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 Roman Tselovalnikov, a maternal uncle of Jakob Gradus (Shade’s murderer):
Line 17: And then the gradual; Line 29: gray
By an extraordinary coincidence (inherent perhaps in the contrapuntal nature of Shade's art) our poet seems to name here (gradual, gray) a man, whom he was to see for one fatal moment three weeks later, but of whose existence at the time (July 2) he could not have known. Jakob Gradus called himself variously Jack Degree or Jacques de Grey, or James de Gray, and also appears in police records as Ravus, Ravenstone, and d'Argus. Having a morbid affection for the ruddy Russia of the Soviet era, he contended that the real origin of his name should be sought in the Russian word for grape, vinograd, to which a Latin suffix had adhered, making it Vinogradus. His father, Martin Gradus, had been a Protestant minister in Riga, but except for him and a maternal uncle (Roman Tselovalnikov, police officer and part-time member of the Social-Revolutionary party), the whole clan seems to have been in the liquor business. Martin Gradus died in 1920, and his widow moved to Strasbourg where she soon died, too. Another Gradus, an Alsatian merchant, who oddly enough was totally unrelated to our killer but had been a close business friend of his kinsmen for years, adopted the boy and raised him with his own children. It would seem that at one time young Gradus studied pharmacology in Zurich, and at another, traveled to misty vineyards as an itinerant wine taster. We find him next engaging in petty subversive activities - printing peevish pamphlets, acting as messenger for obscure syndicalist groups, organizing strikes at glass factories, and that sort of thing. Sometime in the forties he came to Zembla as a brandy salesman. There he married a publican's daughter. His connection with the Extremist party dates from its first ugly writhings, and when the revolution broke out, his modest organizational gifts found some appreciation in various offices. His departure for Western Europe, with a sordid purpose in his heart and a loaded gun in his pocket, took place on the very day that an innocent poet in an innocent land was beginning Canto Two of Pale Fire. We shall accompany Gradus in constant thought, as he makes his way from distant dim Zembla to green Appalachia, through the entire length of the poem, following the road of its rhythm, riding past in a rhyme, skidding around the corner of a run-on, breathing with the caesura, swinging down to the foot of the page from line to line as from branch to branch, hiding between two words (see note to line 596), reappearing on the horizon of a new canto, steadily marching nearer in iambic motion, crossing streets, moving up with his valise on the escalator of the pentameter, stepping off, boarding a new train of thought, entering the hall of a hotel, putting out the bedlight, while Shade blots out a word, and falling asleep as the poet lays down his pen for the night.
The surname Tselovalnikov comes from tseloval’nik (obs., inn-keeper, publican; hist., tax-collector). In his poem Rodoslovnaya moego geroya (“The Pedigree of my Hero,” 1836) written after the meter and rhyme scheme of a Eugene Onegin stanza Pushkin mentions Mityushka tseloval’nik (Mityushka the tax-collector) and zvezda dvoyurodnogo dyadi (an uncle's breast star):
Кто б ни был ваш родоначальник,
Мстислав, князь Курбский, иль Ермак,
Или Митюшка целовальник,
Вам все равно. Конечно, так:
Вы презираете отцами,
Их славой, честию, правами
Великодушно и умно;
Вы отреклись от них давно,
Прямого просвещенья ради,
Гордясь (как общей пользы друг)
Красою собственных заслуг,
Звездой двоюродного дяди,
Иль приглашением на бал
Туда, где дед ваш не бывал.
Whoever your ancestor were,
Mstislav, Prince Kurbski, or Yermak,
or Mityushka the tax-collector,
you do not care...
Mityushka being a diminutive of Dmitri, Mityushka tselovalnik and Roman Tselovalnikov (a police officer and part-time member of the Social-Revolutionary party) bring to mind Dmitri Bogrov (1887-1911), an Ukranian Jewish lawyer known for his assassination of the Russian prime minister Pyotr Stolypin (1862-1911) in the Kiev Opera House on Sept. 1, 1911. A member of an anarchist group who was hired as an informant by the Okhrana (the Imperial secret police), Bogrov unsuccessfully attempted to elicit the support of the Social Revolutionary Party, which caused him to have a nervous breakdown. Roman Tselovalnikov's first name seems to hint at the Romanovs (the Russian Imperial family).
On the other hand, at the beginning of Slovo o polku Igoreve (“The Song of Igor’s Campaign”) khrabryi Mstislav (brave Mstislav) who slew Rededya before the Kasog troops and krasnyi Roman Svyatoslavovich (fair Roman son of Svyatoslav) are mentioned:
Не лепо ли ны бяшете, братие, начяти старыми словесы трудныхе повестий о полку Игореве, Игоря Святеславлича! Начати же ся той песни по былинамь сего времени, а не по замышлению Бояню!
Боян бо вещий, аще кому хотяше песнь творити, то растекашется мыслию по древу, серым велком по земли, шизыме орломе под облакы, помняшеть бо рече первыхе времене усобице. Тогда пущашеть 10 соколовь на стадо лебедей; которыи дотечаше, та преди песнь пояше старому Ярославу, храброму Мстиславу, иже зареза Редедю преде пелкы касожьскыми, красному Романови Святославличю. Бояне же, братие, не 10 соколовь на стадо лебедей пущаше, не своя вещиа престы на живая струны вескладаше; они же сами княземе славу рокотаху.
Might it not become us,
brothers,
to begin in the diction of yore
the stern tale
of the campaign of Igor,
Igor son of Svyatoslav?
Let us, however,
begin this song
in keeping with the happenings
of these times
and not with the contriving of
Boyan.
For he, vatic Boyan
if he wished to make a laud for
one,
ranged in thought
[like the nightingale] over the
tree;
like the gray wolf
across land;
like the smoky eagle
up to the clouds.
For as he recalled, said he,
the feuds of initial times,
"He set ten falcons
upon a flock of swans,
and the one first overtaken,
sang a song first"-
to Yaroslav of yore,
and to brave Mstislav
who slew Rededya
before the Kasog troops,
and to fair Roman
son of Svyatoslav.
To be sure, brothers,
Boyan did not [really]
set ten falcons
upon a flock of swans:
his own vatic fingers
he laid on the live strings,
which then twanged out by
themselves
a paean to princes. (Exordium)
An anonymous epic poem of the 12th century, Slovo o polku Igoreve was translated into English by VN. Roman Tselovalnikov and Jakob Gradus bring to mind Roman Jakobson, a linguist with whom VN refused to collaborate on his translation (1960) of Slovo.
Чтоб вы меня из памяти не стёрли,
у вас я стану костью в горле.