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), the Zemblan Revolution broke out on May 1, 1958:
When the Zemblan Revolution broke out (May 1, 1958), she [Queen Disa] wrote the King a wild letter in governess English, urging him to come and stay with her until the situation cleared up. The letter was intercepted by the Onhava police, translated into crude Zemblan by a Hindu member of the Extremist party, and then read aloud to the royal captive in a would-be ironic voice by the preposterous commandant of the palace. There happened to be in that letter one - only one, thank God - sentimental sentence: "I want you to know that no matter how much you hurt me, you cannot hurt my love," and this sentence (if we re-English it from the Zemblan) came out as: "I desire you and love when you flog me" He interrupted the commandant, calling him a buffoon and a rogue, and insulting everybody around so dreadfully that the Extremists had to decide fast whether to shoot him at once or let him have the original of the letter.
Eventually he managed to inform her that he was confined to the palace. Valiant Disa hurriedly left the Riviera and made a romantic but fortunately ineffectual attempt to return to Zembla. Had she been permitted to land, she would have been forthwith incarcerated, which would have reacted on the King's flight, doubling the difficulties of escape. A message from the Karlists containing these simple considerations checked her progress in Stockholm, and she flew back to her perch in a mood of frustration and fury (mainly, I think, because the message had been conveyed to her by a cousin of hers, good old Curdy Buff, whom she loathed). Several weeks passed and she was soon in a state of even worse agitation owing to rumors that her husband might be condemned to death. She left Cap Turc again. She had traveled to Brussels and chartered a plane to fly north, when another message, this time from Odon, came, saying that the King and he were out of Zembla, and that she should quietly regain Villa Disa and await there further news. In the autumn of the same year she was informed by Lavender that a man representing her husband would be coming to discuss with her certain business matters concerning property she and her husband jointly owned abroad. She was in the act of writing on the terrace under the jacaranda a disconsolate letter to Lavender when the tall, sheared and bearded visitor with the bouquet of flowers-of-the-gods who had been watching her from afar advanced through the garlands of shade. She looked up - and of course no dark spectacles and no make-up could for a moment fool her. (note to Lines 433-434)
According to Tyutchev, the only Revolution in this world that deserves to be taken seriously, the only one, at least, that always has success is Spring. Tyutchev's poem Vesennyaya groza ("The Spring Thunderstorm," 1828) begins with the line Lyublyu grozu v nachale maya (I love a thunderstorm at the beginning of May):
Люблю грозу в начале мая,
Когда весенний, первый гром,
Как бы резвяся и играя,
Грохочет в небе голубом.
Гремят раскаты молодые,
Вот дождик брызнул, пыль летит,
Повисли перлы дождевые,
И солнце нити золотит.
С горы бежит поток проворный,
В лесу не молкнет птичий гам,
И гам лесной, и шум нагорный —
Всё вторит весело громам.
Ты скажешь: ветреная Геба,
Кормя Зевесова орла,
Громокипящий кубок с неба,
Смеясь, на землю пролила.
I love a thunderstorm at the beginning of May,
when spring’s first thunder,
as though play, in a frolic,
rumbles in the blue sky.
The young peals of thunder rattle.
Now it is drizzling,
dust is flying, pearls are hanging,
and the sun is gilding the treads.
A swift torrent rushes down the hill,
The birds’ clamour in the wood does not cease;
The clamour in the woods and the noise on the hillside
All gaily echo the thunder — claps.
You'd say: frivolous Hebe,
feeding Zeus' eagle,
has spilled on Earth, laughing,
the thunder-boiling cup.
In Canto Four of his poem Shade says that his third collection of poetry was Hebe's Cup:
Dim Gulf was my first book (free verse); Night Rote
Came next; then Hebe's Cup, my final float
in that damp carnival, for now I term
Everything "Poems," and no longer squirm.
(But this transparent thingum does require
Some moondrop title. Help me, Will! Pale Fire.) (ll. 957-962)
Right after this Shade mentions his sensual love for the consonne d'appui, Echo's fey child:
Gently the day has passed in a sustained
Low hum of harmony. The brain is drained
And a brown ament, and the noun I meant
To use but did not, dry on the cement.
Maybe my sensual love for the consonne
D'appui, Echo's fey child, is based upon
A feeling of fantastically planned,
Richly rhymed life. I feel I understand
Existence, or at least a minute part
Of my existence, only through my art,
In terms of combinational delight;
And if my private universe scans right,
So does the verse of galaxies divine
Which I suspect is an iambic line. (ll. 963-976)
In his essay “F. I. Tyutchev. The Meaning of his Work” (1911) Bryusov points out that Tyutchev loved what the French call consonne d'appui (intrusive consonant):
Самая форма стиха у Тютчева, при первом взгляде, кажется небрежной. Но это впечатление ошибочное. За исключением немногих (преимущественно написанных на политические злобы дня), большинство стихотворений Тютчева облечено в очень изысканные метры. Напомним, например, стихи «Грустный вид и грустный час». При беглом чтении не замечаешь в их построении ничего особенного. Лишь потом открываешь тайну прелести их формы. В них средние два стиха первой строфы (3-й и 4-й) рифмуются со средними стихами второй строфы (9-м и 10-м). Притом, чтобы ухо уловило это созвучие, разделенное четырьмя стихами, Тютчев выбрал рифмы особенно полные, в которых согласованы не только буквы после ударяемой гласной, но и предыдущая согласная (которую французы называют consonne d'appui): «гробовой – живой», тумана – Лемана». Примерами не менее утонченного построения могут служить стихотворения: «Поэзия», «Вдали от солнца и природы», «Слезы людские, о слезы людскиe», «Двум сестрам», «Венеция», «Первый лист», «Кончен пир, умолкли хоры». (IV)
The last day of Shade's life has gently passed in a sustained low hum of harmony. In Pushkin’s little tragedy Mozart and Salieri (1830) Mozart twice mentions harmony:
М о ц а р т
За твоё
Здоровье, друг, за искренний союз,
Связующий Моцарта и Сальери,
Двух сыновей гармонии.
(Пьёт.)
Mozart
To your health,
My friend, and to the loyal bond
that binds together Mozart and Salieri,
two sons of harmony.
(Scene II)
Моцарт
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.
Mozart
If all could feel like you the power of harmony!
But no: the world could not go on then. None
Would bother with the needs of lowly life;
All would surrender to free art.
(ibid.)
In his Pushkin speech, O naznachenii poeta (“On a Poet’s Destination,” 1921), Alexander Blok says that a poet is a son of harmony and quotes Mozart’s words (attributing them to Salieri):
Что такое поэт? Человек, который пишет стихами? Нет, конечно. Он называется поэтом не потому, что он пишет стихами; но он пишет стихами, то есть приводит в гармонию слова и звуки, потому что он - сын гармонии, поэт.
What is a poet? A man who writes in verse? Of course, not. He is called a poet not because he writes in verse; but he writes in verse, that is he brings into harmony words and sounds, because he is a son of harmony, a poet.
Нельзя сопротивляться могуществу гармонии, внесённой в мир поэтом; борьба с нею превышает и личные и соединённые человеческие силы. "Когда бы все так чувствовали силу гармонии!" - томится одинокий Сальери. Но её чувствуют все, только смертные - иначе, чем бог - Моцарт. От знака, которым поэзия отмечает на лету, от имени, которое она даёт, когда это нужно, - никто не может уклониться, так же как от смерти. Это имя даётся безошибочно.
According to Blok, everybody feels the power of harmony, but mortals feel it differently than god (Mozart) does. In VN’s novel Ada (1969) Van Veen (the narrator and main character) says that on Desdemonia (as Van calls Demonia, aka Antiterra, Earth’s twin planet on which Ada is set) artists are the only gods:
That meeting, and the nine that followed, constituted the highest ridge of their twenty-one-year-old love: its complicated, dangerous, ineffably radiant coming of age. The somewhat Italianate style of the apartment, its elaborate wall lamps with ornaments of pale caramel glass, its white knobbles that produced indiscriminately light or maids, the slat-eyes, veiled, heavily curtained windows which made the morning as difficult to disrobe as a crinolined prude, the convex sliding doors of the huge white 'Nuremberg Virgin'-like closet in the hallway of their suite, and even the tinted engraving by Randon of a rather stark three-mast ship on the zigzag green waves of Marseilles Harbor – in a word, the alberghian atmosphere of those new trysts added a novelistic touch (Aleksey and Anna may have asterisked here!) which Ada welcomed as a frame, as a form, something supporting and guarding life, otherwise unprovidenced on Desdemonia, where artists are the only gods. (3.8)
Desdemonia hints at Desdemona, Othello’s wife in Shakespeare’s Othello. In his essay Taynyi smysl tragedii “Otello” (“The Secret Meaning of the Tragedy Othello,” 1919) Blok says that Desdemona is a harmony, Desdemona is a soul, and the soul can not but saves from the chaos:
Дездемона - это гармония, Дездемона - это душа, а душа не может не спасать от хаоса.
Duchess of Payn, of Great Payn and Mone, Queen Disa (the wife of Charles the Beloved) seems to blend Leonardo’s Mona Lisa with Shakespeare’s Desdemona. Mona Lisa (1901) is a poem by Bryusov:
Есть обольщение в вине,
В его манящем аромате,
Как поцелуи в тишине,
Как вздох в безмолвии объятий.
Как хорошо дрожать, молчать,
Тревожиться при каждом звуке,
И жечь лобзанья, как печать,
Впечатлевать, как символ, руки.
Предчувствовать слова, глаза,
Утаенные в сердце речи,
Мечтать, как черны волоса,
Обжегшие случайно плечи.
И разойтись без клятв, без слов,
Скользнуть, как спугнутые тени,
Чтоб эта ночь, как греза снов,
Вплелась в гирлянду сновидений.
Есть обольщенье в тишине,
Восторг в безмолвии объятий,
Как сладость тайная в вине,
В его манящем аромате.
In the poem's last stanza Bryusov says that in wine there is a secret sweetness. Sladost' taynaya (a secret sweetness) brings to mind Taynaya Vecherya (Russian for "the Last Supper," the final meal that, in the Gospel accounts, Jesus shared with his apostles in Jerusalem before his crucifixion). Describing the conversation at the Faculty Club, Kinbote compares Gerald Emerald (a young instructor at Wordsmith University who gives Gradus, Shade's murderer, a lift to Kinbote's rented house) 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)