In Canto Two of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN's novel Pale Fire, 1962) speaks of his dead daughter and says:
Alas, the dingy cygnet never turned
Into a wood duck. (ll. 318-319)
In his commentary Kinbote (Shade’s mad commentator who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla) writes:
A pretty conceit. The wood duck, a richly colored bird, emerald, amethyst, carnelian, with black and white markings, is incomparably more beautiful than the much-overrated swan, a serpentine goose with a dirty neck of yellowish plush and a frogman's black rubber flaps.
Incidentally, the popular nomenclature of American animals reflects the simple utilitarian minds of ignorant pioneers and has not yet acquired the patina of European faunal names. (note to Line 319)
Shade reverses, so to speak, the metamorphosis in Hans Christian Andersen's faity tale The Ugly Duckling (1843). On the other hand, a wood duck mentioned by Shade brings to mind the lake duck in Mamin-Sibiryak's story for children Seraya sheyka ("The Gray Neck," 1893). A writer who was admired by Lenski (as in his autobiography Speak, Memory, 1951, VN calls one of his tutors), Dmitri Mamin-Sibiryak (1852-1912) makes one think of Parasha Sibiryachka, the Russian title of Xavier de Maistre's novella La Jeune Sibérienne ("The Young Siberian", 1825). The author of Voyage autour de ma chambre ("A Journey Around My Room," 1794), a book written to stave off boredom whilst the author was serving a 42-day sentence of confinement to his room for participating in a duel in Turin, Xavier de Maistre (1763-1852) makes one think of Charles Xavier Vseslav (the full name of King Charles the Beloved):
Charles II, Charles Xavier Vseslav, last King of Zembla, surnamed The Beloved, b. 1915, reigned 1936-1958; his crest, 1; his studies and his reign, 12; fearful fate of predecessors, 62; his supporters, 70; parents, 71; bedroom, 80; escape from palace, 130; and across the mountains, 149; engagement to Disa recalled, 275; parenthetical passage through Paris, 286; and through Switzerland, 408: visit to Villa Disa, 433; night in mountains recalled, 597, 662; his Russian blood, and Crown Jewels (q.v. by all means), 681; his arrival in the, U.S.A., 691; letter to Disa stolen, 741; and quoted, 768; his portrait discussed, 894; his presence in library, 949; identity almost revealed, 991: Solus Rex, 1000. See also Kinbote. (Index)
Shade's murderer, Jakob Gradus is also known as de Grey:
Gradus, Jakob, 1915-1959; alias Jack Degree, de Grey, d'Argus, Vinogradus, Leningradus, etc.; a Jack of small trades and a killer, 12, 17; lynching the wrong people, 80; his approach synchronized with S 's work on the poem, 120, 131; his election and past tribulations, 171; the first lap of his journey, Onhava to Copenhagen, 181, 209; to Paris, and meeting with Oswin Bretwit, 286; to Geneva, and talk with little Gordon at Joe Lavender's place near Lex, 408; calling headquarters from Geneva, 469; his name in a variant, and his wait in Geneva, 596; to Nice, and his wait there, 697; his meeting with Izumrudov in Nice and discovery of the King's address, 741; from Paris to New York, 873; in New York, 949; his morning in New York, his journey to New Wye, to the campus, to Dulwich Rd., 949 ; the crowning blunder, 1000. (Index)
In 1812 Xavier de Maistre (who moved to Russia in 1803) married a Russian noblewoman, Sofia Ivanovna Zagryazhski (1778–1851), the maternal aunt to Natalia Nikolaevna Pushkin, born Goncharov (the poet's wife, 1812-1863). The poet's wife, Sybil Shade, and Queen Disa (the wife of Charles the Beloved) seem to be one and the same person whose "real" name is Sofia Botkin, born Lastochkin. Her husband, Professor Vsevolod Botkin, went mad and became the poet Shade, his commentator Kinbote and his murderer 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.
The characters in Mamin-Sibiryak's story Seraya sheyka include the Fox, a beast of prey that attempts to catch the Gray Neck injuring her wing, which prevents the Gray Neck from flying southward for the winter. Describing his contacts with publishers, Kinbote mentions an old fox in the book publishing business:
Imagine a soft, clumsy giant; imagine a historical personage whose knowledge of money is limited to the abstract billions of a national debt; imagine an exiled prince who is unaware of the Golconda in his cuff links! This is to say - oh, hyperbolically - that I am the most impractical fellow in the world. Between such a person and an old fox in the book publishing business, relations are at first touchingly carefree and chummy, with expansive banterings and all sorts of amiable tokens. I have no reason to suppose that anything will ever happen to prevent this initial relationship with good old Frank, my present publisher, from remaining a permanent fixture.
Frank has acknowledged the safe return of the galleys I had been sent here and has asked me to mention in my Preface - and this I willingly do - that I alone am responsible for any mistakes in my commentary. Insert before a professional. A professional proofreader has carefully rechecked the printed text of the poem against the phototype of the manuscript, and has found a few trivial misprints I had missed; that has been all in the way of outside assistance. Needless to say how much I had been looking forward to Sybil Shade's providing me with abundant biographical data; unfortunately she left New Wye even before I did, and is dwelling now with relatives in Quebec. We might have had, of course, a most fruitful correspondence, but the Shadeans were not to be shaken off. They headed for Canada in droves to pounce on the poor lady as soon as I had lost contact with her and her changeful moods. Instead of answering a month-old letter from my cave in Cedarn, listing some of my most desperate queries, such as the real name of "Jim Coates" etc., she suddenly shot me a wire, requesting me to accept Prof. H. (!) and Prof. C (!!) as coeditors of her husband's poem. How deeply this surprised and pained me! Naturally, it precluded collaboration with my friend's misguided widow. (Foreword)
In his foreword to Shade's poem Kinbote describes his first meeting with the poet in the faculty club, and mentions the usual questions that were fired at him (Kinbote is a confirmed vegetarian) about eggnogs and milkshakes being or not being acceptable to one of his persuasion:
A few days later, however, namely on Monday, February 16, I was introduced to the old poet at lunch time in the faculty club. "At last presented credentials," as noted, a little ironically, in my agenda. I was invited to join him and four or five other eminent professors at his usual table, under an enlarged photograph of Wordsmith College as it was, stunned and shabby, on a remarkably gloomy summer day in 1903. His laconic suggestion that I "try the pork" amused me. I am a strict vegetarian, and I like to cook my own meals. Consuming something that had been handled by a fellow creature was, I explained to the rubicund convives, as repulsive to me as eating any creature, and that would include - lowering my voice - the pulpous pony-tailed girl student who served us and licked her pencil. Moreover, I had already finished the fruit brought with me in my briefcase, so I would content myself, I said, with a bottle of good college ale. My free and simple demeanor set everybody at ease. The usual questions were fired at me about eggnogs and milkshakes being or not being acceptable to one of my persuasion. Shade said that with him it was the other way around: he must make a definite effort to partake of a vegetable. Beginning a salad, was to him like stepping into sea water on a chilly day, and he had always to brace himself in order to attack the fortress of an apple. I was not yet used to the rather fatiguing jesting and teasing that goes on among American intellectuals of the inbreeding academic type and so abstained from telling John Shade in front of all those grinning old males how much I admired his work lest a serious discussion of literature degenerate into mere facetiation. Instead I asked him about one of my newly acquired students who also attended his course, a moody, delicate, rather wonderful boy; but with a resolute shake of his hoary forelock the old poet answered that he had ceased long ago to memorize faces and names of students and that the only person in his poetry class whom he could visualize was an extramural lady on crutches. "Come, come," said Professor Hurley, "do you mean, John, you really don't have a mental or visceral picture of that stunning blonde in the black leotard who haunts Lit. 202?" Shade, all his wrinkles beaming, benignly tapped Hurley on the wrist to make him stop. Another tormentor inquired if it was true that I had installed two ping-pong tables in my basement. I asked, was it a crime? No, he said, but why two? "Is that a crime?" I countered, and they all laughed. (Foreword)
In "eggnogs" and "milkshakes" there are not only eggs and milk, but also nogi (Russ., legs, feet) and sheyki (Russ., little necks).