According to 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), four months of the year (December, January, February and March) are called in Zembla "the white-nosed months:"
February and March in Zembla (the two last of the four "white-nosed months," as we call them) used to be pretty rough too, but even a peasant's room there presented a solid of uniform warmth - not a reticulation of deadly drafts. It is true that, as usually happens to newcomers, I was told I had chosen the worst winter in years - and this at the latitude of Palermo. On one of my first mornings there, as I was preparing to leave for college in the powerful red car I had just acquired, I noticed that Mr. and Mrs. Shade, neither of whom I had yet met socially (I was to learn later that they assumed I wished to be left alone), were having trouble with their old Packard in the slippery driveway where it emitted whines of agony but could not extricate one tortured rear wheel out of a concave inferno of ice. John Shade busied himself clumsily with a bucket from which, with the gestures of a sower, he distributed handfuls of brown sand over the blue glaze. He wore snowboots, his vicuña collar was up, his abundant gray hair looked berimed in the sun. I knew he had been ill a few months before, and thinking to offer my neighbors a ride to the campus in my powerful machine, I hurried out toward them. A lane curving around the slight eminence on which my rented castle stood separated it from my neighbors' driveway, and I was about to cross that lane when I lost my footing and sat down on the surprisingly hard snow. My fall acted as a chemical reagent on the Shades' sedan, which forthwith budged and almost ran over me as it swung into the lane with John at the wheel strenuously grimacing and Sybil fiercely talking to him. I am not sure either saw me. (Foreword)
In his story Shinel’ (“The Overcoat,” 1842) Gogol calls the Northern frost a powerful foe that bestows such powerful and piercing nips on all noses impartially that the poor officials really do not know what to do with them:
Есть в Петербурге сильный враг всех, получающих четыреста рублей в год жалованья или около того. Враг этот не кто другой, как наш северный мороз, хотя, впрочем, и говорят, что он очень здоров. В девятом часу утра, именно в тот час, когда улицы покрываются идущими в департамент, начинает он давать такие сильные и колючие щелчки без разбору по всем носам, что бедные чиновники решительно не знают, куда девать их. В это время, когда даже у занимающих высшие должности болит от морозу лоб и слезы выступают в глазах, бедные титулярные советники иногда бывают беззащитны. Все спасение состоит в том, чтобы в тощенькой шинелишке перебежать как можно скорее пять-шесть улиц и потом натопаться хорошенько ногами в швейцарской, пока не оттают таким образом все замерзнувшие на дороге способности и дарованья к должностным отправлениям. Акакий Акакиевич с некоторого времени начал чувствовать, что его как-то особенно сильно стало пропекать в спину и плечо, несмотря на то что он старался перебежать как можно скорее законное пространство. Он подумал наконец, не заключается ли каких грехов в его шинели. Рассмотрев ее хорошенько у себя дома, он открыл, что в двух-трех местах, именно на спине и на плечах, она сделалась точная серпянка; сукно до того истерлось, что сквозило, и подкладка расползлась. Надобно знать, что шинель Акакия Акакиевича служила тоже предметом насмешек чиновникам; от нее отнимали даже благородное имя шинели и называли ее капотом. В самом деле, она имела какое-то странное устройство: воротник ее уменьшался с каждым годом более и более, ибо служил на подтачиванье других частей ее. Подтачиванье не показывало искусства портного и выходило, точно, мешковато и некрасиво. Увидевши, в чем дело, Акакий Акакиевич решил, что шинель нужно будет снести к Петровичу, портному, жившему где-то в четвертом этаже по черной лестнице, который, несмотря на свой кривой глаз и рябизну по всему лицу, занимался довольно удачно починкой чиновничьих и всяких других панталон и фраков, — разумеется, когда бывал в трезвом состоянии и не питал в голове какого-нибудь другого предприятия. Об этом портном, конечно, не следовало бы много говорить, но так как уже заведено, чтобы в повести характер всякого лица был совершенно означен, то, нечего делать, подавайте нам и Петровича сюда. Сначала он назывался просто Григорий и был крепостным человеком у какого-то барина; Петровичем он начал называться с тех пор, как получил отпускную и стал попивать довольно сильно по всяким праздникам, сначала по большим, а потом, без разбору, по всем церковным, где только стоял в календаре крестик. С этой стороны он был верен дедовским обычаям, и, споря с женой, называл ее мирскою женщиной и немкой. Так как мы уже заикнулись про жену, то нужно будет и о ней сказать слова два; но, к сожалению, о ней не много было известно, разве только то, что у Петровича есть жена, носит даже чепчик, а не платок; но красотою, как кажется, она не могла похвастаться; по крайней мере, при встрече с нею одни только гвардейские солдаты заглядывали ей под чепчик, моргнувши усом и испустивши какой-то особый голос.
There exists in St. Petersburg a powerful foe of all who receive a salary of four hundred rubles a year, or thereabouts. This foe is no other than the Northern cold, although it is said to be very healthy. At nine o'clock in the morning, at the very hour when the streets are filled with men bound for the various official departments, it begins to bestow such powerful and piercing nips on all noses impartially that the poor officials really do not know what to do with them. At an hour when the foreheads of even those who occupy exalted positions ache with the cold, and tears start to their eyes, the poor titular councillors are sometimes quite unprotected. Their only salvation lies in traversing as quickly as possible, in their thin little cloaks, five or six streets, and then warming their feet in the porter's room, and so thawing all their talents and qualifications for official service, which had become frozen on the way. Akakiy Akakievich had felt for some time that his back and shoulders suffered with peculiar poignancy, in spite of the fact that he tried to traverse the distance with all possible speed. He began finally to wonder whether the fault did not lie in his cloak. He examined it thoroughly at home, and discovered that in two places, namely, on the back and shoulders, it had become thin as gauze: the cloth was worn to such a degree that he could see through it, and the lining had fallen into pieces. You must know that Akakiy Akakievich's cloak served as an object of ridicule to the officials: they even refused it the noble name of cloak, and called it a cape. In fact, it was of singular make: its collar diminishing year by year, but serving to patch its other parts. The patching did not exhibit great skill on the part of the tailor, and was, in fact, baggy and ugly. Seeing how the matter stood, Akakiy Akakievich decided that it would be necessary to take the cloak to Petrovich, the tailor, who lived somewhere on the fourth floor up a dark stair-case, and who, in spite of his having but one eye, and pock-marks all over his face, busied himself with considerable success in repairing the trousers and coats of officials and others; that is to say, when he was sober and not nursing some other scheme in his head. It is not necessary to say much about this tailor; but, as it is the custom to have the character of each personage in a novel clearly defined, there is no help for it, so here is Petrovich the tailor. At first he was called only Grigoriy, and was some gentleman's serf; he commenced calling himself Petrovich from the time when he received his free papers, and further began to drink heavily on all holidays, at first on the great ones, and then on all church festivities without discrimination, wherever a cross stood in the calendar. On this point he was faithful to ancestral custom; and when quarrelling with his wife, he called her a low female and a German. As we have mentioned his wife, it will be necessary to say a word or two about her. Unfortunately, little is known of her beyond the fact that Petrovich has a wife, who wears a cap and a dress; but cannot lay claim to beauty, at least, no one but the soldiers of the guard even looked under her cap when they met her.
A powerful foe and its powerful and piercing nips bring to mind Kinbote’s powerful Kramler:
Despite a wobbly heart (see line 735), a slight limp, and a certain curious contortion in his method of progress, Shade had an inordinate liking for long walks, but the snow bothered him, and he preferred, in winter, to have his wife call for him after classes with the car. A few days later, as I was about to leave Parthenocissus Hall - or Main Hall (or now Shade Hall, alas), I saw him waiting outside for Mrs. Shade to fetch him. I stood beside him for a minute, on the steps of the pillared porch, while pulling my gloves on, finger by finger, and looking away, as if waiting to review a regiment: "That was a thorough job," commented the poet. He consulted his wrist watch. A snowflake settled upon it. "Crystal to crystal," said Shade. I offered to take him home in my powerful Kramler. "Wives, Mr. Shade, are forgetful." He cocked his shaggy head to look at the library clock. Across the bleak expanse of snow-covered turf two radiant lads in colorful winter clothes passed, laughing and sliding. Shade glanced at his watch again and, with a shrug, accepted my offer. (Foreword)
Moaning and shifting from one foot to the other, Gradus started leafing through the college directory but when he found the address, he was faced with the problem of getting there.
"Dulwich Road," he cried to the girl. "Near? Far? Very far, probably?"
"Are you by any chance Professor Pnin's new assistant?" asked Emerald.
"No," said the girl. "This man is looking for Dr. Kinbote, I think. You are looking for Dr. Kinbote, aren't you?"
"Yes, and I can't any more," said Gradus.
"I thought so," said the girl. "Doesn't he live somewhere near Mr. Shade, Gerry?"
"Oh, definitely," said Gerry, and turned to the killer: "I can drive you there if you like. It is on my way."
Did they talk in the car, these two characters, the man in green and the man in brown? Who can say? They did not. After all, the drive took only a few minutes (it took me, at the wheel of my powerful Kramler, four and a half).
"I think I'll drop you here," said Mr. Emerald. "It's that house up there." (note to Line 949)
Parthenocissus tricuspidata is a flowering plant in the grape family (Vitaceae) native to eastern Asia in Korea, Japan, and northern and eastern China. Although unrelated to true ivy, it is commonly known as Boston ivy, grape ivy, and Japanese ivy, and also as Japanese creeper, and by the name woodbine (though the latter may refer to a number of different vine species). According to Kinbote, Gradus (Shade’s murderer) contended that the real origin of his name should be sought in the Russian word for grape, vinograd, to which a Latin suffix had adhered, making it Vinogradus:
Jakob Gradus called himself variously Jack Degree or Jacques de Grey, or James de Gray, and also appears in police records as Ravus, Ravenstone, and d'Argus. Having a morbid affection for the ruddy Russia of the Soviet era, he contended that the real origin of his name should be sought in the Russian word for grape, vinograd, to which a Latin suffix had adhered, making it Vinogradus. His father, Martin Gradus, had been a Protestant minister in Riga, but except for him and a maternal uncle (Roman Tselovalnikov, police officer and part-time member of the Social-Revolutionary party), the whole clan seems to have been in the liquor business. Martin Gradus died in 1920, and his widow moved to Strasbourg where she soon died, too. (note to Line 17)
In VN’s novel Dar (“The Gift,” 1937) Koncheyev (Fyodor’s rival poet) mentions vinograd (ripening vines) in the lines quoted in a review by Valentin Linyov (the ignorant critic):
Он еще просмотрел еженедельный иллюстрированный журнальчик, выходивший в Варшаве, и нашел рецензию на тот же предмет, но совсем другого пошиба. Это была критика-буфф. Тамошний Валентин Линев, из номера в номер безформенно, забубенно и не вполне грамотно изливавший свои литературные впечатления, был славен тем, что не только не мог разобраться в отчетной книге, но по-видимому, никогда не дочитывал ее до конца. Бойко творя из-под автора, увлекаясь собственным пересказом, выхватывая отдельные фразы в подтверждение неправильных заключений, плохо понимая начальные страницы, а в следующих энергично пускаясь по ложному следу, он добирался до предпоследней главы в блаженном состоянии пассажира еще не знающего (а в его случае так и не узнающего), что сел не в тот поезд. Неизменно бывало, что, долистав вслепую длинный роман или коротенькую повесть (размер не играл роли), он навязывал книге собственное окончание, - обыкновенно как раз противоположное замыслу автора. Другими словами, если бы, скажем, Гоголь приходился ему современником, и Линев о нем писал, то он прочно остался бы при невинном убеждении, что Хлестаков - ревизор в самом деле. Когда же, как сейчас, он писал о стихах, то простодушно употреблял прием так называемых межцитатных мостиков . Его разбор кончеевской книги сводился к тому, что он за автора отвечал на какую-то подразумеваемую альбомную анкету (Ваш любимый цветок? Любимый герой? Какую добродетель вы больше всего цените?): "Поэт, - писал о Кончееве Линев, - любит (следовала цепочка цитат, искаженных насилием их сочетания и винительных падежей). Его пугает (опять обрубки стихов). Он находит утешение в - (та же игра); но с другой стороны - (три четверти стиха, обращенных посредством кавычек в плоское утверждение); иногда же ему кажется, что" - и тут Линев, ненароком выковырнул что-то более или менее целое:
Виноград созревал, изваянья в аллеях синели.
Небеса опирались на снежные плечи отчизны...
- и это было так, словно голос скрипки вдруг заглушил болтовню патриархального кретина.
He also looked through a little illustrated weekly published by Russian émigrés in Warsaw and found a review on the same subject, but of a completely different cut. It was a critique-bouffe. The local Valentin Linyov, who from issue to issue used to pour out his formless, reckless, and not altogether grammatical literary impressions, was famous not only for not being able to make sense of the book he reviewed but also for not having, apparently, read it to the end. Jauntily using the author as a springboard, carried away by his own paraphrase, extracting isolated phrases in support of his incorrect conclusions, misunderstanding the initial pages and thereafter energetically pursuing a false trail, he would make his way to the penultimate chapter in the blissful state of a passenger who still does not know (and in his case never finds out) that he has boarded the wrong train. It invariably happened that having leafed blindly through a long novel or a short story (size played no part in it) he would provide the book with his own ending—usually exactly opposite to the author’s intention. In other words, if, say, Gogol had been a contemporary and Linyov were writing about him, Linyov would remain firmly of the innocent conviction that Hlestakov was indeed the inspector-general. But when, as now, he wrote about poetry, he artlessly employed the device of so-called “inter-quotational footbridges.” His discussion of Koncheyev’s book boiled down to his answering for the author a kind of implied album questionnaire (Your favorite flower? Favorite hero? Which virtue do you prize most?): “The poet,” Linyov wrote of Koncheyev, “likes [there followed a string of quotations, forcibly distorted by their combination and the demands of the accusative case]. He dreads [more bleeding stumps of verse]. He finds solace in—[même jeu]; but on the other hand [three-quarters of a line turned by means of quotes into a flat statement]; at times it seems to him that”—and here Linyov inadvertently extricated something more or less whole:
Days of ripening vines! In the avenues, blue-shaded statues.
The fair heavens that lean on the motherland’s shoulders of snow.
—and it was as if the voice of a violin had suddenly drowned the hum of a patriarchal cretin. (Chapter Three)
Gogol is the author of Nos (“The Nose,” 1835). In Gogol's story Zapiski Sumasshedshego ("The Notes of a Madman," 1835) Poprishchin (who imagines that he is Ferdinand VIII, the king of Spain) says that the noses live on the moon.
Kinbote’s powerful Kramler seems to be a cross between Rambler (American automobile brand) and Jack Kramer (1921-2009), U. S. tennis player and promoter. In his Commentary and Index Kinbote mentions Julius Steinmann (b. 1928), tennis champion and Zemblan patriot:
The Zemblan Revolution provided Gradus with satisfactions but also produced frustrations. One highly irritating episode seems retrospectively most significant as belonging to an order of things that Gradus should have learned to expect but never did. An especially brilliant impersonator of the King, the tennis ace Julius Steinmann (son of the well-known philanthropist), had eluded for several months the police who had been driven to the limits of exasperation by his mimicking to perfection the voice of Charles the Beloved in a series of underground radio speeches deriding the government. When finally captured he was tried by a special commission, of which Gradus was a member, and condemned to death. The firing squad bungled their job, and a little later the gallant young man was found recuperating from his wounds at a provincial hospital. When Gradus learned of this, he flew into one of his rare rages - not because the fact presupposed royalist machinations, but because the clean, honest, orderly course of death had been interfered with in an unclean, dishonest, disorderly manner. Without consulting anybody he rushed to the hospital, stormed in, located Julius in a crowded ward and managed to fire twice, both times missing, before the gun was wrested from him by a hefty male nurse. He rushed back to headquarters and returned with a dozen soldiers but his patient had disappeared.
Such things rankle - but what can Gradus do? The huddled fates engage in a great conspiracy against Gradus. One notes with pardonable glee that his likes are never granted the ultimate thrill of dispatching their victim themselves. Oh, surely, Gradus is active, capable, helpful, often indispensable. At the foot of the scaffold, on a raw and gray morning, it is Gradus who sweeps the night's powder snow off the narrow steps; but his long leathery face will not be the last one that the man who must mount those steps is to see in this world. It is Gradus who buys the cheap fiber valise that a luckier guy will plant, with a time bomb inside, under the bed of a former henchman. Nobody knows better than Gradus how to set a trap by means of a fake advertisement, but the rich old widow whom it hooks is courted and slain by another. When the fallen tyrant is tied, naked and howling, to a plank in the public square and killed piecemeal by the people who cut slices out, and eat them, and distribute his living body among themselves (as I read when young in a story about an Italian despot, which made of me a vegetarian for life), Gradus does not take part in the infernal sacrament: he points out the right instrument and directs the carving.
All this is as it should be; the world needs Gradus. But Gradus should not kill kings. Vinogradus should never, never provoke God. Leningradus should not aim his peashooter at people even in dreams, because if he does, a pair of colossally thick, abnormally hairy arms will hug him from behind and squeeze, squeeze, squeeze. (note to Line 171)
The last word in Kinbote’s Commentary is Gradus:
"And you, what will you be doing with yourself, poor King, poor Kinbote?" a gentle young voice may inquire.
God will help me, I trust, to rid myself of any desire to follow the example of two other characters in this work. I shall continue to exist. I may assume other disguises, other forms, but I shall try to exist. I may turn up yet, on another campus, as an old, happy, healthy, heterosexual Russian, a writer in exile, sans fame, sans future, sans audience, sans anything but his art. I may join forces with Odon in a new motion picture: Escape from Zembla (ball in the palace, bomb in the palace square). I may pander to the simple tastes of theatrical critics and cook up a stage play, an old-fashioned Melodrama with three principals: a lunatic who intends to kill an imaginary king, another lunatic who imagines himself to be that king, and a distinguished old poet who stumbles by chance into the line of fire, and perishes in the clash between the two figments. Oh, I may do many things! History permitting, I may sail back to my recovered kingdom, and with a great sob greet the gray coastline and the gleam of a roof in the rain. I may huddle and groan in a madhouse. But whatever happens, wherever the scene is laid, somebody, somewhere, will quietly set out - somebody has already set out, somebody still rather far away is buying a ticket, is boarding a bus, a ship, a plane, has landed, is walking toward a million photographers, and presently he will ring at my door - a bigger, more respectable, more competent Gradus. (note to Line 1000)
"A bigger, more respectable, more competent Gradus" brings to mind the real Inspector whose arrival is announced at the end of Gogol's play Revizor ("The Inspector," 1836):
Жандарм. Приехавший по именному повелению из Петербурга чиновник требует вас сей же час к себе. Он остановился в гостинице.
Произнесённые слова поражают как громом всех. Звук изумления единодушно взлетает из дамских уст; вся группа, вдруг переменивши положение, остаётся в окаменении.
GENDARME. The Inspector-General sent by Imperial command has arrived, and requests your attendance at once. He awaits you in the inn.
(They are thunderstruck at this announcement. The ladies utter simultaneous ejaculations of amazement; the whole group suddenly shift their positions and remain as if petrified.)
In his book Gogol' i chyort ("Gogol and the Devil," 1906) Merezhkovski speaks of the ending of Gogol's play, quotes Gogol's words Revizor bez kontsa ("The Inspector is not finished") and several times mentions Grad (City):
<По повелению из Петербурга> - вот что оглушает, как громом, всех, не только действующих лиц и зрителей, но, кажется, и самого Гоголя. Повеление из Петербурга? Но откуда же, как не из Петербурга - этого самого призрачного,
туманного, <фантастического из всех городов земного шара>, ползёт и расстилается по всей России тот <ошеломляющий туман>, та страшная мгла жизни, <египетские тьмы>, чертово марево, в которых ничего не видно, видны <какие-то свиные рыла вместо лиц, а больше ничего>? Оба ревизора, первый и второй, простой <елистратишка> и настоящий <генералиссимус>, не одинаково ли законные дети одной и той же <табели о рангах>, не плоды ли одного и того же
<петербургского периода> русской истории?
Да и весь этот чудовищный уездный город не часть ли всероссийского Града, гражданства, не отражение ли крошечное, обратное, но совершенно точное, как в капле воды, самого Петербурга? Петербург вызвал из небытия этот город. По
какому же праву, с какой высоты будет он судить и казнить его? В самом Петербурге гоголевских времен, что, собственно, произошло такого, что могло бы разразиться над этим маленьким Содомом не хлестаковским, а действительно
Божиим громом? Что могло бы явиться среди этих <свиных рыл>, не как лицо жандарма, всё-таки похожее отчасти на лицо Держиморды, а как действительно человеческое лицо Божеского правосудия?
Нет, <Ревизор> не кончен, не сознан до конца самим Гоголем и не понят зрителями; узел завязки развязан условно, сценически, но не религиозно. Одна комедия кончена, начинается или должна бы начаться другая, несколько более
смешная и страшная. Мы её так и не увидим на сцене: но и до сей поры разыгрывается она за сценою, в жизни. Это сознаёт отчасти Гоголь. <Ревизор без конца>, - говорит он. Мы могли бы прибавить: Ревизор бесконечен. Это смех не какой-либо частный, временный, исторический, а именно – бесконечный смех русской совести над русским Градом. (Part One, III)
According to Merezhkovski, Gogol's play (with the epigraph "There's no use grumbling at the mirror if your own mug is crooked. A Russian proverb") is the infinite laughter of Russian conscience over Russian Grad. Merezhkovski calls Khlestakov (the main character in "The Inspector") "an artificial man, homunculus who jumped out of Peter's table of ranks as of an alchemical phial:"
Он весь до мозга костей - петербургский безземельный <пролетарий>, безродный, искусственный человек - гомункул, выскочивший из <петровской табели о рангах>, как из алхимической склянки. (Part One, II)
In his book on Gogol (1944) VN points out that there are many homunculi among Gogol's characters. Shade's murderer, Gradus is a homunculus.
Khlestakov is an impostor. In his book on Gogol Merezhkovski wonders if Khlestakov, samozvanets (the impostor), has enough courage to call himself samoderzhets (an autocrat):
До чего бы дошёл он, если бы не поскользнулся? Назвал ли бы себя, как всякий самозванец, самодержцем? А, может быть, в наши дни не удовольствовался бы и царственным, никаким, вообще, человеческим именем, и уже прямо назвал бы себя <сверхчеловеком>, <человекобогом>? Сказал бы то, что у Достоевского чёрт советует сказать Ивану Карамазову: <Где станет Бог - там уже место Божие; где стану я, там сейчас же будет первое место - и всё позволено>! (Part One, II)
Merezhkovski quotes Ivan Karamazov's words in Dostoevski's novel Brothers Karamazov (1880): vsyo pozvoleno (all is allowed). In Canto Three of his poem Shade describes IPH (a lay Institute of Preparation for the Hereafter) and mentions Fra Karamazov mumbling his inept all is allowed:
In later years it started to decline:
Buddhism took root. A medium smuggled in
Pale jellies and a floating mandolin.
Fra Karamazov, mumbling his inept
All is allowed, into some classes crept;
And to fulfill the fish wish of the womb,
A school of Freudians headed for the tomb. (ll. 638-644)
The tailor in Gogol's "Overcoat," Petrovich brings to mind Colonel Peter Gusev, King Alfin's "aerial adjutant:"
King's Alfin's absent-mindedness was strangely combined with a passion for mechanical things, especially for flying apparatuses. In 1912, he managed to rise in an umbrella-like Fabre "hydroplane" and almost got drowned in the sea between Nitra and Indra. He smashed two Farmans, three Zemblan machines, and a beloved Santos Dumont Demoiselle. A very special monoplane, Blenda IV, was built for him in 1916 by his constant "aerial adjutant" Colonel Peter Gusev (later a pioneer parachutist and, at seventy, one of the greatest jumpers of all time), and this was his bird of doom. On the serene, and not too cold, December morning that the angels chose to net his mild pure soul, King Alfin was in the act of trying solo a tricky vertical loop that Prince Andrey Kachurin, the famous Russian stunter and War One hero, had shown him in Gatchina. Something went wrong, and the little Blenda was seen to go into an uncontrolled dive. Behind and above him, in a Caudron biplane, Colonel Gusev (by then Duke of Rahl) and the Queen snapped several pictures of what seemed at first a noble and graceful evolution but then turned into something else. At the last moment, King Alfin managed to straighten out his machine and was again master of gravity when, immediately afterwards, he flew smack into the scaffolding of a huge hotel which was being constructed in the middle of a coastal heath as if for the special purpose of standing in a king's way. This uncompleted and badly gutted building was ordered razed by Queen Blenda who had it replaced by a tasteless monument of granite surmounted by an improbable type of aircraft made of bronze. The glossy prints of the enlarged photographs depicting the entire catastrophe were discovered one day by eight-year-old Charles Xavier in the drawer of a secretary bookcase. In some of these ghastly pictures one could make out the shoulders and leathern casque of the strangely unconcerned aviator, and in the penultimate one of the series, just before the white-blurred shattering crash, one distinctly saw him raise one arm in triumph, and reassurance. The boy had hideous dreams after that but his mother never found out that he had seen those infernal records. (note to Line 71)
Oleg, Duke of Rahl, 1916-1931, son of Colonel Gusev, Duke of Rahl (b .1885, still spry); K.'s beloved playmate, killed in a toboggan accident, 130. (Index)
According to Kinbote, the disguised King 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)
Gusev (1890) is a story by Chekhov. In a conversation with Kinbote Shade mentioned Gogol, Dostoevski and 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)