According to John Shade (the poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962), IPH (a lay Institute of Preparation for the Hereafter) was a grave in Reason's early spring:
L'if, lifeless tree! Your great Maybe, Rabelais:
The grand potato. I.P.H., a lay
Institute (I) of Preparation (P)
For the Hereafter (H), or If, as we
Called it - big if! - engaged me for one term
To speak on death ("to lecture on the Worm,"
Wrote President McAber). You and I,
And she, then a mere tot, moved from New Wye
To Yewshade, in another, higher state.
I love great mountains. From the iron gate
Of the ramshackle house we rented there
One saw a snowy form, so far, so fair,
That one could only fetch a sigh, as if
It might assist assimilation. Iph
Was a larvorium and a violet:
A grave in Reason's early spring. And yet
It missed the gist of the whole thing; it missed
What mostly interests the preterist;
For we die every day; oblivion thrives
Not on dry thighbones but on blood-ripe lives,
And our best yesterdays are now foul piles
Of crumpled names, phone numbers and foxed files.
I'm ready to become a floweret
Or a fat fly, but never, to forget.
And I'll turn down eternity unless
The melancholy and the tenderness
Of mortal life; the passion and the pain;
The claret taillight of that dwindling plane
Off Hesperus; your gesture of dismay
On running out of cigarettes; the way
You smile at dogs; the trail of silver slime
Snails leave on flagstones; this good ink, this rhyme,
This index card, this slender rubber band
Which always forms, when dropped, an ampersand,
Are found in Heaven by the newly dead
Stored in its strongholds through the years. (ll. 501-536)
In the last stanza of his Lines Written in Early Spring William Wordsworth mentions heaven and reason:
I heard a thousand blended notes,
While in a grove I sate reclined,
In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts
Bring sad thoughts to the mind.
To her fair works did Nature link
The human soul that through me ran;
And much it grieved my heart to think
What man has made of man.
Through primrose tufts, in that green bower,
The periwinkle trailed its wreaths;
And ’tis my faith that every flower
Enjoys the air it breathes.
The birds around me hopped and played,
Their thoughts I cannot measure:—
But the least motion which they made
It seemed a thrill of pleasure.
The budding twigs spread out their fan,
To catch the breezy air;
And I must think, do all I can,
That there was pleasure there.
If this belief from heaven be sent,
If such be Nature’s holy plan,
Have I not reason to lament
What man has made of man?
Yewshade brings to mind Wordsworth’s poem Yew-Trees:
There is a Yew-tree, pride of Lorton Vale,
Which to this day stands single, in the midst
Of its own darkness, as it stood of yore:
Not loathe to furnish weapons for the Bands
Of Umfraville or Percy ere they marched
To Scotland's heaths; or those that crossed the sea
And drew their sounding bows at Azincour,
Perhaps at earlier Crecy, or Poictiers.
Of vast circumference and gloom profound
This solitary Tree! - a living thing
Produced too slowly ever to decay;
Of form and aspect too magnificent
To be destroyed. But worthier still of note
Are those fraternal Four of Borrowdale,
Joined in one solemn and capacious grove;
Huge trunks! - and each particular trunk a growth
Of intertwisted fibres serpentine
Up-coiling, and inveteratley convolved, -
Nor uninformed with Fantasy, and looks
That threaten the profane; - a pillared shade,
Upon whose grassless floor of red-brown hue,
By sheddings from the pining umbrage tinged
Perennially - beneath whose sable roof
Of boughs, as if for festal purpose decked
With unrejoicing berries - ghostly Shapes
May meet at noontide: Fear and trembling Hope,
Silence and Foresight, Death the Skeleton
And Time the Shadow; there to celebrate,
As in a natural temple scattered o'er
With altars undisturbed of mossy stone,
United worship; or in mute repose
To lie, and listen to the mountain flood
Murmuring from Glaramara's inmost caves.
Pushkin’s Sonet (“A Sonnet,” 1830) has the epigraph from Wordsworth: “Scorn not the sonnet, critic.” In his “Sonnet” Pushkin mentions Mickiewicz (“the singer of Lithuania”) and Delvig among famous sonneteers. At the end of his poem Ne podrazhay: svoeobrazen geniy (“Don’t imitate: a genius is unique,” 1828) Baratynski says that, every time he sees inspired Mickiewicz at Byron's feet, he thinks: "rise up, the humble worshipper, rise up and remember that you are a god yourself:"
Не подражай: своеобразен гений
И собственным величием велик;
Доратов ли, Шекспиров ли двойник,
Досаден ты: не любят повторений.
С Израилем певцу один закон:
Да не творит себе кумира он!
Когда тебя, Мицкевич вдохновенный,
Я застаю у Байроновых ног,
Я думаю: поклонник униженный!
Восстань, восстань и вспомни: сам ты бог!
At the beginning of his poem Euthanasia Byron mentions Oblivion and its languid wing:
When Time, or soon or late, shall bring
The dreamless sleep that lulls the dead,
Oblivion! may thy languid wing
Wave gently o'er my dying bed!
Byron is the author of The Waltz (1812). In his poem “To A. M. T-ya” (1814-17) written at the Lyceum Delvig says that, in a waltz’s frenzied whirl, he wished to be all eyes, and, in the poem’s last line, mentions zabvenie (oblivion) and its wing:
Могу ль забыть то сладкое мгновенье,
Когда я вами жил и видел только вас,
И вальса в бешеном круженье
Завидовал свободе дерзких глаз?
Я весь тогда желал оборотиться в зренье,
Я умолял: «Постой, веселое мгновенье!
Пускай я не спущу с прекрасной вечно глаз,
Пусть так забвение крылом покроет нас!»
At the end of his Poslanie Delvigu (“The Epistle to Delvig,” 1827) Pushkin says: pevtsu Korsara podrazhay (imitate the singer of The Corsair, i. e. Byron), and mentions skandinavov ray voinskiy (the Scandinavians’ martial paradise, i. e. the Valhalla) and Hamlet-Baratynski (an allusion to Baratynski’s poem “The Skull”):
Прими ж сей череп, Дельвиг, он
Принадлежит тебе по праву.
Обделай ты его, барон,
В благопристойную оправу.
Изделье гроба преврати
В увеселительную чашу,
Вином кипящим освяти
Да запивай уху да кашу.
Певцу Корсара подражай
И скандинавов рай воинский
В пирах домашних воскрешай,
Или как Гамлет-Баратынский
Над ним задумчиво мечтай:
О жизни мертвый проповедник,
Вином ли полный, иль пустой,
Для мудреца, как собеседник,
Он стоит головы живой.
In his Foreword to Shade’s poem Kinbote (Shade’s mad commentator who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla) mentions a ferocious lady at whose club he had refused to speak on the subject of "The Hally Valley:"
Oh, there were many such incidents. In a skit performed by a group of drama students I was pictured as a pompous woman hater with a German accent, constantly quoting Housman and nibbling raw carrots; and a week before Shade's death, a certain ferocious lady at whose club I had refused to speak on the subject of "The Hally Valley" (as she put it, confusing Odin's Hall with the title of a Finnish epic), said to me in the middle of a grocery store, "You are a remarkably disagreeable person. I fail to see how John and Sybil can stand you," and, exasperated by my polite smile, she added: "What's more, you are insane." But let me not pursue the tabulation of nonsense. Whatever was thought, whatever was said, I had my full reward in John's friendship. This friendship was the more precious for its tenderness being intentionally concealed, especially when we were not alone, by that gruffness which stems from what can be termed the dignity of the heart. His whole being constituted a mask. John Shade's physical appearance was so little in keeping with the harmonies hiving in the man, that one felt inclined to dismiss it as a coarse disguise or passing fashion; for if the fashions of the Romantic Age subtilized a poet's manliness by baring his attractive neck, pruning his profile and reflecting a mountain lake in his oval gaze, present-day bards, owing perhaps to better opportunities of aging, look like gorillas or vultures. My sublime neighbor's face had something about it that might have appealed to the eye, had it been only leonine or only Iroquoian; but unfortunately, by combining the two it merely reminded one of a fleshy Hogarthian tippler of indeterminate sex. His misshapen body, that gray mop of abundant hair, the yellow nails of his pudgy fingers, the bags under his lusterless eyes, were only intelligible if regarded as the waste products eliminated from his intrinsic self by the same forces of perfection which purifed and chiseled his verse. He was his own cancellation.
Kinbote’s “Oh, there” brings to mind Othere, a God-inspired northern bard mentioned by Kinbote in his Commentary:
During our sunset rambles, of which there were so many, at least nine (according to my notes) in June, but dwindling to two in the first three weeks of July (they shall be resumed Elsewhere!), my friend had a rather coquettish way of pointing out with the tip of his cane various curious natural objects. He never tired of illustrating by means of these examples the extraordinary blend of Canadian Zone and Austral Zone that "obtained, " as he put it, in that particular spot of Appalachia where at our altitude of about 1,500 feet northern species of birds, insects and plants commingled with southern representatives. As most literary celebrities, Shade did not seem to realize that a humble admirer who has cornered at last and has at last to himself the inaccessible man of genius, is considerably more interested in discussing with him literature and life than in being told that the "diana" (presumably a flower) occurs in New Wye together with the "atlantis" (presumably another flower), and things of that sort. I particularly remember one exasperating evening stroll (July 6) which my poet granted me, with majestic generosity, in compensation for a bad hurt (see, frequently see, note to line 181), in recompense for my small gift (which I do not think he ever used), and with the sanction of his wife who made it a point to accompany us part of the way to Dulwich Forest. By means of astute excursions into natural history Shade kept evading me, me, who was, hysterically, intensely, uncontrollably curious to know what portion exactly of the Zemblan-king's adventures he had completed in the course of the last four or five days. My usual shortcoming, pride, prevented me from pressing him with direct questions but I kept reverting to my own earlier themes - the escape from the palace, the adventures in the mountains - in order to force some confession from him. One would imagine that a poet, in the course of composing a long and difficult piece, would simply jump at the opportunity of talking about his triumphs and tribulations. But nothing of the sort! All I got in reply to my infinitely gentle and cautious interrogations were such phrases as: "Yep. It's coming along nicely," or "Nope, I'm not talkin'," and finally he brushed me off with a rather offensive anecdote about King Alfred who, it was said, liked the stories of a Norwegian attendant he had but drove him away when engaged in other business: "Oh, there you are," rude Alfred would say to the gentle Norwegian who had come to weave a subtly different variant of some old Norse myth he had already related before: "Oh there you are again!" And thus it came to pass, my dears, that a fabulous exile, a God-inspired northern bard, is known today to English schoolboys by the trivial nickname: Ohthere.
However! On a later occasion my capricious and henpecked friend was much kinder (see note to line 802).
In his poem The Discoverer of the North Cape Henry Wadsworth Longfellow speaks of Othere, the old sea-captain, and King Alfred:
Othere, the old sea-captain,
Who dwelt in Helgoland,
To King Alfred, the Lover of Truth,
Brought a snow-white walrus-tooth,
Which he held in his brown right hand….
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”). In Baratynski’s poem “Don’t imitate: a genius is unique” the third line reads: Doratov li, Shekspirov li dvoynik (Whether Dorat’s or Shakespeare’s double).