Shade’s mad commentator who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla, Kinbote (one of the three main characters in VN's novel Pale Fire, 1962) is known on the campus of Wordsmith University as the Great Beaver:
Alas, my peace of mind was soon to be shattered. The thick venom of envy began squirting at me as soon as academic suburbia realized that John Shade valued my society above that of all other people. Your snicker, my dear Mrs. C., did not escape our notice as I was helping the tired old poet to find his galoshes after that dreary get-together party at your house. One day I happened to enter the English Literature office in quest of a magazine with the picture of the Royal Palace in Onhava, which I wanted my friend to see, when I overheard a young instructor in a green velvet jacket, whom I shall mercifully call Gerald Emerald, carelessly saying in answer to something the secretary had asked: "I guess Mr. Shade has already left with the Great Beaver." Of course I am quite tall, and my brown beard is of a rather rich tint and texture; the silly cognomen evidently applied to me, but was not worth noticing, and after calmly taking the magazine from a pamphlet-cluttered table, I contented myself on my way out with pulling Gerald Emerald's bow-tie loose with a deft jerk of my fingers as I passed by him. There was also the morning when Dr. Nattochdag, head of the department to which I was attached, begged me in a formal voice to be seated, then closed the door, and having regained, with a downcast frown, his swivel chair, urged me "to be more careful." In what sense, careful? A boy had complained to his adviser. Complained of what, good Lord? That I had criticized a literature course he attended ("a ridiculous survey of ridiculous works, conducted by a ridiculous mediocrity"). Laughing in sheer relief, I embraced my good Netochka, telling him I would never be naughty again. I take this opportunity to salute him. He always behaved with such exquisite courtesy toward me that I sometimes wondered if he did not suspect what Shade suspected, and what only three people (two trustees and the president of the college) definitely knew. (Foreword)
The Russian word for "beaver" is bobr. Count Aleksey Grigorievich Bobrinski (1762–1813) was Catherine the Great's illegitimate son by Count Grigory Orlov. Empress Catherine II gave birth to her only official illegitimate son on April 11, 1762, several months before the death of her husband, Emperor Peter III (who was killed in Ropsha with a fork by Alexey Orlov, Grigory's brother), and her ascension to the throne. Catherine II (born Sophie Auguste Friederike von Anhalt-Zerbst, 1729-1796) named him Bobrinski, a surname derived from the estate he lived in (according to other sources, Bobrinski was named after a larg beaver fur coat in which the infant was wrapped and secretly carried out of the palace). The characters in VN's novel Otchayanie ("Despair," 1934) include Orlovius, the insurance agent. The narrator and main character in VN's novel, Hermann Karlovich murders Felix, a tramp whom Hermann believes to be his perfect double. The name Felix (which, as Hermann points out, means "the happy one") seems to hint at Derzhavin's ode Felitsa (1782). By Felitsa (the god-like Queen of the Kirgiz-Kaysak Horde) Derzhavin means Catherine II. On the night of March 24, 1801, the Emperor Paul I (Alexey Bobrinski's half-brother) was assassinated by a group of champagne-soaked officers led by Platon Zubov (Catherine's last favorite) in his residence, the newly-built Mikhaylovski palace. Since 1819 the Main Engineering School was located in the gloomy Mikhaylovski palace. In 1838-1843 Fyodor Dostoevski (a Russian writer, 1821-1881) was a student of the Main Engineering School. In a letter of Oct. 31, 1838 (Dostoevski’s seventeenth birthday), written in the Mikhaylovski palace (where the students lived) Dostoevski twice uses the word gradus (degree):
Друг мой! Ты философствуешь как поэт. И как не ровно выдерживает душа градус вдохновенья, так не ровна, не верна и твоя философия. Чтоб больше знать, надо меньше чувствовать, и обратно, правило опрометчивое, бред сердца.
My friend, you philosophize like a poet. And just because the soul cannot be forever in a state of exaltation [gradus vdokhnoven'ya, the degree of inspiration], your philosophy is not true and not just. To know more one must feel less, and vice versa. Your judgment is featherheaded – it is a delirium of the heart.
Заметь, что поэт в порыве вдохновенья разгадывает Бога, следовательно, исполняет назначенье философии. Следовательно, поэтический восторг есть восторг философии... Следовательно, философия есть та же поэзия, только высший градус её!..
Remark that the poet, in the moment of inspiration, comprehends God and consequently does the philosopher's work. Consequently poetic inspiration is nothing less than poetical inspiration. Consequently philosophy is nothing but poetry, a higher degree of poetry!
Dostoevski is the author of Dvoynik ("The Double," 1846). Shade's murderer, Gradus is Kinbote's double. 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). Shade, Kinbote and Gradus seem to represent three different aspects of mad Botkin's personality. An American scholar of Russian descent, Professor Vsevolod Botkin went mad and became the poet Shade, his commentator Kinbote and his murderer Graduster after the tragic death of his daughter Nadezhda (Hazel Shade's "real" name). 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. According to Kinbote, Shade listed Dostoevski 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)
Sybil Shade (the poet's wife) and Queen Disa (the wife of Charles the Beloved) must also be one and the same person (whose "real" name is Sofia Botkin, born Lastochkin). Lastochka ("The Swallow," 1794) is a poem by Gavriil Derzhavin (a Russian poet and statesman, 1743-1816) written after the death of his wife Plenira (as Derzhavin called her), born Ekaterina Yakovlevna Bastidon. Sophie was the name given to Catherine II by her birth (little Sophie was nicknamed Feke or Figchen). Derzhavin is the author of the following Sonet ("A Sonnet," 1776):
Красавица! не трать ты времени напрасно
И знай, что без любви все в свете суеты:
Жалей и не теряй прелестной красоты,
Чтоб после не тужить, что век прошел несчастно.
Любися в младости, доколе сердце страстно;
Как сей век пролетит, ты будешь уж — не ты.
Плети себе венки, покуда есть цветы,
Гуляй в садах весной, а осенью ненастно.
Взгляни когда, взгляни на розовый цветок
Тогда, когда уже завял ея листок:
И красота твоя подобно ей завянет.
He трать своих ты дней, доколь ты не стара,
И знай, что на тебя никто тогда не взглянет,
Когда, как розы сей, пройдет твоя пора.
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”). O. Henry's story The Roads We Take (1910) ends in Shark Dodson's words "Bolivar cannot carry double." In Pushkin's Eugene Onegin (XV: 10), Onegin wears shirokiy bolivar (a top hat with wide rims à la Bolivar):
Бывало, он еще в постеле:
К нему записочки несут.
Что? Приглашенья? В самом деле,
Три дома на вечер зовут:
Там будет бал, там детский праздник.
Куда ж поскачет мой проказник?
С кого начнет он? Все равно:
Везде поспеть немудрено.
Покамест в утреннем уборе,
Надев широкий боливар3,
Онегин едет на бульвар
И там гуляет на просторе,
Пока недремлющий брегет
Не прозвонит ему обед.
It happened, he'd be still in bed
when little billets would be brought him.
What? Invitations? Yes, indeed,
to a soiree three houses bid him:
here, there will be a ball; elsewhere, a children's fete.
So whither is my scamp to scurry?
Whom will he start with? Never mind:
'tis simple to get everywhere in time.
Meanwhile, in morning dress,
having donned a broad bolivar3,
Onegin drives to the boulevard
and there goes strolling unconfined
till vigilant Bréguet
to him chimes dinner.
3. Hat à la Bolivar. (Pushkin’s note)
In Chapter One (XVI: 3-4) of EO Pushkin mentions Onegin’s bobrovyi vorotnik (beaver coat) that silvers with frostdust:
Уж тёмно: в санки он садится.
«Пади, пади!» — раздался крик;
Морозной пылью серебрится
Его бобровый воротник.
К Talon4 помчался: он уверен,
Что там уж ждет его Каверин.
Вошел: и пробка в потолок,
Вина кометы брызнул ток;
Пред ним roast-beef окровавленный,
И трюфли, роскошь юных лет,
Французской кухни лучший цвет,
И Страсбурга пирог нетленный
Меж сыром лимбургским живым
И ананасом золотым.
'Tis dark by now. He gets into a sleigh.
The cry “Way, way!” resounds.
With frostdust silvers
his beaver collar.
To Talon's4 he has dashed off: he is certain
that there already waits for him [Kavérin];
has entered — and the cork goes ceilingward,
the flow of comet wine spurts forth,
a bloody roast beef is before him,
and truffles, luxury of youthful years,
the best flower of French cookery,
and a decayless Strasbourg pie
between a living Limburg cheese
and a golden ananas.
4. Well-known restaurateur. (Pushkin’s note)