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), Jakob Gradus (Shade's murderer) called himself variously Jack Degree or Jacques de Grey, or James de Gray, and also appears in police records as Ravus, Ravenstone, and d'Argus:
Jakob Gradus called himself variously Jack Degree or Jacques de Grey, or James de Gray, and also appears in police records as Ravus, Ravenstone, and d'Argus. Having a morbid affection for the ruddy Russia of the Soviet era, he contended that the real origin of his name should be sought in the Russian word for grape, vinograd, to which a Latin suffix had adhered, making it Vinogradus. His father, Martin Gradus, had been a Protestant minister in Riga, but except for him and a maternal uncle (Roman Tselovalnikov, police officer and part-time member of the Social-Revolutionary party), the whole clan seems to have been in the liquor business. Martin Gradus died in 1920, and his widow moved to Strasbourg where she soon died, too. Another Gradus, an Alsatian merchant, who oddly enough was totally unrelated to our killer but had been a close business friend of his kinsmen for years, adopted the boy and raised him with his own children. It would seem that at one time young Gradus studied pharmacology in Zurich, and at another, traveled to misty vineyards as an itinerant wine taster. We find him next engaging in petty subversive activities - printing peevish pamphlets, acting as messenger for obscure syndicalist groups, organizing strikes at glass factories, and that sort of thing. Sometime in the forties he came to Zembla as a brandy salesman. There he married a publican's daughter. His connection with the Extremist party dates from its first ugly writhings, and when the revolution broke out, his modest organizational gifts found some appreciation in various offices. His departure for Western Europe, with a sordid purpose in his heart and a loaded gun in his pocket, took place on the very day that an innocent poet in an innocent land was beginning Canto Two of Pale Fire. We shall accompany Gradus in constant thought, as he makes his way from distant dim Zembla to green Appalachia, through the entire length of the poem, following the road of its rhythm, riding past in a rhyme, skidding around the corner of a run-on, breathing with the caesura, swinging down to the foot of the page from line to line as from branch to branch, hiding between two words (see note to line 596), reappearing on the horizon of a new canto, steadily marching nearer in iambic motion, crossing streets, moving up with his valise on the escalator of the pentameter, stepping off, boarding a new train of thought, entering the hall of a hotel, putting out the bedlight, while Shade blots out a word, and falling asleep as the poet lays down his pen for the night. (note to Line 17)
Jacques de Grey seems to hint at Sir Jacques le Gris (lit. "the Gray," c. 1330s – 29 December 1386), a French squire and knight who gained fame and infamy, and was ultimately killed when he engaged in one of the last judicial duels permitted by the Parlement of Paris after he was accused of rape by Marguerite de Carrouges, the wife of his neighbour and rival, Sir Jean de Carrouges. Carrouges brought legal proceedings against Le Gris before King Charles VI (surnamed the Beloved and later the Mad) who, after hearing the evidence, authorised a trial by combat to determine the question. The duel attracted thousands of spectators and has been discussed by many notable French writers, from the contemporary Jean Froissart to Voltaire.
According to Maximilian Voloshin, everything revolutionary is always connected with the name Yakov (Jacob): the Jacqueries, Jacobins, etc. The roots of the Great French Revolution and of the execution of the King Louis XVI should be sought in the 14th century, when Jacques de Molay (the Grand Master of the Knights Templar, 1244-1314) was burned. Here is an excerpt from the chapter on Voloshin in Eugenia Gertsyk's Vospominaniya (Memoirs):
— Революция? Революция — пароксизм чувства справедливости. Революция — дыхание тела народа... И знаете, — Волошин оживляется, переходя на милую ему почву Франции, — 89-й год, или, вернее, казнь Людовика, — корнями в XIV веке, когда происками папы и короля сожжен был в Париже великий магистр ордена тамплиеров Яков Моле, — этот могущественный орден замышлял социальные преобразования, от него и принципы: Egalite и т. д. И вот во Франции пульсация возмездия, всё революционное всегда связано с именем Якова: крестьянские жакерии, якобинцы...
According to Voloshin, Revolution is a paroxysm of the sense of justice. "Saint-Just is the embodiment of the absolute idea of justice, which in the very sound of his name marked its appearance on the earth." (Prophets and Avengers)
Voloshin's conversation with Eugenia Gertsyk took place in 1907, ten years before the Revolution and eleven years before the execution of Nicholas II and his family (among the people who were executed with the tsar was Dr Eugene Botkin). The chief executioner of the tsar's family was Yakov Yurovski.
Voloshin also speaks of Jacques de Molay in his essay Proroki i mstiteli (The Prophets and Avengers, 1906):
21 января 1793 года находится в неразрывной связи с 18 марта 1314 года - днём, когда был сожжён Великий Магистр ордена Тамплиэров, Яков Молэ.
За шесть лет до этого, в ночь с 12 на 13 ноября 1307 года, заговором всех государств Европы, составленным по инициативе французского короля Филиппа Красивого и папы Климента V, был совершен один из самых грандиозных coups d'Etat, случившихся в Европе.
Был арестован весь могущественный рыцарский орден тамплиеров, тайное общество, которое держало в своих руках все богатство и всю власть тогдашней Европы и подготовляло громадный религиозный и социальный переворот в европейском человечестве.
Шесть лет длился процесс, в котором тамплиеры обвинялись в черной магии, колдовстве и сатанизме, и 18 марта 1314 года великий магистр Яков Моле был сожжен на медленном огне на том самом месте Pont-Neuf, где теперь стоит статуя Генриха IV.
Он горел несколько часов и призвал папу и короля предстать вместе с ним на суд Божий в этом же году.
Папа умер через 40 дней, и тело его сгорело от опрокинутого светильника в то время, когда оно стояло в церкви, а король Филипп Красивый умер через год. Орден тамплиеров, основанный Гюгом де Пайеном как земное воплощение небесного ордена «Святого Грааля», был хранителем эзотерического христианства, и есть основание предполагать, что он подготовлял громадное религиозно-социальное переустройство средневекового мира.
Перед казнью Яков Молэ основал четыре Великих Масонских ложи: в Неаполе восточную, в Эдинбурге западную, в Стокгольме северную и в Париже южную.
На другой день после его сожжения Chevalier Aumont и семь тамплиэров, переодетые в костюмы каменщиков, с благоговением подобрали пепел его костра.
Так родилось по преданию тайное общество Франк-Масонов, которое впоследствии передало Великой Революции свой девиз: Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité.
According to Voloshin, 21 January 1793 (the day when Louis XVI was executed) is connected with 18 March 1314 (the day when Jacques de Molay was burned). Before his death Jacques de Molay founded four Masonic Grand Lodges: in Naples, Edinburgh, Stockholm and Paris. The Great French Revolution owes its motto, "Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité," to the Freemasons. Duchess of Payn, of Great Payn and Mone, Queen Disa (the wife of Charles the Beloved) brings to mind Hugues de Payens or Payns (1070-1136), the co-founder and first Grand Master of the Knights Templars, the earthly embodiment of the heavenly "Holy Grail."
Gradus also appears in police records as Ravenstone. A ravenstone is a place of execution, akin to the gallows. But it also brings to mind ravenstvo, Russian for "equality" (the French égalité). A cousin of King Louis XVI, Philippe Égalité (Louis Philippe II, Duke of Orléans, 1747-93) was the Grand Master of the Masonic Grand Orient de France. Louis Philippe voted for the death of Louis XVI; however, he was himself guillotined in 1793 during the Reign of Terror. Maximilian Voloshin (1877-1932) is a namesake of Maximilien Robespierre (1758-94), one of the most widely known, influential, and controversial figures of the French Revolution. In Robespierre there is Pierre (btw., the name means "stone"). M'sieur Pierre is the executioner in VN’s novel Priglashenie na kazn’ (“Invitation to a Beheading,” 1935). The epigraph to Invitation to a Beheading is from the invented French thinker Pierre Delalande:
Comme un fou se croit Dieu
nous nous croyons mortels.
Delalande. Discours sur les ombres
In The Prophets and Avengers Voloshin says:
«Обезьяна сошла с ума и стала человеком».
Следующий день начнется, когда человек сойдет с ума и станет Богом.
"The ape went mad and became man."
The next day will begin, when the man goes mad and becomes God.
In Prophets and Avengers Voloshin says that Voltaire became a Mason in the last years of his life (in 1778) and that he belonged to a lodge founded by Jerome de Lalande (a French mathematician and astronomer, 1732-1807):
Когда Вольтер в самые последние годы своей жизни (1778) был посвящен в масоны, то в числе членов ложи Девяти Сестер, основанной Лаландом, в которую он был введен Франклином и историком Курт де Жебелен, были: Бальи, Дантон, Гара, Бриссо, Камилль Демулен, Шамфор, Петион, Кондорсэ и Дом Герль.
Benjamin Franklin, Danton, Camille Desmoulins and Chamfort belonged to the same Masonic lodge.
In his essay Voloshin mentions the Jacobins and stresses the mysterious role of the name Jacob:
Якобинизм имел уже имя раньше того, чем главы заговора выбрали старую церковь монахов-якобитов местом для своих собраний. Их имя происходит от имени Якова - имени рокового для всех революций. Старые опустошители Франции, создавшие Жакерию, назывались "Жаками".
Философ, роковые слова которого предуготовили новые жакерии, назывался "Жан-Жаком", и тайные двигатели Революции клялись низвергнуть трон и алтарь на гробнице Якова Молэ.