In VN's novel Pale Fire (1962) one of Kinbote's notes to Shade's poem ends with a rather anti-Darwinian aphorism, "the one who kills is always his victim's inferior:"
Line 596: Points at the puddle in his basement room
We all know those dreams in which something Stygian soaks through and Lethe leaks in the dreary terms of defective plumbing. Following this line, there is a false start preserved in the draft – and I hope the reader will feel something of the chill that ran down my long and supple spine when I discovered this variant:
Should the dead murderer try to embrace
His outraged victim whom he now must face?
Do objects have a soul? Or perish must
Alike great temples and Tanagra dust?
The last syllable of Tanagra and the first three letters of "dust" form the name of the murderer whose shargar (puny ghost) the radiant spirit of our poet was soon to face. "Simple chance!" the pedestrian reader may cry. But let him try to see, as I have tried to see, how many such combinations are possible and plausible. "Leningrad used to be Petrograd?" "A prig rad (obs. past tense of read) us?"
This variant is so prodigious that only scholarly discipline and a scrupulous regard for the truth prevented me from inserting it here, and deleting four lines elsewhere (for example, the weak lines 627-630) so as to preserve the length of the poem.
Shade composed these lines on Tuesday, July 14th. What was Gradus doing that day? Nothing. Combinational fate rests on its laurels. We saw him last on the late afternoon of July 10th when he returned from Lex to his hotel in Geneva, and there we left him.
For the next four days Gradus remained fretting in Geneva. The amusing paradox with these men of action is that they constantly have to endure long stretches of otiosity that they are unable to fill with anything, lacking as they do the resources of an adventurous mind. As many people of little culture, Gradus was a voracious reader of newspapers, pamphlets, chance leaflets and the multilingual literature that comes with nose drops and digestive tablets; but this summed up his concessions to intellectual curiosity, and since his eyesight was not too good, and the consumability of local news not unlimited, he had to rely a great deal on the torpor of sidewalk cafes and on the makeshift of sleep.
How much happier the wide-awake indolents, the monarchs among men, the rich monstrous brains deriving intense enjoyment and rapturous pangs from the balustrade of a terrace at nightfall, from the lights and the lake below, from the distant mountain shapes melting into the dark apricot of the afterglow, from the black conifers outlined against the pale ink of the zenith, and from the garnet and green flounces of the water along the silent, sad, forbidden shoreline. Oh my sweet Boscobel! And the tender and terrible memories, and the shame, and the glory, and the maddening intimation, and the star that no party member can ever reach.
On Wednesday morning, still without news, Gradus telegraphed headquarters saying that he thought it unwise to wait any longer and that he would be staying at Hotel Lazuli, Nice.
Lines 597-608: the thoughts we should roll-call, etc.
This passage should be associated in the reader's mind with the extraordinary variant given in the preceding note, for only a week later Tanagra dust and "our royal hands" were to come together, in real life, in real death.
Had he not fled, our Charles II might have been executed; this would have certainly happened had he been apprehended between the palace and the Rippleson Caves; but he sensed those thick fingers of fate only seldom during his flight; he sensed them feeling for him (as those of a grim old shepherd checking a daughter's virginity) when he was slipping, that night, on the damp ferny flank of Mt. Mandevil (see note to line 149), and next day, at a more eerie altitude, in the heady blue, where the mountaineer becomes aware of a phantom companion. Many times that night our King cast himself upon the ground with the desperate resolution of resting there till dawn that he might shift with less torment what hazard soever he ran. (I am thinking of yet another Charles, another long dark man above two yards high.) But it was all rather physical, or neurotic, and I know perfectly well that my King, if caught and condemned and led away to be shot, would have behaved as he does in lines 606-608: thus he would look about him with insolent composure, and thus he would
Taunt our inferiors, cheerfully deride
The dedicated imbeciles and spit
Into their eyes just for the fun of it
Let me close this important note with a rather anti-Darwinian aphorism: The one who kills is always his victim's inferior.
Osip Mandelshtam's poem Za gremuchuyu doblest' gryadushchikh vekov ("For the sake of the resonant valor of ages to come," 1935) ends with the line "I menya tol'ko ravnyi ub'yot (And only an equal will kill me):"
За гремучую доблесть грядущих веков,
За высокое племя людей
Я лишился и чаши на пире отцов,
И веселья, и чести своей.
Мне на плечи кидается век-волкодав,
Но не волк я по крови своей,
Запихай меня лучше, как шапку, в рукав
Жаркой шубы сибирских степей.
Чтоб не видеть ни труса, ни хлипкой грязцы,
Ни кровавых костей в колесе,
Чтоб сияли всю ночь голубые песцы
Мне в своей первобытной красе,
Уведи меня в ночь, где течет Енисей
И сосна до звезды достает,
Потому что не волк я по крови своей
И меня только равный убьет.
For the sake of the resonant valor of ages to come,
for the sake of a high race of men,
I forfeited a bowl at my fathers' feast
and merriment, and my honour.
On my shoulders there pounces the wolfhound age,
but no wolf be blood I am;
better, like a fur cap, thrust me into the sleeve
of the warmly fur-coated Siberian steppes,
— so that I may not see the coward, the bit of soft muck,
the bloody bones on the wheel,
so that all night the blue-fox furs may blaze
for me in their pristine beauty.
Lead me into the night where the Enisey flows,
and the pine reaches up to the star,
because no wolf by blood am I,
and only an equal will kill me.
(VN's translation)
One of Kinbote examples, "Leningrad used to be Petrograd," brings to mind Mandelshtam's poem Leningrad (1931). Gradus means in Latin "step," "pace," "degree." In his poem Lamarck (1932) Mandelshtam mentions poslednyaya stupen' na podvizhnoy lestnitse Lamarka (the last step on Lamarck's moving staircase):
Был старик, застенчивый, как мальчик,
Неуклюжий, робкий патриарх.
Кто за честь природы фехтовальщик?
Ну конечно, пламенный Ламарк.
Если все живое лишь помарка
За короткий выморочный день,
На подвижной лестнице Ламарка
Я займу последнюю ступень.
К кольчецам спущусь и к усоногим,
Прошуршав средь ящериц и змей,
По упругим сходням, по излогам
Сокращусь, исчезну, как протей.
Роговую мантию надену,
От горячей крови откажусь,
Обрасту присосками и в пену
Океана завитком вопьюсь.
Мы прошли разряды насекомых
С наливными рюмочками глаз.
Он сказал: «Природа вся в разломах,
Зренья нет, – ты зришь в последний раз!»
Он сказал: «Довольно полнозвучья,
Ты напрасно Моцарта любил,
Наступает глухота паучья,
Здесь провал сильнее наших сил».
И от нас природа отступила
Так, как будто мы ей не нужны,
И продольный мозг она вложила,
Словно шпагу, в темные ножны.
И подъемный мост она забыла,
Опоздала опустить для тех,
У кого зеленая могила,
Красное дыханье, гибкий смех.
Who is this old man, tongue-tied as a youth,
This fiery, halting patriarch,
Who fenced for nature's honour, though uncouth?
Why, naturally, the answer is Lamarck.
If all that lives is only a scribbled error,
Lasting a short, intestate day,
Then as I ride the Lamarckian escalator
The last step is the one I'll occupy.
I shall descend to ciliapedes, annelids,
Rustle past lizards and infernal serpents, tear
Down springy gang-planks and through watersheds,
Decline, decrease; like Proteus, disappear.
And I'll put on a thick and warty mantle,
I shall renounce my warm and scarlet blood,
Grow suckers on my hands and plunge my tentacles
Into the ocean's foaming flood.
We've now passed by the classes of insects waiting
With juicy eyes like goblets full of wine.
For as he says, Nature's disintegrating:
Sight will not be: you see for the last time.'
He said, 'You've had your fill of the sonorities,
Your love for Mozart was in vain, of course,
For now arachnid deafness creeps upon us,
This gap cannot be bridged by your weak forces' force.'
And nature withdrew from us, as if asserting
She had no need, she turned her back for good,
She took a long thin brain, which she inserted
Into a backbone scabbard, like a sword.
And she was late in lowering the drawbridge:
She left it up, forgetting those behind,
Those destined to have grass green round their gravestones,
Whose breath is scarlet, and their laughter lithe.
(tr. Andrew Reynolds)
A French naturalist, biologist, academic, and soldier, Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744-1829) was an early proponent of the idea that biological evolution occurred and proceeded in accordance with natural laws, though the mechanism he suggested has been refuted at large. Tthe author of On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, 1859) Charles Darwin (an English naturalist, 1809-1882) was heavily aware of Lamarck's ideas and used them as a foundational stepping stone. In his poem Lamarck Mandelshtam mentions Mozart (an Austrian composer, 1876-1791): "Ty naprasno Mozarta lyubil (You vainly loved Mozart)." In Pushkin's little tragedy Mozart and Salieri (1830) Mozart uses the phrase nikto b (none would):
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.
(Pushkin, Mozart and Salieri, 1830, Scene II)
Nikto b is Botkin (Shade's, Kinbote's and Gradus's "real" name) in reverse. An American scholar of Russian descent, Professor Vsevolod Botkin went mad and became the poet John Shade, his commentator Charles Kinbote (who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla) and his murderer Jakob Gradus after the tragic death of his daughter Nadezhda (Hazel Shade’s “real” name). Nadezhda Yakovlevna was the name and patronymic of Mandelshtam's wife. Nadezhda means in Russian “hope.” 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 (a target of Pushkin's epigrams, "half-milord, half-merchant, etc."), will be full again.
"Something Stygian" brings to mind stigiyskaya nezhnost' (Stygian tenderness) mentioned by Mandelshtam in his poem Kogda Psikheya-zhizn' spuskaetsya k tenyam ("When Psyche-life steps down to the shades," 1920):
Когда Психея-жизнь спускается к теням
В полупрозрачный лес, вослед за Персефоной,
Слепая ласточка бросается к ногам
С стигийской нежностью и веткою зеленой.
Навстречу беженке спешит толпа теней,
Товарку новую встречая причитаньем,
И руки слабые ломают перед ней
С недоумением и робким упованьем.
Кто держит зеркальце, кто баночку духов,--
Душа ведь женщина, ей нравятся безделки,
И лес безлиственный прозрачных голосов
Сухие жалобы кропят, как дождик мелкий.
И в нежной сутолке не зная, что начать,
Душа не узнает прозрачные дубравы,
Дохнет на зеркало и медлит передать
Лепешку медную с туманной переправы.
When Psyche-life steps down to the shades,
the translucent wood, following Persephone,
a blind swallow casts itself at her feet
with Stygian tenderness and a green branch.
The shades swarm to welcome the refugee,
their new little companion, and greet her with eager wailing,
wringing their frail arms before her
in awe and trouble and shy hope.
One of them holds out a mirror, and another, perfume,
because the soul is a woman and fond of trifles.
And the silence of the leafless forest is spotted
with transparent voices, dry laments, like a fine rain.
And in the fond confusion, uncertain where to begin,
the soul does not recognize the transparent woods.
She breathes on the mirror and she still clutches
the copper wafer, the fee for the misty crossing.
Slepaya lastochka (the blind swallow) in the poem's third line brings to mind Sofia Botkin, born Lastochkin, the "real" name of both Sybil Shade (the poet's wife) and Queen Disa (the wife of Charles the Beloved). Aya-Sofiya ("Hagia Sophia," 1912) is a poem by Mandelshtam. Duchess of Payn, of Great Payn and Mone, Queen Disa was born in 1928, thirty years after Sybil Irondell's birth (John Shade was born on July 5, 1898, and his wife is a few months his senior). Charles Darwin (who was born on February 12, 1809) died in April 1882, thirty years after Nikolay Gogol's death (Gogol was born on April 1, 1809). According to Kinbote, Shade listed Gogol among Russian humorists:
Speaking of the Head of the bloated Russian Department, Prof. Pnin, a regular martinet in regard to his underlings (happily, Prof. Botkin, who taught in another department, was not subordinated to that grotesque "perfectionist"): "How odd that Russian intellectuals should lack all sense of humor when they have such marvelous humorists as Gogol, Dostoevski, Chekhov, Zoshchenko, and those joint authors of genius Ilf and Petrov." (note to Line 172)
Leaking Lethe mentioned by Kinbote brings to mind Rossiya, Leta, Loreleya (Russia, Lethe, Lorelei), the last line of Mandelshtam's poem Dekabrist (“The Decembrist,” 1917):
"Тому свидетельство языческий сенат,-
Сии дела не умирают"
Он раскурил чубук и запахнул халат,
А рядом в шахматы играют.
Честолюбивый сон он променял на сруб
В глухом урочище Сибири,
И вычурный чубук у ядовитых губ,
Сказавших правду в скорбном мире.
Шумели в первый раз германские дубы,
Европа плакала в тенетах,
Квадриги черные вставали на дыбы
На триумфальных поворотах.
Бывало, голубой в стаканах пунш горит,
С широким шумом самовара
Подруга рейнская тихонько говорит,
Вольнолюбивая гитара.
Еще волнуются живые голоса
О сладкой вольности гражданства,
Но жертвы не хотят слепые небеса,
Вернее труд и постоянство.
Все перепуталось, и некому сказать,
Что, постепенно холодея,
Все перепуталось, и сладко повторять:
Россия, Лета, Лорелея.
The pagan senate is your proof
That deeds like these will never die!"
He lit his pipe and wrapped his dressing gown around
While chess was being played nearby.
Ambitious dreams he'd traded for a hut
In Siberia's wild reaches,
And a fancy pipe between acid lips
That spoke truth in a sorrowful world.
And German oaks rustled for the first time,
While Europe wept in snares,
And black teams of four reared up
On crossroads of triumph.
Punch used to burn blue in their glasses,
And accompanied by the samovar's hiss
A friend from the Rhine,
A freedom-loving guitar, murmured softly.
Lively voices would still get exercised
About society's sweet freedom.
But blind heaven, rejecting sacrifice,
Prefers hard work and loyalty.
All is muddled, and there's no one to recount
That everything grows gradually cold,
All is muddled, yet how lovely to repeat:
Russia, Lethe, Lorelei.
In his poem My zhivyom, pod soboyu ne chuya strany ("We live not feeling land beneath us," 1933) Mandelshtam mentions uslugi polulyudey (the attentions of half-men) and kremlyovskiy gorets (the Kremlin mountaineer):
Мы живем, под собою не чуя страны,
Наши речи за десять шагов не слышны,
А где хватит на полразговорца,
Там припомнят кремлевского горца.
Его толстые пальцы, как черви, жирны,
И слова, как пудовые гири, верны,
Тараканьи смеются глазища
И сияют его голенища.
А вокруг него сброд тонкошеих вождей,
Он играет услугами полулюдей.
Кто свистит, кто мяучит, кто хнычет,
Он один лишь бабачит и тычет.
Как подкову, дарит за указом указ —
Кому в пах, кому в лоб, кому в бровь, кому в глаз.
Что ни казнь у него — то малина
И широкая грудь осетина.
We live without feeling the country beneath us,
our speech at ten paces inaudible,
and where there are enough for half a conversation
the name of the Kremlin mountaineer is dropped.
His thick fingers are fatty like worms,
but his words are as true as pound weights.
his cockroach whiskers laugh,
and the tops of his boots shine.
Around him a rabble of thick-skinned leaders,
he plays with the attentions of half-men.
Some whistle, some miaul, some shivel,
but he just bangs and pokes.
He forges his decrees like horseshoes —
some get it in the groin, some in the forehead.
some in the brows, some in the eyes.
Whatever the execution — it's a raspberry,
And he has the broad chest of an Osette.
(tr. David McDuff)
A member of the Shadows (a regicidal organization), Gradus is “half-man who is half mad:"
I have considered in my earlier note (I now see it is the note to line 171) the particular dislikes, and hence the motives, of our "automatic man," as I phrased it at a time when he did not have as much body, did not offend the senses as violently as now; was, in a word, further removed from our sunny, green, grass-fragrant Arcady. But Our Lord has fashioned man so marvelously that no amount of motive hunting and rational inquiry can ever really explain how and why anybody is capable of destroying a fellow creature (this argument necessitates, I know, a temporary granting to Gradus of the status of man), unless he is defending the life of his son, or his own, or the achievement of a lifetime; so that in final judgment of the Gradus versus the Crown case I would submit that if his human incompleteness be deemed insufficient to explain his idiotic journey across the Atlantic just to empty the magazine of his gun; we may concede, doctor, that our half-man was also half mad. (note to Line 949)
The terrible name (that cannot be mentioned, even in the Index to the obscure work of a scholar) of the leader of the Shadows seems to hint at Stalin:
Shadows, the, a regicidal organization which commissioned Gradus (q. v.) to assassinate the self-banished king; its leader's terrible name cannot be mentioned, even in the Index to the obscure work of a scholar; his maternal grandfather, a well-known and very courageous master builder, was hired by Thurgus the Turgid, around 1885, to make certain repairs in his quarters, and soon after that perished, poisoned in the royal kitchens, under mysterious circumstances, together with his three young apprentices whose first names Yan, Yonny, and Angeling, are preserved in a ballad still to be heard in some of our wilder valleys. (Index)
The author of the Ode to Stalin (1937), Osip Mandelshtam (1891-1938) died on December 27, 1938, at the Vtoraya Rechka (Second River) transit camp near Vladivostok. In VN's novel Pnin (1957) Vladivostok (a city in the Russian Far East, on the coast of the Pacific Ocean) is mentioned:
Pnin, rippling with mute mirth, sat down again at his desk: he had a tale to tell. That line in the absurd Russian grammar, 'Brozhu li ya vdol' ulits shumnïh (Whether I wander along noisy streets),' was really the opening of a famous poem. Although Pnin was supposed in this Elementary Russian class to stick to language exercises ('Mama, telefon! Brozhu li ya vdol' ulits shumnïh. Ot Vladivostoka do Vashingtona 5000 mil'.'), he took every opportunity to guide his students on literary and historical tours.
In a set of eight tetrametric quatrains Pushkin described the morbid habit he always had - wherever he was, whatever he was doing - of dwelling on thoughts of death and of closely inspecting every passing day as he strove to find in its cryptogram a certain 'future anniversary': the day and month that would appear, somewhere, sometime upon his tombstone.
'"And where will fate send me", imperfective future, "death",' declaimed inspired Pnin, throwing his head back and translating with brave literality, '"in fight, in travel, or in waves? Or will the neighbouring dale" - dolina, same word, "valley" we would now say - "accept my refrigerated ashes", poussière, "cold dust" perhaps more correct. And though it is indifferent to the insensible body..."' (Chapter Three, 3)
Yesterday, 2 July 2026, was the forty-ninth anniversary of VN's death.