время грозы облака будут спускаться до моей кровли. Нынче в пять часов утра, когда я открыл окно, моя комната наполнилась запахом цветов, растущих в скромном палисаднике. Ветки цветущих черешен смотрят мне в окна, и ветер иногда усыпает мой письменный стол их белыми лепестками. Вид с трех сторон у меня чудесный. На запад пятиглавый Бешту синеет, как «последняя туча рассеянной бури»; на север поднимается Машук, как мохнатая персидская шапка, и закрывает всю эту часть небосклона; на восток смотреть веселее: внизу передо мною пестреет чистенький, новенький городок, шумят целебные ключи, шумит разноязычная толпа, — а там, дальше, амфитеатром громоздятся горы всё синее и туманнее, а на краю горизонта тянется серебряная цепь снеговых вершин, начинаясь Казбеком и оканчиваясь двуглавым Эльборусом… Весело жить в такой земле! Какое-то отрадное чувство разлито во всех моих жилах. Воздух чист и свеж, как поцелуй ребенка; солнце ярко, небо сине — чего бы, кажется, больше? — зачем тут страсти, желания, сожаления?.. Однако пора. Пойду к Елизаветинскому источнику: там, говорят, утром собирается всё водяное общество.
May 11
Yesterday I arrived in Pyatigorsk and rented quarters in the outskirts at the foot of Mount Mashuk; this is the highest part of the town, so high that the clouds will reach down to my roof during thunderstorms. When I opened the window at five o'clock this morning the fragrance of the flowers growing in the modest little front garden flooded my room. The flower-laden branches of the cherry trees peep into my windows, and now and then the wind sprinkles my writing desk with the white petals. I have a marvelous view on three sides. Five-peaked Beshtau looms blue in the west like "the last cloud of the storm blown over. " In the north rises Mashuk like a shaggy Persian cap, concealing this part of the horizon. To the east the view is more cheerful: down below, the clean new town spreads colorfully before me, the medicinal fountains babble, and so do the multilingual crowds. Further in the distance the massive amphitheater of mountains grows ever bluer and mistier, while on the fringe of the horizon stretches the silvery chain of snow-capped peaks beginning with Kazbek and ending with twin-peaked Elbrus... It is a joy to live in a place like this! A feeling of elation flows in all my veins. The air is pure and fresh like the kiss of a child, the sun is bright and the sky blue-what more could one desire? What place is there here for passions, yearnings and regrets? But it's time to go. I'll walk down to Elizabeth Spring, where they say the spa society congregates in the mornings. (Pechorin’s Diary)
Vodyanoe obshchestvo brings to mind Vodyanoy, as in her translation of PF Vera Nabokov renders The Merman, a fine old melodrama which, according to Odon (a world-famous actor and Zemblan patriot who helps the King to escape from Zembla), had not been performed for at least three decades:
Anyway, Odon had to leave in a few moments, being due to act that night in The Merman, a fine old melodrama which had not been performed, he said, for at least three decades. "I'm quite satisfied with my own melodrama," remarked the King. "Alas," said Odon. Furrowing his forehead, he slowly got into his leathern coat. One could do nothing tonight. If he asked the commandant to be left on duty, it would only provoke suspicion, and the least suspicion might be fatal. Tomorrow he would find some opportunity to inspect that new avenue of escape, if it was that and not a dead end. Would Charlie (His Majesty) promise not to attempt anything until then? "But they are moving closer and closer," said the King alluding to the noise of rapping and ripping that came from the Picture Gallery. "Not really," said Odon, "one inch per hour, maybe two. I must be going now," he added indicating with a twitch of the eyelid the solemn and corpulent guard who was coming to relieve him. (note to Line 130)
According to Kinbote, John Shade and Sybil Irondell were married in 1919, exactly three decades before King Charles wed Disa, Duchess of Payn:
John Shade and Sybil Swallow (see note to line 247) were married in 1919, exactly three decades before King Charles wed Disa, Duchess of Payn. Since the very beginning of his reign (1936-1958) representatives of the nation, salmon fishermen, non-union glaziers, military groups, worried relatives, and especially the Bishop of Yeslove, a sanguineous and saintly old man, had been doing their utmost to persuade him to give up his copious but sterile pleasures and take a wife. It was a matter not of morality but of succession. As in the case of some of his predecessors, rough alderkings who burned for boys, the clergy blandly ignored our young bachelor's pagan habits, but wanted him to do what an earlier and even more reluctant Charles had done: take a night off and lawfully engender an heir.
He saw nineteen-year-old Disa for the first time on the festive night of July the 5th, 1947, at a masked ball in his uncle's palace. She had come in male dress, as a Tirolese boy, a little knock-kneed but brave and lovely, and afterwards he drove her and her cousins (two guardsmen disguised as flower-girls) in his divine new convertible through the streets to see the tremendous birthday illumination, and the fackeltanz in the park, and the fireworks, and the pale upturned faces. He procrastinated for almost two years but was set upon by inhumanly eloquent advisers, and finally gave in. On the eve of his wedding he prayed most of the night locked up all alone in the cold vastness of the Onhava cathedral. Smug alderkings looked at him from the ruby-and-amethyst windows. Never had he so fervently asked God for guidance and strength (see further my note to lines 433-434). (note to Line 275)
July 5 is Shade's, Kinbote's and Gradus's birthday (while Shade was born in 1898, Kinbote and Gradus were born in 1915). A masked ball at which the King met Disa for the first time recalls Lermontov's drama in verse Maskarad ("The Masquerade," 1835). Fleur de Fyler (the Countess’ daughter who tries to seduce young Charles Xavier) becomes Queen Disa’s favorite lady-in-waiting. Odon = Nodo (Odon’s half-brother) = odno (neut. of odin, “one”). While the stage name Odon recalls Lermontov's poem Vykhozhu odin ya na dorogu (“I go out on the road alone…” 1841), The Merman brings to mind Lermontov's poems Rusalka ("The Mermaid," 1832) and Morskaya tsarevna ("The Sea Princess," 1841). According to Pnin (the title character of a novel, 1957, by VN), Lermontov has expressed everything about mermaids in only two poems:
"All right, I'm afraid we are wandering away from our little joke. Now, you look at the picture. So this is the mariner, and this is the pussy, and this is a rather wistful mermaid hanging around, and now look at the puffs right above the sailor and the pussy."
"Atomic bomb explosion," said Pnin sadly.
"No, not at all. It is something much funnier. You see, these round puffs are supposed to be the projections of their thoughts. And now at last we are getting to the amusing part. The sailor imagines the mermaid as having a pair of legs, and the cat imagines her as all fish."
"Lermontov," said Pnin, lifting two fingers, "has expressed everything about mermaids in only two poems. I cannot understand American humor even when I am happy, and I must say--" He removed his glasses with trembling hands, elbowed the magazine aside, and, resting his head on his arm, broke into muffled sobs. (Chapter Two, 7)
Describing Pnin’s fit of laughter, VN mentions pear-shaped tears that trickle down Pnin’s tanned cheeks:
But there were still better sessions in the way of humour. With an air of coy secrecy, benevolent Pnin, preparing the children for the marvellous treat he had once had himself, and already revealing, in an uncontrollable smile, an incomplete but formidable set of tawny teeth, would open a dilapidated Russian book at the elegant leatherette marker he had carefully placed there; he would open the book, whereupon as often as not a look of the utmost dismay would alter his plastic features; agape, feverishly, he would flip right and left through the volume, and minutes might pass before he found the right page--or satisfied himself that he had marked it correctly after all. Usually the passage of his choice would come from some old and naпve comedy of merchant-class habitus rigged up by Ostrovski almost a century ago, or from an equally ancient but even more dated piece of trivial Leskovian jollity dependent on verbal contortions. He delivered these stale goods with the rotund gusto of the classical Alexandrinka (a theatre in Petersburg), rather than with the crisp simplicity of the Moscow Artists; but since to appreciate whatever fun those passages still retained one had to have not only a sound knowledge of the vernacular but also a good deal of literary insight, and since his poor little class had neither, the performer would be alone in enjoying the associative subtleties of his text. The heaving we have already noted in another connexion would become here a veritable earthquake. Directing his memory, with all the lights on and all the masks of the mind a-miming, toward the days of his fervid and receptive youth (in a brilliant cosmos that seemed all the fresher for having been abolished by one blow of history), Pnin would get drunk on his private wines as he produced sample after sample of what his listeners politely surmised was Russian humour. Presently the fun would become too much for him; pear-shaped tears would trickle down his tanned cheeks. Not only his shocking teeth but also an astonishing amount of pink upper-gum tissue would suddenly pop out, as if a jack-in-the-box had been sprung, and his hand would fly to his mouth, while his big shoulders shook and rolled. And although the speech he smothered behind his dancing hand was now doubly unintelligible to the class, his complete surrender to his own merriment would prove irresistible. By the time he was helpless with it he would have his students in stitches, with abrupt barks of clockwork hilarity coming from Charles and a dazzling flow of unsuspected lovely laughter transfiguring Josephine, who was not pretty, while Eileen, who was, dissolved in a jelly of unbecoming giggles. (Chapter One, 1)
In his Commentary Kinbote mentions Professor Pnin, the Head of the bloated Russian Department at Wordsmith University:
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)
Yumor Lermontova ("Lermontov's Humor") is an essay by Nik. T-o (I. Annenski's penname) included in his Kniga otrazheniy ("The Book of Reflections," 1906). Lermontov’s poem Net, ya ne Bayron, ya drugoy… (“No, I’m not Byron, I’m another…” 1832) ends in the word nikto (nobody):
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!
Lermontov compares his soul to the ocean in which nadezhd razbitykh gruz (a load of broken hopes) lies. The “real” name of Hazel Shade (the poet’s daughter) seems to be Nadezhda Botkin. An American scholar of Russian descent, Professor Vsevolod Botkin went mad and became Shade, Kinbote and Gradus (the poet’s murderer) after the tragic death of his daughter. There is nadezhda (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 (a target of Pushkin’s epigrams, “half-milord, half-merchant, etc.”), will be full again.
Sybil Shade (the poet’s wife) and Queen Disa (the wife of Charles the Beloved) seem to be one and the same person whose “real” name is Sofia Botkin, born Lastochkin. Lastochki ("The Swallows," 1884) is a poem by Afanasiy Fet (who was married to Maria Botkin). In his poem in octaves Student ("The Student," 1884) Fet mentions all the poets who had affected him and his friend Apollon Grigoriev: Lermontov, and Byron, and Musset:
Но, боже мой, как много чепухи
Болтали мы; как нам казались сладки
Поэты, нас затронувшие, все:
И Лермонтов, и Байрон, и Мюссе.
In his poem Net, ne tebya tak pylko ya lyublyu… (“No, it is not you I love so ardently…” 1841) Lermontov addresses a young woman and says that he loves in her a past suffering and his perished youth:
Нет, не тебя так пылко я люблю,
Не для меня красы твоей блистанье;
Люблю в тебе я прошлое страданье
И молодость погибшую мою.
Когда порой я на тебя смотрю,
В твои глаза вникая долгим взором:
Таинственным я занят разговором,
Но не с тобой я сердцем говорю.
Я говорю с подругой юных дней,
В твоих чертах ищу черты другие,
В устах живых уста давно немые,
В глазах огонь угаснувших очей.
No, it is not you I love so ardently,
And the splendor of your beauty is not for me:
I love in you a past suffering
And my perished youth.
When at times I look at you,
Penetrating your eyes with a long stare:
Secretly, I am occupied in conversation,
But it is not with you that I speak with my heart.
I converse with a friend of my youth;
In your features I seek the features of another;
In your living lips I seek lips long mute,
In your eyes I seek the fire of extinguished eyes.
Lermontov’s fatal duel with Martynov took place on July 15, 1841. The words bol’ (pain) and ston (moan) used by Lermontov in Lines 14 and 15 of his poem “July 15, 1830” bring to mind Gertsoginya Bol’stonskaya, as in her translation of PF Vera Nabokov renders “Duchess of Payn, of Great Payn and Mone” (Queen Disa’s title).
Odon's half-brother Nodo (a cardsharp and despicable traitor) is almost a namesake of Dr. Bodo von Falternfels, a newly imported Austrian scholar at Waindell University, a strong anti-Pninist (for Kinbote, Sybil Shade is the poet's "domestic anti-Karlist"). Falter is a medium in VN's story Ultima Thule (1942), a part of VN's unfinished novel Solus Rex. A famous Italian psychiatrist dies when Falter tells him his secret. German for "rock," Fels brings to mind the mountain ledge from which Grushnitski, shot through his breast by Pechorin, falls:
Я выстрелил...
Когда дым рассеялся, Грушницкого на площадке не было. Только прах легким столбом еще вился на краю обрыва.
Все в один голос вскрикнули.
- Finita la comedia! - сказал я доктору.
Он не отвечал и с ужасом отвернулся.
Я пожал плечами и раскланялся с секундантами Грушницкого.
Спускаясь по тропинке вниз, я заметил между расселинами скал окровавленный труп Грушницкого. Я невольно закрыл глаза... Отвязав лошадь, я шагом пустился домой. У меня на сердце был камень. Солнце казалось мне тускло, лучи его меня не грели.
I fired.
When the smoke had cleared away, Grushnitski was not to be seen on the ledge. Only a slender column of dust was still eddying at the edge of the precipice.
There was a simultaneous cry from the rest.
"Finita la commedia!" I said to the doctor.
He made no answer, and turned away with horror.
I shrugged my shoulders and bowed to Grushnitski's seconds.
As I descended by the path, I observed Grushnitski's bloodstained corpse between the clefts of the rocks. Involuntarily, I closed my eyes. Untying my horse, I set off home at a walking pace. A stone lay upon my heart. To my eyes the sun seemed dim, its beams were powerless to warm me.