In Canto Three of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) describes his visit to Mrs. Z. who mentioned Shade’s poem about Mon Blon that appeared in the Blue Review:
"I can't believe," she said, "that it is you!
I loved your poem in the Blue Review.
That one about Mon Blon. I have a niece
Who's climbed the Matterhorn. The other piece
I could not understand. I mean the sense.
Because, of course, the sound--But I'm so dense!" (ll. 781-786)
In his commentary Kinbote (Shade’s mad commentator who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla) writes:
An image of Mont Blanc's "blue-shaded buttresses and sun-creamed domes" is fleetingly glimpsed through the cloud of that particular poem which I wish I could quote but do not have at hand. The "white mountain" of the lady's dream, caused by a misprint to tally with Shade's "white fountain," makes a thematic appearance here, blurred as it were by the lady's grotesque pronunciation. (note to Line 782)
Mont Blanc is the highest mountain in the Alps. Suvorov Crossing the Alps in 1799 is a painting (1899) by Vasiliy Surikov (a Russian painter, 1848-1916). To Maximilian Voloshin's question about the palette Surikov listed the dyes that he uses. Among them are cobalt and ultramatine:
На вопрос мой о палитре Василий Иванович отвечал:
«Я употребляю обыкновенно охры, кобальт, ультрамарин, сиену натуральную и жженую, оксид-руж, кадмий темный и оранжевый, краплаки, изумрудную зелень и индейскую желтую. Тело пишу только охрами, краплаком и кобальтом. Изумрудную зелень употребляю только в драпировки – никогда в тело. Черные тона составляю из ультрамарина, краплака и индейской желтой. Иногда употребляю персиковую черную. Умбру редко. Белила – кремницкие». (from Voloshin's essay Surikov included in volume III of Liki tvorchestva, "Faces of Creativity," 1917)
The blue color pigments, cobalt and ultramarine bring to mind the Blue Review in which Shade's poem about Mont Blanc appeared and Kobaltana, a once fashionable mountain resort mentioned by Kinbote in his index to Shade's poem:
Kobaltana, a once fashionable mountain resort near the ruins of some old barracks, now a cold and desolate spot of difficult access and no importance but still remembered in military families and forest castles, not in the text.
In an interview to Alfred Appel (included in Strong Opinions, 1974) VN says that the Zemblan crown jewels (vainly looked for by Andronnikov and Niagarin, the two Soviet experts hired by the new Zemblan government) are hidden in the ruins of some old barracks near Kobaltana. A chief relic of the Muscovite Grand Princes and Russian tsars is Shapka Monomakha (the Monomakh Cap; Vladimir II Monomakh, 1053-1125, was Grand Prince of Kiev from 1113 to 1125):
Monomakh's Cap in the foreground and Kazan Cap in the background.
Russian regalia used prior to the Great Imperial Crown. The crown is styled after the Monomakh Cap, and was made for Tsar Michael Fyodorovich by Kremlin masters in 1627. The orb and sceptre are of Western-European origin and may have been given to Tsar Boris Godunov in 1604.
In Pushkin's tragedy Boris Godunov (1825) Boris Godunov exclaims: Da, tyazhela ty, shapka Monomakha! ("Yes, you are heavy, Monomakh's Cap!"). Surikov is the author of illustrations to Boris Godunov.
In his essay Sud’ba Pushkina (“The Fate of Pushkin,” 1897) Vladimir Solovyov quotes Pushkin’s sonnet Poetu (“To a Poet,” 1828) and the lines from Byron’s Manfred (1816-17), in which Mont Blanc (“the monarch of mountains”) is mentioned:
Уже в сонете "Поэту" высота самосознания смешивается с высокомерием и требование бесстрастия - с обиженным и обидным выражением отчуждения.
Ты - царь, живи один!
Это взято, кажется, из Байрона: the solitude of kings. Но ведь одиночество царей состоит не в том, что они живут одни,- чего, собственно, и не бывает,- а в том, что они среди других имеют единственное положение. Это есть одиночество горных вершин.
Монблан - монарх соседних гор:
Они его венчали.
("Манфред" Байрона). (chapter VII)
Mont Blanc is the monarch of mountains;
They crown'd him long ago (Manfred, Act One, scene 1).
In Byron's poem Manfred is a Faustian noble living in the Bernese Alps. The historical Manfred (1232-66) was the last King of Sicily from the Hohenstaufen dynasty. New Wye (a small University town where Shade and Kinbote live) is situated at the latitude of Palermo (the largest city in and capital of Sicily):
February and March in Zembla (the two last of the four "white-nosed months," as we call them) used to be pretty rough too, but even a peasant's room there presented a solid of uniform warmth - not a reticulation of deadly drafts. It is true that, as usually happens to newcomers, I was told I had chosen the worst winter in years - and this at the latitude of Palermo. On one of my first mornings there, as I was preparing to leave for college in the powerful red car I had just acquired, I noticed that Mr. and Mrs. Shade, neither of whom I had yet met socially (I was to learn later that they assumed I wished to be left alone), were having trouble with their old Packard in the slippery driveway where it emitted whines of agony but could not extricate one tortured rear wheel out of a concave inferno of ice. John Shade busied himself clumsily with a bucket from which, with the gestures of a sower, he distributed handfuls of brown sand over the blue glaze. He wore snowboots, his vicuña collar was up, his abundant gray hair looked berimed in the sun. I knew he had been ill a few months before, and thinking to offer my neighbors a ride to the campus in my powerful machine, I hurried out toward them. A lane curving around the slight eminence on which my rented castle stood separated it from my neighbors' driveway, and I was about to cross that lane when I lost my footing and sat down on the surprisingly hard snow. My fall acted as a chemical reagent on the Shades' sedan, which forthwith budged and almost ran over me as it swung into the lane with John at the wheel strenuously grimacing and Sybil fiercely talking to him. I am not sure either saw me. (Foreword)
Die Auffindung von Manfreds Leiche (1836) and Manfreds Einzug in Luceria (1846) are historical paintings by Carl Rahl (an Austrian painter, 1812-65). Charles Xavier's beloved playmate who was killed in a toboggan accident, Oleg Gusev is the Duke of Rahl. Surikov is the author of Vzyatie snezhnogo gorodka ("Taking a Snow Town," 1891), Surikov's only large picture without historical content:
Painted in Krasnoyarsk, the picture was inspired by the artist’s childhood memories. He portrays an amusing game typically played on the last day of Shrovetide. A small town would be built from snow and ice. One group would guard the town while the other attacked. This game possibly came from the Cossacks in remembrance of the subjugation of Siberia. Surikov’s painting is an expression and celebration of the Russian character.
According to Kinbote, Charles the Beloved could boast of some Russian blood:
When I was a child, Russia enjoyed quite a vogue at the court of Zembla but that was a different Russia - a Russia that hated tyrants and Philistines, injustice and cruelty, the Russia of ladies and gentlemen and liberal aspirations. We may add that Charles the Beloved could boast of some Russian blood. In medieval times two of his ancestors had married Novgorod princesses. Queen Yaruga (reigned 1799-1800) his great-great-granddam, was half Russian; and most historians believe that Yaruga's only child Igor was not the son of Uran the Last (reigned 1798-1799) but the fruit of her amours with the Russian adventurer Hodinski, her goliart (court jester) and a poet of genius, said to have forged in his spare time a famous old Russian chanson de geste generally attributed to an anonymous bard of the twelfth century. (note 681)
Yaruga, Queen, reigned 1799-1800, sister of Uran (q. v.); drowned in an ice-hole with her Russian lover during traditional New Year's festivities, 681. (Index)
At the beginning of his essay on Surikov Voloshin mentions huge paintings depicting "the bad accidents of history" and compares them to old historical novels:
Многие ли в наши дни сохранили способность глядеть на многосаженные полотна, изображающие «несчастные случаи истории», без тайной, сосущей тоски?
Такую же тоску вызывает в нас и чтение старых исторических романов, ставших, подобно исторической живописи, лишь сомнительным пособием, рекомендованным для школьных библиотек. Историческая живопись в том виде, какой мы ее знаем в XIX веке, возникла как естественное последствие романтизма. (I)
Old historical novels make on think of Ivan Lazhechnikov's novel Ledyanoy dom ("The House of Ice," 1835) that dealt with the intrigues and horrors of the court of Empress Anna Ioannovna (the niece of Peter I who reigned in 1730-1740).
Voloshin's book Liki tvorchestva ("Faces of Creativity") brings to mind VN's story Lik (1939). Like Odon (pseudonym of Donald O’Donnell, a world-famous actor and Zemblan patriot who helps the King to escape from Zembla), Alexander Lik (in the English version, Lik is the stage name of Lavrentiy Ivanovich Kruzhevnitsyn) is an actor. The story's characters include Oleg Koldunov (Lik's cousin and former schoolmate and tormentor). In his poem Mednyi vsadnik (“The Bronze Horseman,” 1833) Pushkin mentions lik (the face) of the half-planet’s ruler:
Кругом подножия кумира
Безумец бедный обошёл
И взоры дикие навёл
На лик державца полумира.
The poor madman walked around
The idol’s pedestal
And looked wildly at the face
Of the half-planet’s ruler. (Part Two)
In L'Abîme ("The Abyss"), a play by the well-known French author Suire, Lik plays the part of Igor (a young Russian). The playwright’s name, Suire seems to hint at the French phrase à suivre (to be continued). It was used by Vladimir Solovyov at the end of his poem “To M. M. Stasyulevich” (1896) written in the day of Archangel Michael’s miracle at Chonae:
Михаилу Матвеевичу <Стасюлевичу> в день чуда Арх<ангела> Михаила в Xoнex
Недаром в Хонех натворил
Чудес Ваш омоним небесный:
Хоть не архангел Михаил —
Вы также Михаил чудесный.
Низвергнул он уже давно
Дракона гордого и злого,—
И Вам, я верю, суждено
Низвергнуть Ратькова-Рожнова.
À suivre
In The Bronze Horseman Pushkin famously mentions bezdna:
О мощный властелин судьбы!
Не так ли ты над самой бездной
На высоте, уздой железной
Россию поднял на дыбы?
Oh, mighty sovereign of destiny!
Haven’t you similarly reared Russia
With an iron bridle on the eminence
Before the abyss ? (Part Two)
After his visit to Mrs. Z. Shade wonders if he should stop investigating his abyss:
Life Everlasting – based on a misprint!
I mused as I drove homeward: take the hint,
And stop investigating my abyss?
But all at once it dawned on me that this
Was the real point, the contrapuntal theme;
Just this: not text, but texture; not the dream
But a topsy-turvical coincidence,
Not flimsy nonsense, but a web of sense.
Yes! It sufficed that I in life could find
Some kind of link-and-bobolink, some kind
Of correlated pattern in the game,
Plexed artistry, and something of the same
Pleasure in it as they who played it found. (ll. 803-815)