Liebe Carolyn und die ganze Bande,
I hope you'll find this interesting:
As you know, Gradus, the name of one of Pale
Fire's three main characters, is the Latin word meaning "step" or
"degree" (gradus is also Russian for "degree", in the English word's
meteorological, geographical, geometrical and "alcoholic"
sense; pod gradusom is colloquial for "drunk"). German
for "degree" is the Latin word minus the suffix: Grad
(its nominative plural form is practically the homograph
of the English word grade). This word occurs, for
instance, in Goethe's Faust, in the following lines (Part
One, the Hexenkueche scene, Mephistopheles' words addressed
to the witch who concocted the perilous drink that should make
of Faust a young man again):
Denn meinem Freund wird dieser Trunk nicht
schaden:
Er ist ein Mann von vielen Graden,
Der manchen guten Schluck getan.
("So this drink won't do any harm to my
friend: / He is a man of many degrees / Who has had
a gulp of it before." Ich entschuldige mich bei Goethes
Schatten wegen dieser schrecklichen Uebersetzung)
In his Commentary to Shade's poem and in the
Index (composed by Shade?), Kinbote mockingly calls Jakob Gradus (alias
Jack Degree) Vinogradus (vinograd is Russian for "grape"). Note
that Gradus murders Shade when the latter goes with Kinbote to K's place to
sample K's Tokay wine. Tokay + B = Bokay + T (Bokay is a place in the
mountains of Zembla, or "Semberland") Sudarg of Bokay is a mirror maker of
genius mentioned in the Index, and practically a palindrome of "Jakob
Gradus". Sudarg + o + soft sign = gosudar' (Russian for
"sovereign")
alles gute,
your gelehrte
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