Describing his wife, Queen Disa (Duchess of Payn, of Great Payn and Mone), 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) quotes a Zemblan saying belwif ivurkumpf wid spew ebanumf ("A beautiful woman should be like a compass rose of ivory with four parts of ebony”):
Since her final departure from Zembla he had visited her twice, the last time two years before; and during that lapse of time her pale-skin, dark-hair beauty had acquired a new, mature and melancholy glow. In Zembla, where most females are freckled blondes, we have the saying: belwif ivurkumpf wid spew ebanumf, "A beautiful woman should be like a compass rose of ivory with four parts of ebony." And this was the trim scheme nature had followed in Disa's case. There was something else, something I was to realize only when I read Pale Fire, or rather reread it after the first bitter hot mist of disappointment had cleared before my eyes. I am thinking of lines 261-267 in which Shade describes his wife. At the moment of his painting that poetical portrait, the sitter was twice the age of Queen Disa. I do not wish to be vulgar in dealing with these delicate matters but the fact remains that sixty-year-old Shade is lending here a well-conserved coeval the ethereal and eternal aspect she retains, or should retain, in his kind noble heart. Now the curious thing about it is that Disa at thirty, when last seen in September 1958, bore a singular resemblance not, of course, to Mrs. Shade as she was when I met her, but to the idealized and stylized picture painted by the poet in those lines of Pale Fire. Actually it was idealized and stylized only in regard to the older woman; in regard to Queen Disa, as she was that afternoon on that blue terrace, it represented a plain unretouched likeness. I trust the reader appreciates the strangeness of this, because if he does not, there is no sense in writing poems, or notes to poems, or anything at all. (note to Lines 433-434)
A compass points north. Klassicheskie rozy (“Classical Roses”) is a 1925 poem and the title of a collection of poetry by Igor Severyanin (a Russian poet, 1887-1941, whose assumed name means "Northerner"). Severyanin's collection came out in Belgrad in 1931 and was dedicted to Queen of Yugoslavia (as the wife of King Alexander I) Maria:
Стихи 1922 — 1930 г.г.
Белград, 1931.
Том XXI.
Её Величеству Королеве Югославии
МАРИИ
с искренним восхищением почтительно подношу в дар свою книгу.
Автор.
Эти стихи, за исключением особо отмеченных, написаны в Эстонии в Тойла.
Estonie, Toila — эти два слова являются полным и неизменным с 1918 г. адресом автора этой книги.
In Yugoslavia there is yug (South in Russian). Queen Maria's husband, King Alexander I (1888-1934) was assassinated in Marseille on October 9, 1934. At the end of Canto Three of his poem Shade (whose daughter Hazel was born in 1934) mentions the murder of a Balkan king:
Yes! It sufficed that I in life could find
Some kind of link-and-bobolink, some kind
Of correlated pattern in the game,
Plexed artistry, and something of the same
Pleasure in it as they who played it found.
It did not matter who they were. No sound,
No furtive light came from their involute
Abode, but there they were, aloof and mute,
Playing a game of worlds, promoting pawns
To ivory unicorns and ebon fauns;
Kindling a long life here, extinguishing
A short one there; killing a Balkan king;
Causing a chunk of ice formed on a high
Flying airplane to plummet from the sky
And strike a farmer dead; hiding my keys,
Glasses or pipe. Coordinating these
Events and objects with remote events
And vanished objects. Making ornaments
Of accidents and possibilities.
Stormcoated, I strode in: Sybil, it is
My firm conviction - "Darling, shut the door.
Had a nice trip?" Splendid - but what is more
I have returned convinced that I can grope
My way to some - to some - "Yes, dear?" Faint hope. (ll. 811-834)
Note ivory unicorns and ebon fauns (fancy chess pieces). In a brief preface to his book Severyanin points out that his permanent address since 1918 was Estonie, Toila. "Estonie, Toila" (where most poems of the collection Classical Roses were written) brings to mind "toilest" ("T. S. Eliot" in reverse):
She twisted words: pot, top
Spider, redips. And "powder" was "red wop."
She called you a didactic katydid.
She hardly ever smiled, and when she did,
It was a sign of pain. She'd criticize
Ferociously our projects, and with eyes
Expressionless sit on her tumbled bed
Spreading her swollen feet, scratching her head
With psoriatic fingernails, and moan,
Murmuring dreadful words in monotone. (ll. 347-356)
One of the examples her father gives is odd. I am quite sure it was I who one day, when we were discussing "mirror words," observed (and I recall the poet's expression of stupefaction) that "spider" in reverse is "redips," and "T.S. Eliot," "toilest." But then it is also true that Hazel Shade resembled me in certain respects. (Kinbote's note to Lines 347-348)
A roza upala na lapu Azora (And the rose fell on the paw of Azor) is a famous palindrome composed by Afanasiy Fet (a Russian poet, born Shenshin, 1820-1892). On August 16, 1857, Fet married Maria Botkin. The "real" name of the three main characters in Pale Fire (the poet Shade, his commentator Kinbote and his murderer Gradus) seems to be Botkin, nikto b (none would) in reverse. At the end of Pushkin's little tragedy Mozart and Salieri (1830) Mozart uses the phrase nikto b:
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.
(Scene II)
Mozart (1838) is a biographical essay by Vasiliy Botkin (1812-1869), the elder brother of Afanasiy Fet's wife Maria. Hazel Shade's "real" name seems to be Nadezhda Botkin (after her tragic death in March 1957 her father, Professor Vsevolod Botkin, went mad and became Shade, Kinbote and Gradus). Izmuchen zhizn’yu, kovarstvom nadezhdy… (“By life tormented, and by cunning hope…” 1864) is a famous poem by Fet. It has the epigraph from Schopenhauer (a German philosopher, 1788-1860, whom Fet admired):
Die Gleichmäβigkeit des Laufes der Zeit it in allen Köpfen beweist mehr, als irgend etwas, das wir alle in denselben Traum versenkt sind, ja das es ein Wesen ist, welches ihn träumt.
The evenness of the passage of time in all heads demonstrates more clearly than anything else that we all are immersed in the same dream and that in fact it is one Being that dreams it.
Igor Severyanin uses the first quatrain of Ivan Myatlev’s 1843 poem Rozy (“The Roses") as an epigraph to his poem Classical Roses:
Как хороши, как свежи были розы
В моем саду! Как взор прельщали мой!
Как я молил весенние морозы
Не трогать их холодною рукой!
1843 г. Мятлев.
В те времена, когда роились грёзы
В сердцах людей, прозрачны и ясны,
Как хороши, как свежи были розы
Моей любви, и славы, и весны!
Прошли лета, и всюду льются слезы…
Нет ни страны, ни тех, кто жил в стране…
Как хороши, как свежи ныне розы
Воспоминаний о минувшем дне!
Но дни идут — уже стихают грозы.
Вернуться в дом Россия ищет троп…
Как хороши, как свежи будут розы,
Моей страной мне брошенные в гроб!
Severyanin's poem ends in the lines: "How beautiful, how fresh will be the roses / That my country will cast into my coffin!"