In Canto Three of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) describes his visit to Mrs. Z. who mentioned Shade’s poem about Mon Blon that appeared in the Blue Review:
"I can't believe," she said, "that it is you!
I loved your poem in the Blue Review.
That one about Mon Blon. I have a niece
Who's climbed the Matterhorn. The other piece
I could not understand. I mean the sense.
Because, of course, the sound--But I'm so dense!" (ll. 781-786)
In his commentary Kinbote (Shade’s mad commentator who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla) writes:
An image of Mont Blanc's "blue-shaded buttresses and sun-creamed domes" is fleetingly glimpsed through the cloud of that particular poem which I wish I could quote but do not have at hand. The "white mountain" of the lady's dream, caused by a misprint to tally with Shade's "white fountain," makes a thematic appearance here, blurred as it were by the lady's grotesque pronunciation. (note to Line 782)
The Bue Review brings to mind Siniy zhurnal (the Blue Magazine) that came out in St. Petersburg (VN's home city renamed Petrograd in 1914 and Leningrad in 1924) from 1910 to 1918. In Ilf and Petrov's novel Dvenadtsat' stuliev ("The Twelve Chairs," 1928) Siniy zhurnal is mentioned:
Остап поклонился, протянул вперед руки, как бы отвергая не заслуженные им аплодисменты, и взошел на эстраду.
— Товарищи! — сказал он прекрасным голосом. — Товарищи и братья по шахматам, предметом моей сегодняшней лекции служит то, о чем я читал, и, должен признаться, не без успеха, в Нижнем-Новгороде неделю тому назад. Предмет моей лекции — плодотворная дебютная идея. Что такое, товарищи, дебют и что такое, товарищи, идея? Дебют, товарищи, — это «Quasi una fantasia». А что такое, товарищи, значит идея? Идея, товарищи, — это человеческая мысль, облеченная в логическую шахматную форму. Даже с ничтожными силами можно овладеть всей доской. Все зависит от каждого индивидуума в отдельности. Например, вон тот блондинчик в третьем ряду. Положим, он играет хорошо…
Блондин в третьем ряду зарделся.
— А вон тот брюнет, допустим, хуже.
Все повернулись и осмотрели также брюнета.
— Что же мы видим, товарищи? Мы видим, что блондин играет хорошо, а брюнет играет плохо. И никакие лекции не изменят этого соотношения сил, если каждый индивидуум в отдельности не будет постоянно тренироваться в шашк… то есть я хотел сказать — в шахматах… А теперь, товарищи, я расскажу вам несколько поучительных историй из практики наших уважаемых гипермодернистов Капабланки, Ласкера и доктора Григорьева.
Остап рассказал аудитории несколько ветхозаветных анекдотов, почерпнутых еще в детстве из «Синего журнала», и этим закончил интермедию.
Краткостью лекции все были слегка удивлены. И одноглазый не сводил своего единственного ока с гроссмейстеровой обуви.
Ostap bowed, stretched out his hands as though restraining the public from undeserved applause, and went up on to the dais.
"Comrades and brother chess players," he said in a fine speaking voice: "the subject of my lecture today is one on which I spoke, not without certain success, I may add, in Nizhni-Novgorod a week ago. The subject of my lecture is 'A Fruitful Opening Idea'.
"What, Comrades, is an opening? And what, Comrades, is an idea? An opening, Comrades, is quasi una fantasia. And what, Comrades, is an idea? An idea, Comrades, is a human thought moulded in logical chess form. Even with insignificant forces you can master the whole of the chessboard. It all depends on each separate individual. Take, for example, the fair-haired young man sitting in the third row. Let's assume he plays well. . . ." The fair-haired young man turned red.
"And let's suppose that the brown-haired fellow over there doesn't play very well."
Everyone turned around and looked at the brown-haired fellow.
"What do we see, Comrades? We see that the fair-haired fellow plays well and that the other one plays badly. And no amount of lecturing can change this correlation of forces unless each separate individual keeps practising his dra- I mean chess. And now, Comrades, I would like to tell you some instructive stories about our esteemed ultramodernists, Capablanca, Lasker and Dr Grigoriev."
Ostap told the audience a few antiquated anecdotes, gleaned in childhood from the Blue Magazine, and this completed the first half of the evening.
The brevity of the lecture caused certain surprise. The one-eyed man was keeping his single peeper firmly fixed on the Grossmeister's footwear. (Chapter 34 "The Interplanetary Chess Tournament")
Blondin (the fair-haired young man) who plays well brings to mind Mrs. Z.'s Mon Blon. In Ilf and Petrov’s novel, Lasker arrives in Vasyuki (as imagined by the local chess enthusiasts) descending by parachute:
Вдруг на горизонте была усмотрена чёрная точка. Она быстро приближалась и росла, превратившись в большой изумрудный парашют. Как большая редька, висел на парашютном кольце человек с чемоданчиком.
– Это он! – закричал одноглазый. – Ура! Ура! Ура! Я узнаю великого философа-шахматиста, доктора Ласкера. Только он один во всем мире носит такие зелёные носочки.
Suddenly a black dot was noticed on the horizon. It approached rapidly, growing larger and larger until it finally turned into a large emerald parachute. A man with an attache case was hanging from the harness, like a huge radish.
"Here he is!" shouted one-eye. "Hooray, hooray, I recognize the great philosopher and chess player Dr. Lasker. He is the only person in the world who wears those green socks." (Chapter 34 “The Interplanetary Chess Tournament”)
According to Kinbote, he arrived in America descending by parachute:
John Shade's heart attack (Oct. 17, 1958) practically coincided with the disguised king's arrival in America where he descended by parachute from a chartered plane piloted by Colonel Montacute, in a field of hay-feverish, rank-flowering weeds, near Baltimore whose oriole is not an oriole. (note to Line 691)
Lasker's izumrudnyi parashut (emerald parachute) brings to mind Izumrudov (one of the greater Shadows who visits Gradus in Nice and tells him the king's new name and address in America):
On the morning of July 16 (while Shade was working on the 698-746 section of his poem) dull Gradus, dreading another day of enforced inactivity in sardonically, sparkling, stimulatingly noisy Nice, decided that until hunger drove him out he would not budge from a leathern armchair in the simulacrum of a lobby among the brown smells of his dingy hotel. Unhurriedly he went through a heap of old magazines on a nearby table. There he sat, a little monument of taciturnity, sighing, puffing out his cheeks, licking his thumb before turning a page, gaping at the pictures, and moving his lips as he climbed down the columns of printed matter. Having replaced everything in a neat pile, he sank back in his chair closing and opening his gabled hands in various constructions of tedium – when a man who had occupied a seat next to him got up and walked into the outer glare leaving his paper behind. Gradus pulled it into his lap, spread it out – and froze over a strange piece of local news that caught his eye: burglars had broken into Villa Disa and ransacked a bureau, taking from a jewel box a number of valuable old medals.
Here was something to brood upon. Had this vaguely unpleasant incident some bearing on his quest? Should he do something about it? Cable headquarters? Hard to word succinctly a simple fact without having it look like a cryptogram. Airmail a clipping? He was in his room working on the newspaper with a safety razor blade when there was a bright rap-rap at the door. Gradus admitted an unexpected visitor – one of the greater Shadows, whom he had thought to be onhava-onhava ("far, far away"), in wild, misty, almost legendary Zembla! What stunning conjuring tricks our magical mechanical age plays with old mother space and old father time!
He was a merry, perhaps overmerry, fellow, in a green velvet jacket. Nobody liked him, but he certainly had a keen mind. His name, Izumrudov, sounded rather Russian but actually meant "of the Umruds," an Eskimo tribe sometimes seen paddling their umyaks (hide-lined boats) on the emerald waters of our northern shores. Grinning, he said friend Gradus must get together his travel documents, including a health certificate, and take the earliest available jet to New York. Bowing, he congratulataed him on having indicated with such phenomenal acumen the right place and the right way. Yes, after a thorough perlustration of the loot that Andron and Niagarushka had obtained from the Queen's rosewood writing desk (mostly bills, and treasured snapshots, and those silly medals) a letter from the King did turn up giving his address which was of all places – our man, who interrupted the herald of success to say he had never – was bidden not to display so much modesty. A slip of paper was now produced on which Izumrudov, shaking with laughter (death is hilarious), wrote out for Gradus their client's alias, the name of the university where he taught, and that of the town where it was situated. No, the slip was not for keeps. He could keep it only while memorizing it. This brand of paper (used by macaroon makers) was not only digestible but delicious. The gay green vision withdrew – to resume his whoring no doubt. How one hates such men! (note to Line 741)
and Gerald Emerald (a young instructor at Wordsmith University who gives Gradus a lift to Kinbote's rented house in New Wye):
Alas, my peace of mind was soon to be shattered. The thick venom of envy began squirting at me as soon as academic suburbia realized that John Shade valued my society above that of all other people. Your snicker, my dear Mrs. C., did not escape our notice as I was helping the tired old poet to find his galoshes after that dreary get-together party at your house. One day I happened to enter the English Literature office in quest of a magazine with the picture of the Royal Palace in Onhava, which I wanted my friend to see, when I overheard a young instructor in a green velvet jacket, whom I shall mercifully call Gerald Emerald, carelessly saying in answer to something the secretary had asked: "I guess Mr. Shade has already left with the Great Beaver." Of course I am quite tall, and my brown beard is of a rather rich tint and texture; the silly cognomen evidently applied to me, but was not worth noticing, and after calmly taking the magazine from a pamphlet-cluttered table, I contented myself on my way out with pulling Gerald Emerald's bow-tie loose with a deft jerk of my fingers as I passed by him. There was also the morning when Dr. Nattochdag, head of the department to which I was attached, begged me in a formal voice to be seated, then closed the door, and having regained, with a downcast frown, his swivel chair, urged me "to be more careful." In what sense, careful? A boy had complained to his adviser. Complained of what, good Lord? That I had criticized a literature course he attended ("a ridiculous survey of ridiculous works, conducted by a ridiculous mediocrity"). Laughing in sheer relief, I embraced my good Netochka, telling him I would never be naughty again. I take this opportunity to salute him. He always behaved with such exquisite courtesy toward me that I sometimes wondered if he did not suspect what Shade suspected, and what only three people (two trustees and the president of the college) definitely knew. (Foreword)
Just as Izumrudov, Gerald Emerald and bad Bob (Kinbote's one-time roomer) seem to be one and the same person, 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 means in Russian "hope." 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. Hazel Shade drowned in Lake Omega. There is a cruel slogan on the wall of the club where Ostap Bender gives his lecture "A Fruiful Opening Idea:"
Гроссмейстера встретили рукоплесканиями. Небольшой клубный зал был увешан разноцветными флажками. Неделю тому назад состоялся вечер «Общества спасания на водах», о чем свидетельствовал также лозунг на стене:
Дело помощи утопающим —
дело рук самих утопающих
The Grossmeister was greeted with applause. The small club-room was decorated with coloured flags left over from an evening held a week before by the lifeguard rescue service. This was clear, furthermore, from the slogan on the wall:
Assistance to Drowning Persons is
In the Hands of those Persons Themselves. (Chapter 34 “The Interplanetary Chess Tournament”)
A lecture given by Ostap Bender in the Vasyuki chess club, "A Fruiful Opening Idea," brings to mind a lecture given by Shade in the Crashaw Club:
The Crashaw Club had paid me to discuss
Why Poetry Is Meaningful to Us.
I gave my sermon, a dull thing but short.
As I was leaving in some haste, to thwart
The so-called "question period" at the end,
One of those peevish people who attend
Such talks only to say they disagree
Stood up and pointed with his pipe at me. (ll. 683-690)
Describing his heart attack, Shade mentions Hurricane Lolita that swept from Florida to Maine:
It was a year of Tempests: Hurricane
Lolita swept from Florida to Maine.
Mars glowed. Shahs married. Gloomy Russians spied.
Lang made your portrait. And one night I died. (ll. 679-82)
Hurricane Lolita brings to mind moguchiy uragan (a powerful hurricane) mentioned by Ostap Bender:
Остап со вчерашнего дня еще ничего не ел. Поэтому красноречие его было необыкновенно.
— Да! — кричал он. — Шахматы обогащают страну! Если вы согласитесь на мой проект, то спускаться из города на пристань вы будете по мраморным лестницам! Васюки станут центром десяти губерний! Что вы раньше слышали о городе Земмеринге? Ничего! А теперь этот городишко богат и знаменит только потому, что там был организован международный турнир. Поэтому я говорю: в Васюках надо устроить международный шахматный турнир.
— Как? — закричали все.
— Вполне реальная вещь, — ответил гроссмейстер, — мои личные связи и ваша самодеятельность — вот все необходимое и достаточное для организации международного васюкинского турнира. Подумайте над тем, как красиво будет звучать: «Международный васюкинский турнир 1927 года». Приезд Хозе-Рауля Капабланки, Эммануила Ласкера, Алехина, Нимцовича, Рети, Рубинштейна, Мароци, Тарраша, Видмара и доктора Григорьева обеспечен. Кроме того, обеспечено и мое участие!
— Но деньги! — застонали васюкинцы. — Им же всем нужно деньги платить! Много тысяч денег! Где же их взять.
— Все учтено могучим ураганом, — сказал О. Бендер, — деньги дадут сборы.
— Кто же у нас будет платить такие бешеные деньги? Васюкинцы…
— Какие там васюкинцы! Васюкинцы денег платить не будут. Они будут их по-лу-чать! Это же все чрезвычайно просто. Ведь на турнир с участием таких величайших вельтмейстеров съедутся любители шахмат всего мира. Сотни тысяч людей, богато обеспеченных людей, будут стремиться в Васюки. Во-первых, речной транспорт такого количества пассажиров поднять не сможет. Следовательно, НКПС построит железнодорожную магистраль Москва — Васюки. Это — раз. Два — это гостиницы и небоскребы для размещения гостей. Три — поднятие сельского хозяйства в радиусе на тысячи километров: гостей нужно снабжать — овощи, фрукты, икра, шоколадные конфеты. Дворец, в котором будет происходить турнир, — четыре. Пять — постройка гаражей для гостевого автотранспорта. Для передачи всему миру сенсационных результатов турнира придется построить сверхмощную радиостанцию. Это — в-шестых. Теперь относительно железнодорожной магистрали Москва — Васюки. Несомненно, таковая не будет обладать такой пропускной способностью, чтобы перевезти в Васюки всех желающих. Отсюда вытекает аэропорт «Большие Васюки» — регулярное отправление почтовых самолетов и дирижаблей во все концы света, включая Лос-Анжелос и Мельбурн.
Ostap had not eaten since the day before, which accounted for his unusual eloquence.
"Yes," he cried, "chess enriches a country! If you agree to my plan, you'll soon be descending marble steps to the quay! Vasyuki will become the centre of ten provinces! What did you ever hear of the town of Semmering before? Nothing! But now that miserable little town is rich and famous just because an international tournament was held there. That's why I say you should organize an international chess tournament in Vasyuki."
"How?" they all cried.
"It's a perfectly practical plan," replied the Grossmeister. "My connections and your activity are all that are required for an international tournament in Vasyuki. Just think how fine that would sound-The 1927 International Tournament to be held in Vasyuki!' Such players as Jose-Raoul Capablanca, Lasker, Alekhine, Reti, Rubinstein, Tarrasch, Widmar and Dr. Grigoryev are bound to come. What's more, I'll take part myself!"
"But what about the money?" groaned the citizens. "They would all have to be paid. Many thousands of roubles! Where would we get it?"
"A powerful hurricane takes everything into account," said Ostap. "The money will come from collections."
"And who do you think is going to pay that kind of money? The people of Vasyuki?"
"What do you mean, the people of Vasyuki? The people of Vasyuki are not going to pay money, they're going to receive it. It's all extremely simple. After all, chess enthusiasts will come from all over the world to attend a tournament with such great champions. Hundreds of thousands of people-well-to-do people-will head for Vasyuki. Naturally, the river transport will not be able to cope with such a large number of passengers. So the Ministry of Railways will have to build a main line from Moscow to Vasyuki. That's one thing. Another is hotels and skyscrapers to accommodate the visitors. The third thing is improvement of the agriculture over a radius of five hundred miles; the visitors have to be provided with fruit, vegetables, caviar and chocolate. The building for the actual tournament is the next thing. Then there's construction of garages to house motor transport for the visitors. An extra-high power radio station will have to be built to broadcast the sensational results of the tournament to the rest of the world. Now about the Vasyuki railway. It most likely won't be able to carry all the passengers wanting to come to Vasyuki, so we will have to have a 'Greater Vasyuki' airport with regular nights by mail planes and airships to all parts of the globe, including Los Angeles and Melbourne." (Chapter 34 “The Interplanetary Chess Tournament”)