The three main characters in VN’s novel Pale Fire (1962) are the poet Shade, his commentator Kinbote (who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla) and his murderer Gradus (a member of the Shadows, a regicidal organization). In his Commentary to Shade's poem Kinbote mockingly calls Gradus (who contended that the real origin of his name should be sought in the Russian word for grape, vinograd) “Vinogradus” and “Leningradus” and repeats the word “squeeze” three times:
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 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 things. 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)
In Herman Melville’s novel Moby Dick (1851) the narrator exclaims “Squeeze! squeeze! squeeze!”:
As I sat there at my ease, cross-legged on the deck; after the bitter exertion at the windlass; under a blue tranquil sky; the ship under indolent sail, and gliding so serenely along; as I bathed my hands among those soft, gentle globules of infiltrated tissues, woven almost within the hour; as they richly broke to my fingers, and discharged all their opulence, like fully ripe grapes their wine; as I snuffed up that uncontaminated aroma,--literally and truly, like the smell of spring violets; I declare to you, that for the time I lived as in a musky meadow; I forgot all about our horrible oath; in that inexpressible sperm, I washed my hands and my heart of it; I almost began to credit the old Paracelsan superstition that sperm is of rare virtue in allaying the heat of anger; while bathing in that bath, I felt divinely free from all ill-will, or petulance, or malice, of any sort whatsoever.
Squeeze! squeeze! squeeze! all the morning long; I squeezed that sperm till I myself almost melted into it; I squeezed that sperm till a strange sort of insanity came over me; and I found myself unwittingly squeezing my co-laborers' hands in it, mistaking their hands for the gentle globules. Such an abounding, affectionate, friendly, loving feeling did this avocation beget; that at last I was continually squeezing their hands, and looking up into their eyes sentimentally; as much as to say,--Oh! my dear fellow beings, why should we longer cherish any social acerbities, or know the slightest ill-humor or envy! Come; let us squeeze hands all round; nay, let us all squeeze ourselves into each other; let us squeeze ourselves universally into the very milk and sperm of kindness.
Would that I could keep squeezing that sperm for ever! For now, since by many prolonged, repeated experiences, I have perceived that in all cases man must eventually lower, or at least shift, his conceit of attainable felicity; not placing it anywhere in the intellect or the fancy; but in the wife, the heart, the bed, the table, the saddle, the fireside, the country; now that I have perceived all this, I am ready to squeeze case eternally. In thoughts of the visions of the night, I saw long rows of angels in paradise, each with his hands in a jar of spermaceti. (chapter 94: “A Squeeze of the Hand”)
Gradus brings to mind the Grampus, a whaling ship in E. A. Poe's novel The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket (1838). In his review of The Works of Edgar Allan Poe, Academy (London), vol. VII, no. 1, January 2, 1875, R. L. Stevenson mentions the four survivors on board the brig Grampus who have lashed themselves to the windlass, lest they should be swept away:
For — the man being giddy — the “idea of revolution” must have preceded the merging of the inquisitorial voices into an indeterminate hum, and most certainly could not have followed it as any fanciful deduction. Again, as before in the matter of effect, one cannot help fearing that some of the subtlety is fustian. To take an example of both sorts of imagination — the fustian and the sincere — from the same story “Arthur Gordon Pym:” the four survivors on board the brig Grampus have lashed themselves to the windlass, lest they should be swept away; one of them, having drawn his lashings too tight, is ready to yield up his spirit for a long while, is nearly cut in two, indeed, by the cord about his loins. “No sooner had we removed it, however,” Poe goes on, “than he spoke and seemed to experience instant relief — being able to move with much greater ease than either Parker or myself” (two who had not tied themselves so closely). “This was no doubt owing to the loss of blood.” Now, whether medically correct or not, this is, on the face of it, sincerely imagined. Whether correct or not in fact, it is correct in art. Poe evidently believed it true; evidently it appeared to him that thus, and not otherwise, the thing would fall out. Now, turn a page back, and we shall find (ii. 78), in the description of the visions that went before Pym while thus bound, something to be received very much more deliberately. “I now remember,” he writes,
“that in all which passed before my mind’s eye, motion was a predominant idea. Thus I never fancied any stationary object, such as a house, a mountain, or anything of that kind; but windmills, ships, huge birds, balloons, people on horseback, carriages driving furiously, and similar moving objects presented themselves in endless succession.”
One of the four survivors in Poe's novel, having drawn his lashings too tight, is nearly cut in two, indeed, by the cord about his loins. At the beginning of VN's novel Lolita (1955) Humbert Humbert calls Lolita "light of my life, fire of my loins." In looking through a comparatively recent (1946) Who’s Who in the Limelight Humbert comes across Roland Pym (an actor):
Pym, Roland. Born in Lundy, Mass., 1922. Received stage training at Elsinore Playhouse, Derby, N. Y. Made debut in Sunburst . Among his many appearances are Two Blocks from Here, The Girl in Green, Scrambled Husbands, The Strange Mushroom, Touch and Go, John Lovely, I Was Dreaming of You. (1.8)
In Canto Three of his poem Shade describes his heart attack and mentions Hurricane Lolita that swept from Florida to Maine:
It was a year of Tempests: Hurricane
Lolita swept from Florida to Maine.
Mars glowed. Shahs married. Gloomy Russians spied.
Lang made your portrait. And one night I died. (ll. 679-82)
According to Kinbote, during the reign of Charles the Beloved Mars never marred the record:
That King's reign (1936-1958) will be remembered by at least a few discerning historians as a peaceful and elegant one. Owing to a fluid system of judicious alliances, Mars in his time never marred the record. Internally, until corruption, betrayal, and Extremism penetrated it, the People's Place (parliament) worked in perfect harmony with the Royal Council. Harmony, indeed, was the reign's password. The polite arts and pure sciences flourished. Technicology, applied physics, industrial chemistry and so forth were suffered to thrive. A small skyscraper of ultramarine glass was steadily rising in Onhava. The climate seemed to be improving. Taxation had become a thing of beauty. The poor were getting a little richer, and the rich a little poorer (in accordance with what may be known some day as Kinbote's Law). Medical care was spreading to the confines of the state: less and less often, on his tour of the country, every autumn, when the rowans hung coral-heavy, and the puddles tinkled with Muscovy glass, the friendly and eloquent monarch would be interrupted by a pertussal "back-draucht" in a crowd of schoolchildren. Parachuting had become a popular sport. Everybody, in a word, was content - even the political mischiefmakers who were contentedly making mischief paid by a contented Sosed (Zembla's gigantic neighbor). But let us not pursue this tiresome subject. (note to Line 12)
In his review of The Works of Edgar Allan Poe R. L. Stevenson writes: "He [Poe] has the true story-teller’s instinct. He knows the little nothings that make stories, or mar them."
Zembla's gigantic neighbor, a contented Sosed brings to mind Zdes' budet gorod zalozhyon / Na zlo nadmennomu sosedu (Here a city will be wrought / To spite the arrogant neighbor), the lines in Pushkin's Introduction to his poem Mednyi vsadnik ("The Bronze Horseman," 1833).
According to Kinbote, Shade’s heart attack almost coincided with the disguised king's arrival in America:
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)
The Colonel’s name seems to hint at Montague, Romeo’s family name in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. Describing his visit to the Elphinstone hospital, Humbert mentions roly-poly Romeo:
Poor Bluebeard. Those brutal brothers. Est-ce que tu ne m’aimes plus, ma Carmen? She never had. At the moment I knew my love was as hopeless as ever – and I also knew the two girls were conspirators, plotting in Basque, or Zemfirian, against my hopeless love. I shall go further and say that Lo was playing a double game since she was also fooling sentimental Mary whom she had told, I suppose, that she wanted to dwell with her fun-loving young uncle and not with cruel melancholy me. And another nurse whom I never identified, and the village idiot who carted cots and coffins into the elevator, and the idiotic green love birds in a cage in the waiting room – all were in the plot, the sordid plot. I suppose Mary thought comedy father Professor Humbertoldi was interfering with the romance between Dolores and her father-substitute, roly-poly Romeo (for you were rather lardy, you know, Rom, despite all that "snow" and "joy juice"). (2.22)
Humbert writes his poem "Wanted" (after Lolita was abducted from the Elphinstone hospital) in a sanatorium near Quebec. It seems that, after Shade's death, Kinbote was hospitalized and writes his Commentary, Index and Foreword to Shade's poem not in "Cedarn, Utana," but in the same madhouse near Quebec. In fact, the poet Shade, his commentator Kinbote and his murderer Gradus represent three different aspects of one and the same person whose "real" name is Botkin. After the tragic death of his daughter, Nadezhda Botkin (Hazel Shade's "real" name), her father, Professor Vsevolod Botkin went mad and was split in three (Shade, Kinbote and Gradus). Nadezhda means “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. "Vinogradus" (as Kinbote calls Gradus) brings to mind Pushkin's poem Vinograd ("The Grapes," 1824), and Leningradus makes one think of Nad omrachyonnym Petrogradom / Dyshal noyabr' osennim khladom (Over darkened Petrograd / November breathed with autumnal cold), the beginning of Part One of Pushkin's "The Bronze Horseman." VN's home city, St. Petersburg was renamed Petrograd in 1914 and Leningrad in 1924. In his Commentary Kinbote says that Leningrad used to be Petrograd:
We all know those dreams in which something Stygian soaks through and Lethe leaks in the dreary terms of defective plumbing. Following this line, there is a false start preserved in the draft—and I hope the reader will feel something of the chill that ran down my long and supple spine when I discovered this variant:
Should the dead murderer try to embrace
His outraged victim whom he now must face?
Do objects have a soul? Or perish must
Alike great temples and Tanagra dust?
The last syllable of “Tanagra” and the first three letters of “dust” form the name of the murderer whose shargar (puny ghost) the radiant spirit of our poet was soon to face. “Simple chance!” the pedestrian reader may cry. But let him try to see, as I have tried to see, how many such combinations are possible and plausible. “Leningrad used to be Petrograd?” “A prig rad (obs. past tense of read) us?”
This variant is so prodigious that only scholarly discipline and a scrupulous regard for the truth prevented me from inserting it here, and deleting four lines elsewhere (for example, the weak lines 627-630) so as to preserve the length of the poem. (note to Line 596)
Gradus + campus = Grampus + cadus (Lat., bottle, jar, jug; grampus is a killer whale)
A character in VN's short novel Soglyadatay ("The Eye," 1930), Weinstock (the medium) loves Edgar Poe. The surname Weinstock means vine, grapevine.