At the end of his commentary 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) quotes the words of his Zemblan nurse, "Minnamin, Gut mag alkan, Pern dirstan (my darling, God makes hungry, the Devil thirsty):"
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)
The Zemblan word for the Devil, Pern seems to hint at Perun, the ancient Slavic God of thunder. In his memoirs Byloe i dumy ("Bygone and Meditations," 1870), Alexander Herzen (a Russian writer and thinker, 1812-1870) mentions peruny (pagan idols):
Мы смелы в отрицании и всегда готовы толкнуть всякого перуна в воду, но перуны домашней и семейной жизни как-то water-proof, они все "выдыбаются". Может, в них и не осталось смысла -- но жизнь осталась; видно, орудия, употребляемые против них, только скользнули по их змеиной чешуе, уронили их, оглушили... по не убили. Ревность... Верность... Измена... Чистота... Темные силы, грозные слова, по милости которых текли реки слез, реки крови, -- слова, заставляющие содрогаться нас, как воспоминание об инквизиции, пытке, чуме... и притом слова, под которыми, как под Дамокловым мечом, жила и живет семья. (Part Five. Chapter XLI. Paris - Italy - Paris, 1847--1852, I)
According to Herzen, we are courageous in negation and are always ready to cast every Perun into water, but the Peruns of domestic and family life are somehow waterproof, they refuse to be drowned. In Der kleine Prinz, the German version of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's fairy tale Le Petit Prince (1943), der Fuchs (the Fox) says: "Man sieht nur mit dem Herzen gut. Das Wesentliche ist für die Augen unsichtbar (It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye)." Saint-Exupéry's Little Prince has never been either hungry or thirsty:
Nous en étions au huitième jour de ma panne dans le désert, et j’avais écouté l’histoire du marchand en buvant la dernière goutte de ma provision d’eau :
– Ah ! dis-je au petit prince, ils sont bien jolis, tes souvenirs, mais je n’ai pas encore réparé mon avion, je n’ai plus rien à boire, et je serais heureux, moi aussi, si je pouvais marcher tout doucement vers une fontaine ! – Mon ami le renard, me dit-il…
– Mon petit bonhomme, il ne s’agit plus du renard !
– Pourquoi ?
– Parce qu’on va mourir de soif… Il ne comprit pas mon raisonnement, il me répondit :
– C’est bien d’avoir eu un ami, même si l’on va mourir. Moi, je suis bien content d’avoir eu un ami renard… « Il ne mesure pas le danger, me dis-je. Il n’a jamais ni faim ni soif. Un peu de soleil lui suffit… » Mais il me regarda et répondit à ma pensée :
– J’ai soif aussi… cherchons un puits…
It was now the eighth day since I had had my accident in the desert, and I had listened to the story of the merchant as I was drinking the last drop of my water supply.
"Ah," I said to the little prince, "these memories of yours are very charming; but I have not yet succeeded in repairing my plane; I have nothing more to drink; and I, too, should be very happy if I could walk at my leisure toward a spring of fresh water!"
"My friend the fox--" the little prince said to me.
"My dear little man, this is no longer a matter that has anything to do with the fox!"
"Why not?"
"Because I am about to die of thirst . . ."
He did not follow my reasoning, and he answered me:
"It is a good thing to have had a friend, even if one is about to die. I, for instance, am very glad to have had a fox as a friend . . ."
"He has no way of guessing the danger," I said to myself. "He has never been either hungry or thirsty. A little sunshine is all he needs . . ."
But he looked at me steadily, and replied to my thought:
"I am thirsty, too. Let us look for a well . . ." (Chapter 24)
Les dieux ont soif ("The Gods are Athirst," 1912) is a historical novel by Anatole France (a French writer, 1844-1924). It is set in Paris in 1793–1794, closely tied to specific events of the French Revolution. "My darling" in Zemblan, minnamin (a word used by Kinbote's Zemblan nurse) brings to mind Madamina (It., My dear lady), the first word in the "Catalogue aria" (sung by Don Juan's servant Leporello) in Mozart's opera Don Giovanni (1787):
Madamina, il catalogo è questo
Delle belle che amò il padron mio;
un catalogo egli è che ho fatt'io;
Osservate, leggete con me.
In Italia seicento e quaranta;
In Alemagna duecento e trentuna;
Cento in Francia, in Turchia novantuna;
Ma in Ispagna son già mille e tre.
My dear lady, this is the list
Of the beauties my master has loved,
A list which I have compiled.
Observe, read along with me.
In Italy, six hundred and forty;
In Germany, two hundred and thirty-one;
A hundred in France; in Turkey, ninety-one;
But in Spain already one thousand and three.
At the end of his autobiographical book Terre des hommes (translated into English as Wind, Sand and Stars, 1939), Antoine de Saint-Exupéry describes a tour he made during a long railway journey through the train in all its length and mentions Mozart enfant (Mozart as a child) sleeping in a crowded third-class carriage:
Et je poursuivis mon voyage parmi ce peuple dont le sommeil était trouble comme un mauvais lieu. Il flottait un bruit vague fait de ronflements rauques, de plaintes obscures, du raclement des godillots de ceux qui, brisés d’un côté, essayaient l’autre. Et toujours en sourdine cet intarissable accompagnement de galets retournés par la mer.
Je m’assis en face d’un couple. Entre l’homme et la femme, l’enfant, tant bien que mal, avait fait son creux, et il dormait. Mais il se retourna dans le sommeil, et son visage m’apparut sous la veilleuse. Ah ! quel adorable visage ! Il était né de ce couple-là une sorte de fruit doré. Il était né de ces lourdes hardes cette réussite de charme et de grâce. Je me penchai sur ce front lisse, sur cette douce moue des lèvres, et je me dis : voici un visage de musicien, voici Mozart enfant, voici une belle promesse de la vie. Les petits princes des légendes n’étaient point différents de lui : protégé, entouré, cultivé, que ne sauraitil devenir ! Quand il naît par mutation dans les jardins une rose nouvelle, voilà tous les jardiniers qui s’émeuvent. On isole la rose, on cultive la rose, on la favorise. Mais il n’est point de jardinier pour les hommes. Mozart enfant sera marqué comme les autres par la machine à emboutir. Mozart fera ses plus hautes joies de musique pourrie, dans la puanteur des cafés-concerts. Mozart est condamné.
Et je regagnai mon wagon. Je me disais : ces gens ne souffrent guère de leur sort. Et ce n’est point la charité ici qui me tourmente. Il ne s’agit point de s’attendrir sur une plaie éternellement rouverte. Ceux qui la portent ne la sentent pas. C’est quelque chose comme l’espèce humaine et non l’individu qui est blessé ici, qui est lésé. Je ne crois guère à la pitié. Ce qui me tourmente, c’est le point de vue du jardinier. Ce qui me tourmente, ce n’est point cette misère, dans laquelle, après tout, on s’installe aussi bien que dans la paresse. Des générations d’Orientaux vivent dans la crasse et s’y plaisent. Ce qui me tourmente, les soupes populaires ne le guérissent point. Ce qui me tourmente, ce ne sont ni ces creux, ni ces bosses, ni cette laideur. C’est un peu, dans chacun de ces hommes, Mozart assassiné.
Seul l’Esprit, s’il souffle sur la glaise, peut créer l’Homme.
I went on through these people whose slumber was as sinister as a den of evil. A vague noise floated in the air made up of raucous snores, obscure moanings, and the scraping of clogs as their wearers, broken on one side, sought comfort on the other. And always the muted accompaniment of those pebbles rolled over and over by the waves. I sat down face to face with one couple. Between the man and the woman a child had hollowed himself out a place and fallen asleep. He turned in his slumber, and in the dim lamplight I saw his face. What an adorable face! A golden fruit had been born of these two peasants. Forth from this sluggish scum had sprung this miracle of delight and grace.
I bent over the smooth brow, over those mildly pouting lips, and I said to myself: This is a musician's face. This is the child Mozart. This is a life full of beautiful promise. Little princes in legends are not different from this. Protected, sheltered, cultivated, what could not this child become?
When by mutation a new rose is born in a garden, all the gardeners rejoice. They isolate the rose, tend it, foster it. But there is no gardener for men. This little Mozart will be shaped like the rest by the common stamping machine. This little Mozart will love shoddy music in the stench of night dives. This little Mozart is condemned.
I went back to my sleeping car. I said to myself: Their fate causes these people no suffering. It is not an impulse to charity that has upset me like this. I am not weeping over an eternally open wound. Those who carry the wound do not feel it. It is the human race and not the individual that is wounded here, is outraged here. I do not believe in pity. What torments me tonight is the gardener's point of view. What torments me is not this poverty to which after all a man can accustom himself as easily as to sloth. Generations of Orientals live in filth and love it. What torments me is not the humps nor hollows nor the ugliness. It is the sight, a little bit in all these men, of Mozart murdered.
Only the Spirit, if it breathe upon the clay, can create Man. (10. Conclusion)
In his foreword to Shade's poem Kinbote says that, soon after her husband's death, Sybil Shade moved to Quebec:
Frank has acknowledged the safe return of the galleys I had been sent here and has asked me to mention in my Preface - and this I willingly do - that I alone am responsible for any mistakes in my commentary. Insert before a professional. A professional proofreader has carefully rechecked the printed text of the poem against the phototype of the manuscript, and has found a few trivial misprints I had missed; that has been all in the way of outside assistance. Needless to say how much I had been looking forward to Sybil Shade's providing me with abundant biographical data; unfortunately she left New Wye even before I did, and is dwelling now with relatives in Quebec. We might have had, of course, a most fruitful correspondence, but the Shadeans were not to be shaken off. They headed for Canada in droves to pounce on the poor lady as soon as I had lost contact with her and her changeful moods. Instead of answering a month-old letter from my cave in Cedarn, listing some of my most desperate queries, such as the real name of "Jim Coates" etc., she suddenly shot me a wire, requesting me to accept Prof. H. (!) and Prof. C (!!) as co-editors of her husband's poem. How deeply this surprised and pained me! Naturally, it precluded collaboration with my friend's misguided widow. (Foreword)
According to Kinbote, he writes his commentary, index and foreword to Shade's poem in Cedarn, Utana. But it seems that Botkin (Shade's, Kinbote's and Gradus's "real" name) actually writes them in a madhouse near Quebec - in the same sanatorium where Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Lolita, 1955) writes his poem "Wanted." During his stay in Quebec City in May 1942, Saint-Exupéry visited the home of Laval University philosophy professor Charles de Koninck. He spent time with the professor's 8-year-old son, Thomas de Koninck, making paper airplanes and drawings. Young Thomas had a habit of asking endless, probing questions. Saint-Exupéry answered every single one with complete patience, later seeing in Thomas's innocent curiosity the exact spirit that defines the Little Prince looking at the world.