In his Index to Shade's poem 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) mentions taynik (secret place) and potaynik (hiding place) where the Zemblan crown jewels are hidden:
Potaynik; taynik (q. v.).
Taynik. Russ., secret place, see Crown Jewels.
Crown Jewels, 130, 681; see Hiding Place.
Hiding place, potaynik (q. v.) (Kinbote’s Index)
Taynik and potaynik bring to mind Taynaya vecherya (the Russian name of the Last Supper, the final meal that, in the Gospel accounts, Jesus shared with his apostles in Jerusalem before his crucifixion) and Alexander Blok's essay Taynyi smysl tragedii “Otello” (“The Secret Meaning of the Tragedy Othello,” 1919). 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 in New Wye) 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 his Pushkin speech, O naznachenii poeta (“On a Poet’s Destination,” 1921), Blok mentions taynaya svoboda (a secret freedom) that Pushkin demanded for a poet:
Не будем сегодня, в день, отданный памяти Пушкина, спорить о том, верно или неверно отделял Пушкин свободу, которую мы называем личной, от свободы, которую мы называем политической. Мы знаем, что он требовал «иной», «тайной» свободы. По-вашему, она «личная»; но для поэта это не только личная свобода:
…Никому
Отчета не давать; себе лишь самому
Служить и угождать; для власти, для ливрея
Не гнуть ни совести, ни помыслов, ни шеи;
По прихоти своей скитаться здесь и там,
Дивясь божественным природы красотам,
И пред созданьями искусств и вдохновенья —
Безмолвно утопать в восторгах умиленья —
Вот счастье! Вот права!..
Это сказано перед смертью. В юности Пушкин говорил о том же:
Любовь и тайная свобода
Внушали сердцу гимн простой.
Эта тайная свобода, эта прихоть — слово, которое потом всех громче повторил Фет («Безумной прихоти певца!»), — вовсе не личная только свобода, а гораздо большая: она тесно связана с двумя первыми делами, которых требует от поэта Аполлон. Все перечисленное в стихах Пушкина есть необходимое условие для освобождения гармонии. Позволяя мешать себе в деле испытания гармонией людей — в третьем деле, Пушкин не мог позволить мешать себе в первых двух делах и эти дела — не личные.
According to Blok, Pushkin's words about a secret freedom were later repeated by Fet. In 1856 Afanasiy Fet married Maria Botkin. The poet Shade, his commentator Kinbote and his murderer Gradus seem to represent three different aspects of one and the same person whose "real" name is Botkin. 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). Nadezhda ("Hope," 1894) is a poem by Merezhkovski, the author of Tayna tryokh: Egipet i Vavilon (“The Secret of Three: Egypt and Babylon,” 1925). 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 (a target of Pushkin's epigrams, "half-milord, half-merchant, etc."), will be full again.
The Zemblan crown jewels remind one of those infinitely high qualities that once shined like luchshie almazy v chelovecheskoy korone (the best diamonds in man’s crown), such as humanism, virtues, impeccable honesty, rectitude, etc., mentioned by Blok in the Foreword to his poem Vozmezdie (“Retribution,” 1919-21):
Тема заключается в том, как развиваются звенья единой цепи рода. Отдельные отпрыски всякого рода развиваются до положенного им предела и затем вновь поглощаются окружающей мировой средой; но в каждом отпрыске зреет и отлагается нечто новое и нечто более острое, ценою бесконечных потерь, личных трагедий, жизненных неудач, падений и т. д.; ценою, наконец, потери тех бесконечно высоких свойств, которые в своё время сияли, как лучшие алмазы в человеческой короне (как, например, свойства гуманные, добродетели, безупречная честность, высокая нравственность и проч.)
In the last stanza of his poem Neznakomka (“The Unknown Woman,” 1906) Blok says that in his soul lies a treasure and the key belongs to him alone:
В моей душе лежит сокровище,
И ключ поручен только мне!
Ты право, пьяное чудовище!
Я знаю: истина в вине.
A treasure lies in my soul,
and I alone have the keeping of its key.
Those drunken brutes are right:
indeed, – there is truth in wine...
(VN's translation)
In the last stanza of his poem Mona Lisa (1901) Bryusov says that there is sladost' taynaya (a secret sweetness) in wine, in its enticing flavor:
Есть обольщенье в тишине,
Восторг в безмолвии объятий,
Как сладость тайная в вине,
В его манящем аромате.
Just before the poet is killed by Gradus, Kinbote invites Shade to a glass of Tokay at his place:
"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 991)
Sybil Shade (the poet's wife) and Queen Disa (the wife of Charles the Beloved) seem to be one and the same person whose "real" name is Sofia Botkin, born Lastochkin. Lastochki ("The Swallows," 1884) is a poem by Fet. One wonders if Sofia Botkin's full name is Sofia Andreevna Botkin? Sofia Andreevna was the name and patronymic of the wives of both Aleksey Konstantinovich and Lyov Nikolaevich Tolstoy. In VN's poem Tolstoy (1928) the last word is tayna (mystery):
Я знаю, смерть лишь некая граница:
мне зрима смерть лишь в образе одном,
последняя дописана страница,
и свет погас над письменным столом.
Еще виденье, отблеском продлившись,
дрожит, и вдруг - немыслимый конец...
И он ушел, разборчивый творец,
на голоса прозрачные деливший
гул бытия, ему понятный гул...
Однажды он со станции случайной
в неведомую сторону свернул,
и дальше - ночь, безмолвие и тайна...
I know that death is just a kind of border;
yet I see death as a specific image:
the final page’s text is now in order,
the lamp extinguished o’er the desk. The vision
keeps shimmering, prolonged by its reflection,
then, suddenly, unthinkably, it ends….
And he is gone, meticulous creator
who into lucid voices separated
the din of being, a din he understood….
One day, from a chance railroad station, he
turned off toward the unknown and left for good;
beyond lies night, silence, and mystery….
(DN's translation)
When Kinbote visits his wife Disa at her Mediterranean villa, the Queen asks him about the crown jewels and he reveals to her their unusual hiding place:
No such qualms disturbed him as he sat now on the terrace of her villa and recounted his lucky escape from the Palace. She enjoyed his description of the underground link with the theater and tried to visualize the jolly scramble across the mountains; but the part concerning Garh displeased her as if, paradoxically, she would have preferred him to have gone through a bit of wholesome houghmagandy with the wench. She told him sharply to skip such interludes, and he made her a droll little bow. But when he began to discuss the political situation (two Soviet generals had just been attached to the Extremist government as Foreign Advisers), a familiar vacant express on appeared in her eyes. Now that he was safely out of the country, the entire blue bulk of Zembla, from Embla Point to Emblem Bay, could sink in the sea for all she cared. That he had lost weight was of more concern to her than that he had lost a kingdom. Perfunctorily she inquired about the crown jewels; he revealed to her their unusual hiding place, and she melted in girlish mirth as she had not done for years and years. "I do have some business matters to discuss," he said. "And there are papers you have to sign." Up in the trellis a telephone climbed with the roses. One of her former ladies in waiting, the languid and elegant Fleur de Fyler (now fortyish and faded), still wearing pearls in her raven hair and the traditional white mantilla, brought certain documents from Disa's boudoir. Upon hearing the King's mellow voice behind the laurels, Fleur recognized it before she could be misled by his excellent disguise. Two footmen, handsome young strangers of a marked Latin type, appeared with the tea and caught Fleur in mid-curtsey. A sudden breeze groped among the glycines. Defiler of flowers. He asked Fleur as she turned to go with the Disa orchids if she still played the viola. She shook her head several times not wishing to speak without addressing him and not daring to do so while the servants might be within earshot. (note to Lines 433-434)
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 end of his poem Shekspir (Shakespeare, 1924) VN says that Shakespeare left this world with a smile:
Нет! В должный час, когда почуял - гонит
тебя Господь из жизни - вспоминал
ты рукописи тайные и знал,
что твоего величия не тронет
молвы мирской бесстыдное клеймо,
что навсегда в пыли столетий зыбкой
пребудешь ты безликим, как само
бессмертие... И вдаль ушел с улыбкой.
No! At the destined hour, when you felt banished
by God from your existence, you recalled
those secret manuscripts, fully aware
that your supremacy would rest unblemished
by public rumor's unashamed brand,
that ever, midst the shifting dust of ages,
faceless you'd stay, like immortality
itself - then vanished in the distance, smiling.
(DN's translation)
In his poem VN says that Shakespeare concealed forever his monstrous genius beneath a mask:
Надменно-чужд тревоге театральной,
ты отстранил легко и беспечально
в сухой венок свивающийся лавр
и скрыл навек чудовищный свой гений
под маскою, но гул твоих видений
остался нам: венецианский мавр
и скорбь его; лицо Фальстафа - вымя
с наклеенными усиками; Лир
бушующий... Ты здесь, ты жив - но имя,
но облик свой, обманывая мир,
ты потопил в тебе любезной Лете.
И то сказать: труды твои привык
подписывать - за плату - ростовщик,
тот Вилль Шекспир, что "Тень" играл в "Гамлете",
жил в кабаках и умер, не успев переварить кабанью головизну...
Haughty, aloof from theatre's alarums,
you easily, regretlessly relinquished
the laurels twinning into a dry wreath,
concealing for all time your monstrous genius
beneath a mask; and yet, your phantasm's echoes
still vibrate for us; your Venetian Moor,
his anguish; Falstaff's visage, like an udder
with pasted-on mustache; the raging Lear..
You are among us, you're alive; your name, though,
your image, too - deceiving, thus, the world
you have submerged in your beloved Lethe.
It's true, of course, a usurer had grown
accustomed, for a sum, to sign your work
(that Shakespeare - Will - who played the Ghost in Hamlet,
who lives in pubs, and died before he could
digest in full his portion of a boar's head)…
Pod maskami ("Beneath the Masks," 1907) is a poem by Blok, the author of Snezhnaya maska ("The Snow Mask," 1907), a cycle of verses. According to Kinbote, Shade’s whole being constituted a mask:
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 Vally" (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. (Foreword)
In his poem Ne ver' sebe ("Don's trust yourself," 1839) Lermontov mentions taynik dushi (the secret place of the soul):
Закрадется ль печаль в тайник души твоей,
Зайдет ли страсть с грозой и вьюгой,—
Не выходи тогда на шумный пир людей
С своею бешеной подругой;
Не унижай себя. Стыдися торговать
То гневом, то тоской послушной
И гной душевных ран надменно выставлять
На диво черни простодушной.
In the last stanza of his poem Balagan (“The Show Booth,” 1906) Blok says that a mould has penetrated into his taynik dushi:
Ну, старая кляча, пойдём
ломать своего Шекспира!
Кин
Над чёрной слякотью дороги
Не поднимается туман.
Везут, покряхтывая, дроги
Мой полинялый балаган.
Лицо дневное Арлекина
Ещё бледней, чем лик Пьеро.
И в угол прячет Коломбина
Лохмотья, сшитые пестро...
Тащитесь, траурные клячи!
Актёры, правьте ремесло,
Чтобы от истины ходячей
Всем стало больно и светло!
В тайник души проникла плесень,
Но надо плакать, петь, идти,
Чтоб в край моих заморских песен
Открылись торные пути.
In one of his last poems, Dal'nie ruki ("Distant Hands," 1909), Annenski mentions dushnyi taynik tuberoz (a sultry hiding place of tuberoses):
Зажим был так сладостно сужен,
Что пурпур дремоты поблёк,—
Я розовых, узких жемчужин
Губами узнал холодок.
О сестры, о нежные десять,
Две ласково дружных семьи,
Вас пологом ночи завесить
Так рады желанья мои.
Вы — гейши фонарных свечений,
Пять роз, обрученных стеблю,
Но нет у Киприды священней
Не сказанных вами люблю.
Как мускус мучительный мумий,
Как душный тайник тубероз,
И я только стеблем раздумий
К пугающей сказке прирос…
Мои вы, о дальние руки,
Ваш сладостно-сильный зажим
Я выносил в холоде скуки,
Я счастьем обвеял чужим.
Но знаю… дремотно хмелея,
Я брошу волшебную нить,
И мне будут сниться, алмея,
Слова, чтоб тебя оскорбить.
A poet and essayist, Innokentiy Annenski (1855-1909) wrote under the panname Nik. T-o ("Mr. Nobody"). Lermontov's poem Net, ya ne Bayron, ya drugoy ("No, I'm not Byron, I'm another," 1832) ends in the line Ya - ili Bog - ili nikto (Myself - or God - or none at all). In Pushkin's little tragedy Mozart and Salieri (1830) Mozart uses the phrase nikto b ("none would," Botkin in reverse):
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 Blok quotes Mozart’s words (attributing them to Salieri):
Нельзя сопротивляться могуществу гармонии, внесенной в мир поэтом; борьба с нею превышает и личные и соединенные человеческие силы. «Когда бы все так чувствовали силу гармонии!» — томится одинокий Сальери. Но ее чувствуют все, только смертные — иначе, чем бог — Моцарт. От знака, которым поэзия отмечает на лету, от имени, которое она дает, когда это нужно, — никто не может уклониться, так же как от смерти. Это имя дается безошибочно.
According to Blok, everybody feels the power of harmony, but mortals feel it differently than god (Mozart) does. The last day of Shade's life has passed in a sustained low hum of harmony:
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 “The Secret Meaning of the Tragedy Othello” 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.
In his Foreword to Shade's poem Kinbote mentions a chaos of Shade's first drafts:
This batch of eighty cards was held by a rubber band which I now religiously put back after examining for the last time their precious contents. Another, much thinner, set of a dozen cards, clipped together and enclosed in the same manila envelope as the main batch, bears some additional couplets running their brief and sometimes smudgy course among a chaos of first drafts. As a rule, Shade destroyed drafts the moment he ceased to need them: well do I recall seeing him from my porch, on a brilliant morning, burning a whole stack of them in the pale fire of the incinerator before which he stood with bent head like an official mourner among the wind-borne black butterflies of that backyard auto-da-fé. But he saved those twelve cards because of the unused felicities shining among the dross of used draftings. Perhaps, he vaguely expected to replace certain passages in the Fair Copy with some of the lovely rejections in his files, or, more probably, a sneaking fondness for this or that vignette, suppressed out of architectonic considerations, or because it had annoyed Mrs. S., urged him to put off its disposal till the time when the marble finality of an immaculate typescript would have confirmed it or made the most delightful variant seem cumbersome and impure. And perhaps, let me add in all modesty, he intended to ask my advice after reading his poem to me as I know he planned to do.