At the beginning of VN's novel Pnin (1957) the narrator mentions Pnin's conservative black Oxfords (formal, lace-up dress shoes defined by "closed lacing," meaning the shoelace eyelet tabs are stitched underneath the front part of the shoe):
The elderly passenger sitting on the north-window side of that inexorably moving railway coach, next to an empty seat and facing two empty ones, was none other than Professor Timofey Pnin. Ideally bald, sun-tanned, and clean-shaven, he began rather impressively with that great brown dome of his, tortoise-shell glasses (masking an infantile absence of eyebrows), apish upper lip, thick neck, and strong-man torso in a tightish tweed coat, but ended, somewhat disappointingly, in a pair of spindly legs (now flannelled and crossed) and frail-looking, almost feminine feet.
His sloppy socks were of scarlet wool with lilac lozenges; his conservative black Oxfords had cost him about as much as all the rest of his clothing (flamboyant goon tie included). Prior to the 1940s, during the staid European era of his life, he had always worn long underwear, its terminals tucked into the tops of neat silk socks, which were clocked, soberly coloured, and held up on his cotton-clad calves by garters. In those days, to reveal a glimpse of that white underwear by pulling up a trouser leg too high would have seemed to Pnin as indecent as showing himself to ladies minus collar and tie; for even when decayed Mme Roux, the concierge of the squalid apartment house in the Sixteenth Arrondissement of Paris where Pnin, after escaping from Leninized Russia and completing his college education in Prague, had spent fifteen years--happened to come up for the rent while he was without his faux col, prim Pnin would cover his front stud with a chaste hand. All this underwent a change in the heady atmosphere of the New World. Nowadays, at fifty-two, he was crazy about sunbathing, wore sport shirts and slacks, and when crossing his legs would carefully, deliberately, brazenly display a tremendous stretch of bare shin. Thus he might have appeared to a fellow passenger; but except for a soldier asleep at one end and two women absorbed in a baby at the other, Pnin had the coach to himself. (Chapter One, 1)
In the surname Pnin there is pni, plural of pen' (Russ., tree stump). At the beginning of A. I. Herzen's unfinished play in blank verse Vil'yam Pen, scenes in verse (1839) a poor bootmaker in Leceister (the action begins in 1650, when the hero is six) says that he is so tired and cold that he cannot hold the bodkin in his hands:
Суббота, вечер. Холодная, сырая комнатка со сводами; величайшая бедность; на соломе лежит больное дитя, вздрагивает и стонет во сне; разный хлам, кожи и посуда. Перед окном сидит сапожник и работает, возле него ученик.
Сапожник (бросает работу).
Нет, выбился из сил, держать в руках
Я шила не могу. Какая стужа,
Я до костей измерзнул весь.
(Дует в руки.)
Что, Жорж, ни одного полена нет?
The bootmaker's apprentice, Zhorzh (George Fox, a Christian mystic and English dissenter, a founder of the Religious Society of Friends, commonly known as the Quakers or Friends, 1624-1691), brings to mind Zhorzhik Uranski, an influential literary critic who is mentioned by the narrator of Pnin:
One of her admirers, a banker, and straightforward patron of the arts, selected among the Parisian Russians an influential literary critic, Zhorzhik Uranski, and for a champagne dinner at the Ougolok had the old boy devote his next feuilleton in one of the Russian--language newspapers to an appreciation of Liza's muse on whose chestnut curls Zhorzhik calmly placed Anna Akhmatov's coronet, whereupon Liza burst into happy tears--for all the world like little Miss Michigan or the Oregon Rose Queen. Pnin, who was not in the know, carried about a folded clipping of that shameless rave in his honest pocket-book, naively reading out passages to this or that amused friend until it got quite frayed and smudgy. Nor was he in the know concerning graver matters, and in fact was actually pasting the remnants of the review in an album when, on a December day in 1938, Liza telephoned from Meudon, saying that she was going to Montpellier with a man who understood her 'organic ego', a Dr Eric Wind, and would never see Timofey again. An unknown French woman with red hair called for Liza's things and said, well, you cellar rat, there is no more any poor lass to taper dessus--and a month or two later there dribbled in from Dr Wind a German letter of sympathy and apology assuring lieber Herr Pnin that he, Dr Wind, was eager to marry 'the woman who has come out of your life into mine.' (Chapter Two, 5)
and Georgiy, the golden name of Liza Bogolepov's new flame:
'Listen to my latest poem,' she said, her hands now along her sides as she lay perfectly straight on her back, and she sang out rhythmically, in long-drawn, deep-voiced tones:
'Ya nadela tyomnoe plat'e,
I monashenki ya skromney;
Iz slonovoy kosti raspyat'e
Nad holodnoy postel'yu moey.
No ogni nebïvalïh orgiy
Prozhigayut moyo zabпtyo
I shepchu ya imya Georgiy--
Zolotoe imya tvoyo!
(I have put on a dark dress
And am more modest than a nun;
An ivory crucifix
Is over my cold bed.
But the lights of fabulous orgies
Burn through my oblivion,
And I whisper the name George--
Your golden name!)' (Chapter Two, 6)
A line in Liza's poem, I monashenki ya skromney (And am more modest than a nun), may hint at kamennaya monashenka (the stone nun), as in a letter of April 12, 1865, to his daughters Tata (Natalia Aleksandrovna Herzen, 1844-1936) and Olya (Olga Aleksandrovna Herzen, 1850-1953), who in 1873 married the French historian Gabriel Monod (1844-1912), Herzen calls Stein, a Roman acquaintance of Malwida von Meysenbug (a German writer, 1816-1903, a friend of Herzen, Wagner and Baudelaire who in 1901 became the first woman nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature):
Каменная монашенка, должно быть, порет вздор. Вообще немецких мнений старайся не принимать.
Kamennaya monashenka makes one think of Pushkin's little tragedy Kamennyi gost' ("The Stone Guest," 1830) set in the 17th century Madrid (it is believed that Pushkin added last touches to The Stone Guest on the morning before his fatal duel with d'Anthès). Madrid is the capital of and the largest city in Spain. Pis'ma ob Ispanii ("Letters about Spain," 1851) is a book by Herzen's friend Vasiliy Botkin (1812-1869). In 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) mentions Prof. Pnin and Prof. Botkin:
Speaking of the Head of the bloated Russian Department, Prof. Pnin, a regular martinet in regard to his underlings (happily, Prof. Botkin, who taught in another department, was not subordinated to that grotesque "perfectionist"): "How odd that Russian intellectuals should lack all sense of humor when they have such marvelous humorists as Gogol, Dostoevski, Chekhov, Zoshchenko, and those joint authors of genius Ilf and Petrov." (note to Line 172)
Chekhov's humorous story Shilo v meshke ("You cannot hide an awl in a bag," 1885) brings to mind shilo (the bodkin) that the bootmaker in Herzen's play Vil'yam Pen cannot hold in his hands. Yumor ("Humor," 1861) is a long satirical poem by Herzen's life-long friend Nikolay Ogaryov (1813-1877). At the beginning of his poem Ogaryov calls tea "torgovli nashey luchshiy tsvet (the best flower of our trade):"
Скажу, и брошу пистолет,
Спрошу печально чашку чая,
Торговли нашей лучший цвет;
А жалок мне удел Китая.
У Альбиона чести нет,
Святую совесть забывая,
Имея очень жадный нрав,
Не знает он народных прав. (1)
Petra Botkina Synov'ya (Peter Botkin & Sons) was one of the largest, oldest, and most prominent tea trading companies in the Russian Empire. According to Kinbote, the author of a remarkable book on surnames (Oxford, 1956), Botkin is one who makes bottekins (fancy footwear):
With commendable alacrity, Professor Hurley produced an Appreciation of John Shade's published works within a month after the poet's death. It came out in a skimpy literary review, whose name momentarily escapes me, and was shown to me in Chicago where I interrupted for a couple of days my automobile journey from New Wye to Cedarn, in these grim autumnal mountains.
A Commentary where placid scholarship should reign is not the place for blasting the preposterous defects of that little obituary. I have only mentioned it because that is where I gleaned a few meager details concerning the poet's parents. His father, Samuel Shade, who died at fifty, in 1902, had studied medicine in his youth and was vice-president of a firm of surgical instruments in Exton. His chief passion, however, was what our eloquent necrologist calls "the study of the feathered tribe," adding that "a bird had been named for him: Bombycilla Shadei" (this should be "shadei," of course). The poet's mother, nee Caroline Lukin, assisted him in his work and drew the admirable figures of his Birds of Mexico, which I remember having seen in my friend's house. What the obituarist does not know is that Lukin comes from Luke, as also do Locock and Luxon and Lukashevich. It represents one of the many instances when the amorphous-looking but live and personal hereditary patronymic grows, sometimes in fantastic shapes, around the common pebble of a Christian name. The Lukins are an old Essex family. Other names derive from professions such as Rymer, Scrivener, Limner (one who illuminates parchments), Botkin (one who makes bottekins, fancy footwear) and thousands of others. My tutor, a Scotsman, used to call any old tumble-down building "a hurley-house." But enough of this. (note to Line 71)
The epigraph to Chapter II of Herzen's story Legenda ("A Legend," 1836) is from the Gospel of Luke (23:43):
Аминь глаголю тебе, днесь со мною будеши в рай.
Лука, гл. XXIII, ст. 43
"Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise."
A son of Ivan Yakovlev and Louise Haag (a Jewish girl from Stuttgart), Alexander Ivanovich Herzen (a Russian writer and thinker, 1812-1870) was born on April 6, 1812, in Moscow, shortly before Napoleon's invasion of Russia and brief occupation of the city. In his main work, Byloe i dumy ("Bygone and Meditations," 1870), Alexander Herzen tells an episode from his father's life. On September 20, 1812, Napoleon asked Ivan Yakovlev (a retired guard captain and rich Russian landowner, 1767-1846) to deliver a peace-offer letter to Emperor Alexander I from occupied and destroyed by fire Moscow. The letter was delivered, Napoleon never got a reply from Alexander I. During his heart attack Timofey Pnin (whose father, Dr. Pavel Pnin, was an eye specialist in St. Petersburg) remembers the date of the Great Moscow Fire--1812:
A sense of being late for some appointment as odiously exact as school, dinner, or bedtime added the discomfort of awkward haste to the difficulties of a quest that was grading into delirium. The foliage and the flowers, with none of the intricacies of their warp disturbed, appeared to detach themselves in one undulating body from their pale-blue background which, in its turn, lost its papery flatness and dilated in depth till the spectator's heart almost burst in response to the expansion. He could still make out through the autonomous garlands certain parts of the nursery more tenacious of life than the rest, such as the lacquered screen, the gleam of a tumbler, the brass knobs of his bedstead, but these interfered even less with the oak leaves and rich blossoms than would the reflection of an inside object in a window-pane with the outside scenery perceived through the same glass. And although the witness and victim of these phantasms was tucked up in bed, he was, in accordance with the twofold nature of his surroundings, simultaneously seated on a bench in a green and purple park. During one melting moment, he had the sensation of holding at last the key he had sought; but, coming from very far, a rustling wind, its soft volume increasing as it ruffled the rhododendrons--now blossomless, blind--confused whatever rational pattern Timofey Pnin's surroundings had once had. He was alive and that was sufficient. The back of the bench against which he still sprawled felt as real as his clothes, or his wallet, or the date of the Great Moscow Fire--1812. (Chapter One, 2)
The surname Herzen (bestowed by Ivan Yakovlev on his illegitimate son) comes from Herz (Germ., heart). Pyotr Alexandrovich Herzen (1871-1947) was born in Florence and became a celebrated surgeon, one of the founders of oncology in the USSR. The name of the concierge of the squalid apartment house in the Sixteenth Arrondissement of Paris where Pnin, after escaping from Leninized Russia and completing his college education in Prague, had spent fifteen years, Mme Roux may hint at the Roux–Herzen method (also widely known as Herzen's bile diversion method), a historic surgical procedure used to treat gallbladder or bile duct disease. Invented by the prominent Russian surgeon Peter Herzen (Alexander Herzen's grandson) and built upon the foundational intestinal loop techniques of Swiss surgeon César Roux), the procedure is a specific type of cholecystojejunostomy. It involves surgically creating an anastomosis (a connection) between the gallbladder and a Y-shaped isolated loop of the jejunum (the middle part of the small intestine) to allow bile to bypass an obstruction. The former Zemblan consul whom Gradus (Shade's murderer whom Kinbote mockingly calls Vinogradus and Leningradus) visits in Paris, Oswin Bretwit is hospitalized on the next day after Gradus' visit and dies under the knife of a surgeon (forgot to mention this fact in my post "prompt surgeon's hand, bad heart & cancer of pancreas in Pale Fire"). An influential literary critic in Pnin, Zhorzhik Uranski brings to mind Uran the Last (a king of Zembla) and Uranograd (as Amphitheaticus dubbed Onhava, the beautiful capital of Zembla). Monashenka is the Russian name of the nun moth (Lymantria monacha):
Herzen's play Vil'yam Pen is based on the life of William Penn (1644–1718), an English writer, theologian, religious thinker, and influential Quaker who founded the Province of Pennsylvania. An advocate of democracy and religious freedom, Penn was known for his amicable relations and successful treaties with the Lenape native peoples who had resided in present-day Pennsylvania before European colonisation there.
Penn was expelled from the University of Oxford in 1662 for his religious nonconformity. That early break with institutional authority became central to his life. He embraced Quakerism, defended freedom of conscience, and repeatedly challenged the established Church of England’s restrictions on religious dissent. Penn built a remarkable life outside conventional institutions, combining religious leadership, writing, political advocacy, and practical enterprise. Today, his legacy is commemorated at Christ Church, Oxford, where his portrait is displayed in the dining hall. An iconic symbol of American Independence, located in Philadelphia (the most populous city of Pennsylvania), the Liberty Bell, previously called the State House Bell or Old State House Bell, brings to mind Kolokol ("The Bell"), the first Russian censorship-free weekly newspaper published by Herzen and Ogaryov in London (1857–1865) and in Geneva (1865–1867).