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 Hodinski, Queen Yaruga’s lover and goliart (court jester) who is said to have forged in his spare time a famous old Russian chanson de geste:
When I was a child, Russia enjoyed quite a vogue at the court of Zembla but that was a different Russia--a Russia that hated tyrants and Philistines, injustice and cruelty, the Russia of ladies and gentlemen and liberal aspirations. We may add that Charles the Beloved could boast of some Russian blood. In medieval times two of his ancestors had married Novgorod princesses. Queen Yaruga (reigned 1799-1800) his great-great-granddam, was half Russian; and most historians believe that Yaruga's only child Igor was not the son of Uran the Last (reigned 1798-1799) but the fruit of her amours with the Russian adventurer Hodinski, her goliart (court jester) and a poet of genius, said to have forged in his spare time a famous old Russian chanson de geste, generally attributed to an anonymous bard of the twelfth century. (note to Line 681)
According to Kinbote Hodinski is also known as Hodyna:
Hodinski, Russian adventurer, d. 1800, also known as Hodyna, 681; resided in Zembla 1778-1800; author of a celebrated pastiche and lover of Princess (later Queen) Yaruga (q. v.), mother of Igor II, grandmother of Thurgus (q. v.). (Index)
Hodyna hints at hody na [Svyateslavlya], an obscure phrase that occurs at the end of Slovo o polku Igoreve (“The Song of Igor’s Campaign”), the anonymous epic of the 12th century:
Рекъ Боянъ и ходы на Святъславля, песнотворца стараго времени Ярославля: «Ольгова коганя хоти! Тяжко ти головы кроме плечю, зло и телу кроме головы», — Руской земли безъ Игоря!
Said Boyan, song-maker
of the times of old,
[of the campaigns] of the kogans
--
Svyatoslav, Yaroslav, Oleg:
"Hard as it is for the head
to be without shoulders
bad it is for the body
to be without head," --
for the Russian land
to be without Igor. (ll. 831-841)
In the Commentary (note to lines 831-834) to his translation of Slovo VN says that the passage is very muddled in the text and that this is the best he can do. Although he does not say this anywhere, VN would certainly know that some commentators (Zabelin, Lihachyov) believe that the words hody na should be read as Hodyna and that Hodyna is not only Boyan’s colleage, but perhaps the name of the author of Slovo.
Hodyna brings to mind godina (year), an archaic word used by Pushkin in his poem Brozhu li ya vdol’ ulits shumnykh… (“Whether I wander along noisy streets,” 1829):
День каждый, каждую годину
Привык я думой провождать,
Грядущей смерти годовщину
Меж их стараясь угадать.
И где мне смерть пошлет судьбина?
В бою ли, в странствии, в волнах?
Или соседняя долина
Мой примет охладелый прах?
Each day each year
I have come to usher out in fancy,
Of my approaching death the anniversary
Intent to guess among them.
And where will fate send me death
In fight, in travel or in waves?
Or will the neighboring vale
accept my cold ashes?
According to Kinbote, Queen Yaruga and her Russian lover drowned in an ice hole during traditional New Year’s festivities (i. e. "in waves"):
Yaruga, Queen, reigned 1799-1800, sister of Uran (q. v.); drowned in an ice-hole with her Russian lover during traditional New Year's festivities, 681. (Index)
In ancient Greek mythology Uran (the sky) is the father of titans. In his poem Staryi vopros (“The Old Question,” 1914) Bryusov mentions titans, like Pushkin, Tolstoy, Dostoevski:
Иль мы — тот народ, кто обрел
Двух сфинксов на отмели невской.
Кто миру титанов привел,
Как Пушкин, Толстой, Достоевский?
In a letter of Oct. 31, 1838, Dostoevski (then a student of the Main Military Engineering School housed in the Mikhaylovski Castle where the tsar Paul I was assassinated in March, 1801) twice repeats the word gradus (degree):
Философию не надо полагать простой математической задачей, где неизвестное - природа... Заметь, что поэт в порыве вдохновенья разгадывает бога, следовательно, исполняет назначенье философии. Следовательно, поэтический восторг есть восторг философии... Следовательно, философия есть та же поэзия, только высший градус её!..
Philosophy should not be regarded as a mere equation where nature is the unknown quantity… Remark that the poet, in the moment of inspiration, comprehends God, and consequently does the philosopher’s work. Consequently poetic inspiration is nothing less than philosophical inspiration. Consequently philosophy is nothing but poetry, a higher degree of poetry!..
Друг мой! Ты философствуешь как поэт. И как не ровно выдерживает душа градус вдохновенья, так не ровна, не верна и твоя философия. Чтоб больше знать, надо меньше чувствовать, и обратно, правило опрометчивое, бред сердца.
My friend, you philosophize like a poet. And just because the soul cannot be forever in a state of exaltation [gradus vdokhnoven'ya, a phrase used by Dostoevski, means "a degree of inspiration"], your philosophy is not true and not just. To know more one must feel less, and vice versa. Your judgment is featherheaded – it is a delirium of the heart.
Gradus is the name of Shade’s murderer. Shade’s birthday, July 5, is also Kinbote’s and Gradus’ birthday (while Shade was born in 1898, Kinbote and Gradus were born in 1915). Shade is thus seventeen years Kinbote's and Gradus' senior. October 31, 1838 (the day on which Dostoevski wrote his letter to his brother Mikhail) is Dostoevski’s seventeenth birthday. Houdini (the illusionist) died on Oct. 31, 1926, at the age of fifty two. Godina in Pushkin's poem "Brozhu li ya vdol’ ulits shumnykh..." reminds one of Gudini (Houdini in Russian spelling).
Uran rhymes with tiran (tyrant). In his first great ode Vol’nost’ (“To Liberty,” 1817) Pushkin describes the murder of Paul I and mentions pustynnyi pamyatnik tirana, zabven’yu broshennyi dvorets (forlorn memorial of a tyrant, a palace to oblivion cast):
Когда на мрачную Неву
Звезда полуночи сверкает,
И беззаботную главу
Спокойный сон отягощает,
Глядит задумчивый певец
На грозно спящий средь тумана
Пустынный памятник тирана,
Забвенью брошенный дворец —
И слышит Клии страшный глас
За сими страшными стенами,
Калигуллы последний час
Он видит живо пред очами,
Он видит — в лентах и звездах,
Вином и злобой упое́нны
Идут убийцы потае́нны,
На лицах дерзость, в сердце страх.
Молчит неверный часовой,
Опущен молча мост подъёмный,
Врата отверсты в тьме ночной
Рукой предательства наёмной…
О стыд! о ужас наших дней!
Как звери, вторглись янычары!…
Падут бесславные удары…
Погиб увенчанный злодей.
When down upon the gloomy Neva
The star Polaris scintillates
And peaceful slumber overwhelms
The head that is devoid of cares,
The pensive poet contemplates
The grimly sleeping in the mist
Forlorn memorial of a tyrant,
A palace to oblivion cast,
And hears the dreadful voice of Clio
Above yon gloom-pervaded walls
And vividly before his eyes
He sees Caligula's last hours.
He sees: beribanded, bestarred,
With Wine and Hate intoxicated,
They come, the furtive assassins,
Their faces brazen, hearts afraid.
Silent is the untrusty watchman,
The drawbridge silently is lowered,
The gate is opened in the dark
Of night by hired treachery's hand.
O shame! O horror of our days!
Like animals, the Janissaries
Burst in. The infamous blows fall,
And perished has the crowned villain!
(VN’s translation)
Pushkin compares Paul I to Caligula, a Roman Emperor whose nickname means in Latin “little boot.” According to Kinbote (the author of books on surnames), Botkin (Shade’s, Kinbote’s and Gradus’ “real” name) is the one who makes bottekins (fancy footwear):
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, nee 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, Limner (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 buildings a "hurley-house." But enough of this. (note to Line 71)
A "hurley-house" brings to mind “forlorn memorial of a tyrant, a palace to oblivion cast.”
Uran the Last is a grandfather of Thurgus the Third (surnamed the Turgid, grandfather of Charles the Beloved). King Thurgus and his surname seem to hint at Turgenev. In his note to Line 69 of Pushkin’s Ode to Liberty (EO Commentary, vol. III, p.344) VN writes:
According to Vigel's Memoirs (1864) and a letter from Nikolay Turgenev to Pyotr Bartenev (in 1867), Pushkin wrote (no doubt from memory – poets do not compose in public) the ode, or part of it, in the rooms of Nikolay Turgenev, who at the time lived in St. Petersburg on the Fontanka Quay, opposite the Mikhaylovski Palace (also known as the Inzhenernyi Castle), whither, flushed after a champagne supper and wearing their resplendent decorations, the assassins made their way to Tsar Paul’s bedroom on the night of Mar. 11, 1801.
Like Byron, Nikolay Turgenev (a Desembrist who escaped to England) was lame. In Chapter Ten of Eugene Onegin Pushkin mentions khromoy Turgenev.
In his next note VN calls Clio “the hysterical Muse of history.” In the last paragraph of his Commentary Kinbote says that, history permitting, he may sail back to his recovered kingdom:
"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, health 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)
Despite his words, immediately after completing his work on Shade's poem, on Oct. 19, 1959 (the anniversary of Pushkin's Lyceum), Kinbote commits suicide. There is a hope that, after Kinbote's death, Botkin, like Count Vorontsov (a target of Pushkin's epigrams, "half-milord, half-merchant, etc."), will be full again.
See also the updated version of my previous post, “OLD, GRAY, MAD NIJINSKI IN LOLITA; NURJINSKI LEAP, DANGLELEAF & LOWDEN IN ADA."