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) calls Professor Pnin, the Head of the bloated Russian Department at Wordsmith University, "a regular martinet in regard to his underlings:"
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)
Walter Scott called Matthew Gregory Lewis (an English novelist and dramatist, 1775-1818) a "martinet:"
Scholars and editors of Walter Scott’s literary works have often been puzzled by the remarkably high estimate Scott held of Matthew Gregory Lewis's poetic talent. In addition to asserting that Lewis was “the person who first attempted to introduce something like the German taste into English fictitious, dramatic, and poetical composition,” Scott felt that “few persons have exhibited more mastery of rhyme, or greater command over the melody of verse.” While conceding that Lewis’s The Monk “seemed to create an epoch in our literature,” Scott’s main interest in the novel was its poetry, and he went so far as to make the claim, probably a doubtful one, that “the public were chiefly captivated by the poetry with which Mr. Lewis had interspersed his prose narrative.” When Scott agreed to contribute ballads to Lewis’s planned collection of supernaturalist verse, he met with exacting criticism from what he called his ”Mentor.” A lyrical technician—Scott referred to him as a “martinet”—Lewis insisted upon scrupulous “accuracy of rhymes and numbers” and, Scott wryly noted, had some trouble disciplining his “northern recruits.”*** Scott includes in an appendix to his “Essay on Imitations of the Ancient Ballad” correspondence from Lewis that reveals the meticulous, detailed nature of his criticisms and suggested revisions. Although somewhat resistant to Lewis’s requested revisions, Scott writes that “I was much indebted to him, as forcing upon the notice of a young and careless author hints which the said author’s vanity made him unwilling to attend to, but which were absolutely necessary to any hope of his ultimate success."
***Scott’s good friend John Leyden also contributed to Tales of Wonder with his poem “The Elfin-King.”
In his Eugene Onegin Commentary VN pairs Lewis with Ann Radcliff (a lady novelist, 1764-1823, whose Gothic megrims so influenced Dostoevski, a writer whom Shade lists among Russian humorists):
9 / Melmoth, gloomy vagabond: Melmoth, ou l'Homme errant, "par Mathurin [sic], traduit librement de l'anglais" by Jean Cohen (Paris, 1821; 6 vols.). The original, little known in Russia, was Melmoth the Wanderer (Edinburgh, 1820; 4 vols.), by Charles Robert Maturin (an Irish clergyman), who used to compose with a wafer pasted on his forehead, which was the signal that if any of his family entered they must not speak to him. The book, although superior to Lewis and Mrs. Radcliff, is essentially second-rate, and Pushkin's high esteem for it (in the French version) is the echo of a French fashion. (vol. II, pp. 352-353)
Humbert's car Melmoth in VN's novel Lolita (1955) is an allusion to Sebastian Melmoth, a pseudonym used by Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) after his release from prison (19 May 1897). In his Foreword and Commentary to Shade's poem Kinbote mentions a distinguished Zemblan scholar Oscar Nattochdag (the Head of the Department to which Kinbote belongs):
Alas, my peace of mind was soon to be shattered. The thick venom of envy began squirting at me as soon as academic suburbia realized that John Shade valued my society above that of all other people. Your snicker, my dear Mrs. C., did not escape our notice as I was helping the tired old poet to find his galoshes after that dreary get-together party at your house. One day I happened to enter the English Literature office in quest of a magazine with the picture of the Royal Palace in Onhava, which I wanted my friend to see, when I overheard a young instructor in a green velvet jacket, whom I shall mercifully call Gerald Emerald, carelessly saying in answer to something the secretary had asked: "I guess Mr. Shade has already left with the Great Beaver." Of course I am quite tall, and my brown beard is of a rather rich tint and texture; the silly cognomen evidently applied to me, but was not worth noticing, and after calmly taking the magazine from a pamphlet-cluttered table, I contented myself on my way out with pulling Gerald Emerald's bow-tie loose with a deft jerk of my fingers as I passed by him. There was also the morning when Dr. Nattochdag, head of the department to which I was attached, begged me in a formal voice to be seated, then closed the door, and having regained, with a downcast frown, his swivel chair, urged me "to be more careful." In what sense, careful? A boy had complained to his adviser. Complained of what, good Lord? That I had criticized a literature course he attended ("a ridiculous survey of ridiculous works, conducted by a ridiculous mediocrity"). Laughing in sheer relief, I embraced my good Netochka, telling him I would never be naughty again. I take this opportunity to salute him. He always behaved with such exquisite courtesy toward me that I sometimes wondered if he did not suspect what Shade suspected, and what only three people (two trustees and the president of the college) definitely knew. (Foreword)
Presumably, permission from Prof. Blue was obtained but even so the plunging of a real person, no matter how sportive and willing, into an invented milieu where he is made to perform in accordance with the invention, strikes one as a singularly tasteless device, especially since other real-life characters, except members of the family, of course, are pseudonymized in the poem.
This name, no doubt, is most tempting. The star over the blue eminently suits an astronomer though actually neither his first nor second name bears any relation to the celestial vault: the first was given him in memory of his grandfather, a Russian starover (accented, incidentally, on the ultima), that is, Old Believer (member of a schismatic sect), named Sinyavin, from siniy, Russ. "blue." This Sinyavin migrated from Saratov to Seattle and begot a son who eventually changed his name to Blue and married Stella Lazurchik, an Americanized Kashube. So it goes. Honest Starover Blue will probably be surprised by the epithet bestowed upon him by a jesting Shade. The writer feels moved to pay here a small tribute to the amiable old freak, adored by everybody on the campus and nicknamed by the students Colonel Starbottle, evidently because of his exceptionally convivial habits. After all, there were other great men in our poet's entourage - for example, that distinguished Zemblan scholar Oscar Nattochdag. (note to Line 627: The great Starover Blue)
Natt och dag means in Swedish "night and day." In Oscar Wilde's The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898) the phrase "night and day" occurs at least three times:
He does not sit with silent men
Who watch him night and day;
Who watch him when he tries to weep,
And when he tries to pray;
Who watch him lest himself should rob
The prison of its prey. (I)
Or else he sat with those who watched
His anguish night and day;
Who watched him when he rose to weep,
And when he crouched to pray;
Who watched him lest himself should rob
Their scaffold of its prey. (III)
For they starve the little frightened child
Till it weeps both night and day:
And they scourge the weak, and flog the fool,
And gibe the old and gray,
And some grow mad, and all grow bad,
And none a word may say. (V)
Oscar Nattochdag's nickname, Netochka hints at Dostoevski's unfinished novel Netochka Nezvanov (1849).