At the end of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN's novel Pale Fire, 1962) says that his brain is drained and mentions a brown ament (a catkin) that dries on the cement:
Gently the day has passed in a sustained
Low hum of harmony. The brain is drained
And a brown ament, and the noun I meant
To use but did not, dry on the cement.
Maybe my sensual love for the consonne
D'appui, Echo's fey child, is based upon
A feeling of fantastically planned,
Richly rhymed life. I feel I understand
Existence, or at least a minute part
Of my existence, only through my art,
In terms of combinational delight;
And if my private universe scans right,
So does the verse of galaxies divine
Which I suspect is an iambic line.
I'm reasonably sure that we survive
And that my darling somewhere is alive,
As I am reasonably sure that I
Shall wake at six tomorrow, on July
The twenty-second, nineteen fifty-nine,
And that the day will probably be fine;
So this alarm clock let me set myself,
Yawn, and put back Shade's "Poems" on their shelf.
But it's not bedtime yet. The sun attains
Old Dr. Sutton's last two windowpanes.
The man must be - what? Eighty? Eighty-two?
Was twice my age the year I married you.
Where are you? In the garden. I can see
Part of your shadow near the shagbark tree.
Somewhere horseshoes are being tossed. Click, Clunk.
(Leaning against its lamppost like a drunk.)
A dark Vanessa with crimson band
Wheels in the low sun, settles on the sand
And shows its ink-blue wingtips flecked with white.
And through the flowing shade and ebbing light
A man, unheedful of the butterfly -
Some neighbor's gardener, I guess - goes by
Trundling an empty barrow up the lane. (ll. 963-999)
Shade is reasonably sure that he will wake at six tomorrow, on July the twenty-second. But on the same evening of July 21, 1959, the poet is killed by Gradus. When We Dead Awaken (Når vi døde vågner, 1899) is the last play of Henrik Ibsen (a Norwegian playwright, 1828-1906).
brain + Ibsen + ament = R. Nesbit Bain + amen/name/mane
In his autobiography Speak, Memory (1951) VN describes his years at Cambridge and pairs Ibsen with Gorki and Gorki’s translator (a certain R. Nesbit Bain):
To some of the several fellow émigrés I met in Cambridge the general trend of my feelings was so obvious and familiar a thing that it would have fallen flat and seemed almost improper if put into words. With the whiter of those White Russians I soon found out that patriotism and politics boiled down to a snarling resentment which was directed more against Kerenski than against Lenin and which proceeded solely from material discomforts and losses. Then, too, I ran into some quite unexpected difficulties with such of my English acquaintances as were considered to be cultured and subtle, and humane, but who, for all their decency and refinement, would lapse into the most astonishing drivel when Russia was being discussed. I want to single out here a young Socialist I knew, a lanky giant whose slow and multiple manipulations of a pipe were horribly aggravating when you did not agree with him and delightfully soothing when you did. With him, I had many political wrangles, the bitterness of which invariably dissolved when we turned to the poets we both cherished. Today he is not unknown among his peers, which is, I admit readily, a pretty meaningless phrase, but then, I am doing my best to obscure his identity; let me refer to him by the name of ‘Nesbit’ as I dubbed him (or affirm now having dubbed him), not only because of his alleged resemblance to early portraits of Maxim Gorki, a regional mediocrity of that era, one of whose stories (“My Fellow Traveler” – another apt note) had been translated by a certain R. Nesbit Bain, but also because ‘Nesbit’ has the advantage of entering into a voluptuous palindromic association with ‘Ibsen,’ a name I shall have to evoke presently. (Chapter Thirteen, 3)
Gorki = igrok (gambler, player). Igrok ("The Gambler," 1866) is a novel by Dostoevski, the author of Dvoynik ("The Double," 1848). Shade’s poem is almost finished when the author is killed by Gradus. Shade’s mad commentator who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla, 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”). Perhaps, the noun that Shade meant to use but did not is "the double"? Shade's murderer, Gradus is Kinbote's double. In a letter of Oct. 31, 1838, to his brother Dostoevski repeats the word gradus (degree) twice:
Философию не надо полагать простой математической задачей, где неизвестное - природа... Заметь, что поэт в порыве вдохновенья разгадывает бога, следовательно, исполняет назначенье философии. Следовательно, поэтический восторг есть восторг философии... Следовательно, философия есть та же поэзия, только высший градус её!..
Philosophy should not be regarded as a mere equation where nature is the unknown quantity… Remark that the poet, in the moment of inspiration, comprehends God, and consequently does the philosopher’s work. Consequently poetic inspiration is nothing less than philosophical inspiration. Consequently philosophy is nothing but poetry, a higher degree of poetry!..
Друг мой! Ты философствуешь как поэт. И как не ровно выдерживает душа градус вдохновенья, так не ровна, не верна и твоя философия. Чтоб больше знать, надо меньше чувствовать, и обратно, правило опрометчивое, бред сердца.
My friend, you philosophize like a poet. And just because the soul cannot be forever in a state of exaltation, your philosophy is not true and not just. To know more one must feel less, and vice versa. Your judgment is featherheaded – it is a delirium of the heart.
October 31, 1838, was Dostoevski’s seventeenth birthday. Shade’s birthday, July 5, is also Kinbote’s and Gradus’ birthday (while Shade was born in 1898, Kinbote and Gradus were born in 1915). 1898 + 17 = 1915. The poet Shade, his commentator Kinbote and his murderer Gradus seem to represent three different aspects of one and the same person whose "real" name is Botkin. 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’s “real” name). Nadezhda means "hope." There is a hope that, when Kinbote completes his work on Shade’s poem and commits suicide (on Oct. 19, 1959, the anniversary of Pushkin’s Lyceum), Botkin, like Count Vorontsov (a target of Pushkin’s epigram, “half-milord, half-merchant, etc.”), will be full again.
Just as ‘Nesbit’ has the advantage of entering into a voluptuous palindromic association with ‘Ibsen,’ the name Botkin enters into a palindromic association with nikto (nobody), the last word in Lermontov’s poem Net, ya ne Bayron, ya drugoy… (“No, I’m not Byron, I’m another,” 1832). In his essay “Pushkin” (1896) Merezhkovski points out that Pushkin is closer to Goethe, than to Byron, and uses the word nikto:
С этой точки зрения становится вполне ясной ошибка тех, которые ставят Пушкина в связь не с Гёте, а с Байроном. Правда, Байрон увеличил силы Пушкина, но не иначе как побеждённый враг увеличивает силы победителя. Пушкин поглотил Евфориона, преодолел его крайности, его разлад, претворил его в своем сердце, и устремился дальше, выше — в те ясные сферы всеобъемлющей гармонии, куда звал Гёте и куда за Гёте никто не имел силы пойти, кроме Пушкина.
According to Merezhkovski, Pushkin followed Goethe to those clear spheres of all-embracing harmony where Goethe had called and where nobody, except Pushkin, was strong enough to go. The opening lines of Goethe's Erlkönig (1782), Wer reitet so spät durch Nacht und Wind? / Es ist der Vater mit seinem Kind (Who rides so late through night and wind? / It is the father with his child), are a leitmotif in Canto Three of Shade's poem.
The last day of Shade's life has passed in a sustained low hum of harmony. In Pushkin's little tragedy Mozart and Salieri (1830) Salieri says that he 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)
In Pushkin’s little tragedy Mozart twice mentions harmony and uses the phrase nikto b (none would):
М о ц а р т
За твоё
Здоровье, друг, за искренний союз,
Связующий Моцарта и Сальери,
Двух сыновей гармонии.
(Пьёт.)
Mozart
To your health,
My friend, and to the loyal bond
that binds together Mozart and Salieri,
two sons of harmony. (Scene II)
Моцарт
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.
Mozart
If all could feel like you the power of harmony!
But no: the world could not go on then. None
Would bother with the needs of lowly life;
All would surrender to free art. (ibid.)
Nikto b is Botkin in rverse. Hazel Shade (the poet's daughter) liked to read words (and names) backwards. Lermontov's poem "No, I'm not Byron, I'm another" ends in the line Ya - ili Bog - ili nikto (Myself - or God - or none at all). Nik. T-o ("Mr. Nobody") was the penname of the poet Innokentiy Annenski (1855-1909). The essays in Annenski's Second Book of Reflections (1909) include Yumor Lermontova ("Lermontov's Humor") and Brand-Ibsen. Brand (1865) is a play (a verse tragedy) by Ibsen. In the penultimate line of his poem Vozmezdie («Retribution», 1910-21) Alexander Blok mentions quantum satis Branda voli (quantum satis of strong-willed Brand):
Когда ты загнан и забит
Людьми, заботой, иль тоскою;
Когда под гробовой доскою
Всё, что тебя пленяло, спит;
Когда по городской пустыне,
Отчаявшийся и больной,
Ты возвращаешься домой,
И тяжелит ресницы иней,
Тогда - остановись на миг
Послушать тишину ночную:
Постигнешь слухом жизнь иную,
Которой днём ты не постиг;
По-новому окинешь взглядом
Даль снежных улиц, дым костра,
Ночь, тихо ждущую утра
Над белым запушённым садом,
И небо - книгу между книг;
Найдёшь в душе опустошённой
Вновь образ матери склонённый,
И в этот несравненный миг -
Узоры на стекле фонарном,
Мороз, оледенивший кровь,
Твоя холодная любовь -
Всё вспыхнет в сердце благодарном,
Ты всё благословишь тогда,
Поняв, что жизнь - безмерно боле,
Чем quantum satis Бранда воли,
А мир - прекрасен, как всегда.
When you are cornered and depressed
By people, dues or anguish.
When, underneath the coffin lid,
All that inspired you, perished;
When through the deserted town dome,
Hopeless and weak,
You're finally returning home,
And rime is on thy eyelashes, -
Then - come to rest for short-lifted flash
To hear the silence of night
You'll fathom other life by ears
That's hard to fathom at daylight
In new way you will do the glance
Of long snow streets and foam of fire,
Of night, quite waiting for the lance
Of morning in white garden, piled.
Of heaven - Book among the books
You'll find in the drained soul
Again your loving mother's look
And at this moment, peerless, sole
The patterns on the lamppost's glass
The frost, that chilled your blood
Your stone-hold love, already past
All will flare up in your heart.
Then everything you'll highly bless
You'll see that life is much greater
Than quantum satis of strong-willed Brand
And the world is beautiful as always. (chapter III)
In Latin quantum satis means “the amount which is enough.” The 999 lines of Shade’s poem look insufficient.
Kinbote's Zembla (in Zemblan: Semblerland) is a land of reflections, of 'resemblers.' When VN revisited Cambridge in the 1930s and met Nesbit (who once resembled Gorki, or Gorki's translator) again, Nesbit looked a little like Ibsen, minus the simian vegetation:
When, after an absence of almost seventeen years I revisited England, I made the dreadful mistake of going to see Cambridge again not at the glorious end of the Easter term but on a raw February day that reminded me only of my own confused old nostalgia. I was hopelessly trying to find an academic job in England (the ease with which I obtained that type of employment in the U.S.A. is to me, in backthought, a constant source of grateful wonder). In every way the visit was not a success. I had lunch with Nesbit at a little place, which ought to have been full of memories but which, owing to various changes, was not. He had given up smoking. Time had softened his features and he no longer resembled Gorki or Gorki’s translator, but looked a little like Ibsen, minus the simian vegetation. An accidental worry (the cousin or maiden sister who kept house for him had just been removed to Binet’s clinic or something) seemed to prevent him from concentrating on the very personal and urgent matter I wanted to speak to him about. Bound volumes of Punch were heaped on a table in a kind of small vestibule where a bowl of goldfish had formerly stood—and it all looked so different. Different too were the garish uniforms worn by the waitresses, of whom none was as pretty as the particular one I remembered so clearly. Rather desperately, as if struggling against boredom, Ibsen launched into politics. I knew well what to expect—denunciation of Stalinism. In the early twenties Nesbit had mistaken his own ebullient idealism for a romantic and humane something in Lenin’s ghastly rule. Ibsen, in the days of the no less ghastly Stalin, was mistaking a quantitative increase in his own knowledge for a qualitative change in the Soviet regime. The thunderclap of purges that had affected “old Bolsheviks,” the heroes of his youth, had given him a salutary shock, something that in Lenin’s day all the groans coming from the Solovki forced labor camp or the Lubyanka dungeon had not been able to do. With horror he pronounced the names of Ezhov and Yagoda—but quite forgot their predecessors, Uritski and Dzerzhinski. While time had improved his judgment regarding contemporaneous Soviet affairs, he did not bother to reconsider the preconceived notions of his youth, and still saw in Lenin’s short reign a kind of glamorous quinquennium Neronis. (Chapter Thirteen, 5)
Btw., Ibsen's first play was Catiline (1848-49). Catilina (1919) is an essay by Alexander Blok. Lucius Sergius Catilina (c. 108 BC – 62 BC) was a Roman politician and soldier, best known for instigating the Catilinian conspiracy, a failed attempt to violently seize control of the Roman state in 63 BC. Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus was a Roman emperor and the final emperor of the Julio-Claudian dinasty, reigning from AD 54 until his death in AD 68. Ibsen is the author of Emperor and Galilean (Kejser og Galilæer, 1873) a play about the Roman Emperor Julian the Apostate (331–363), the last pagan ruler of the Roman Empire. Smert' bogov. Yulian Otstupnik ("The Death of Gods. Julian the Apostate," 1895) is a novel by Merezhkovski, the first novel in Merezhkovski's trilogy Khristos i Antikhrist ("Christ and the Antichrist").