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), Gradus (Shade’s murderer) is a cross between bat and crab:
The grotesque figure of Gradus, a cross between bat and crab, was not much odder than many other Shadows, such as, for example, Nodo, Odon's epileptic half-brother who cheated at cards, or a mad Mandevil who had lost a leg in trying to make anti-matter. (note to Line 171)
Describing the last moments of Shade’s life, Kinbote mentions a bat writing a legible tale of torture in the bruised and branded sky:
Well did I know he could never resist a golden drop of this or that, especially since he was severely rationed at home. With an inward leap of exultation I relieved him of the large envelope that hampered his movements as he descended the steps of the porch, sideways, like a hesitating infant. We crossed the lawn, we crossed the road. Clink-clank, came the horseshoe music from Mystery Lodge. In the large envelope I carried I could feel the hard-cornered, rubberbanded batches of index cards. We are absurdly accustomed to the miracle of a few written signs being able to contain immortal imagery, involutions of thought, new worlds with live people, speaking, weeping, laughing. We take it for granted so simply that in a sense, by the very act of brutish routine acceptance, we undo the work of the ages, the history of the gradual elaboration of poetical description and construction, from the treeman to Browning, from the caveman to Keats. What if we awake one day, all of us, and find ourselves utterly unable to read? I wish you to gasp not only at what you read but at the miracle of its being readable (so I used to tell my students). Although I am capable, through long dabbling in blue magic, of imitating any prose in the world (but singularly enough not verse - I am a miserable rhymester), I do not consider myself a true artist, save in one matter: I can do what only a true artist can do - pounce upon the forgotten butterfly of revelation, wean myself abruptly from the habit of things, see the web of the world, and the warp and the weft of that web. Solemnly I weighed in my hand what I was carrying under my left armpit, and for a moment, I found myself enriched with an indescribable amazement as if informed that fireflies were making decodable signals on behalf of stranded spirits, or that a bat was writing a legible tale of torture in the bruised and branded sky.
I was holding all Zembla pressed to my heart. (note to Line 991)
Letuchaya mysh' ("The Bat," 1895) is a poem by Bryusov. In his poem Ryb’ye prazdnestvo (“The Fish Festival,” 1916) Bryusov mentions mnogoumnyi krab (the witty crab):
А под утро самое, предварив разъезд,
Выведен с процессией пятипалых звезд,
Скажет с красной кафедры, жестами всех лап,
Речь громоподобную многоумный краб;
Объяснит, что праведно был прославлен днесь
Тот, кто кормит тщательно мир подводный весь,
Что сему кормителю так давно пора
Хоть клешней качанием прокричать: «Ура!»
Что все бури, отмели и огонь твой, Эльм!
Славься между рыбами царь торпед — Вильгельм!
Gradus is a member of the Shadows (a regicidal organization). In his poem U groba dnya (“At the Coffin of the Day,” 1909) Bryusov mentions skorbnye teni (the mournful shadows) and traurnyi flyor (the funerary veil):
Скорбные тени, окутаны чёрным,
Вышли, влекут свой задумчивый хор,
Головы клонят в молчаньи покорном,
Стелят над травами траурный флёр.
Traurnyi flyor brings to mind Fleur de Fyler, Countess de Fyler’s daughter who attempts to seduce young Charles Xavier after the death of his mother, Queen Blenda:
He awoke to find her [Fleur de Fyler] standing with a comb in her hand before his—or, rather, his grandfather’s—cheval glass, a triptych of bottomless light, a really fantastic mirror, signed with a diamond by its maker, Sudarg of Bokay. She turned about before it: a secret device of reflection gathered an infinite number of nudes in its depths, garlands of girls in graceful and sorrowful groups, diminishing in the limpid distance, or breaking into individual nymphs, some of whom, she murmured, must resemble her ancestors when they were young—little peasant garlien combing their hair in shallow water as far as the eye could reach, and then the wistful mermaid from an old tale, and then nothing. (note to Line 80)
A mirror maker of genius, Sudarg of Bokay (Jakob Gradus in reverse) reminds one of nekiy ravnyi gosudar’ (some equal sovereign), as in his Proshchal’naya poeza (“The Farewell Poem,” 1912) Severyanin calls Bryusov :
Вокруг — талантливые трусы
И обнаглевшая бездарь...
И только Вы, Валерий Брюсов,
Как некий равный государь...
The poems in Bryusov’s collection Zerkalo teney (“The Mirror of Shadows,” 1912) include Bessonnitsa (“Insomnia”) and Demon samoubiystva (“The Demon of Suicide”). In the latter poem Bryusov mentions shest’ tonkikh gilz s bezdymnym porokhom (six thin cartridges with smokeless powder):
В лесу, когда мы пьяны шорохом,
Листвы и запахом полян,
Шесть тонких гильз с бездымным порохом
Кладёт он, молча, в барабан.
According to Kinbote, at the age of six he suffered from adult insomnia:
Many years ago--how many I would not care to say--I remember my Zemblan nurse telling me, a little man of six in the throes of adult insomnia: "Minnamin, Gut mag alkan, Pern dirstan" (my darling, God makes hungry, the Devil thirsty). Well, folks, I guess many in this fine hall are as hungry and thirsty as me, and I'd better stop, folks, right here.
Yes, better stop. My notes and self are petering out. Gentlemen, I have suffered very much, and more than any of you can imagine. I pray for the Lord's benediction to rest on my wretched countrymen. My work is finished. My poet is dead.
"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 the other two 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, health 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 principles: 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 Revizor (“The Inspector,” 1836). Gogol's play has for epigraph the saying Na zerkalo necha penyat', koli rozha kriva (Don't blame the mirror, if your face is faulty). In his story Strashnaya mest’ (“A Terrible Vengeance,” 1832) Gogol mentions netopyri (the bats) and their shadows:
Под потолком взад и вперед мелькают нетопыри, и тень от них мелькает по стенам, по дверям, по помосту.
In his story Gogol famously says that a rare bird can fly to the middle of the Dnepr. Vladimir I (958-1015), a Grand Prince of Kiev who converted to Christianity in 988, caused the effigy of Perun (the Slavic god of thunder) to be drowned in the Dnepr. Zemblan for “the Devil,” Pern seems to hint at Perun.
Bog i d’yavol (“God and Devil,” 1903) is a poem by Balmont. In his memoir essay “Bryusov” (1925) Hodasevich compares Bryusov to Salieri and Balmont to Mozart:
Он не любил людей, потому что прежде всего не уважал их. Это во всяком случае было так в его зрелые годы. В юности, кажется, он любил Коневского. Не плохо он относился к 3. H. Гиппиус. Больше назвать некого. Его неоднократно подчёркнутая любовь к Бальмонту вряд ли может быть названа любовью. В лучшем случае это было удивление Сальери перед Моцартом. Он любил называть Бальмонта братом. М. Волошин однажды сказал, что традиция этих братских чувств восходит к глубокой древности: к самому Каину.
In Pushkin’s little tragedy “Mozart and Salieri” (1830) Mozart uses the phrase nikto b (“none would”). Shade’s, Kinbote’s and Gradus’ “real” name seems to be Botkin, nikto b in reverse. An American scholar of Russian descent, Professor Vsevolod Botkin went mad and became Shade, Kinbote and Gradus after the tragic death of his daughter Nadezhda (Hazel Shade of Kinbote’s Commentary). In 1912 Bryusov's mistress Nadezhda Lvov (a young poet) committed suicide. In his memoir essay on Bryusov Hodasevich mentions Bryusov's hope (nadezhda) that under the Bolsheviks he would be able to turn Russian literature na stol'ko-to gradusov (to so-and-so many degrees):
А какая надежда на то, что в истории литературы будет сказано: "в таком-то году повернул русскую литературу на столько-то градусов"!
According to Kinbote, Gradus is a half-man who is half mad:
I have considered in my earlier note (I now see it is the note to line 171) the particular dislikes, and hence the motives, of our "automatic man," as I phrased it at a time when he did not have as much body, did not offend the senses as violently as now; was, in a word, further removed from our sunny, green, grass-fragrant Arcady. But Our Lord has fashioned man so marvelously that no amount of motive hunting and rational inquiry can ever really explain how and why anybody is capable of destroying a fellow creature (this argument necessitates, I know, a temporary granting to Gradus of the status of man), unless he is defending the life of his son, or his own, or the achievement of a lifetime; so that in final judgment of the Gradus versus the Crown case I would submit that if his human incompleteness be deemed insufficient to explain his idiotic journey across the Atlantic just to empty the magazine of his gun; we may concede, doctor, that our half-man was also half mad. (note to Line 949)
Half-man half mad brings to mind "a collection of half droll, half sad chapters," as in the Prefatory Piece Pushkin calls his Eugene Onegin:
Не мысля гордый свет забавить,
Вниманье дружбы возлюбя,
Хотел бы я тебе представить
Залог достойнее тебя,
Достойнее души прекрасной,
Святой исполненной мечты,
Поэзии живой и ясной,
Высоких дум и простоты;
Но так и быть — рукой пристрастной
Прими собранье пёстрых глав,
Полусмешных, полупечальных,
Простонародных, идеальных,
Небрежный плод моих забав,
Бессониц, лёгких вдохновений,
Незрелых и увядших лет,
Ума холодных наблюдений
И сердца горестных замет.
Not thinking to amuse the haughty world,
having grown fond of friendship's heed,
I wish I could present you with a gage
that would be worthier of you —
be worthier of a fine soul
full of a holy dream,
of live and limpid poetry,
of high thoughts and simplicity.
But so be it. With partial handing
take this collection of pied chapters:
half droll, half sad,
plain-folk, ideal,
the careless fruit of my amusements,
insomnias, light inspirations,
unripe and withered years,
the intellect's cold observations,
and the heart's sorrowful remarks.
According to Pushkin, his EO is the careless fruit of bessonnits, lyogkikh vdokhnoveniy (insomnias, light inspirations). Pushkin’s novel in verse is dedicated to Pletnyov (Pushkin’s friend and publisher to whom the Prefatory Piece is addressed). In a letter of April 11, 1831, to Pletnyov Pushkin asks Pletnyov if he is still alive and calls him ten’ vozlyublennaya (the beloved shade):
Воля твоя, ты несносен: ни строчки от тебя не дождёшься. Умер ты, что ли? Если тебя уже нет на свете, то, тень возлюбленная, кланяйся от меня Державину и обними моего Дельвига.
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.
Redkaya ptitsa (a rare bird) in Gogol's "Terrible Vengeance" brings to mind Chekhov’s story Rara avis (1886). Chekhov is the author of Tysyacha odna strast’, ili Strashnaya noch’ (“A Thousand and One Passions, or The Terrible Night,” 1880), a parody of Gothic story. The characters in E. A. Poe's story The Literary Life of Thingum Bob, Esq. (1844) include Mr. Crab, the editor of the “Lollipop." E. A. Poe is the author of The Thousand-and-Second Tale of Scheherazade (1845).
Shade’s poem is almost finished when the author is killed by Gradus. Kinbote believes that, to be completed, Shade’s poem needs but one line (Line 1000, identical to Line 1: “I was the shadow of the waxwing slain”). But it seems that, like some sonnets, Shade's poem also needs a coda (Line 1001: “By its own double in the windowpane”). Dvoynik ("The Double") is a short novel (1846) by Dostoevski (who twice uses the word gradus, “degree,” in a letter of Oct. 31, 1838, to his brother) and a poem (1909) by Alexander Blok (who confessed that he did not know what a coda is). In the last poem of his cycle Solov'inyi sad ("The Nightingale Garden," 1915) Blok mentions krab vspolokhnutyi (a crab flushed out):
И оттуда, где серые спруты
Покачнулись в лазурной щели,
Закарабкался краб всполохнутый
И присел на песчаной мели.
Я подвинулся, - он приподнялся,
Широко разевая клешни,
Но сейчас же с другим повстречался,
Подрались и пропали они...
There is Blok in yabloko (apple). At the end of VN’s story Signs and Symbols (1948) crab apple is mentioned:
The telephone rang. It was an unusual hour for it to ring. He stood in the middle of the room, groping with his foot for one slipper that had come off, and childishly, toothlessly, gaped at his wife. Since she knew more English than he, she always attended to the calls.
”Can I speak to Charlie?” a girl’s dull little voice said to her now.
“What number do you want? . . . No. You have the wrong number.”
She put the receiver down gently and her hand went to her heart. “It frightened me,” she said.
He smiled a quick smile and immediately resumed his excited monologue. They would fetch him as soon as it was day. For his own protection, they would keep all the knives in a locked drawer. Even at his worst, he presented no danger to other people.
The telephone rang a second time.
The same toneless, anxious young voice asked for Charlie.
“You have the incorrect number. I will tell you what you are doing. You are turning the letter ‘o’ instead of the zero.” She hung up again.
They sat down to their unexpected, festive midnight tea. He sipped noisily; his face was flushed; every now and then he raised his glass with a circular motion, so as to make the sugar dissolve more thoroughly. The vein on the side of his bald head stood out conspicuously, and silvery bristles showed on his chin. The birthday present stood on the table. While she poured him another glass of tea, he put on his spectacles and reexamined with pleasure the luminous yellow, green, and red little jars. His clumsy, moist lips spelled out their eloquent labels—apricot, grape, beach plum, quince. He had got to crab apple when the telephone rang again. (3)
The last phone call seems to signal the boy’s suicide. The caller must be VN himself (it is the reader who should attend to the phone). We can also hear VN's bird-like voice (that Kinbote mistakes for Shade's voice) in Pale Fire:
The passage 797 (second part of line)-809, on the poet's sixty-fifth card, was composed between the sunset of July 18 and the dawn of July 19. That morning I had prayed in two different churches (on either side, as it were, of my Zemblan denomination, not represented in New Wye) and had strolled home in an elevated state of mind. There was no cloud in the wistful sky, and the very earth seemed to be sighing after our Lord Jesus Christ. On such sunny, sad mornings I always feel in my bones that there is a chance yet of my not being excluded from Heaven, and that salvation may be granted to me despite the frozen mud and horror in my heart. As I was ascending with bowed head the gravel path to my poor rented house, I heard with absolute distinction, as if he were standing at my shoulder and speaking loudly, as to a slightly deaf man, Shade's voice say: "Come tonight, Charlie." I looked around me in awe and wonder: I was quite alone. I looked around me in awe and wonder: I was quite alone. I at once telephoned. The Shades were out, said the cheeky ancillula, an obnoxious little fan who came to book for them on Sundays and no doubt dreamt of getting the old poet to cuddle her some wifeless day. I retelephoned two hours later; got, as usual, Sybil; insisted on talking to my friend (my "messages" were never transmitted), obtained him, and asked him as calmly as possible what he had been doing around noon when I had heard him like a big bird in my garden. He could not quite remember, said wait a minute, he had been playing golf with Paul (whoever that was), or at least watching Paul play with another colleague. I cried that I must see him in the evening and all at once, with no reason at all, burst into tears, flooding the telephone and gasping for breath, a paroxysm which had not happened to me since Bob left me on March 30. There was a flurry of confabulation between the Shades, and then John said: "Charles, listen. Let's go for a good ramble tonight, I'll meet you at eight." It was my second good ramble since July 6 (that unsatisfactory nature talk); the third one, on July 21, was to be exceedingly brief. (note to Line 802)
Like Kinbote, the six-year-old boy in Signs and Symbols suffered from insomnia:
The boy, aged six—that was when he drew wonderful birds with human hands and feet, and suffered from insomnia like a grown-up man. (2)
crab + bat + nikto + ado/oda = acrobat + Botkin +ad/da
nikto – nobody
oda – ode
ad – hell
da – yes