In Canto Three of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN's novel Pale Fire, 1962) describes his heart attack that occured during a lecture he gave at 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.
And then it happened - the attack, the trance,
Or one of my old fits. There sat by chance
A doctor in the front row. At his feet
Patly I fell. My heart had stopped to beat,
It seems, and several moments passed before
It heaved and went on trudging to a more
Conclusive destination. Give me now
Your full attention. I can't tell you how
I knew - but I did know that I had crossed
The border. Everything I loved was lost
But no aorta could report regret.
A sun of rubber was convulsed and set;
And blood-black nothingness began to spin
A system of cells interlinked within
Cells interlinked within cells interlinked
Within one stem. And dreadfully distinct
Against the dark, a tall white fountain played. (ll. 683-707)
Richard Crashaw (c.1613 – 1649) was an English poet, teacher, High Church Anglican cleric and Roman Catholic convert, who was one of the major metaphysical poets in 17th-century English literature. A Note on Richard Crashaw is an essay by T. S. Eliot (an English poet, essayist, and playwright, 1888 – 1965) included in his collection of essays For Lancelot Andrewes (1928). Part II of T. S. Eliot's poem The Waste Land (1922) is entitled A Game of Chess. In Ilf and Petrov's novel Dvenadtsat' stuliev ("The Twelve Chairs," 1928) Ostap Bender gives a lecture in the Vasyuki chess club, "Plodotvornaya debyutnaya ideya (A Fruitful Opening Idea):"
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")
According to Kinbote (Shade’s mad commentator who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla), in a conversation with him Shade mentioned those joint authors of genius Ilf and Petrov:
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)
According to Professor Kinbote (the author of a remarkable book on surnames), Botkin is one who makes bottekins, fancy footwear. In Canto Two of his poem Shade speaks of his dead daughter and says that she twisted words:
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)
In his commentary Kinbote says that it was he who observed one day that “spider” in reverse was “redips,” and “T.S. Eliot,” “toilest:”
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. (note to Lines 347-348)
Shade's, Kinbote's and Gradus' "real" name, Botkin is nikto b (Russ., 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 and Salieri are two sons of harmony:
М о ц а р т
За твоё
Здоровье, друг, за искренний союз,
Связующий Моцарта и Сальери,
Двух сыновей гармонии.
(Пьёт.)
Mozart
Here is a health
To you, my friend, and to the candid union
That ties together Mozart and Salieri,
Two sons of harmony.
(Drinks.) (ibid.)
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)
Mozart (1838) is a biographical essay by Vasiliy Botkin (a Russian writer and critic, 1811-1869), a target of Mikhail Zoshchenko's satire in Golubaya kniga ("The Blue Book," 1935). Zoshchenko's Blue Book brings to mind the Blue Review in which Mrs. Z. read Shade's poem about Mon Blon. Mon Blon makes one think of blondinchik (a fair-haired young man) who plays chess well (in Ostap Bender's lecture "A Fruitful Opening Idea").