In his commentary and index to Shade's poem 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) mentions King Alfin (the father of Charles the Beloved):
Alfin the Vague (1873-1918; regnal dates 1900-1918, but 1900-1919 in most biographical dictionaries, a fumble due to the coincident calendar change from Old Style to New) was given his cognomen by Amphitheatricus, a not unkindly writer of fugitive poetry in the liberal gazettes (who was also responsible for dubbing my capital Uranograd!). King Alfin's absent-mindedness knew no bounds. He was a wretched linguist, having at his disposal only a few phrases of French and Danish, but every time he had to make a speech to his subjects - to a group of gaping Zemblan yokels in some remote valley where he had crash-landed - some uncontrollable switch went into action in his mind, and he reverted to those phrases, flavoring them for topical sense with a little Latin. Most of the anecdotes relating to his naïve fits of abstraction are too silly and indecent to sully these pages; but one of them that I do not think especially funny induced such guffaws from Shade (and returned to me, via the Common Room, with such obscene accretions) that I feel inclined to give it here as a sample (and as a corrective). One summer before the first world war, when the emperor of a great foreign realm (I realize how few there are to choose from) was paying an extremely unusual and flattering visit to our little hard country, my father took him and a young Zemblan interpreter (whose sex I leave open) in a newly purchased custom-built car on a jaunt in the countryside. As usual, King Alfin traveled without a vestige of escort, and this, and his brisk driving, seemed to trouble his guest. On their way back, some twenty miles from Onhava, King Alfin decided to stop for repairs. While he tinkered with the motor, the emperor and the interpreter sought the shade of some pines by the highway, and only when King Alfin was back in Onhava, did he gradually realize from a reiteration of rather frantic questions that he had left somebody behind ("What emperor?" has remained his only memorable mot). Generally speaking, in respect of any of my contributions (or what I thought to be contributions) I repeatedly enjoined my poet to record them in writing, by all means, but not to spread them in idle speech; even poets, however, are human.
King 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)
Alfin, King, surnamed The Vague, 1873-1918, reigned from 1900; K.'s father; a kind, gentle, absent-minded monarch, mainly interested in automobiles, flying machines, motorboats and, at one time, sea shells; killed in an airplane accident, 71.
Alfin is an anagram of final. In his poem Song at Sunset (1860) Walt Whitman (an American poet, 1819-1892) says that he sings the endless finales of things:
I sing the Equalities, modern or old,
I sing the endless finales of things;
I say Nature continues—Glory continues;
I praise with electric voice;
For I do not see one imperfection in the universe;
And I do not see one cause or result lamentable at last in the
universe.
According to Kinbote, in the penultimate picture taken by Queen Blenda one distinctly saw King Alfin raise one arm in triumph, and reassurance. In Song at Sunset Walt Whitman mentions triumph:
Or cities, or silent woods, or peace, or even amid the sights of war;
Wherever I have been, I have charged myself with contentment and
triumph.
King Alfin's surname may hint at a vague mist mentioned by Walt Whitman in his poem Apparitions:
A vague mist hanging ’round half the pages:
(Sometimes how strange and clear to the soul,
That all these solid things are indeed but apparitions, concepts,
non-realities.)
A vague mist brings to mind misty vineyards to which Gradus (Shade's murderer) traveled as an itinerant wine taster:
By an extraordinary coincidence (inherent perhaps in the contrapuntal nature of Shade's art) our poet seems to name here (gradual, gray) a man, whom he was to see for one fatal moment three weeks later, but of whose existence at the time (July 2) he could not have known. 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. Another Gradus, an Alsatian merchant, who oddly enough was totally unrelated to our killer but had been a close business friend of his kinsmen for years, adopted the boy and raised him with his own children. It would seem that at one time young Gradus studied pharmacology in Zurich, and at another, traveled to misty vineyards as an itinerant wine taster. We find him next engaging in petty subversive activities - printing peevish pamphlets, acting as messenger for obscure syndicalist groups, organizing strikes at glass factories, and that sort of thing. Sometime in the forties he came to Zembla as a brandy salesman. There he married a publican's daughter. His connection with the Extremist party dates from its first ugly writhings, and when the revolution broke out, his modest organizational gifts found some appreciation in various offices. His departure for Western Europe, with a sordid purpose in his heart and a loaded gun in his pocket, took place on the very day that an innocent poet in an innocent land was beginning Canto Two of Pale Fire. We shall accompany Gradus in constant thought, as he makes his way from distant dim Zembla to green Appalachia, through the entire length of the poem, following the road of its rhythm, riding past in a rhyme, skidding around the corner of a run-on, breathing with the caesura, swinging down to the foot of the page from line to line as from branch to branch, hiding between two words (see note to line 596), reappearing on the horizon of a new canto, steadily marching nearer in iambic motion, crossing streets, moving up with his valise on the escalator of the pentameter, stepping off, boarding a new train of thought, entering the hall of a hotel, putting out the bedlight, while Shade blots out a word, and falling asleep as the poet lays down his pen for the night. (note to Line 17)
At one time young Gradus studied pharmacology in Zurich. The first Soviet leader, Vladimir Lenin (1870-1924) lived in Zurich (at Spiegelstraße 14) from February 1916 until April 2, 1917. Spiegel is German for "mirror." In his commentary and index to Shade's poem Kinbote mentions Sudarg of Bokay (Jakob Gradus in reverse), a mirror maker of genius. The name of the mother of Charles the Beloved seems to hint at "blenda," a term in photography (derived from the German word blenden, to blind) meaning a lens hood. It is a physical attachment placed on the front of a camera lens to block stray, unwanted light from entering, which prevents flares, lens ghosts, and washed-out colors. One of the murderers of the Russian Imperial family, Yakov Yurovsky (1878-1939) owned a photo studio in Yekaterinburg. The Dead Emperor is a short commemorative poem by Walt Whitman honoring Kaiser Wilhelm I of Germany upon his death in March 1888:
To-day, with bending head and eyes, thou, too, Columbia,
Less for the mighty crown laid low in sorrow—less for the Emperor,
Thy true condolence breathest, sendest out o'er many a salt sea mile,
Mourning a good old man—a faithful shepherd, patriot.
"What Emperor?" has remained King Alfin's only memorable mot. (What Emperor? What Whitman? The Good Gay Poet?) King Alfin brings to mind Alphina, the youngest of Judge Goldsworth's four daughters (Judge Goldsworth's wife, whose picture Kinbote sees in the study of his rented house in New Wye resembles Malenkov, a Soviet politician who briefly succeeded Joseph Stalin as the leader of the Soviet Union). The last Russian tsar, Nicholas II (whose hobby was photography) had four daughters and a son (who suffered from hemophilia). Among the people who were executed (on July 17, 1918) with the tsar's family was Doctor Evgeniy Botkin. Shade's, Kinbote's and Gradus's "real" name seems to be Botkin, nikto b (none would) in reverse.
One of the first Russian translators of Walt Whitman, Konstantin Balmont (1867-1943) is the author of Nash Tsar' ("Our Tsar") and Nikolayu Poslednemu ("To Nicholas the Last"), the poems included in Pesni mstitelya ("The Songs of an Avenger," 1907). In the latter poem Balmont calls Nicholas II karlik (a dwarf) and tells Nicholas II: "Ty dolzhen byt' ubit (You must be killed):"
Ты осквернил себя, свою страну, все страны,
Что стонут под твоей уродливой пятой,
Ты карлик, ты Кощей, ты грязью, кровью пьяный,
Ты должен быть убит, ты стал для всех бедой.
According to Kinbote, on his deathbed Conmal (the King’s uncle, Zemblan translator of Shakespeare) called his nephew “Karlik:”
To return to the King: take for instance the question of personal culture. How often is it that kings engage in some special research? Conchologists among them can be counted on the fingers of one maimed hand. The last king of Zembla—partly under the influence of his uncle Conmal, the great translator of Shakespeare (see notes to lines 39-40 and 962), had become, despite frequent migraines, passionately addicted to the study of literature. At forty, not long before the collapse of his throne, he had attained such a degree of scholarship that he dared accede to his venerable uncle’s raucous dying request: “Teach, Karlik!” Of course, it would have been unseemly for a monarch to appear in the robes of learning at a university lectern and present to rosy youths Finnegans Wake as a monstrous extension of Angus MacDiarmid's "incoherent transactions" and of Southey's Lingo-Grande ("Dear Stumparumper," etc.) or discuss the Zemblan variants, collected in 1798 by Hodinski, of the Kongsskugg-sio (The Royal Mirror), an anonymous masterpiece of the twelfth century. Therefore he lectured under an assumed name and in a heavy make-up, with wig and false whiskers. All brown-bearded, apple-checked, blue-eyed Zemblans look alike, and I who have not shaved now for a year, resemble my disguised king (see also note to line 894). (note to Line 12)
Conchologists are scientists and hobbyists who study and collect mollusk shells. In his Index to Shade's poem Kinbote says that at one time King Alfin was interested in sea shells. In his article Uitmen v russkoy literature ("Whitman in the Russian Literature"), Ivan Turgenev (a writer whose name brings to mind King Thurgus the Third, surnamed the Turgid, the father of Alfin the Vague) at one time was interested in Walt Whitman:
Толстой и Тургенев об Уоте Уитмэне. Как относился к Уитмэну Лев Толстой? Об этом сообщает английский толстовец Эйльмер Мод (Маudе) в книге „Толстой и его учение".
„Главный недостаток Уота Уитмэна, — говорил Лев Толстой мистеру Моду, — заключается в том, что он, несмотря на весь свой энтузиазм, не обладает ясной философией жизни. Относительно некоторых важных вопросов жизни он стоит на распутьи, и не указывает нам, по какому пути должно следовать. А, между тем, ошибки и недосмотры ясно-сознающего человека могут быть более полезны, чем полуправды людей, предпочитающих, оставаться в неопределенности... Во всех отношениях и по всякому поводу выражение ваших мыслей таким образом, что вас не понимают ,,плохо".. (См. „Минувшие Годы", 1908, IX *).
*) Беседа Мода с Толстым относится к 90 годам.
Но совсем не так относятся к Уитмэну иные из нынешних толстовцев. Например, Эрнест Кросби, в своей книге „Толстой и его жизнеописание", подтверждает идеи Толстого именно идеями Уитмэна. Этот толстовец — вернее, социалист толстовской окраски — в своих стихотворениях был подражателем Уитмэна. (См. Эрнест Кросби „Толстой и его жизнеописание". Перевод с английского. Изд. „Посредника", 1911).
К сожалению, мнение Тургенева об Уоте Уитмэне дошло до нас из вторых рук в несколько расплывчатом виде. Беседуя в Париже в 1874 году с одним.(американским писателем о разных литературных явлениях, Иван Сергеевич сказал, между прочим, что „некоторое время его очень интересовали произведения Уота Уитмэна; он думал, что среди кучи шумихи в них были хорошие зерна". (См. „Минувшие Годы", ч. 1908, VIII , стр. 67). Следов этого интереса к Уитмэну в, письмах Тургенева до сих пор не обнаружено.
In Turgenev's novel Ottsy i deti ("Fathers and Sons," 1862) Bazarov famously says: "Nature's not a temple, but a workshop, and man's the workman in it." The Russian word for workman used by Turgenev, rabotnik brings to mind Tolstoy's story Khozyain i rabotnik ("Master and Man," 1895). An English follower of Leo Tolstoy to whom Tolstoy told his opinion about Walt Whitman, Aylmer Maude brings to mind Shade's dear bizarre Aunt Maud.
Walt Whitman makes one think of Whit Monday (Dukhov den') mentioned by Fyodor Godunov-Cherdyntsev, the narrator and main character in VN's novel Dar ("The Gift," 1937), in his book Zhizn' Chernyshevskogo ("The Life of Chernyshevski"):
Духов день (28 мая 1862 г.), дует сильный ветер; пожар начался на Лиговке, а затем мазурики подожгли Апраксин Двор. Бежит Достоевский, мчатся пожарные, "и на окнах аптек в разноцветных шарах вверх ногами на миг отразились". А там, густой дым повалил через Фонтанку по направлению к Чернышеву переулку, откуда вскоре поднялся новый черный столб... Между тем Достоевский прибежал. Прибежал к сердцу черноты, к Чернышевскому, и стал истерически его умолять приостановить всё это. Тут занятны два момента: вера в адское могущество Николая Гавриловича и слухи о том, что поджоги велись по тому самому плану, который был составлен еще в 1849 году петрашевцами.
Whit Monday (May 28, 1862), a strong wind is blowing; a conflagration has begun on the Ligovka and then the desperadoes set fire to the Apraxin Market. Dostoevski is running, firemen are galloping “and in pharmacy windows, in gaudy glass globes, upside down are in passing reflected” (as seen by Nekrasov). And over there, thick smoke billows over the Fontanka canal in the direction of Chernyshyov Street, where presently a new, black column arises…. Meanwhile Dostoevski has arrived. He has arrived at the heart of the blackness, at Chernyshevski’s place, and starts to beg him hysterically to put a stop to all this. Two aspects are interesting here: the belief in Nikolay Gavrilovich’s satanic powers, and the rumors that the arson was being carried out according to the same plan which the Petrashevskians had drawn up as early as 1849. (Chapter Four)