In Canto One of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) describes his childhood and, at the end of the Canto, mentions his fainting fits:
I was the shadow of the waxwing slain
By feigned remoteness in the windowpane.
I had a brain, five senses (one unique);
But otherwise I was a cloutish freak.
In sleeping dreams I played with other chaps
But really envied nothing - save perhaps
The miracle of a lemniscate left
Upon wet sand by nonchalantly deft
Bicycle tires.
A thread of subtle pain,
Tugged at by playful death, released again,
But always present, ran through me. One day,
When I'd just turned eleven, as I lay
Prone on the floor and watched a clockwork toy -
A tin wheelbarrow pushed by a tin boy -
Bypass chair legs and stray beneath the bed,
There was a sudden sunburst in my head.
And then black night. That blackness was sublime.
I felt distributed through space and time:
One foot upon a mountaintop, one hand
Under the pebbles of a panting strand,
One ear in Italy, one eye in Spain,
In caves, my blood, and in the stars, my brain.
There were dull throbs in my Triassic; green
Optical spots in Upper Pleistocene,
An icy shiver down my Age of Stone,
And all tomorrows in my funnybone.
During one winter every afternoon
I'd sink into that momentary swoon.
And then it ceased. Its memory grew dim.
My health improved. I even learned to swim.
But like some little lad forced by a wench
With his pure tongue her abject thirst to quench,
I was corrupted, terrified, allured,
And though old doctor Colt pronounced me cured
Of what, he said, were mainly growing pains,
The wonder lingers and the shame remains. (ll. 131-166)
In his note to Line 162 (With his pure tongue, etc.) Kinbote (Shade’s mad commentator who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla) writes:
This is a singularly roundabout way of describing a country girl's shy kiss; but the whole passage is very baroque. My own boyhood was too happy and healthy to contain anything remotely like the fainting fits experienced by Shade: It must have been with him a mild form of epilepsy, a derailment of the nerves at the same spot, on the same curve of the tracks, every day, for several weeks, until nature repaired the damage. Who can forget the good-natured faces, glossy with sweat, of copper-chested railway workers leaning upon their spades and following with their eyes the windows of the great express cautiously gliding by?
In Garshin's story Khudozhniki ("Artists," 1879) Ryabinin wonders if he will go off the rails:
Уже две недели, как я перестал ходить в академию: сижу дома и пищу. Работа совершенно измучила меня, хотя идет успешно. Следовало бы сказать не хотя, а тем более, что идет успешно. Чем ближе она подвигается к концу, тем все страшнее и страшнее кажется мне то, что я написал. И кажется мне еще, что это - моя последняя картина.
Вот он сидит передо мною в темном углу котла, скорчившийся в три погибели, одетый в лохмотья, задыхающийся от усталости человек. Его совсем не было бы видно, если бы не свет, проходящий сквозь круглые дыры, просверленные для заклепок. Кружки этого света пестрят его одежду и лицо, светятся золотыми пятнами на его лохмотьях, на всклоченной и закопченной бороде и волосах, на багрово-красном лице, по которому струится пот, смешанный с грязью, на жилистых надорванных руках и на измученной широкой и впалой груди. Постоянно повторяющийся страшный удар обрушивается на котел и заставляет несчастного глухаря напрягать все свои силы, чтобы удержаться в своей невероятной позе. Насколько можно было выразить это напряженное усилие, я выразил.
Иногда я кладу палитру и кисти и усаживаюсь подальше от картины, прямо против нее. Я доволен ею; ничто мне так не удавалось, как эта ужасная вещь. Беда только в том, что это довольство не ласкает меня, а мучит. Это - не написанная картина, это - созревшая болезнь. Чем она разрешится, я не знаю, но чувствую, что после этой картины мне нечего уже будет писать. Птицеловы, рыболовы, охотники со всякими экспрессиями и типичнейшими физиономиями, вся эта "богатая область жанра" - на что мне теперь она? Я ничем уже не подействую так, как этим глухарем, если только подействую...
Сделал опыт: позвал Дедова и показал ему картину. Он сказал только: "ну, батенька", и развел руками. Уселся, смотрел полчаса, потом молча простился и ушел. Кажется, подействовало... Но ведь он все-таки - художник.
И я сижу перед своей картиной, и на меня она действует. Смотришь и не можешь оторваться, чувствуешь за эту измученную фигуру. Иногда мне даже слышатся удары молота... Я от него сойду с ума. Нужно его завесить.
Полотно покрыло мольберт с картиной, а я все сижу перед ним, думая все о том же неопределенном и страшном, что так мучит меня. Солнце заходит и бросает косую желтую полосу света сквозь пыльные стекла на мольберт, завешенный холстом. Точно человеческая фигура. Точно Дух Земли в "Фаусте", как его изображают немецкие актеры.
...Wer ruft mich?
Кто позвал тебя? Я, я сам создал тебя здесь. Я вызвал тебя, только не из какой-нибудь "сферы", а из душного, темного котла, чтобы ты ужаснул своим видом эту чистую, прилизанную, ненавистную толпу. Приди, силою моей власти прикованный к полотну, смотри с него на эти фраки и трэны, крикни им: я - язва растущая! Ударь их в сердце, лиши их сна, стань перед их глазами призраком! Убей их спокойствие, как ты убил мое...
Да, как бы не так!.. Картина кончена, вставлена в золотую раму, два сторожа потащат ее на головах в академию на выставку. И вот она стоит среди "полдней" и "закатов", рядом с "девочкой с кошкой", недалеко от какого-нибудь трехсаженного "Иоанна Грозного, вонзающего посох в ногу Васьки Шибанова". Нельзя сказать, чтобы на нее не смотрели; будут смотреть и даже хвалить. Художники начнут разбирать рисунок. Рецензенты, прислушиваясь к ним, будут чиркать карандашиками в своих записных книжках. Один г. В. С. выше заимствований; он смотрит, одобряет, превозносит, пожимает мне руку. Художественный критик Л. с яростью набросится на бедного глухаря, будет кричать: но где же тут изящное, скажите, где тут изящное? И разругает меня на все корки. Публика... Публика проходит мимо бесстрастно или с неприятной гримасой; дамы - те только скажут: "ah, comme il est laid, се глухарь", и проплывут к следующей картине, к "девочке с кошкой", смотря на которую, скажут: "очень, очень мило" или что-нибудь подобное. Солидные господа с бычьими глазами поглазеют, потупят взоры в каталог, испустят не то мычание, не то сопенье и благополучно проследуют далее. И разве только какой-нибудь юноша или молодая девушка остановятся со вниманием и прочтут в измученных глазах, страдальчески смотрящих с полотна, вопль, вложенный мною в них...
Ну, а дальше? Картина выставлена, куплена и увезена. Что ж будет со мною? То, что я пережил в последние дни, погибнет ли бесследно? Кончится ли все только одним волнением, после которого наступит отдых с исканием невинных сюжетов?.. Невинные сюжеты! Вдруг вспомнилось мне, как один знакомый хранитель галереи, составляя каталог, кричал писцу:
- Мартынов, пиши! №112 Первая любовная сцена: девушка срывает розу.
- Мартынов, еще пиши! №113 Вторая любовная сцена: девушка нюхает розу.
Буду ли я по-прежнему нюхать розу? Или сойду с рельсов?
It is a fortnight since I stopped going to the academy. I sit at home, painting. The work has worn me out completely, although it is going well. I should have said because it is going well instead of although. The nearer it moves to completion the more frightening does this thing I have painted seem to me. I also have a feeling that this will be my last painting.
There he sits before me, crouching in the dark boiler, a man clothed in rags, panting with fatigue. He would not be visible at all but for the light that filters through the round holes drilled for the rivets. These disks of light spangle his clothes and face, throw patches of gleaming gold on his tatters, on his matted grimy beard and hair, his livid face, down which pours sweat mixed with dirt, on his knotted toil-worn hands, his broad, sunken, pain-racked chest. The terrible blows descend upon the boiler without a stop and make the unfortunate fellow exert every ounce of his strength to keep his body balanced in its unnatural pose. I have tried to express this strained effort of the man as best I could.
Sometimes I put aside my palette and brushes and sit down as far away from the picture as I can, directly facing it. I am pleased with it; I have never done anything so well as that ghastly thing. The only trouble is this satisfaction/is torture to me instead of a pleasure. It is not a painted picture, it is a ripened disease. Where it is going to end I do not know, but I feel that after this picture I will have nothing more to paint. Fowlers, fishers, huntsmen with all kinds of expressions and typical faces, that whole "rich domain of genre"-of what use is it to me now? I shall never be as effectual as I am with this Human Anvil, if I am effectual at all. . . .
I made an experiment: I invited Dedov down and showed him my picture. All he said was, "Oh, I say," and spread his hands. He sat down, looked at it for half an hour, then silently took his leave and went away. I believe he was impressed. But then he is an artist after all.
I, too, sit in front of my picture, and it impresses me too. You look and cannot tear your eyes away from it; you feel for that pain-racked tortured figure. Sometimes I even seem to hear the blows of the hammer. It will drive me mad. I must cover it up.
The easel with the picture on it is covered with a cloth, but I still sit before it, the same dread unuttered thoughts preying on my mind. The sun goes down and throws a shaft of slanting yellow light upon the covered easel through the dusty window-panes. Exactly like a human figure. Like the Weltgeist in Faust, as represented by German actors.
. . . Wer ruft mich?
Who calls thee? I, I myself have created thee here. I have invoked thee, not from the "spheres," but from a dark and stuffy boiler in order that the sight of thee may appal that clean, that sleek and hateful rabble. Bound to canvas by the spell of my power, come forth, gaze down upon those dress coats and trains, and shout to them: I am a festering sore! Smite their hearts, give them no sleep, rise as a ghost before their eyes! Kill their peace of mind, as thou hast killed mine. . . .
Not likely! The picture has been finished, and put in a gilt frame, and two attendants will bear it off to the exhibition at the academy on their heads. And now there it stands among the Noons and Sunsets, next to a "Girl with a cat," not far from a seven-yard-long "Ivan the Terrible piercing the foot of Vaska Shibanov with his staff." You cannot say that no one looked at it; people will look at it and even praise it. Artists will discuss the texture. Reviewers, taking their cue from them, will start scribbling in their notebooks. Mr. V. S. alone takes his cue from no one; he looks, approves, praises, and shakes my hand. L. the art critic will furiously attack the poor Human Anvil, and shout: "But where does beauty come in? Tell me, where is the beautiful?" And he will rail at me in good set "terms. The public. . . . The public pass by impassively or with a grimace of distaste; the ladies will merely say: "Ah, comme il est laid, ce Human Anvil," and sail along to the next picture, the "Girl with a cat," looking at which they will say: "Pretty, very pretty," or something like that. Solid-looking ox-eyed gentlemen will stare at it, lower their gaze to the catalogue, emit a sound that is half moo and half sniff, and proceed on their way. Only some youth, perhaps, or some young girl will stop attentively, and read with amazement in the anguish-filled eyes looking down at them from the canvas the cry of pain that I have put into them.
And what next? The picture has been shown, bought, and taken away. But what is going to happen to me? Will all that I have lived through these last few days be lost without a trace? Will the end of it be a mere stirring of emotion, after which will come relaxation and a quest of innocent subjects? Innocent subjects! I was suddenly reminded of a picture-gallery keeper of my acquaintance, who compiled a catalogue, and shouted to the clerk:
"Martynov, take it down! No. 112. First love scene: girl plucks a rose."
"Martynov, another one! No. 113. Second love scene: girl smells the rose."
Shall I be smelling the rose as before? Or will I go off the rails?
Ryabinin works on the painting called Glukhar' ("Human Anvil"). Glukhar' is the Russian name of capercaillie (the bird Tetrao urogallus). Describing the King's escape from Zembla, Kinbote mentions good capercaillie and woodcock shooting:
A handshake, a flash of lightning. As the King waded into the damp, dark bracken, its odor, its lacy resilience, and the mixture of soft growth and steep ground reminded him of the times he had picnicked hereabouts - in another part of the forest but on the same mountainside, and higher up, as a boy, on the boulderfield where Mr. Campbell had once twisted an ankle and had to be carried down, smoking his pipe, by two husky attendants. Rather full memories, on the whole. Wasn't there a hunting box nearby - just beyond Silfhar Falls? Good capercaillie and woodcock shooting - a sport much enjoyed by his late mother, Queen Blenda, a tweedy and horsy queen. Now as then, the rain seethed in the black trees, and if you paused you heard your heart thumping, and the distant roar of the torrent. What is the time, kot or? He pressed his repeater and, undismayed, it hissed and tinkled out ten twenty-one. (note to Line 149)