In Canto Three of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) wonders if he should stop investigating his abyss and mentions a web of sense:
Life Everlasting – based on a misprint!
I mused as I drove homeward: take the hint,
And stop investigating my abyss?
But all at once it dawned on me that this
Was the real point, the contrapuntal theme;
Just this: not text, but texture; not the dream
But a topsy-turvical coincidence,
Not flimsy nonsense, but a web of sense.
Yes! It sufficed that I in life could find
Some kind of link-and-bobolink, some kind
Of correlated pattern in the game,
Plexed artistry, and something of the same
Pleasure in it as they who played it found. (ll. 803-815)
In his note to Line 810 (“a web of sense”) Kinbote (Shade’s mad commentator who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla) writes:
One of the five cabins of which this motor court consists is occupied by the owner, a blear-eyed, seventy-year-old man whose twisted limp reminds me of Shade. He runs a small gas station nearby, sells worms to fishermen, and usually does not bother me, but the other day he suggested I "grab any old book" from the shelf in his room. Not wishing to offend him, I cocked my head at them, to one side, and then to the other, but they were all dog-eared paperback mystery stories and did not rate more than a sigh and a smile. He said wait a minute-and took from a bedside recess a battered clothbound treasure. "A great book by a great guy," the Letters of Franklin Lane. "Used to see a lot of him in Rainier Park when I was a young ranger up there. You take it for a couple of days. You won't regret it!"
I did not. Here is a passage that curiously echoes Shade's tone at the end of Canto Three. It comes from a manuscript fragment written by Lane on May 17, 1921, on the eve of his death, after a major operation: "And if I had passed into that other land, whom would I have sought?... Aristotle! - Ah, there would be a man to talk with! What satisfaction to see him take, like reins from between his fingers, the long ribbon of man's life and trace it through the mystifying maze of all the wonderful adventure... The crooked made straight. The Daedalian plan simplified by a look from above – smeared out as it were by the splotch of some master thumb that made the whole involuted, boggling thing one beautiful straight line."
In his letters of Nov. 4, 1823, and of July 5, 1824, from Odessa to Vyazemski Pushkin mentions Aristotle and his old nets:
La Vigne школьник Вольтера — и бьется в старых сетях Аристотеля — романтизма нет еще во Франции. А он-то и возродит умершую поэзию — помни мое слово — первый поэтический гений в отечестве Буало ударится в такую бешеную свободу, что что твои немцы. Покамест во Франции поэтов менее, чем у нас.
Век романтизма не настал еще для Франции — Лавинь бьется в старых сетях Аристотеля — он ученик трагика Вольтера, а не природы.
July 5 is Shade’s, Kinbote’s and Gradus’s birthday (while Shade was born in 1898, Kinbote and Gradus were born in 1915). An American progressive politician from California, Franklin Knight Lane (note that "lane" is the last word of Shade's poem in its unfinished form) was born on July 15, 1864, and died on May 18, 1921. Earlier in his Commentary Kinbote mentions St. Swithin’s Day (July 15):
I crept back to my cheerless domicile with a heavy heart and a puzzled mind. The heart remained heavy but the puzzle was solved a few days later, very probably on St. Swithin's Day, for I find in my little diary under that date the anticipatory "promnad vespert mid J. S.," crossed out with a petulance that broke the lead in midstroke. Having waited and waited for my friend to join me in the lane, until the red of the sunset had turned to the ashes of dusk, I walked over to his front door, hesitated, assessed the gloom and the silence, and started to walk around the house. This time not a glint came from the back parlor, but by the bright prosaic light in the kitchen I distinguished one end of a whitewashed table and Sybil sitting at it with so rapt a look on her face that one might have supposed she had just thought up a new recipe. The back door was ajar, and as I tapped it open and launched upon some gay airy phrase, I realized that Shade, sitting at the other end of the table, was in the act of reading to her something that I guessed to be a part of his poem. They both started. An unprintable oath escaped from him and he slapped down on the table the stack of index cards he had in his hand. Later he was to attribute this temperamental outburst to his having mistaken, with his reading glasses on, a welcome friend for an intruding salesman; but I must say it shocked me, it shocked me greatly, and disposed me at the time to read a hideous meaning into everything that followed. "Well, sit down," said Sybil, "and have some coffee" (victors are generous). I accepted, as I wanted to see if the recitation would be continued in my presence. It was not. "I thought," I said to my friend, "you were coming out with me for a stroll." He excused himself saying he felt out of sorts, and continued to clean the bowl of his pipe as fiercely as if it were my heart he was hollowing out. (note to Lines 47-48)
A cancelled entry in Kinbote’s diary, “promnad vespert mid J. S.” brings to mind Vesper zolotoy (the golden Hesperus), as in his manuscript poem V golubom nebesnom pole (“In the blue heavenly area,” 1833) Pushkin calls the planet Venus:
В голубом небесном поле
Светит Веспер золотой -
Старый дож плывет в гондоле
С догарессой молодой.
Воздух полн дыханья лавра,
. . . . . . . . морская мгла,
Дремлют флаги бучентавра,
Ночь безмолвна и тепла.
In 1888 Pushkin’s poem was completed by Apollon Maykov who entitled his version Staryi dozh ("The Old Doge"):
«Ночь светла; в небесном поле
Ходит Веспер золотой;
Старый дож плывет в гондоле
с догарессой молодой...» *
Занимает догарессу
Умной речью дож седой...
Слово каждое по весу -
Что червонец дорогой...
Тешит он ее картиной,
Как Венеция, тишком,
Весь, как тонкой паутиной,
Мир опутала кругом:
«Кто сказал бы в дни Аттилы,
Чтоб из хижин рыбарей
Всплыл на отмели унылой
Этот чудный перл морей!
Чтоб, укрывшийся в лагуне,
Лев святого Марка стал
Выше всех владык - и втуне
Рев его не пропадал!
Чтоб его тяжелой лапы
Мощь почувствовать могли
Императоры, и папы,
И султан, и короли!
Подал знак - гремят перуны,
Всюду смута настает,
А к нему - в его лагуны -
Только золото плывет!..»
Кончил он, полусмеяся,
Ждет улыбки - но, глядит,
На плечо его склоняся,
Догаресса - мирно спит!..
«Всё дитя еще!» - с укором,
Полным ласки, молвил он,
Только слышит - вскинул взором -
Чье-то пенье... цитры звон...
И всё ближе это пенье
К ним несется над водой,
Рассыпаясь в отдаленье
В голубой простор морской...
Дожу вспомнилось былое...
Море зыбилось едва...
Тот же Веспер... «Что такое?
Что за глупые слова!» -
Вздрогнул он, как от укола
Прямо в сердце... Глядь, плывет,
Обгоняя их, гондола,
Кто-то в маске там поет:
«С старым дожем плыть в гондоле.
Быть его - и не любить...
И к другому, в злой неволе,
Тайный помысел стремить...
Тот «другой» - о догаресса! -
Самый ад не сладит с ним!
Он безумец, он повеса,
Но он - любит и любим!..»
Дож рванул усы седые...
Мысль за мыслью, целый ад,
Словно молний стрелы злые,
Душу мрачную браздят...
А она - так ровно дышит,
На плече его лежит...
«Что же?.. Слышит иль не слышит?
Спит она или не спит?!.»
*Эти четыре строчки найдены в бумагах Пушкина, как начало чего-то. Да простит мне тень великого поэта попытку угадать: что же было дальше?
In a footnote Maykov says that the first four lines were found in Pushkin's papers as a beginning of something and asks ten' velikogo poeta (the shade of the great poet) to pardon him for his attempt to guess what happened next. The old Doge in Maykov’s poem proudly tells his young wife that Venice caught in a thin web the whole world. According to Kinbote, he can see the web of the world, and the warp and the weft of that web:
Well did I know he could never resist a golden drop of this or that, especially since he was severely rationed at home. With an inward leap of exultation I relieved him of the large envelope that hampered his movements as he descended the steps of the porch, sideways, like a hesitating infant. We crossed the lawn, we crossed the road. Clink-clank, came the horseshoe music from Mystery Lodge. In the large envelope I carried I could feel the hard-cornered, rubberbanded batches of index cards. We are absurdly accustomed to the miracle of a few written signs being able to contain immortal imagery, involutions of thought, new worlds with live people, speaking, weeping, laughing. We take it for granted so simply that in a sense, by the very act of brutish routine acceptance, we undo the work of the ages, the history of the gradual elaboration of poetical description and construction, from the treeman to Browning, from the caveman to Keats. What if we awake one day, all of us, and find ourselves utterly unable to read? I wish you to gasp not only at what you read but at the miracle of its being readable (so I used to tell my students). Although I am capable, through long dabbling in blue magic, of imitating any prose in the world (but singularly enough not verse - I am a miserable rhymester), I do not consider myself a true artist, save in one matter: I can do what only a true artist can do – pounce upon the forgotten butterfly of revelation, wean myself abruptly from the habit of things, see the web of the world, and the warp and the weft of that web. Solemnly I weighed in my hand what I was carrying under my left armpit, and for a moment, I found myself enriched with an indescribable amazement as if informed that fireflies were making decodable signals on behalf of stranded spirits, or that a bat was writing a legible tale of torture in the bruised and branded sky.
I was holding all Zembla pressed to my heart. (note to Line 991)
"A golden drop of this or that" (Kinbote invites Shade to a glass of Tokay at his place) brings to mind vina zolotogo (Gen. of zolotoe vino, “golden wine”), a phrase used by Maykov in the second line of his poem Dvoynik (“The Double,” 1844):
Назвавши гостей, приготовил я яств благовонных,
В сосуды хрустальные налил вина золотого.
Убрал молодыми цветами свой стол, и, заране
Веселый, что скоро здесь клики и смех раздадутся,
Вокруг я ходил, поправляя приборы, плоды и гирлянды.
Но гости не идут никто… Изменила и ты, молодая
Царица стола моего, для которой нарочно
Я лучший венок приготовил из лилий душистых,
Которой бы голос и яркие очи, уста и ланиты
Служили бы солнцем веселости общей, законом
И сладкой уздой откровенному Вакху… Что ж делать?
Печально гляжу я на ясные свечи, ряд длинный приборов…
А где же друзья? Где она?.. Отчего не явилась?..
Быть может…
Ведь женское сердце и женская клятва что ветер…
Эх, сяду за кубок один я… Один ли?.. А он, неотступный,
Зачем он, непрошеный гость, предо мною уселся,
С насмешкой глядит мне в глаза? И напрасно движенья
Досады и ревности скрыть перед ним я стараюсь…
Ох, трудно привыкнуть к нему, хоть давно мы знакомы!
Всё страшно в нем видеть свой образ, но только без сердца,
Без страсти и с вечно холодной логической речью…
Софист неотступный, оставь меня! Что тебе пользы,
Хирург беспощадный, терзать мою душу?..
In the poem's last line Maykov calls his double khirurg besposhchadnyi (a merciless surgeon). Oswin Bretwin (the former Zemblan consul whom Gradus visits in Paris) dies under the knife:
But to return to the roofs of Paris. Courage was allied in Oswin Bretwit with integrity, kindness, dignity, and what can be euphemistically called endearing naïveté. When Gradus telephoned from the airport, and to whet his appetite read to him Baron B.'s message (minus the Latin tag), Bretwit's only thought was for the treat in store for him. Gradus had declined to say over the telephone what exactly the "precious papers" were, but it so happened that the ex-consul had been hoping lately to retrieve a valuable stamp collection that his father had bequeathed years ago to a now defunct cousin. The cousin had dwelt in the same house as Baron B., and with all these complicated and entrancing matters uppermost in his mind, the ex-consul, while awaiting his visitor, kept wondering not if the person from Zembla was a dangerous fraud, but whether he would bring all the albums at once or would do it gradually so as to see what he might get for his pains. Bretwit hoped the business would be completed that very night since on the following morning he was to be hospitalized and possibly operated upon (he was, and died under the knife). (note to Line 286)
The name Bretwit means "Chess Intelligence" and brings to mind pawns mentioned by Shade at the end of Canto Three:
It did not matter who they were. No sound,
No furtive light came from their involute
Abode, but there they were, aloof and mute,
Playing a game of worlds, promoting pawns
To ivory unicorns and ebon fauns;
Kindling a long life here, extinguishing
A short one there; killing a Balkan king;
Causing a chunk of ice formed on a high
Flying airplane to plummet from the sky
And strike a farmer dead; hiding my keys,
Glasses or pipe. Coordinating these
Events and objects with remote events
And vanished objects. Making ornaments
Of accidents and possibilities.
Stormcoated, I strode in: Sybil, it is
My firm conviction - "Darling, shut the door.
Had a nice trip?" Splendid - but what is more
I have returned convinced that I can grope
My way to some - to some - "Yes, dear?" Faint hope. (ll. 816-834)
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”).
Valerian Maykov (Apollon's younger brother, the critic) drowned in a lake near St. Petersburg on July 15, 1847, at the age of twenty-three. Hazel Shade (the poet’s daughter, 1934-57) was twenty-three when she drowned in Lake Omega. In his review of Stikhotvoreniya Apollona Maykova (“The Poems of Apollon Maykov,” 1842) Belinski criticizes Maykov’s poem Olinf i Esfir’ (“Olynth and Esther,” 1841) and says that its alpha and omega is martyrdom and death for truth:
Другая сторона поэмы -- христианская, тоже полна трагического величия, ибо ее альфа и омега -- мученичество и смерть за истину; но и она так же слаба и бледна у нашего поэта, как и языческая.
At the beginning of his essay Belinski speaks of Lermontov’s recent death (Lermontov's duel with Martynov took place on July 15, 1841) and twice repeats the word nadezhda (hope):
Даровита земля русская: почва ее не оскудевает талантами... Лишь только ожесточенное тяжкими утратами или оскорбленное несбывшимися надеждами сердце ваше готово увлечься порывом отчаяния, -- как вдруг новое явление привлекает к себе ваше внимание, возбуждает в вас робкую и трепетную надежду...
The “real” name of Hazel Shade seems to be Nadezhda Botkin. After her tragic death, her father, Professor Vsevolod Botkin (an American scholar of Russian descent) went mad and became Shade, Kinbote and Gradus. There is a hope that, when Kinbote completes his work on Shade’s poem and commits suicide (on October 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.