Having struck this out, the poet tried another theme, but these lines he also canceled:
England where poets flew the highest, now
Wants them to plod and Pegasus to plough;
Now the prosemongers of the Grubby Group,
The Message Man, the owlish Nincompoop
And all the Social Novels of our age
Leave but a pinch of coal dust on the page. (note to Line 922)
In his essay on Bryusov in "The Silhouettes of Russian Writers" Aihenvald says that Bryusov has exchanged the winged Pegasus for vol (an ox):
Музагет его поэзии — вол; на него променял он крылатого Пегаса и ему сам же правильно уподобляет свою тяжелую мечту. Его стихи не свободнорожденные. Илот искусства, труженик литературы, он, при всей изысканности своих тем и несмотря на вычуры своих построений, не запечатлел своей книги красотою духовного аристократизма и беспечности. Всегда на его челе заметны неостывшие капли трудовой росы.
Aihenvald calls Bryusov an "heilot of art, toiler of literature." Илот (heilot, a slave in ancient Sparta) needs but one letter to become пилот (a pilot). On the other hand, илот almost rhymes with Элиот (Eliot). According to Kinbote (Shade’s mad commentator who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla), it was he who observed one day that “spider” in reverse is “redips” and “T.S. Eliot,” “toilest:”
One of the examples her father gives is odd. I am quite sure it was I who one day, when we were discussing "mirror words," observed (and I recall the poet's expression of stupefaction) that "spider" in reverse is "redips," and "T.S. Eliot," "toilest." But then it is also true that Hazel Shade resembled me in certain respects. (note to Lines 347-348)
In Gerontion (1920) T. S. Eliot mentions a wilderness of mirrors, the spider and Fresca:
These with a thousand small deliberations
Protract the profit of their chilled delirium,
Excite the membrane, when the sense has cooled,
With pungent sauces, multiply variety
In a wilderness of mirrors. What will the spider do
Suspend its operations, will the weevil
Delay? De Bailhache, Fresca, Mrs. Cammel, whirled
Beyond the circuit of the shuddering Bear
In fractured atoms. Gull against the wind, in the windy straits
Of Belle Isle, or running on the Horn,
White feathers in the snow, the Gulf claims,
And an old man driven by the Trades
To a sleepy corner.
In his poem Eliot also mentions Fräulein von Kulp “who turned in the hall, one hand on the door.” Describing his years in Paris, Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Lolita, 1955) quotes one of his pastiches:
The days of my youth, as I look back on them, seem to fly away from me in a flurry of pale repetitive scraps like those morning snow storms of used tissue paper that a train passenger sees whirling in the wake of the observation car. In my sanitary relations with women I was practical, ironical and brisk. While a college student, in London and Paris, paid ladies sufficed me. My studies were meticulous and intense, although not particularly fruitful. At first, I planned to take a degree in psychiatry as many manqué talents do; but I was even more manqué than that; a peculiar exhaustion, I am so oppressed, doctor, set in; and I switched to English literature, where so many frustrated poets end as pipe-smoking teachers in tweeds. Paris suited me. I discussed Soviet movies with expatriates. I sat with uranists in the Deux Magots. I published tortuous essays in obscure journals. I composed pastiches:
... Fräulein von Kulp
may turn, her hand upon the door;
I will not follow her. Nor Fresca. Nor
that Gull. (1.5)
Lolita's married name, Mrs. Richard F. Schiller, seems to hint at Friedrich Schiller, the author of Pegasus im Joche ("Pegasus in Yoke," 1795). Describing the second lap of his road trip with Lolita across the USA, Humbert mentions a gas station, under the sign of Pegasus:
I now warn the reader not to mock me and my mental daze. It is easy for him and me to decipher now a past destiny; but a destiny in the making is, believe me, not one of those honest mystery stories where all you have to do is keep an eye on the clues. In my youth I once read a French detective tale where the clues were actually in italics; but that is not McFate’s way - even if one does learn to recognize certain obscure indications.
For instance: I would not swear that there was not at least one occasion, prior to, or at the very beginning of, the Midwest lap of our journey, when she managed to convey some information to, or otherwise get into contact with, a person or persons unknown. We had stopped at a gas station, under the sign of Pegasus, and she had slipped out of her seat and escaped to the rear of the premises while the raised hood, under which I had bent to watch the mechanic’s manipulations, hid her for a moment from my sight. Being inclined to be lenient, I only shook my benign head though strictly speaking such visits were taboo, since I felt instinctively that toiletsas also telephoneshappened to be, for reasons unfathomable, the points where my destiny was liable to catch. We all have such fateful objectsit may be a recurrent landscape in one case, a number in anothercarefully chosen by the gods to attract events of special significance for us: here shall John always stumble; there shall Jane’s heart always break. (2.16)
In his essay on Bryusov Aihenvald mentions Hamlet's feigned madness and compares Bryusov to Salieri:
Как в притворном безумии Гамлета, в его преднамеренном художестве видна система, и не убраны громоздкие леса методы. Специалист искусства, не только он, явно для всех, поставил ему подножием ремесло, как Сальери, но и оцепенел в своей эстетической профессиональности, и в самой широте своих сюжетов и сведений оказался узким, проявил нечто тесное и тупое, — поэт-педант.
In Pushkin’s little tragedy “Mozart and Salieri” (1830) Mozart uses the phrase nikto b (none would):
Когда бы все так чувствовали силу
Гармонии! Но нет: тогда б не мог
И мир существовать; никто б не стал
Заботиться о нуждах низкой жизни;
Все предались бы вольному искусству.
If all could feel like you the power
of harmony! But no: the world
could not go on then. None would
bother about the needs of lowly life;
All would surrender to free art. (Scene II)
The “real” name of Shade, Kinbote and Gradus (the poet’s murderer), Botkin is nikto b in reverse. 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). In his memoir essay “Bryusov” (1925) Hodasevich mentions Bryusov's hope (nadezhda) that under the Bolsheviks he would be able to turn Russian literature na stol'ko-to gradusov (to so-and-so many degrees):
А какая надежда на то, что в истории литературы будет сказано: "в таком-то году повернул русскую литературу на столько-то градусов".
Hodasevich compares the relationships between Bryusov and Balmont to those between Salieri and Mozart in Pushkin's little tragedy:
Его неоднократно подчёркнутая любовь к Бальмонту вряд ли может быть названа любовью. В лучшем случае это было удивление Сальери перед Моцартом.
In his essay Balmont-lirik (“Balmont the Lyric Poet”) included in Kniga otrazheniy (“Book of Reflections,” 1906) Nik. T-o (I. Annenski’s penname) complains that we do not want to look at poetry seriously and mentions emblema (the emblem):
Да и не хотим мы глядеть на поэзию серьёзно, т. е. как на искусство. На словах поэзия будет для нас, пожалуй, и служение, и подвиг, и огонь, и алтарь, и какая там ещё не потревожена эмблема, а на деле мы всё ещё ценим в ней сладкий лимонад, не лишённый, впрочем, и полезности, которая даже строгим и огорчённым русским читателем очень ценится. Разве можно думать над стихами? Что же тогда останется для алгебры?
“How can one meditate about verses? What will then remain for algebra?” In Ramsdale Humbert fears that Charlotte (Lolita’s mother) will bundle off her daughter to St. Algebra. In Pushkin’s little tragedy Salieri says that he cut up music like a corpse and measured harmony by algebra:
Звуки умертвив,
Музыку я разъял, как труп. Поверил
Я алгеброй гармонию.
Having stifled sounds,
I cut up music like a corpse. I measured
Harmony by algebra. (scene I)
Among the “emblems” mentioned by Annenski in his essay on Balmont are podvig (feat, exploit), ogon’ (fire) and altar’ (altar). All of them occur in Pushkin’s sonnet Poetu (“To a Poet,” 1830), in which the author tells to a poet “you are a king, live alone:”
Поэт! не дорожи любовию народной.
Восторженных похвал пройдёт минутный шум;
Услышишь суд глупца и смех толпы холодной,
Но ты останься твёрд, спокоен и угрюм.
Ты царь: живи один. Дорогою свободной
Иди, куда влечёт тебя свободный ум,
Усовершенствуя плоды любимых дум,
Не требуя наград за подвиг благородный.
Они в самом тебе. Ты сам свой высший суд;
Всех строже оценить умеешь ты свой труд.
Ты им доволен ли, взыскательный художник?
Доволен? Так пускай толпа его бранит
И плюет на алтарь, где твой огонь горит,
И в детской резвости колеблет твой треножник.
Poet! do not cling to popular affection.
The temporary noise of ecstatic praises will pass;
You will hear the fool’s judgment, the laugh of the cold crowd,
But you must remain firm, calm, and morose.
You are a king; live alone. By way of the free road
Go wherever your free mind draws you,
Perfecting the fruits of your beloved thoughts,
Not asking any rewards for your noble feat.
They are inside you. You are your highest judge;
More strictly than anyone can you appraise your work.
Are you satisfied with it, exacting artist?
Satisfied? Then let the crowd treat it harshly
And spit on the altar, where your fire burns
And shake your tripod in childish playfulness.
(transl. Diana Senechal)
In the penultimate line of his "Acrostic Sonnet with a Coda to Igor Severyanin" (1912) Bryusov mentions kon' (a horse):
И ты стремишься ввысь, где солнце — вечно,
Где неизменен гордый сон снегов,
Откуда в дол спадают бесконечно
Ручьи алмазов, струи жемчугов.
Юдоль земная пройдена. Беспечно
Свершай свой путь меж молний и громов!
Ездок отважный! слушай вихрей рев,
Внимай с улыбкой гневам бури встречной!
Еще грозят зазубрины высот,
Расщелины, где тучи спят, но вот
Яснеет глубь в уступах синих бора.
Назад не обращай тревожно взора
И с жадной жаждой новой высоты
Неутомимо правь конём, — и скоро
У ног своих весь мир увидишь ты!
The pseudonym Severyanin comes from sever (North). Zembla is a distant northern land. In his sonnet "Nekrasov" (1925) Severyanin mentions Nekrasov's khromenkiy, vzyeroshennyi Pegas (lame, dishevelled Pegasus) and calls Nekrasov "the Russian Don Quixote" (the name of Don Quixote's horse was, of course, Rocinante).
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”). Dvoynik ("The Double") is a short novel (1846) by Dostoevski and a poem (1909) by Alexander Blok. Blok's poem O doblestyakh, o podvigakh, o slave... (“About valours, about feats, about glory…” 1908) echoes a line in Pushkin's poem "October 19, 1825," o Shillere, o slave, o lyubvi (about Schiller, about glory, about love). Shilleru ("To Schiller," 1855) is a poem by Afanasiy Fet (who married Maria Botkin in 1857). The maiden name of Fet's mother was Charlotte Becker. Lolita's mother was born Charlotte Becker. Kinbote completes his work on Shade’s poem and commits suicide on Oct. 19, 1959 (the anniversary of Pushkin's Lyceum). There is a hope that, after Kinbote’s death, Botkin, like Count Vorontsov (a target of Pushkin’s epigrams, “half-milord, half-merchant, etc."), will be full again.