In Canto Three of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN's novel Pale Fire, 1962) mentions a game of chess with his wife Sybil who says that her knight is pinned:
"What is that funny creaking--do you hear?"
"It is the shutter on the stairs, my dear."
"If you're not sleeping, let's turn on the light.
I hate that wind! Let's play some chess." "All right."
"I'm sure it's not the shutter. There--again."
"It is a tendril fingering the pane."
"What glided down the roof and made that thud?"
"It is old winter tumbling in the mud."
"And now what shall I do? My knight is pinned."
Who rides so late in the night and the wind?
It is the writer's grief. It is the wild
March wind. It is the father with his child. (ll. 653-665)
In VN's novel The Real Life of Sebastian Knight (1941) Sebastian Knight (who signed his poems with a little black chess-knight drawn in ink) dies in a sanatorium in St Damier. As V. (the narrator in TRLSK, Sebastian's half-brother) points out, damier is French for "chess board:"
Would I never get to Sebastian? Who were those idle idiots who wrote on the wall 'Death to the Jews' or 'Vive le front populaire', or left obscene drawings? Some anonymous artist had begun blacking squares - a chess board, ein Schachbrett, un damier:. There was a flash in my brain and the word settled on my tongue: St Damier! (chapter 20)
In Dr Starov's telegram Sebastian's name is spelled Sevastian:
'Sevastian's state hopeless come immediately Starov.' It was worded in French; the 'v' in Sebastian's name was a transcription of its Russian spelling; for some reason unknown, I went to the bathroom and stood there for a moment in front of the looking-glass. Then I snatched my hat and ran downstairs. The time was a quarter to twelve when I reached the station, and there was a train at 0.02, arriving at Paris about half past two p.m. on the following day. (chapter 19)
In Luchami strel Erot menya pronzil: ("Eros has pierced me with the rays of his arrows:"), the first sonnet in the cycle Zolotye zavesy ("Golden Veils," 1907), Vyacheslav Ivanov compares himself to svyazen' Sevastian (bound Sebastian):
Лучами стрел Эрот меня пронзил,
Влача на казнь, как связня Севастьяна;
И, расточа горючий сноп колчана,
С другим снопом примчаться угрозил.
Так вещий сон мой жребий отразил
В зеркальности нелживого обмана...
И стал я весь - одна живая рана;
И каждый луч мне в сердце водрузил
Росток огня и корнем врос тягучим;
И я расцвёл - золотоцвет мечей -
Одним из солнц, и багрецом текучим
К ногам стекла волна моих ключей...
Ты погребла в пурпурном море тело,
И роза дня в струистой урне тлела.
Eros has pierced me with the rays of his arrows,
Dragging me to execution, like bound Sebastian.
And, having squandered the burning shaft of his quiver,
He has threatened to rush back with another shaft...
In V. Ivanov's sonnet svyazen' Sevastian is Saint Sebastian (died c. 288 AD), an early Christian saint and martyr. An obsolete word meaning "prisoner," svyazen' comes from svyazyvat' (to tie, bind). In chess vocabulary svyazyvat' means "to pin." In a game of chess that Sybil plays with her husband her knight is svyazan (pinned).
In the cycle's sixth sonnet V. Ivanov mentions mertsanie Sivillinoy svechi (the glimmer of Sibyl's candle) and dush spleten'ya i raskoly (the interlacing and splits of souls):
Чью розу гнут всех горних бурь Эолы,
Чью лилию пронзают все мечи, -
В мерцании Сивиллиной свечи
Душ лицезрит сплетенья и расколы.
At the beginning of Vyacheslav Velikolepnyi (“Vyacheslav the Magnificent”), an essay included in his book Potestas clavium. Vlast’ klyuchey (“Power of the Keys,” 1923), the philosopher Lev Shestov mentions the green cover of Vyacheslav Ivanov’s book Borozdy i mezhi (“Furrows and Boundaries,” 1916) on which the title is printed in red characters:
Предо мною новая книга В. Иванова. На зелёной обложке красными буквами напечатано заглавие: “Борозды и межи”. Краски яркие, заглавие яркое. И обложка не обманывает: книга, как всё, впрочем, что выходит из-под пера Вячеслава Иванова, - необыкновенно яркая.
Before me is a new book by V. Ivanov. On the green cover the title is printed in red characters: “Furrows and Boundaries.” Bright colors, bright title. And the cover does not deceive: like everything what comes from Vyacheslav Ivanov’s pen, the book is extraordinarily bright.
Part Three of V. Ivanov’s book is entitled Igry Melpomeny (“The Games of Melpomene”) and brings to mind Skazki Melpomeny ("The Fairy Tales of Melpomene," 1884), Chekhov's first book that includes six short stories. The name Shestov comes from shest’ (six). Melpomene is the Muse of Tragedy. According to Kinbote (Shade’s mad commentator who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla), the King escaped from the palace by the secret passage that leads to the theater’s green room. Describing the discovery of the secret passage, Kinbote mentions the magic key:
As soon as Monsieur Beauchamp had sat down for a game of chess at the bedside of Mr. Campbell and had offered his raised fists to choose from, the young Prince took Oleg to the magical closet. The wary, silent, green-carpeted steps of an escalier dérobé led to a stone-paved underground passage. Strictly speaking it was "underground" only in brief spells when, after burrowing under the southwest vestibule next to the lumber room, it went under a series of terraces, under the avenue of birches in the royal park, and then under the three transverse streets, Academy Boulevard, Coriolanus Lane and Timon Alley, that still separated it from its final destination. Otherwise, in its angular and cryptic course it adapted itself to the various structures which it followed, here availing itself of a bulwark to fit in its side like a pencil in the pencil hold of a pocket diary, there running through the cellars of a great mansion too rich in dark passageways to notice the stealthy intrusion. Possibly, in the intervening years, certain arcane connections had been established between the abandoned passage and the outer world by the random repercussions of work in surrounding layers of masonry or by the blind pokings of time itself; for here and there magic apertures and penetrations, so narrow and deep as to drive one insane, could be deduced from a pool of sweet, foul ditch water, bespeaking a moat, or from a dusky odor of earth and turf, marking the proximity of a glacis slope overhead; and at one point, where the passage crept through the basement of a huge ducal villa, with hothouses famous for their collections of desert flora, a light spread of sand momentarily changed the sound of one's tread. Oleg walked in front: his shapely buttocks encased in tight indigo cotton moved alertly, and his own erect radiance, rather than his flambeau, seemed to illume with leaps of light the low ceiling and crowding wails. Behind him the young Prince's electric torch played on the ground and gave a coating of flour to the back of Oleg's bare thighs. The air was musty and cold. On and on went the fantastic burrow. It developed a slight ascending grade. The pedometer had tocked off 1,888 yards, when at last they reached the end. The magic key of the lumber room closet slipped with gratifying ease into the keyhole of a green door confronting them, and would have accomplished the act promised by its smooth entrance, had not a burst of strange sounds coming from behind the door caused our explorers to pause. Two terrible voices, a man's and a woman's, now rising to a passionate pitch, now sinking to raucous undertones, were exchanging insults in Gutnish as spoken by the fisherfolk of Western Zembla. An abominable threat made the woman shriek out in fright. Sudden silence ensued, presently broken by the man's murmuring some brief phrase of casual approval ("Perfect, my dear," or "Couldn't be better") that was more eerie than anything that had come before. (note to Line 130)
1,888 yards between the palace and the theater seem to correspond to 1888, the year of Iris Acht’s death:
One August day, at the beginning of his third month of luxurious captivity in the South West Tower, he was accused of using a fop's hand mirror and the sun's cooperative rays to flash signals from his lofty casement. The vastness of the view it commanded was denounced not only as conducive to treachery but as producing in the surveyor an airy sense of superiority over his low-lodged jailers. Accordingly, one evening the King's cot-and-pot were transferred to a dismal lumber room on the same side of the palace but on its first floor. Many years before, it had been the dressing room of his grandfather, Thurgus the Third. After Thurgus died (in 1900) his ornate bedroom was transformed into a kind of chapel and the adjacent chamber, shorn of its full-length multiple mirror and green silk sofa, soon degenerated into what it had now remained for half a century, an old hole of a room with a locked trunk in one corner and an obsolete sewing machine in another. It was reached from a marble-flagged gallery, running along its north side and sharply turning immediately west of it to form a vestibule in the southwest corner of the Palace. The only window gave on an inner court on the south side. This window had once been a glorious dreamway of stained glass, with a fire-bird and a dazzled huntsman, but a football had recently shattered the fabulous forest scene and now its new ordinary pane was barred from the outside. On the west-side wall, above a whitewashed closet door, hung a large photograph in a frame of black velvet. The fleeting and faint but thousands of times repeated action of the same sun that was accused of sending messages from the tower, had gradually patinated this picture which showed the romantic profile and broad bare shoulders of the forgotten actress Iris Acht, said to have been for several years, ending with her sudden death in 1888, the mistress of Thurgus. In the opposite, east-side wall a frivolous-looking door, similar in turquoise coloration to the room's only other one (opening into the gallery) but securely hasped, had once led to the old rake's bedchamber; it had now lost its crystal knob, and was flanked on the east-side wall by two banished engravings belonging to the room's period of decay. They were of the sort that is not really supposed to be looked at, pictures that exist merely as general notions of pictures to meet the humble ornamental needs of some corridor or waiting room: one was a shabby and lugubrious Fête Flammande after Teniers; the other had once hung in the nursery whose sleepy denizens had always taken it to depict foamy waves in the foreground instead of the blurry shapes of melancholy sheep that it now revealed. (ibid.)
In a letter of July 22, 1888, to his sister Chekhov suggests that Mme Tarnovski (the aunt of VN’s mother, “Aunt Pasha,” as VN calls her in his autobiography Speak, Memory) should be undressed and painted green:
Вчера я ездил в Шах-мамай, именье Айвазовского, за 25 верст от Феодосии. Именье роскошное, несколько сказочное; такие имения, вероятно, можно видеть в Персии. Сам Айвазовский, бодрый старик лет 75, представляет из себя помесь добродушного армяшки с заевшимся архиереем; полон собственного достоинства, руки имеет мягкие и подает их по-генеральски. Недалёк, но натура сложная и достойная внимания. В себе одном он совмещает и генерала, и архиерея, и художника и армянина, и наивного деда, и Отелло. Женат на молодой и очень красивой женщине, которую держит в ежах. Знаком с султанами, шахами и эмирами. Писал вместе с Глинкой «Руслана и Людмилу». Был приятелем Пушкина, но Пушкина не читал. В своей жизни он не прочел ни одной книги. Когда ему предлагают читать, он говорит: «Зачем мне читать, если у меня есть свои мнения?» Я у него пробыл целый день и обедал. Обед длинный, тягучий, с бесконечными тостами. Между прочим, на обеде познакомился я с женщиной-врачом Тарновской, женою известного профессора. Это толстый, ожиревший комок мяса. Если её раздеть голой и выкрасить в зелёную краску, то получится болотная лягушка. Поговоривши с ней, я мысленно вычеркнул её из списка врачей...
. . . Yesterday we went to Shah-Mamai Aivazovsky’s estate, twenty-five versts from Feodosia. It is a magnificent estate, rather like fairyland; such estates may probably be seen in Persia. Aivazovsky himself, a vigorous old man of seventy-five, is a mixture of a good-natured Armenian and an overfed bishop; he is full of dignity, has soft hands, and offers them like a general. He is not very intelligent, but is a complex nature worthy of attention. He combines in himself a general, a bishop, an artist, an Armenian, a naive old peasant, and an Othello. He is married to a young and very beautiful woman whom he rules with a rod of iron. He is friendly with Sultans, Shahs, and Amirs. He collaborated with Glinka in writing “Ruslan and Lyudmila.” He was a friend of Pushkin, but has never read him. He has not read a single book in his life. When it is suggested to him that he should read something he answers, “Why should I read when I have opinions of my own?” I spent a whole day in his house and had dinner there. The dinner was fearfully long, with endless toasts. By the way, at that dinner I was introduced to the lady doctor, wife of the well-known professor. She is a fat, bulky piece of flesh. If she were undressed and painted green she would look just like a frog. After talking to her I mentally scratched her off the list of women doctors. . . .
Shah-Mamai brings to mind shakhmaty, Russian for "chess." Shakhmatovo was Alexander Blok's family estate in the Province of Moscow. Alexander Alexandrovich Blok (1880-1921) has the same name-and-patronymic as old Dr Starov in TRLSK:
Doctor Starov. Alexander Alexandrovich Starov. The train clattered over the points, repeating those x's. (chapter 20)
In Chapter One of his poem Vozmezdie (“Retribution,” 1910-21) Blok mentions all those who ceased to be a pawn and whom the authorities hasten to transform into rooks or knights:
И власть торопится скорей
Всех тех, кто перестал быть пешкой,
В тур превращать, или в коней...
An obsolete word used by Blok, tur (Gen. pl. of tura, “rook”) and tower are related words. In his Commentary Kinbote mentions Baron Bland, the Keeper of the Treasure who jumped or fell from the North Tower of the Royal Palace:
However, not all Russians are gloomy, and the two young experts from Moscow whom our new government engaged to locate the Zemblan crown jewels turned out to be positively rollicking. The Extremists were right in believing that Baron Bland, the Keeper of the Treasure, had succeeded in hiding those jewels before he jumped or fell from the North Tower; but they did not know he had had a helper and were wrong in thinking the jewels must be looked for in the palace which the gentle white-haired Bland had never left except to die. I may add, with pardonable satisfaction, that they were, and still are, cached in a totally different - and quite unexpected - corner of Zembla. (note to Line 681)
Baron Bland seems to blend Blok with Brand, the title character of a play in verse (1865) by Ibsen. In the penultimate line of “Retribution” Blok mentions quantum satis Branda voli (quantum satis of strong-willed Brand):
Когда ты загнан и забит
Людьми, заботой, иль тоскою;
Когда под гробовой доскою
Всё, что тебя пленяло, спит;
Когда по городской пустыне,
Отчаявшийся и больной,
Ты возвращаешься домой,
И тяжелит ресницы иней,
Тогда - остановись на миг
Послушать тишину ночную:
Постигнешь слухом жизнь иную,
Которой днём ты не постиг;
По-новому окинешь взглядом
Даль снежных улиц, дым костра,
Ночь, тихо ждущую утра
Над белым запушённым садом,
И небо - книгу между книг;
Найдёшь в душе опустошённой
Вновь образ матери склонённый,
И в этот несравненный миг -
Узоры на стекле фонарном,
Мороз, оледенивший кровь,
Твоя холодная любовь -
Всё вспыхнет в сердце благодарном,
Ты всё благословишь тогда,
Поняв, что жизнь - безмерно боле,
Чем quantum satis Бранда воли,
А мир - прекрасен, как всегда.
When you are cornered and depressed
By people, dues or anguish.
When, underneath the coffin lid,
All that inspired you, perished;
When through the deserted town dome,
Hopeless and weak,
You're finally returning home,
And rime is on thy eyelashes, -
Then - come to rest for short - lifted flash
To hear the silence of night
You'll fathom other life by ears
That's hard to fathom at daylight
In new way you will do the glance
Of long snow streets and foam of fire,
Of night, quite waiting for the lance
Of morning in white garden, piled.
Of heaven - Book among the books
You'll find in the drained soul
Again your loving mother's look
And at this moment, peerless, sole
The patterns on the lamppost's glass
The frost, that chilled your blood
Your stone-hold love, already past
All will flare up in your heart.
Then everything you'll highly bless
You'll see that life is much greater
Than quantum satis of strong-willed Brand
And the world is beautiful as always. (chapter III)
In Latin quantum satis means “the amount which is enough.” The 999 lines of Shade’s poem look insufficient. Kinbote believes that, to be completed, Shade’s almost finished 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 (who appears as a character in Blok's "Retribution") and a poem (1909) by Blok.
Baron Bland’s end brings to mind the heroine’s death in Dostoevski’s story Krotkaya (“A Gentle Creature,” 1876) and Luzhin’s death in VN’s novel Zashchita Luzhina (“The Luzhin Defense,” 1930). Luzhin’s maternal grandfather was a composer. The red-and-green opposition in Pale Fire (the Shades live in “the frame house between Goldsworth and Wordsmith on its square of green;” the king escapes from Zembla dressed as an athlete in scarlet wool) brings to mind Rossini (an operatic composer whose name comes from the Italian word for "red") and Verdi (another operatic composer whose name comes from the Italian word for "green"). Verdi’s opera Rigoletto (1851) is based on Victor Hugo's play Le roi s'amuse (“The King Amuses Himself,” 1832). In “The Fragments of Onegin’s Journey” [XXVII] Pushkin compares Rossini to Orpheus (a legendary musician who descended into the Underworld of Hades to recover his lost wife Eurydice) and Rossini’s music, to Ay (the champagne):
Но уж темнеет вечер синий,
Пора нам в оперу скорей:
Там упоительный Россини,
Европы баловень ― Орфей.
Не внемля критике суровой,
Он вечно тот же, вечно новый,
Он звуки льёт ― они кипят,
Они текут, они горят,
Как поцелуи молодые,
Все в неге, в пламени любви,
Как зашипевшего аи
Струя и брызги золотые...
Но, господа, позволено ль
С вином равнять dо-rе-mi-sоl?
But darker grows already the blue evening.
Time to the opera we sped:
there 'tis the ravishing Rossini,
the pet of Europe, Orpheus.
Not harking to harsh criticism,
he is ever selfsame, ever new;
he pours out melodies, they seethe,
they flow, they burn
like youthful kisses,
all sensuousness, in flames of love,
like, at the fuzzing point, Ay's
stream and gold spurtles...
but, gentlemen, is it permitted
to equalize do-re-mi-sol with wine?
In his poem V restorane ("At the Restaurant," 1910) Blok mentions a black rose in a goblet of Ay, golden as the sky:
Я сидел у окна в переполненном зале.
Где-то пели смычки о любви.
Я послал тебе чёрную розу в бокале
Золотого, как нёбо, аи.
I sat by the window in a crowded room.
Distant bows were singing of love.
I sent you a black rose in a goblet
Of Ay, golden as the sky.
One of Blok’s poems begins Ne zatem velichal ya sebya paladinom… (“Not for that I called myself a paladin…” 1908):
Не затем величал я себя паладином,
Не затем ведь и ты приходила ко мне,
Чтобы только рыдать над потухшим камином,
Чтобы только плясать при умершем огне!
Или счастие вправду неверно и быстро?
Или вправду я слаб уже, болен и стар?
Нет! В золе ещё бродят последние искры,
Есть огонь, чтобы вспыхнул пожар!
In his Commentary to Shade's poem Kinbote mentions Black Rose Paladins:
Actually Odon happened to be one of the most prominent actors in Zembla and was winning applause in the Royal Theater on his off-duty nights. Through
him the King kept in touch with numerous adherents, young nobles, artists, college athletes, gamblers, Black Rose Paladins, members of fencing clubs, and other men of fashion and adventure. (note to Line 130)
In his poem Zhil na svete rytsar' bednyi ("There was once a poor knight:" 1829) Pushkin mentions paladiny (paladins) proclaiming the names of their ladies, while the poem's hero shouts: "Lumen coelum, sancta Rosa!":
Между тем как паладины
Ввстречу трепетным врагам
По равнинам Палестины
Мчались, именуя дам,
Lumen coelum, sancta Rosa!
Восклицал всех громче он,
И гнала его угроза
Мусульман со всех сторон.
When the Paladins proclaiming
Ladies' names as true love's sign
Hurled themselves into the battle
On the plains of Palestine,
Lumen coelum, sancta Rosa!
Shouted he with flaming glance,
And the fury of his menace
Checked the Mussulman's advance.
Just before Shade’s death Kinbote invites the poet to his place to a glass of Tokay:
"Well," I said, "has the muse been kind to you?"
"Very kind," he replied, slightly bowing his hand-propped head. "exceptionally kind and gentle. In fact, I have here [indicating a huge pregnant envelope near him on the oilcloth] practically the entire product. A few trifles to settle and [suddenly striking the table with his fist] I've swung it, by God."
The envelope, unfastened at one end, bulged with stacked cards.
"Where is the missus?" I asked (mouth dry).
"Help me, Charlie, to get out of here," he pleaded. "Foot gone to sleep. Sybil is at a dinner-meeting of her club."
"A suggestion," I said, quivering. "I have at my place half a gallon of Tokay. I'm ready to share my favorite wine with my favorite poet. We shall have for dinner a knackle of walnuts, a couple of large tomatoes, and a bunch of bananas. And if you agree to show me your 'finished product,' there will be another treat: I promise to divulge to you why I gave you, or rather who gave you, your theme."
"What theme?" said Shade absently, as he leaned on my arm and gradually recovered the use of his numb limb.
"Our blue inenubilable Zembla, and the red-capped Steinmann, and the motorboat in the sea cave, and -"
"Ah," said Shade, "I think I guessed your secret quite some time ago. But all the same I shall sample your wine with pleasure. Okay, I can manage by myself now." (note to Line 997)
Shade's muse and Kinbote's red-capped Steinmann bring to mind kolpak (a cap) that was knitted for the muses and put on them, with bells, by Phoebus himself in Pushkin's poem “To V. S. Filimonov. At Receiving his Poem Fool’s Cap” (1828):
Вам музы, милые старушки,
Колпак связали в добрый час,
И, прицепив к нему гремушки,
Сам Феб надел его на вас.
Хотелось в том же мне уборе
Пред вами нынче щегольнуть
И в откровенном разговоре,
Как вы, на многое взглянуть;
Но старый мой колпак изношен,
Хоть и любил его поэт;
Он поневоле мной заброшен:
Не в моде нынче красный цвет.
Итак, в знак мирного привета,
Снимая шляпу, бью челом,
Узнав философа-поэта
Под осторожным колпаком.
According to Pushkin, his old cap is worn out and neglected against his will, because the red color is not in vogue now. In his poem Tovarishcham (“To my Comrades,” 1817) addressed to his Lyceum friends Pushkin asks to leave him his krasnyi kolpak (red cap):
Друзья! немного снисхожденья -
Оставьте красный мне колпак,
Пока его за прегрешенья
Не променял я на шишак,
Пока ленивому возможно,
Не опасаясь грозных бед,
Ещё рукой неосторожной
В июле распахнуть жилет.
In the poem’s last line Pushkin mentions iyul’ (July). Shade begins his last poem on July 2, 1959, and is killed by Gradus on July 21, 1959. In Ob iyune i iyule (“On June and July”), a part of his humorous Filologicheskie zametki (“Philological Notes,” 1885), Chekhov mentions the inexorable red pencil with which Death scratched off in July six Russian poets:
Для писателей июль несчастный месяц. Смерть своим неумолимым красным карандашом зачеркнула в июле шестерых русских поэтов и одного Памву Берынду.
For the writers July is an unhappy month. With its inexorable red pencil Death scratched off in July six Russian poets and one Pamva Berynda.
In 1901 Chekhov married Olga Knipper (a leading actress of the Moscow Art Theater). In July, 1904, Chekhov died in Badenweiler (a German spa). In Pushkin's Eugene Onegin (Four: XXVI: 9-14) Lenski (a Göttingen student) plays chess with Olga and with a pawn takes in abstraction his own rook:
Уединясь от всех далёко,
Они над шахматной доской,
На стол облокотясь, порой
Сидят, задумавшись глубоко,
И Ленской пешкою ладью
Берёт в рассеяньи свою.
Secluded far from everybody,
over the chessboard they,
their elbows on the table, sometimes
sit deep in thought,
and Lenski with a pawn
takes in abstraction his own rook.
While Sybil Shade (the poet's wife) seems to be a green chess queen, Queen Disa (the wife of Charles the Beloved) is a red queen. Duchess of Payn, of Great Payn and Mone, Queen Disa seems to be a cross between Leonardo’s Mona Lisa and Desdemona, Othello’s wife in Shakespeare’s Othello. At the beginning of a poem that he contributed to the school magazine Victor Wind (in VN’s novel Pnin, 1957, Liza Bogolepov’s son who imagines that his father is a king) mentions Mona Lisa’s nun-pale lips that Leonardo had made so red:
Leonardo! Strange diseases
strike at madders mixed with lead:
nun-pale now are Mona Lisa's
lips that you had made so red. (Chapter Four, 5)
Describing a conversation at the Faculty Club, Kinbote compares Gerald Emerald (a young instructor at Wordsmith University) to a disciple in Leonardo’s Last Supper:
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 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. (note to Line 894)
In Shakespeare's Othello (3.3) Iago famously calls jealousy "a green-eyed monster:"
Beware of jealousy, my lord! It's a green-eyed monster that makes fun of the victims it devours.
Othello is an opera (1816) by Rossini and an opera (1887) by Verdi. At Joe Lavender's Villa Libitina Gradus (Shade's murderer whom Kinbote compares to a chess knight, that skip-space piece, standing on a marginal file) meets Gordon Krummholz, a musical prodigy:
"Gordon is a musical prodigy," said Miss Baud, and the boy winced. "Gordon, will you show the garden to this gentleman?"
The boy acquiesced, adding he would take a dip if nobody minded. He put on his sandals and led the way out. Through light and shade walked the strange pair: the graceful boy wreathed about the loins with ivy and the seedy killer in his cheap brown suit with a folded newspaper sticking out of his left-hand coat pocket.
"That's the Grotto," said Gordon. "I once spent the night here with a friend." Gradus let his indifferent glance enter the mossy recess where one could glimpse a collapsible mattress with a dark stain on its orange nylon. The boy applied avid lips to a pipe of spring water and wiped his wet hands on his black bathing trunks. Gradus consulted his watch. They strolled on. "You have not seen anything yet," said Gordon. (note to Line 408)
In Keats' ballad La Belle Dame sans Merci (1819) the lady takes the knight to her Elfin grot:
She took me to her Elfin grot,
And there she wept and sighed full sore,
And there I shut her wild wild eyes
With kisses four.
According to Kinbote, the King called Gordon’s governess “Mademoiselle Belle:”
From a window seat a gaunt jet-glittering lady stiffly arose and introduced herself as the governess of Mr. Lavender's nephew. Gradus mentioned his eagerness to see Lavender's sensational collection: this aptly defined its pictures of lovemaking in orchards, but the governess (whom the King had always called to her pleased face Mademoiselle Belle instead of Mademoiselle Baud) hastened to confess her total ignorance of her employer's hobbies and treasures and suggested the visitor's taking a look at the garden: "Gordon will show you his favorite flowers" she said, and called into the next room "Gordon!" (note to Line 408)
The “real” name of Gordon’s governess seems to hint at Baudelaire. In his poem Don Juan aux enfers (“Don Juan in Hell”) Baudelaire mentions Don Juan's wife Elvira:
Frissonnant sous son deuil, la chaste et maigre Elvire,
Près de l'époux perfide et qui fut son amant,
Semblait lui réclamer un suprême sourire
Où brillât la douceur de son premier serment.
Shuddering in her grief, Elvira, chaste and thin,
Near her treacherous spouse who was once her lover,
Seemed to implore of him a final, parting smile
That would shine with the sweetness of his first promises.
(tr. W. Aggeler)
Don Juan is a satirical, epic poem by George Gordon Byron. In Mozart’s opera Don Giovanni (1787) Leporello (Don Giovanni’s servant) sings his "Catalogue aria" to Donna Elvira (a lady of Burgos abandoned by Don Giovanni):
Madamina, il catalogo è questo
Delle belle che amò il padron mio;
un catalogo egli è che ho fatt'io;
Osservate, leggete con me.
In Italia seicento e quaranta;
In Alemagna duecento e trentuna;
Cento in Francia, in Turchia novantuna;
Ma in Ispagna son già mille e tre.
V'han fra queste contadine,
Cameriere, cittadine,
V'han contesse, baronesse,
Marchesane, principesse.
E v'han donne d'ogni grado,
D'ogni forma, d'ogni età.
Nella bionda egli ha l'usanza
Di lodar la gentilezza,
Nella bruna la costanza,
Nella bianca la dolcezza.
Vuol d'inverno la grassotta,
Vuol d'estate la magrotta;
È la grande maestosa,
La piccina è ognor vezzosa.
Delle vecchie fa conquista
Pel piacer di porle in lista;
Sua passion predominante
È la giovin principiante.
Non si picca – se sia ricca,
Se sia brutta, se sia bella;
Purché porti la gonnella,
Voi sapete quel che fa.
My dear lady, this is the list
Of the beauties my master has loved,
A list which I have compiled.
Observe, read along with me.
In Italy, six hundred and forty;
In Germany, two hundred and thirty-one;
A hundred in France; in Turkey, ninety-one;
But in Spain already one thousand and three.
Among these are peasant girls,
Maidservants, city girls,
Countesses, baronesses,
Marchionesses, princesses,
Women of every rank,
Every shape, every age.
With blondes it is his habit
To praise their kindness;
In brunettes, their faithfulness;
In the white-haired, their sweetness.
In winter he likes fat ones.
In summer he likes thin ones.
He calls the tall ones majestic.
The little ones are always charming.
He seduces the old ones
For the pleasure of adding to the list.
His greatest favourite
Is the young beginner.
It doesn't matter if she's rich,
Ugly or beautiful;
If she wears a skirt,
You know what he does.
The first word of Leporello’s aria, madamina (It., “my dear lady”) brings to mind minnamin (“my darling”), the first word in a Zemblan saying quoted by Kinbote at the end of his Commentary:
Many years ago--how many I would not care to say--I remember my Zemblan nurse telling me, a little man of six in the throes of adult insomnia: "Minnamin, Gut mag alkan, Pern dirstan" (my darling, God makes hungry, the Devil thirsty). Well, folks, I guess many in this fine hall are as hungry and thirsty as me, and I'd better stop, folks, right here. (note to Line 1000)
In Pushkin’s little tragedy “Mozart and Salieri” (1830) Mozart mentions his bessonnitsa (insomnia):
Сальери
Что ты мне принёс?
Моцарт
Нет — так; безделицу. Намедни ночью
Бессонница моя меня томила,
И в голову пришли мне две, три мысли.
Сегодня их я набросал. Хотелось
Твое мне слышать мненье; но теперь
Тебе не до меня.
Salieri
What did you bring me?
Mozart
This?
No, just a trifle. Late the other night,
As my insomnia was full upon me,
Brought some two, three ideas into my head;
Today I jot them down... O well, I hoped
To hear what you may think of this, but now
You're in no mood for me. (Scene I)
A little earlier the blind fiddler plays an aria from Mozart’s Don Giovanni:
Сальери
Ты здесь! — Давно ль?
Моцарт
Сейчас. Я шёл к тебе,
Нёс кое-что тебе я показать;
Но, проходя перед трактиром, вдруг
Услышал скрыпку... Нет, мой друг, Сальери!
Смешнее отроду ты ничего
Не слыхивал... Слепой скрыпач в трактире
Разыгрывал voi che sapete. Чудо!
Не вытерпел, привёл я скрыпача,
Чтоб угостить тебя его искусством.
Войди!
Входит слепой старик со скрыпкой.
Из Моцарта нам что-нибудь!
Старик играет арию из Дон-Жуана;
Моцарт хохочет.
Сальери
И ты смеяться можешь?
Моцарт
Ах, Сальери!
Ужель и сам ты не смеешься?
Сальери
Нет.
Мне не смешно, когда маляр негодный
Мне пачкает Мадонну Рафаэля,
Мне не смешно, когда фигляр презренный
Пародией бесчестит Алигьери.
Пошёл, старик.
Salieri
You here! -- since long?
Mozart
Just now. I had
Something to show you; I was on my way,
But passing by an inn, all of a sudden
I heard a violin... My friend Salieri,
In your whole life you haven't heard anything
So funny: this blind fiddler in the inn
Was playing the "voi che sapete". Wondrous!
I couldn't keep myself from bringing him
To treat you to his art. Entrez, maestro!
(Enter a blind old man with a violin.)
Some Mozart, now!
(The old man plays an aria from Don Giovanni; Mozart
roars with laughter.)
Salieri
And you can laugh?
Mozart
Ah, come,
Salieri, aren't you laughing?
Salieri
No, I'm not!
How can I laugh when some inferior dauber
Stains in my view the great Raphael's Madonna;
How can I laugh when some repellent mummer
With tasteless parodies dishonors Dante.
Begone, old man! (ibid.)
Voi che sapete is a reference to Voi sapete quel che fa (You know what he does), the last words of Leporello’s aria.
In Pushkin’s little tragedy Mozart uses the phrase nikto b (none would):
Когда бы все так чувствовали силу
Гармонии! Но нет: тогда б не мог
И мир существовать; никто б не стал
Заботиться о нуждах низкой жизни;
Все предались бы вольному искусству.
If all could feel like you the power
of harmony! But no: the world
could not go on then. None would
bother about the needs of lowly life;
All would surrender to free art. (Scene II)
The “real” name of the poet Shade, his commentator Kinbote and his murderer Gradus seems to be Botkin (nikto b in reverse). An American scholar of Russian descent, Professor Vsevolod Botkin went mad and became Shade, Kinbote and Gradus after the tragic death of his daughter Nadezhda (Hazel Shade’s “real” name). There is 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 (Pushkin's boss in Odessa and a target of his epigrams: "half-milord, half-merchant, etc."), will be full again.