According to 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), he writes his Commentary, Index and Foreword (in that order) to Shade's poem in a desolate log cabin:
These lines are represented in the drafts by a variant reading
39 ........... and home would haste my thieves
40The sun with stolen ice, the moon with leaves
One cannot help recalling a passage in Timon of Athens (Act IV, Scene 3) where the misanthrope talks to the three marauders. Having no library in the desolate log cabin where I live like Timon in his cave, I am compelled for the purpose of quick citation to retranslate this passage into English prose from a Zemblan poetical version of Timon which, I hope, sufficiently approximates the text, or is at least faithful to its spirit:
The sun is a thief: she lures the sea and robs it.
The moon is a thief: he steals his silvery light from the sun.
The sea is a thief: it dissolves the moon.
For a prudent appraisal of Conmal's translations of Shakespeare's works, see note to line 962. (note to Lines 39-40)
Shakespeare's translator into Zemblan, Conmal is the king's uncle. In his essay Torzhestvo dobrodeteli ("The Triumph of Virtue," 1930) VN mentions otgolosok (an echo) of Uncle Tom's Cabin in some Soviet novels:
К счастью, нет никаких оснований предполагать, что советская литература в скором времени свернет с пути истины. Все благополучно, добродетель торжествует. Совершенно неважно, что превозносимое добро и караемое зло - добро и зло классовые. В этом маленьком классовом мире соотношения нравственных сил и приемы борьбы те же, что и в большом мире, человеческом. Все знакомые литературные типы, выражающие собой резко и просто хорошее или худое в человеке (или в обществе), светлые личности, никогда не темнеющие, и темные личности, обреченные на беспросветность, все эти старые наши знакомые, резонеры, элодеи, праведные грубияны и коварные льстецы, опять теснятся на страницах советской книги. Тут и отголосок "Хижины дяди Тома", и своеобразное повторение какой-нибудь темы из старых приложений к "Ниве" (молодая княжна увлекается отцовским секретарем, честным разночинцем с народническими наклонностями), и искание розы без шипов на торном пути от политического неведения к большевицкому откровению, и факел знания, и рыцарские приключения, где Красный Рыцарь разбивает один полчища врагов. То, что в общечеловеческой литературе до сих пор так или иначе еще держится в произведениях высоконравственных дам и писателей для юношества и будет, вероятно, держаться до конца мира, повторяется в советской литературе как нечто новое, с апломбом, с жаром, с упоением. Мы возвращаемся к самым истокам литературы, к простоте, еще не освященной вдохновением, и к нравоучительству, еще не лишенному пафоса. Советская литература несколько напоминает те отборные елейные библиотеки, которые бывают при тюрьмах и исправительных домах для просвещения и умиротворения заключенных.
According to VN, the Soviet literature resembles somewhat those select unctuous libraries that one can find in prisons. In VN’s novel Lolita (1955) Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character) writes his Confession of a White Widowed Male in imprisonment. Describing his stay with Lolita in The Enchanted Hunters (a hotel in Briceland where Humbert and Lolita spend their first night together), Humbert calls the black porter who carries the bags to the hotel room and the black lift operator “Uncle Tom:”
The two pink pigs were now among my best friends. In the slow clear hand of crime I wrote: Dr. Edgar H. Humbert and daughter, 342 Lawn Street, Ramsdale. A key (342!) was half-shown to me (magician showing object he is about to palm) and handed over to Uncle Tom. Lo, leaving the dog as she would leave me some day, rose from her haunches; a raindrop fell on Charlotte’s grave; a handsome young Negress slipped open the elevator door, and the doomed child went in followed by her throat-clearing father and crayfish Tom with the bags. (1.27)
I had hoped the drug would work fast. It certainly did. She had had a long long day, she had gone rowing in the morning with Barbara whose sister was Waterfront Director, as the adorable accessible nymphet now started to tell me in between suppressed palate-humping yawns, growing in volume - oh, how fast the magic potion worked! - and had been active in other ways too. The movie that had vaguely loomed in her mind was, of course, by the time we watertreaded out of the dining room, forgotten. As we stood in the elevator, she leaned against me, faintly smiling - wouldn’t you like me to tell you - half closing her dark-lidded eyes. “Sleepy, huh?” said Uncle Tom who was bringing up the quiet Franco-Irish gentleman and his daughter as well as two withered women, experts in roses. They looked with sympathy at my frail, tanned, tottering, dazed rosedarling. I had almost to carry her into our room. There, she sat down on the edge of the bed, swaying a little, speaking in dove-dull, long-drawn tones. (ibid.)
Describing the first lap of his road trip with Lolita across the USA, Humbert mentions the log cabin where Lincoln was born:
The present log cabin boldly simulating the past log cabin where Lincoln was born. (2.2)
In the Russian version (1967) of Lolita VN renders “log cabin” as izba:
вполне современная изба, смело подделывающаяся под былую избу, где родился Линкольн.
But in her Russian translation of Pale Fire Vera Nabokov renders “log cabin” as khizhina – presumably, an allusion to Khizhina dyadi Toma (the Russian title of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel).
At the end of his poem “Wanted” written after Lolita was abducted from him Humbert mentions stardust:
My car is limping, Dolores Haze,
And the last long lap is the hardest,
And I shall be dumped where the weed decays,
And the rest is rust and stardust.
In his apology of suicide Kinbote mentions a tall business center hotel browing the star dust:
Of the not very many ways known of shedding one's body, falling, falling, falling is the supreme method, but you have to select your sill or ledge very carefully so as not to hurt yourself or others. Jumping from a high bridge is not recommended even if you cannot swim, for wind and water abound in weird contingencies, and tragedy ought not to culminate in a record dive or a policeman's promotion. If you rent a cell in the luminous waffle, room 1915 or 1959, in a tall business center hotel browing the star dust, and pull up the window, and gently - not fall, not jump - but roll out as you should for air comfort, there is always the chance of knocking clean through into your own hell a pacific noctambulator walking his dog; in this respect a back room might be safer, especially if giving on the roof of an old tenacious normal house far below where a cat may be trusted to flash out of the way. (note to Line 493)
Immediately after finishing his work on Shade’s poem (on Oct. 19, 1959, the anniversary of Pushkin’s Lyceum), Kinbote commits suicide. It seems that Kinbote writes his Commentary, Index and Foreword (in that order) to Shade’s poem not in “Cedarn, Utana,” but in a madhouse – in the same sanatorium in Quebec where Humbert Humbert writes his poem “Wanted.” After Shade’s death his wife Sybil goes to Quebec:
Frank has acknowledged the safe return of the galleys I had been sent here and has asked me to mention in my Preface - and this I willingly do - that I alone am responsible for any mistakes in my commentary. Insert before a professional. A professional proofreader has carefully rechecked the printed text of the poem against the phototype of the manuscript, and has found a few trivial misprints I had missed; that has been all in the way of outside assistance. Needless to say how much I had been looking forward to Sybil Shade's providing me with abundant biographical data; unfortunately she left New Wye even before I did, and is dwelling now with relatives in Quebec. We might have had, of course, a most fruitful correspondence, but the Shadeans were not to be shaken off. They headed for Canada in droves to pounce on the poor lady as soon as I had lost contact with her and her changeful moods. Instead of answering a month-old letter from my cave in Cedarn, listing some of my most desperate queries, such as the real name of "Jim Coates" etc., she suddenly shot me a wire, requesting me to accept Prof. H. (!) and Prof. C (!!) as coeditors of her husband's poem. How deeply this surprised and pained me! Naturally, it precluded collaboration with my friend's misguided widow. (Foreword)
According to Kinbote, John Shade and Sybil Swallow 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)
Queen Disa (who was born in 1928) is thirty years younger than Sybil Shade (who was born in 1898). In Alexandre Dumas père’s The Vicomte of Bragelonne: Ten Years Later (1850), the third and last novel of The d’Artagnan Romances, the action takes place thirty years after the events described in The Three Musketeers. Dumas is the author of The Count of Monte Cristo (1844). In "The Triumph of Virtue" VN says that there is an obvious literary connection between the type of a party member in Soviet literature and the Count of Monte Cristo:
Имена не запоминаются, имен нет. Матрос в изображении писателя второго сорта и матрос в изображении писателя сорта третьего ничем друг от друга не отличны, и только обезумевший от благонамеренности пролетарский критик может там и сям выскоблить ересь. В этой, в лучшем случае второсортной, литературе (первого сорта в продаже нет) тип матроса так же отчетлив, как, скажем, старинный тип простака. Этот матрос, очень любимый советскими писателями, говорит "амба", добродетельно матюгается и читает "разные книжки". Он женолюбив, как всякий хороший, здоровый парень, но иногда из-за этого попадает в сети буржуазной или партизанской сирены и на время сбивается с линии классового добра. На эту линию, впрочем, он неизбежно возвращается. Матрос - светлая личность, хотя и туповат. Несколько похож на него тип "солдата" - другой баловень советской литературы. Солдат тоже любит тискать налитых всякими соками деревенских девчат и ослеплять своей белозубой улыбкой сельских учительниц. Как и матрос, солдат часто попадает из-за бабы впросак. Он всегда жизнерадостен, отлично знает политическую грамоту и щедр на бодрые восклицания, вроде "а ну, ребята!". Мужики избирают его председателем, причем какой-нибудь старый крестьянин неизменно ухмыляется в бороду и одобрительно говорит: "здорово загнул парень" (т. е. старый крестьянин прозрел). Но популярность матроса и солдата ничто перед популярностью партийца. Партиец угрюм, мало спит, много курит, видит до поры до времени в женщине товарища и очень прост в обращении, так что всем делается хорошо на душе от его спокойствия, мрачности и деловитости. Партийная мрачность, впрочем, вдруг прорывается детской улыбкой или же в трудном для чувств положении он кому-нибудь жмет руку, и у боевого товарища сразу слезы навертываются на глаза. Партиец редко бывает красив, но зато лицо у него точно высечено из камня. Светлее этого типа просто не сыскать. "Эх, брат",- говорит он в минуту откровенности, и читателю дано одним глазком увидеть жизнь, полную лишений, подвигов и страданий. Его литературная связь с графом Монтекристо или с каким-нибудь вождем краснокожих совершенно очевидна.
In his Commentary Kinbote mentions the star that no party member can ever reach:
We all know those dreams in which something Stygian soaks through and Lethe leaks in the dreary terms of defective plumbing. Following this line, there is a false start preserved in the draft – and I hope the reader will feel something of the chill that ran down my long and supple spine when I discovered this variant:
Should the dead murderer try to embrace
His outraged victim whom he now must face?
Do objects have a soul? Or perish must
Alike great temples and Tanagra dust?
The last syllable of Tanagra and the first three letters of "dust" form the name of the murderer whose shargar (puny ghost) the radiant spirit of our poet was soon to face. "Simple chance!" the pedestrian reader may cry. But let him try to see, as I have tried to see, how many such combinations are possible and plausible. "Leningrad used to be Petrograd?" "A prig rad (obs. past tense of read) us?"
This variant is so prodigious that only scholarly discipline and a scrupulous regard for the truth prevented me from inserting it here, and deleting four lines elsewhere (for example, the weak lines 627-630) so as to preserve the length of the poem.
Shade composed these lines on Tuesday, July 14th. What was Gradus doing that day? Nothing. Combinational fate rests on its laurels. We saw him last on the late afternoon of July 10th when he returned from Lex to his hotel in Geneva, and there we left him.
For the next four days Gradus remained fretting in Geneva. The amusing paradox with these men of action is that they constantly have to endure long stretches of otiosity that they are unable to fill with anything, lacking as they do the resources of an adventurous mind. As many people of little culture, Gradus was a voracious reader of newspapers, pamphlets, chance leaflets and the multilingual literature that comes with nose drops and digestive tablets; but this summed up his concessions to intellectual curiosity, and since his eyesight was not too good, and the consumability of local news not unlimited, he had to rely a great deal on the torpor of sidewalk cafes and on the makeshift of sleep.
How much happier the wide-awake indolents, the monarchs among men, the rich monstrous brains deriving intense enjoyment and rapturous pangs from the balustrade of a terrace at nightfall, from the lights and the lake below, from the distant mountain shapes melting into the dark apricot of the afterglow, from the black conifers outlined against the pale ink of the zenith, and from the garnet and green flounces of the water along the silent, sad, forbidden shoreline. Oh my sweet Boscobel! And the tender and terrible memories, and the shame, and the glory, and the maddening intimation, and the star that no party member can ever reach.
On Wednesday morning, still without news, Gradus telegraphed headquarters saying that he thought it unwise to wait any longer and that he would be staying at Hotel Lazuli, Nice. (note to Line 596)
Boscobel: or, the history of His Sacred Majesties most miraculous preservation after the Battle of Worcester, 3 Sept. 1651 is a work by Thomas Blount (an English antiquarian and lexicographer, 1618-79). It is an account of Charles II's preservation after Worcester, with the addition of the king's own account dictated to Pepys. Charles II was the son of Charles I, a less fortunate monarch who was beheaded in 1649. In Dumas’ novel Twenty Years After (1845) d’Artagnan and his friends attempt to save Charles I from the scaffold.
Btw., Uncle Tom in Lolita brings to mind “Balthasar, Prince of Loam,” as Kinbote dubbed his black gardener. According to Kinbote, his gardener had worked for two years as a male nurse in a hospital for Negroes in Maryland:
He had worked for two years as a male nurse in a hospital for Negroes in Maryland. He was hard up. He wanted to study landscaping, botany and French ("to read in the original Baudelaire and Dumas"). I promised him some financial assistance. He started to work at my place the very next day. He was awfully nice and pathetic, and all that, but a little too talkative and completely impotent which I found discouraging. Otherwise he was a strong strapping fellow, and I hugely enjoyed the aesthetic pleasure of watching him buoyantly struggle with earth and turf or delicately manipulate bulbs, or lay out the flagged path which may or may not be a nice surprise for my landlord, when he safely returns from England (where I hope no bloodthirsty maniacs are stalking him!). How I longed to have him (my gardener, not my landlord) wear a great big turban, and shalwars, and an ankle bracelet. I would certainly have him attired according to the old romanticist notion of a Moorish prince, had I been a northern king - or rather had I still been a king (exile becomes a bad habit). You will chide me, my modest man, for writing so much about you in this note, but I feel I must pay you this tribute. After all, you saved my life. You and I were the last people who saw John Shade alive, and you admitted afterwards to a strange premonition which made you interrupt your work as; you noticed us from the shrubbery walking toward the porch where stood - (Superstitiously I cannot write out the odd dark word you employed.) (note to Line 998)
“Balthasar, Prince of Loam” is actually a male nurse in a Quebec sanatorium where Kinbote writes his Commentary.