Describing IPH (a lay Institute of Preparation for the Hereafter) in Canto Three of his poem, John Shade (the poet in VN's novel Pale Fire, 1962) mentions l’if, lifeless tree, grand potato and Yewshade:
L'if, lifeless tree! Your great Maybe, Rabelais:
The grand potato.
I.P.H., a lay
Institute (I) of Preparation (P)
For the Hereafter (H), or If, as we
Called it--big if!--engaged me for one term
To speak on death ("to lecture on the Worm,"
Wrote President McAber).
You and I,
And she, then a mere tot, moved from New Wye
To Yewshade, in another, higher state. (ll. 500-509)
In his Commentary Kinbote (Shade’s mad commentator who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla) writes:
Line 501: L'if
The yew in French. It is curious that the Zemblan word for the weeping willow is also "if" (the yew is tas).
Line 502: The grand potato
An execrable pun, deliberately placed in this epigraphic position to stress lack of respect for Death. I remember from my schoolroom days Rabelais' soi-disant "last words" among other bright bits in some French manual: Je m'en vais chercher le grand peut-être.
In the first line of his sonnet Les Hiboux (“The Owls”) Baudelaire mentions les ifs noirs (the black yews):
Sous les ifs noirs qui les abritent
Les hiboux se tiennent rangés
Ainsi que des dieux étrangers
Dardant leur oeil rouge. Ils méditent.
Sans remuer ils se tiendront
Jusqu'à l'heure mélancolique
Où, poussant le soleil oblique,
Les ténèbres s'établiront.
Leur attitude au sage enseigne
Qu'il faut en ce monde qu'il craigne
Le tumulte et le mouvement;
L'homme ivre d'une ombre qui passe
Porte toujours le châtiment
D'avoir voulu changer de place.
Under the dark yews which shade them,
The owls are perched in rows,
Like so many strange gods,
Darting their red eyes. They meditate.
Without budging they will remain
Till that melancholy hour
When, pushing back the slanting sun,
Darkness will take up its abode.
Their attitude teaches the wise
That in this world one must fear
Movement and commotion;
Man, enraptured by a passing shadow,
Forever bears the punishment
Of having tried to change his place.
(tr. W. Aggeler)
Kinbote is l'homme ivre d'une ombre qui passe (the man enraptured by a passing shadow). After Shade's death Kinbote changes his place, moving to Cedarn. In a variant quoted by Kinbote in his Commentary Shade says that he likes his name: Shade, Ombre, almost "man" in Spanish:
After line 274 there is a false start in the draft:
I like my name: Shade, Ombre, almost "man"
In Spanish...
One regrets that the poet did not pursue this theme--and spare his reader the embarrassing intimacies that follow. (note to Line 275)
At IPH Shade "tore apart the fantasies of Poe." Baudelaire translated into French (as Ombre) E. A. Poe's story "Shadow. A Parable."
Baudelaire’s sonnet Les Hiboux was translated into Russian by I. Annenski (who transformed black yews into black birches):
Зеницей нацелясь багровой,
Рядами на чёрных берёзах,
Как идолы, старые совы
Застыли в мечтательных позах.
И с места не тронется птица,
Покуда, алея, могила
Не примет останков светила
И мрак над землёй не сгустится.
А людям пример их — наука,
Что двигаться лишняя мука,
Что горшее зло — суета,
Что если гоняться за тенью
Кого и заставит мечта,
Безумца карает — Движенье.
In a letter of October 17, 1908, to Ekaterina Mukhin, Annenski says that people who ceased to believe in God but continue to fear the devil created this otzyvayushchiysya kalamburom (smacking of a pun) terror before the smell of sulfuric pitch, Le grand Peut-Etre:
Люди, переставшие верить в бога, но продолжающие трепетать чёрта... Это они создали на языке тысячелетней иронии этот отзывающийся каламбуром ужас перед запахом серной смолы - Le grand Peut-Etre. Для меня peut-etre - не только бог, но это всё, хотя это и не ответ, и не успокоение…
Annenski suffered from an incurable heart disease. Shade’s heart attack (that he describes in Canto Three of his poem and that almost coincided with the disguised king's arrival in America) took place on October 17, 1958:
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)
Russian for “yew” is tis. There is tis in Outis (Gr., Nobody) and tas (Zemblan for “yew”) in vanitas (Lat., vanity; in his translation of Baudelaire’s sonnet Annenski mentions sueta, “vanity”). In his essay Ob Annenskom (“On Annenski,” 1934) Hodasevich compares Annenski to Ivan Ilyich Golovin (the main character in Tolstoy’s story “The Death of Ivan Ilyich,” 1886) and points out that Annenski regarded his penname Nik. T-o (“Mr. Nobody”) as a translation of Greek Outis, the pseudonym under which Odysseus conceals his identity from Polyphemus (the Cyclops in Homer’s Odyssey):
Чего не додумал Иван Ильич, то знал Анненский. Знал, что никаким директорством, никаким бытом и даже никакой филологией от смерти по-настоящему не загородиться. Она уничтожит и директора, и барина, и филолога. Только над истинным его "я", над тем, что отображается в "чувствах и мыслях", над личностью -- у неё как будто нет власти. И он находил реальное, осязаемое отражение и утверждение личности -- в поэзии. Тот, чьё лицо он видел, подходя к зеркалу, был директор гимназии, смертный никто. Тот, чьё лицо отражалось в поэзии, был бессмертный некто. Ник. Т-о -- никто -- есть безличный действительный статский советник, которым, как видимой оболочкой, прикрыт невидимый некто. Этот свой псевдоним, под которым он печатал стихи, Анненский рассматривал как перевод греческого "утис", никто, -- того самого псевдонима, под которым Одиссей скрыл от циклопа Полифема своё истинное имя, свою подлинную личность, своего некто. Поэзия была для него заклятием страшного Полифема -- смерти. Но психологически это не только не мешало, а даже способствовало тому, чтобы его вдохновительницей, его Музой была смерть.
According to Hodasevich, Annenski’s Muse was death. Just before Shade’s death Kinbote asks him, if the muse was kind to him:
"Well," I said, "has the muse been kind to you?"
"Very kind," he replied, slightly bowing his hand-propped head: "Exceptionally kind and gentle. In fact, I have here (indicating a huge pregnant envelope near him on the oilcloth) practically the entire product. A few trifles to settle and [suddenly striking the table with his fist] I've swung it, by God." (note to Line 991)
Shade’s poem is almost finished when the author is killed by Gradus (a member of the Shadows, Zemblan regicidal organization). 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," 1904) is a poem by Nik. T-o:
Не я, и не он, и не ты,
И то же, что я, и не то же:
Так были мы где-то похожи,
Что наши смешались черты.
В сомненьи кипит ещё спор,
Но, слиты незримой четою,
Одной мы живём и мечтою,
Мечтою разлуки с тех пор.
Горячешный сон волновал
Обманом вторых очертаний,
Но чем я глядел неустанней,
Тем ярче себя ж узнавал.
Лишь полога ночи немой
Порой отразит колыханье
Моё и другое дыханье,
Бой сердца и мой и не мой…
И в мутном круженьи годин
Всё чаще вопрос меня мучит:
Когда наконец нас разлучат,
Каким же я буду один?
Not I, and not he, and not you,
Both what I am, and what I am not:
We were so alike somewhere
That our features got mixed.
……..
And, in the turbid whirling of years,
The question torments me ever more often:
When we will be separated at last,
What kind of person I will be alone?
In another 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). 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). 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 and of Jonathan Swift's death), Botkin, like Count Vorontsov (a target of Pushkin’s epigrams, “half-milord, half-merchant, etc.”), will be full again.
Let me draw your attention to the updated version of my previous post, “Gordon Krummholz as musical prodigy in Pale Fire.”