In his poem about a miragarl ("mirage girl") quoted by 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) in his commentary the society poet and sculptor Arnor mentions a dream king in the sandy wastes of time and three hundred camels:
Our Prince was fond of Fleur as of a sister but with no soft shadow of incest or secondary homosexual complications. She had a small pale face with prominent cheekbones, luminous eyes, and curly dark hair. It was rumored that after going about with a porcelain cup and Cinderella's slipper for months, the society sculptor and poet Arnor had found in her what he sought and had used her breasts and feet for his Lilith Calling Back Adam; but I am certainly no expert in these tender matters. Otar, her lover, said that when you walked behind her, and she knew you were walking behind her, the swing and play of those slim haunches was something intensely artistic, something Arab girls were taught in special schools by special Parisian panders who were afterwards strangled. Her fragile ankles, he said, which she placed very close together in her dainty and wavy walk, were the "careful jewels" in Arnor's poem about a miragarl ("mirage girl"), for which "a dream king in the sandy wastes of time would give three hundred camels and three fountains."
On ságaren werém tremkín tri stána
Verbálala wod gév ut trí phantána
(I have marked the stress accents).
The Prince did not heed this rather kitschy prattle (all, probably, directed by her mother) and, let it be repeated, regarded her merely as a sibling, fragrant and fashionable, with a painted pout and a maussade, blurry, Gallic way of expressing the little she wished to express. Her unruffled rudeness toward the nervous and garrulous Countess amused him. He liked dancing with her - and only with her. He hardly squirmed at all when she stroked his hand or applied herself soundlessly with open lips to his cheek which the haggard after-the-ball dawn had already sooted. She did not seem to mind when he abandoned her for manlier pleasures; and she met him again in the dark of a car or in the half-glow of a cabaret with the subdued and ambiguous smile of a kissing cousin. (note to Line 80)
Sagaren seems to hint at the Sahara (a desert spanning across North Africa). On ságaren werém (in the sandy wastes of time) brings to mind sredi pustyn’ vremyon (among the wastes of times) in Gumilyov’s poem about Théophile Gautier:
Вперёд, всегда вперёд, и вдруг заметит глаз
Немного зелени, обрадовавшей нас:
Лес кипарисовый и плиты снега чище.
Чтоб отдохнули мы среди пустынь времён,
Господь оазисом нам указал кладбище:
Больные путники, вкусить спешите сон.
…To make us take a rest among the wastes of times,
The Lord as an oasis pointed to us at cemetery:
Sick travelers, hurry up to taste of sleep.
Describing his African travels, Gumilyov says that he did not notice crossing the Equator, because he was reading on his camel and reading Baudelaire:
Пересечения экватора я не заметил, я читал на моем верблюде и читал Бодлера.
Charles Baudelaire dedicated his book Les Fleurs du Mal ("The Flowers of Evil," 1857) to Théophile Gautier:
Dédicace
Au poète impeccable
Au parfait magicien ès lettres françaises
A mon très-cher et très-vénéré
Maître et ami
Théophile Gautier
Avec les sentiments
De la plus profonde humilité
Je dédie
Ces fleurs maladives
C.B.
Dedication
To the impeccable poet
To the pefect magician of French letters
To my very dear and very revered
Master and friend
Théophile Gautier
With sentiments
Of the most profound humility
I dedicate
These unhealthy flowers
C.B.
A posthumous third edition of Les Fleurs du Mal, with a preface by Théophile Gautier and including 14 previously unpublished poems, was issued in 1868. A daughter of Countess de Fyler (Queen Blenda's lady-in-waiting), Fleur de Fyler is 'Defiler of Flowers:'
No such qualms disturbed him as he sat now on the terrace of her villa and recounted his lucky escape from the Palace. She enjoyed his description of the underground link with the theater and tried to visualize the jolly scramble across the mountains; but the part concerning Garh displeased her as if, paradoxically, she would have preferred him to have gone through a bit of wholesome houghmagandy with the wench. She told him sharply to skip such interludes, and he made her a droll little bow. But when he began to discuss the political situation (two Soviet generals had just been attached to the Extremist government as Foreign Advisers), a familiar vacant expression appeared in her eyes. Now that he was safely out of the country, the entire blue bulk of Zembla, from Embla Point to Emblem Bay, could sink in the sea for all she cared. That he had lost weight was of more concern to her than that he had lost a kingdom. Perfunctorily she inquired about the crown jewels; he revealed to her their unusual hiding place, and she melted in girlish mirth as she had not done for years and years. "I do have some business matters to discuss," he said. "And there are papers you have to sign." Up in the trellis a telephone climbed with the roses. One of her former ladies in waiting, the languid and elegant Fleur de Fyler (now fortyish and faded), still wearing pearls in her raven hair and the traditional white mantilla, brought certain documents from Disa's boudoir. Upon hearing the King's mellow voice behind the laurels, Fleur recognized it before she could be misled by his excellent disguise. Two footmen, handsome young strangers of a marked Latin type, appeared with the tea and caught Fleur in mid-curtsey. A sudden breeze groped among the glycines. Defiler of flowers. He asked Fleur as she turned to go with the Disa orchids if she still played the viola. She shook her head several times not wishing to speak without addressing him and not daring to do so while the servants might be within earshot. (note to Lines 433-434)
In Chapter One (XXXI: 1-4) of Eugene Onegin Pushkin eulogizes female feet and mentions pustynya (a desert) and nozhki (little feet) that trample veshnie tsvety (vernant blooms):
Когда ж и где, в какой пустыне,
Безумец, их забудешь ты?
Ах, ножки, ножки! где вы ныне?
Где мнёте вешние цветы?
So when and where, in what desert, will you
forget them, madman? Little feet,
ah, little feet! Where are you now?
Where do you trample vernant blooms?
At the end of Chapter One (L: 8-14) of EO Pushkin says that it is time to leave the dreary shore and to sigh for somber Russia beneath the sky of his Africa:
Пора покинуть скучный брег
Мне неприязненной стихии,
И средь полуденных зыбей,
Под небом Африки моей,11
Вздыхать о сумрачной России,
Где я страдал, где я любил,
Где сердце я похоронил.
'Tis time to leave the dreary shore
of the element inimical to me,
and 'mid meridian ripples
beneath the sky of my Africa,11
to sigh for somber Russia,
where I suffered, where I loved,
where I buried my heart.
11. See the first edition of Eugene Onegin. (Pushkin's note)
Pushkin (whose maternal great-grandfather, Abram Petrovich Gannibal, c. 1696-1781, was the blackamoor and godson of Peter I) had African blood. The poet's mother, Nadezhda Osipovna Pushkin, born Gannibal, is a namesake of Nadezhda Botkin (Hazel Shade's "real" name). After her tragic death, her father, Professor Vsevolod Botkin, went mad and became Shade, Kinbote and Gradus (the poet's murderer). Nadezhda means “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.
A poet who was executed by the Bolsheviks, Nikolay Stepanovich Gumilyov (1886-1921) has the same name-and-patronymic as Nikolay Stepanovich takoy-to (So and So), the old Professor in Chekhov's story Skuchnaya istoriya (“A Dreary Story,” 1889). In Chekhov’s the old Professor says that he is vynosliv, kak verblyud (has the power of endurance of a camel):
Есть в России заслуженный профессор Николай Степанович такой-то, тайный советник и кавалер; у него так много русских и иностранных орденов, что когда ему приходится надевать их, то студенты величают его иконостасом. Знакомство у него самое аристократическое; по крайней мере за последние 25—30 лет в России нет и не было такого знаменитого ученого, с которым он не был бы коротко знаком. Теперь дружить ему не с кем, но если говорить о прошлом, то длинный список его славных друзей заканчивается такими именами, как Пирогов, Кавелин и поэт Некрасов, дарившие его самой искренней и теплой дружбой. Он состоит членом всех русских и трех заграничных университетов. И прочее, и прочее. Всё это и многое, что еще можно было бы сказать, составляет то, что называется моим именем.
Это мое имя популярно. В России оно известно каждому грамотному человеку, а за границею оно упоминается с кафедр с прибавкою известный и почтенный. Принадлежит оно к числу тех немногих счастливых имен, бранить которые или упоминать их всуе, в публике и в печати считается признаком дурного тона. Так это и должно быть. Ведь с моим именем тесно связано понятие о человеке знаменитом, богато одаренном и несомненно полезном. Я трудолюбив и вынослив, как верблюд, а это важно, и талантлив, а это еще важнее. К тому же, к слову сказать, я воспитанный, скромный и честный малый. Никогда я не совал своего носа в литературу и в политику, не искал популярности в полемике с невеждами, не читал речей ни на обедах, ни на могилах своих товарищей... Вообще на моем ученом имени нет ни одного пятна и пожаловаться ему не на что. Оно счастливо.
Носящий это имя, то есть я, изображаю из себя человека 62 лет, с лысой головой, с вставными зубами и с неизлечимым tic'ом. Насколько блестяще и красиво мое имя, настолько тускл и безобразен я сам. Голова и руки у меня трясутся от слабости; шея, как у одной тургеневской героини, похожа на ручку контрабаса, грудь впалая, спина узкая. Когда я говорю или читаю, рот у меня кривится в сторону; когда улыбаюсь — всё лицо покрывается старчески мертвенными морщинами. Ничего нет внушительного в моей жалкой фигуре; только разве когда бываю я болен tic'ом, у меня появляется какое-то особенное выражение, которое у всякого, при взгляде на меня, должно быть, вызывает суровую внушительную мысль: «По-видимому, этот человек скоро умрет».
There is in Russia an emeritus Professor Nikolay Stepanovich, a chevalier and privy councilor; he has so many Russian and foreign decorations that when he has occasion to put them on the students nickname him "The Ikonstand." His acquaintances are of the most aristocratic; for the last twenty-five or thirty years, at any rate, there has not been one single distinguished man of learning in Russia with whom he has not been intimately acquainted. There is no one for him to make friends with nowadays; but if we turn to the past, the long list of his famous friends winds up with such names as Pirogov, Kavelin, and the poet Nekrasov, all of whom bestowed upon him a warm and sincere affection. He is a member of all the Russian and of three foreign universities. And so on, and so on. All that and a great deal more that might be said makes up what is called my "name."
That is my name as known to the public. In Russia it is known to every educated man, and abroad it is mentioned in the lecture-room with the addition "honored and distinguished." It is one of those fortunate names to abuse which or to take which in vain, in public or in print, is considered a sign of bad taste. And that is as it should be. You see, my name is closely associated with the conception of a highly distinguished man of great gifts and unquestionable usefulness. I have the industry and power of endurance of a camel, and that is important, and I have talent, which is even more important. Moreover, while I am on this subject, I am a well-educated, modest, and honest fellow. I have never poked my nose into literature or politics; I have never sought popularity in polemics with the ignorant; I have never made speeches either at public dinners or at the funerals of my friends ... In fact, there is no slur on my learned name, and there is no complaint one can make against it. It is fortunate.
The bearer of that name, that is I, see myself as a man of sixty-two, with a bald head, with false teeth, and with an incurable tic douloureux. I am myself as dingy and unsightly as my name is brilliant and splendid. My head and my hands tremble with weakness; my neck, as Turgenev says of one of his heroines, is like the handle of a double bass; my chest is hollow; my shoulders narrow; when I talk or lecture, my mouth turns down at one corner; when I smile, my whole face is covered with aged-looking, deathly wrinkles. There is nothing impressive about my pitiful figure; only, perhaps, when I have an attack of tic douloureux my face wears a peculiar expression, the sight of which must have roused in every one the grim and impressive thought, "Evidently that man will soon die." (Chapter I)
Tri stána verbálala (three hundered camels) brings to mind trista glaz (three hundred eyes) of the old Professor's students:
Хороший дирижер, передавая мысль композитора, делает сразу двадцать дел: читает партитуру, машет палочкой, следит за певцом, делает движение в сторону то барабана, то валторны и проч. То же самое и я, когда читаю. Предо мною полтораста лиц, не похожих одно на другое, и триста глаз, глядящих мне прямо в лицо. Цель моя — победить эту многоголовую гидру. Если я каждую минуту, пока читаю, имею ясное представление о степени ее внимания и о силе разумения, то она в моей власти. Другой мой противник сидит во мне самом. Это — бесконечное разнообразие форм, явлений и законов и множество ими обусловленных своих и чужих мыслей. Каждую минуту я должен иметь ловкость выхватывать из этого громадного материала самое важное и нужное и так же быстро, как течет моя речь, облекать свою мысль в такую форму, которая была бы доступна разумению гидры и возбуждала бы ее внимание, причем надо зорко следить, чтобы мысли передавались не по мере их накопления, а в известном порядке, необходимом для правильной компоновки картины, какую я хочу нарисовать. Далее я стараюсь, чтобы речь моя была литературна, определения кратки и точны, фраза возможно проста и красива. Каждую минуту я должен осаживать себя и помнить, что в моем распоряжении имеются только час и сорок минут. Одним словом, работы немало. В одно и то же время приходится изображать из себя и ученого, и педагога, и оратора, и плохо дело, если оратор победит в вас педагога и ученого, или наоборот.
A good conductor, interpreting the thought of the composer, does twenty things at once: reads the score, waves his baton, watches the singer, makes a motion sideways, first to the drum then to the wind-instruments, and so on. I do just the same when I lecture. Before me a hundred and fifty faces, all unlike one another; three hundred eyes all looking straight into my face. My object is to dominate this many-headed monster. If every moment as I lecture I have a clear vision of the degree of its attention and its power of comprehension, it is in my power. The other foe I have to overcome is in myself. It is the infinite variety of forms, phenomena, laws, and the multitude of ideas of my own and other people's conditioned by them. Every moment I must have the skill to snatch out of that vast mass of material what is most important and necessary, and, as rapidly as my words flow, clothe my thought in a form in which it can be grasped by the monster's intelligence, and may arouse its attention, and at the same time one must keep a sharp lookout that one's thoughts are conveyed, not just as they come, but in a certain order, essential for the correct composition of the picture I wish to sketch. Further, I endeavor to make my diction literary, my definitions brief and precise, my wording, as far as possible, simple and eloquent. Every minute I have to pull myself up and remember that I have only an hour and forty minutes at my disposal. In short, one has one's work cut out. At one and the same minute one has to play the part of savant and teacher and orator, and it's a bad thing if the orator gets the upper hand of the savant or of the teacher in one, or vice versa. (ibid.)
Describing his insomnia, the old Professor mentions a novel with the strange title that he mechanically read through in one night, O chyom pela lastochka ("About What the Swallow was Singing"):
Что касается моего теперешнего образа жизни, то прежде всего я должен отметить бессонницу, которою страдаю в последнее время. Если бы меня спросили: что составляет теперь главную и основную черту твоего существования? Я ответил бы: бессонница. Как и прежде, по привычке, ровно в полночь я раздеваюсь и ложусь в постель. Засыпаю я скоро, но во втором часу просыпаюсь, и с таким чувством, как будто совсем не спал. Приходится вставать с постели и зажигать лампу. Час или два я хожу из угла в угол по комнате и рассматриваю давно знакомые картины и фотографии. Когда надоедает ходить, сажусь за свой стол. Сижу я неподвижно, ни о чем не думая и не чувствуя никаких желаний; если передо мной лежит книга, то машинально я придвигаю ее к себе и читаю без всякого интереса. Так, недавно в одну ночь я прочел машинально целый роман под странным названием: «О чем пела ласточка». Или же я, чтобы занять свое внимание, заставляю себя считать до тысячи, или воображаю лицо кого-нибудь из товарищей и начинаю вспоминать: в каком году и при каких обстоятельствах он поступил на службу? Люблю прислушиваться к звукам. То за две комнаты от меня быстро проговорит что-нибудь в бреду моя дочь Лиза, то жена пройдет через залу со свечой и непременно уронит коробку со спичками, то скрипнет рассыхающийся шкап или неожиданно загудит горелка в лампе — и все эти звуки почему-то волнуют меня.
As regards my present manner of life, I must give a foremost place to the insomnia from which I have suffered of late. If I were asked what constituted the chief and fundamental feature of my existence now, I should answer, Insomnia. As in the past, from habit I undress and go to bed exactly at midnight. I fall asleep quickly, but before two o'clock I wake up and feel as though I had not slept at all. Sometimes I get out of bed and light a lamp. For an hour or two I walk up and down the room looking at the familiar photographs and pictures. When I am weary of walking about, I sit down to my table. I sit motionless, thinking of nothing, conscious of no inclination; if a book is lying before me, I mechanically move it closer and read it without any interest -- in that way not long ago I mechanically read through in one night a whole novel, with the strange title "About What the Swallow was Singing"; or to occupy my attention I force myself to count to a thousand; or I imagine the face of one of my colleagues and begin trying to remember in what year and under what circumstances he entered the service. I like listening to sounds. Two rooms away from me my daughter Liza says something rapidly in her sleep, or my wife crosses the drawing-room with a candle and invariably drops the matchbox; or a warped cupboard creaks; or the burner of the lamp suddenly begins to hum -- and all these sounds, for some reason, excite me. (ibid.)
The “real” name of both Sybil Shade (the poet’s wife whom Kinbote calls “Sybil Swallow”) and Queen Disa (the wife of Charles the Beloved) seems to be Sofia Botkin, born Lastochkin. Queen Disa is a cross between Leonardo’s Mona Lisa and Desdemona, Othello’s wife in Shakespeare’s Othello. In Chekhov's story Liza is the name of the old Professor's daughter. Describing his courtship, the old Professor compares himself to Othello and his wife to Desdemona:
Я слушаю, машинально поддакиваю и, вероятно, оттого, что не спал ночь, странные, ненужные мысли овладевают мной. Я смотрю на свою жену и удивляюсь, как ребенок. В недоумении я спрашиваю себя: неужели эта старая, очень полная, неуклюжая женщина, с тупым выражением мелочной заботы и страха перед куском хлеба со взглядом, отуманенным постоянными мыслями о долгах и нужде, умеющая говорить только о расходах и улыбаться только дешевизне — неужели эта женщина была когда-то той самой тоненькой Варею, которую я страстно полюбил за хороший, ясный ум, за чистую душу, красоту и, как Отелло Дездемону, за «состраданье» к моей науке? Неужели это та самая жена моя Варя, которая когда-то родила мне сына?
I listen, mechanically assent, and probably because I have had a bad night, strange and inappropriate thoughts intrude themselves upon me. I gaze at my wife and wonder like a child. I ask myself in perplexity, is it possible that this old, very stout, ungainly woman, with her dull expression of petty anxiety and alarm about daily bread, with eyes dimmed by continual brooding over debts and money difficulties, who can talk of nothing but expenses and who smiles at nothing but things getting cheaper -- is it possible that this woman is no other than the slender Varya whom I fell in love with so passionately for her fine, clear intelligence, for her pure soul, her beauty, and, as Othello his Desdemona, for her "sympathy" for my studies? Could that woman be no other than the Varya who had once borne me a son? (ibid.)
According to the old Professor, he wrote his first love letter to his wife on a page headed "Historia morbi:"
В без четверти десять нужно идти к моим милым мальчикам читать лекцию. Одеваюсь и иду по дороге, которая знакома мне уже 30 лет и имеет для меня свою историю. Вот большой серый дом с аптекой; тут когда-то стоял маленький домик, а в нем была портерная; в этой портерной я обдумывал свою диссертацию и написал первое любовное письмо к Варе. Писал карандашом, на листе с заголовком «Historia morbi». Вот бакалейная лавочка; когда-то хозяйничал в ней жидок, продававший мне в долг папиросы, потом толстая баба, любившая студентов за то, что «у каждого из них мать есть»; теперь сидит рыжий купец, очень равнодушный человек, пьющий чай из медного чайника. А вот мрачные, давно не ремонтированные университетские ворота; скучающий дворник в тулупе, метла, кучи снега... На свежего мальчика, приехавшего из провинции и воображающего, что храм науки в самом деле храм, такие ворота не могут произвести здорового впечатления. Вообще ветхость университетских построек, мрачность коридоров, копоть стен, недостаток света, унылый вид ступеней, вешалок и скамей в истории русского пессимизма занимают одно из первых мест на ряду причин предрасполагающих... Вот и наш сад. С тех пор, как я был студентом, он, кажется, не стал ни лучше, ни хуже. Я его не люблю. Было бы гораздо умнее, если бы вместо чахоточных лип, желтой акации и редкой, стриженой сирени росли тут высокие сосны и хорошие дубы. Студент, настроение которого в большинстве создается обстановкой, на каждом шагу, там, где он учится, должен видеть перед собою только высокое, сильное и изящное... Храни его бог от тощих деревьев, разбитых окон, серых стен и дверей, обитых рваной клеенкой.
At a quarter to ten I have to go and give a lecture to my dear boys. I dress and walk along the road which I have known for thirty years, and which has its history for me. Here is the big grey house with the chemist's shop; at this point there used to stand a little house, and in it was a beershop; in that beershop I thought out my thesis and wrote my first love-letter to Varya. I wrote it in pencil, on a page headed "Historia morbi." Here there is a grocer's shop; at one time it was kept by a little Jew, who sold me cigarettes on credit; then by a fat peasant woman, who liked the students because "every one of them has a mother"; now there is a red-haired shopkeeper sitting in it, a very stolid man who drinks tea from a copper teapot. And here are the gloomy gates of the University, which have long needed doing up; I see the bored porter in his sheep-skin, the broom, the drifts of snow ... On a boy coming fresh from the provinces and imagining that the temple of science must really be a temple, such gates cannot make a healthy impression. Altogether the dilapidated condition of the University buildings, the gloominess of the corridors, the griminess of the walls, the lack of light, the dejected aspect of the steps, the hat-stands and the benches, take a prominent position among predisposing causes in the history of Russian pessimism ... Here is our garden ... I fancy it has grown neither better nor worse since I was a student. I don't like it. It would be far more sensible if there were tall pines and fine oaks growing here instead of sickly-looking lime-trees, yellow acacias, and skimpy pollard lilacs. The student whose state of mind is in the majority of cases created by his surroundings, ought in the place where he is studying to see facing him at every turn nothing but what is lofty, strong and elegant ... God preserve him from gaunt trees, broken windows, grey walls, and doors covered with torn American leather! (ibid.)
Historia morbi (history of disease) brings to mind a volume of Historia Zemblica mentioned by Kinbote in the same note of his Commentary:
The forty days between Queen Blenda's death and his coronation was perhaps the most trying stretch of time in his life. He had had no love for his mother, and the hopeless and helpless remorse he now felt degenerated into a sickly physical fear of her phantom. The Countess, who seemed to be near him, to be rustling at his side, all the time, had him attend table-turning seances with an experienced American medium, seances at which the Queen's spirit, operating the same kind of planchette she had used in her lifetime to chat with Thormodus Torfaeus and A. R. Wallace, now briskly wrote in English: "Charles take take cherish love flower flower flower." An old psychiatrist so thoroughly bribed by the Countess as to look, even on the outside, like a putrid pear, assured him that his vices had subconsciously killed his mother and would continue "to kill her in him" if he did not renounce sodomy. A palace intrigue is a special spider that entangles you more nastily at every desperate jerk you try. Our Prince was young, inexperienced, and half-frenzied with insomnia. He hardly struggled at all. The Countess spent a fortune on buying his kamergrum (groom of the chamber), his bodyguard, and even the greater part of the Court Chamberlain. She took to sleeping in a small antechamber next to his bachelor bedroom, a splendid spacious circular apartment at the top of the high and massive South West Tower. This had been his father's retreat and was still connected by a jolly chute in the wall with a round swimming pool in the hall below, so that the young Prince could start the day as his father used to start it by slipping open a panel beside his army cot and rolling into the shaft whence he whizzed down straight into bright water. For other needs than sleep Charles Xavier had installed in the middle of the Persian rug-covered floor a so-called patifolia, that is, a huge, oval, luxuriously flounced, swansdown pillow the size of a triple bed. It was in this ample nest that Fleur now slept, curled up in its central hollow, under a coverlet of genuine giant panda fur that had just been rushed from Tibet by a group of Asiatic well-wishers on the occasion of his ascension to the throne. The antechamber, where the Countess was ensconced, had its own inner staircase and bathroom, but also communicated by means of a sliding door with the West Gallery. I do not know what advice or command her mother had given Fleur; but the little thing proved a poor seducer. She kept trying, as one quietly insane, to mend a broken viola d'amore or sat in dolorous attitudes comparing two ancient flutes, both sad-tuned and feeble. Meantime, in Turkish garb, he lolled in his father's ample chair, his legs over its arm, flipping through a volume of Historia Zemblica, copying out passages and occasionally fishing out of the nether recesses of his seat a pair of old-fashioned motoring goggles, a black opal ring, a ball of silver chocolate wrapping, or the star of a foreign order. (note to Line 80)
Shade is killed by Gradus on 21 July 1959, soon after his sixty-first birthday. Shade's birthday, July 5, is also Kinbote's and Gradus' birthday (while Shade was born in 1898, Kinbote and Gradus were born in 1915). In 1959 Kinbote and Gradus are both forty-four. Chekhov died in Badenweiler (a German spa) on July 15, 1904, aged forty-four. The old Professor in Chekhov’s “Dreary Story” is sixty-two and he knows that he will soon die. In his essay on Chekhov, Tvorchestvo iz nichego ("Creation from Nothing," 1905), Lev Shestov calls Chekhov pevets beznadezhnosti (a poet of hopelessness):
Чтобы в двух словах определить его тенденцию, я скажу: Чехов был певцом безнадежности. Упорно, уныло, однообразно в течение всей своей почти 25-летней литературной деятельности Чехов только одно и делал: теми или иными способами убивал человеческие надежды. В этом, на мой взгляд, сущность его творчества.
To define his tendency in a word, I would say that Chekhov was the poet of hopelessness. Stubbornly, sadly, monotonously, during all the years of his literary activity, nearly a quarter of a century long, Chekhov was doing one alone: by one means or another he was killing human hopes. Herein, I hold, lies the essence of his work. (I)
Shestov’s essay on Chekhov has for epigraph a line from Baudelaire’s poem Le Goût du néant (“The Taste for Nothingness”):
Résigne-toi, mon cœur, dors ton sommeil de brute.
(Resign yourself, my heart; sleep your brutish sleep.)
In a discarded variant (quoted by Kinbote in his Commentary) Shade mentions poor Baudelaire:
A beautiful variant, with one curious gap, branches off at this point in the draft (dated July 6):
Strange Other World where all our still-born dwell,
And pets, revived, and invalids, grown well,
And minds that died before arriving there:
Poor old man Swift, poor —, poor Baudelaire
What might that dash stand for? Unless Shade gave prosodic value to the mute e in “Baudelaire,” which I am quite certain he would never have done in English verse (cp. “Rabelais,” line 501), the name required here must scan as a trochee. Among the names of celebrated poets, painters, philosophers, etc., known to have become insane or to have sunk into senile imbecility, we find many suitable ones. Was Shade confronted by too much variety with nothing to help logic choose and so left a blank, relying upon the mysterious organic force that rescues poets to fill it in at its own convenience? Or was there something else—some obscure intuition, some prophetic scruple that prevented him from spelling out the name of an eminent man who happened to be an intimate friend of his? Was he perhaps playing safe because a reader in his household might have objected to that particular name being mentioned? And if it comes to that, why mention it at all in this tragical context? Dark, disturbing thoughts. (note to Line 231)
Kinbote is afraid that this dash stands for his name. Actually, it stands for Botkin (Shade’s, Kinbote’s and Gradus’ “real” name). According to Kinbote, Shade listed Chekhov 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)
In Ilf and Petrov's novel Dvenadtsat' stuliev ("The Twelve Chairs," 1928) Bender and Vorob'yaninov watch an avant-garde stage version of Gogol's play Zhenit'ba ("The Wedding," 1835) in the Columbus Theater in which the actor who plays Kochkaryov (a character in Gogol's play) arrives apparently on a camel:
Публика покорилась. Свет так и не зажигался до конца акта. В полной темноте гремели барабаны. С фонарями прошел отряд военных в форме гостиничных швейцаров. Потом, как видно, на верблюде, приехал Кочкарёв. Судить обо всём этом можно было из следующего диалога:
— Фу, как ты меня испугал! А ещё на верблюде приехал!
— Ах, ты заметил, несмотря на темноту?! А я хотел преподнести тебе сладкое вер-блюдо!
The audience gave in. The lights did not go up again until the end of the act. The drums rolled in complete darkness. A squad of soldiers dressed as hotel doormen passed by, carrying torches. Then Kochkaryov arrived, apparently on a camel. This could only be judged from the following dialogue.
“Ouch, how you frightened me! And you came on a camel, too."
"Ah, so you noticed, despite the darkness. I wanted to bring you a fragrant camellia!" (chapter 30)
Kochkaryov's pun, sladkoe ver-blyudo (a sweet verb-meal), brings to mind verbalala. In Ilf and Petrov's novel Zolotoy Telyonok ("The Golden Calf," 1931) Bender and Koreyko cross the desert on camels. Alexander Ivanovich Koreyko (a secret Soviet millionaire) has the same name and patronymic as Luzhin, the main character in VN's novel Zashchita Luzhina ("The Luzhin Defence," 1930). A writer of books for children, Luzhin's father is the author of Priklyucheniya Antoshi ("The Adventures of Antosha") and Luzhin's schoolmates call little Luzhin "Antosha." Antosha Chekhonte was young Chekhov's penname.
Verbalala seems to blend verblyud (camel) with balalaika. In the "Fragments from Onegin's Journey" Pushkin mentions verblyud (the camel) that lies in the cliff's shade:
Онегин едет в Астрахань и оттуда на Кавказ.
Он видит: Терек своенравный
Крутые роет берега;
Пред ним парит орел державный,
Стоит олень, склонив рога;
Верблюд лежит в тени утеса,
В лугах несется конь черкеса,
И вкруг кочующих шатров
Пасутся овцы калмыков,
Вдали — кавказские громады:
К ним путь открыт. Пробилась брань
За их естественную грань,
Чрез их опасные преграды;
Брега Арагвы и Куры
Узрели русские шатры.
Onegin fares to Astrahan [XI], and from there to the Caucasus:
[XII]
He sees the wayward Térek
eroding its steep banks;
before him soars a stately eagle,
a deer stands, with bent horns;
the camel lies in the cliff's shade;
in meadows courses the Circassian's steed,
and round nomadic tents
the sheep of Kalmuks graze.
Afar [loom] the Caucasian masses.
The way to them is clear. War penetrated
beyond their natural divide,
across their perilous barriers.
The banks of the Arágva and Kurá
saw Russian tents.
In the "Fragments of Onegin's Journey" Pushkin says that he is fond now of the balalaika:
Иные нужны мне картины:
Люблю песчаный косогор,
Перед избушкой две рябины,
Калитку, сломанный забор,
На небе серенькие тучи,
Перед гумном соломы кучи
Да пруд под сенью ив густых,
Раздолье уток молодых;
Теперь мила мне балалайка
Да пьяный топот трепака
Перед порогом кабака.
Мой идеал теперь — хозяйка,
Мои желания — покой,
Да щей горшок, да сам большой.
Needful to me are other pictures:
I like a sandy hillside slope,
before a small isba two rowans,
a wicket gate, a broken fence,
up in the sky gray clouds,
before the thrash barn heaps of straw,
and in the shelter of dense willows
a pond — the franchise of young ducks.
I'm fond now of the balalaika
and of the trepak's drunken stomping
before the threshold of the tavern;
now my ideal is a housewife,
my wishes, peace
and “pot of shchi but big myself.” [XVIII]
In the next stanza Pushkin mentions Fountain of Bahchisaray:
Порой дождливою намедни
Я, завернув на скотный двор...
Тьфу! прозаические бредни,
Фламандской школы пестрый сор!
Таков ли был я, расцветая?
Скажи, фонтан Бахчисарая?
Такие ль мысли мне на ум
Навел твой бесконечный шум,
Когда безмолвно пред тобою
Зарему я воображал...
Средь пышных, опустелых зал,
Спустя три года, вслед за мною,
Скитаясь в той же стороне,
Онегин вспомнил обо мне.
The other day, during a rainy spell,
as I had dropped into the cattle yard —
Fie! Prosy divagations,
the Flemish School's variegated dross!
Was I like that when I was blooming?
Say, Fountain of Bahchisaray!
Were such the thoughts that to my mind
your endless purl suggested
when silently in front of you
Zaréma I imagined?...
Midst the sumptuous deserted halls
after the lapse of three years, in my track
in the same region wandering, Onegin
remembered me. [XIX]
On the other hand, verbalala brings to mind Chekhov’s story Verba (“The Willow,” 1883). The action in it begins on verbnoe voskresen’ye (Palm Sunday):
Лет 30 тому назад, в вербное воскресенье, в день именин старухи-вербы, старик сидел на своем месте, глядел на весну и удил... Кругом было тихо, как всегда... Слышался только шёпот стариков, да изредка всплескивала гуляющая рыба. Старик удил и ждал полдня. В полдень он начинал варить уху. Когда тень вербы начинала отходить от того берега, наступал полдень.
Время Архип узнавал еще и по почтовым звонкам. Ровно в полдень через плотину проезжала Т—я почта.
In Chekhov's story the coachman kills the postman, robs him and, when he is exposed, drowns himself in the river. In Chekhov's story Tysyacha odna strast’, ili Strashnaya noch’ (“A Thousand and One Passions, or The Terrible Night,” 1880), a parody of Gothic story dedicated to Victor Hugo, the narrator kills his cocher (coachman). In Pushkin's story Telega zhizni ("The Coach of Life," 1823) yamshchik (the coachman) is sedoe Vremya (gray Time):
Хоть тяжело под час в ней бремя,
Телега на ходу легка;
Ямщик лихой, седое время,
Везет, не слезит с облучка.
С утра садимся мы в телегу;
Мы рады голову сломать
И, презирая лень и негу,
Кричим: пошел!......
Но в полдень нет уж той отваги;
Порастрясло нас; нам страшней
И косогоры и овраги;
Кричим: полегче, дуралей!
Катит по прежнему телега;
Под вечер мы привыкли к ней
И дремля едем до ночлега -
А время гонит лошадей.
Although her load is sometimes heavy,
The coach moves at an easy pace;
The dashing driver, gray-haired time
Drives on, secure upon his box.
At dawn we gaily climb aboard her
We're ready for a crazy ride,
And scorning laziness and languor,
We shout: "Get on, there! Don't delay!'
But midday finds our courage wane,
We're shaken now: and at this hour
Both hills and dales inspire dread.
We shout: "Hold on, drive slower, fool!"
The coach drives on just as before;
By eve we are used to it,
And doze as we attain our inn.
While Time just drives the horses on.
In Canto Two of his poem Shade speaks of his daughter and mentions the school pantomime in which she appeared as Mother Time:
It was no use, no use. The prizes won
In French and history, no doubt, were fun;
At Christmas parties games were rough, no doubt,
And one shy little guest might be left out;
But let's be fair: while children of her age
Were cast as elves and fairies on the stage
That she'd helped paint for the school pantomime,
My gentle girl appeared as Mother Time,
A bent charwoman with slop pail and broom,
And like a fool I sobbed in the men's room. (ll. 305-314)
Novoe vremya (New Time) was Suvorin's newspaper to which Chekhov contributed his stories.