Describing the King's escape from Zembla, 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 a shiver of alfear (uncontrollable fear caused by elves) that ran between his shoulderblades:
He was still chuckling over the wench's discomfiture when he came to the tremendous stones amassed around a small lake which he had reached once or twice from the rocky Kronberg side many years ago. Now he glimpsed the flash of the pool through the aperture of a natural vault, a masterpiece of erosion. The vault was low and he bent his head to step down toward the water. In its limpid tintarron he saw his scarlet reflection but, oddly enough, owing to what seemed to be at first blush an optical illusion, this reflection was not at his feet but much further; moreover, it was accompanied by the ripple-warped reflection of a ledge that jutted high above his present position. And finally, the strain on the magic of the image caused it to snap as his red-sweatered, red-capped doubleganger turned and vanished, whereas he, the observer, remained immobile. He now advanced to the very lip of the water and was met there by a genuine reflection, much larger and clearer than the one that had deceived him. He skirted the pool. High up in the deep-blue sky jutted the empty ledge whereon a counterfeit king had just stood. A shiver of alfear (uncontrollable fear caused by elves) ran between his shoulderblades. He murmured a familiar prayer, crossed himself, and resolutely proceeded toward the pass. At a high point upon an adjacent ridge a steinmann (a heap of stones erected as a memento of an ascent) had donned a cap of red wool in his honor. He trudged on. But his heart was a conical ache poking him from below in the throat, and after a while he stopped again to take stock of conditions and decide whether to scramble up the steep debris slope in front of him or to strike off to the right along a strip of grass, gay with gentians, that went winding between lichened rocks. He elected the second route and in due course reached the pass. (note to Line 149)
Uncontrollable fear caused by elves, alfear brings to mind VN's story Kartofel'nyi el'f ("The Potato Elf," 1929) and Alfyorov, a character (Mashen'ka's husband, the mathematician) in VN's first novel Mashen'ka ("Mary," 1926). "A strip of grass, gay with gentians," makes one think of Gornotsvetov ("Mr. Mountbloom"), a gay dancer (Kolin's partner) in Mary. The main character in Mary, Ganin compares Alfyorov to tsifra (a figure) and his wife, to tsvetok (a flower):
-- Вы не математик, Антон Сергеич, -- суетливо продолжал Алферов.-- А я на числах, как на качелях, всю жизнь прокачался. Бывало, говорил жене: раз я математик, ты мать-и-мачеха.
Горноцветов и Колин залились тонким смехом. Госпожа Дорн вздрогнула, испуганно посмотрела на обоих.
-- Одним словом: цифра и цветок,-- холодно сказал Ганин.
Только Клара улыбнулась. Ганин стал наливать себе воды, все смотрели на его движенье.
-- Да, вы правы, нежнейший цветок,-- протяжно сказал Алфёров, окинув соседа своим блестящим, рассеянным взглядом. -- Прямо чудо, как она пережила эти годы ужаса. Я вот уверен, что она приедет сюда цветущая, веселая... Вы -- поэт, Антон Сергеевич, опишите-ка такую штуку,-- как женственность, прекрасная русская женственность, сильнее всякой революции, переживает все,-- невзгоды, террор...
‘You’re not a mathematician, Anton Sergeyevich,’ Alfyorov went on fussily, ‘but I’ve been swinging on that trapeze all my life. I once used to say to my wife that if I’m a “summer” you’re surely a spring cinquefoil —’
Gornotsvetov and Kolin dissolved in mannered mirth. Frau Dorn gave a start and looked at them both in fright.
‘In short, a flower and a figure,’ said Ganin drily. Only Klara smiled. Ganin started pouring himself some water, his action watched by all the others.
‘Yes, you’re right, a most fragile flower,’ drawled Alfyorov, turning his bright, vacant look onto his neighbor. ‘It’s an absolute miracle how she survived those seven years of horror. And I’m sure that when she arrives she’ll be gay and blooming. You’re a poet, Anton Sergeyevich; you ought to write something about it — about how womanhood, lovely Russian womanhood, is stronger than any revolution and can survive it all — adversity, terror —’ (Chapter II)
In his poem Domik v Kolomne ("A Small House in Kolomna," 1830), a mock epic in octaves, Pushkin says that it is a thrill to lead one’s verses under numbers (pod tsiframi) and compares each line to a soldier and the poet, to a Tamerlane or even Napoleon himself:
Как весело стихи свои вести
Под цыфрами, в порядке, строй за строем,
Не позволять им в сторону брести,
Как войску, в пух рассыпанному боем!
Тут каждый слог замечен и в чести,
Тут каждый стих глядит себе героем,
А стихотворец… с кем же равен он?
Он Тамерлан иль сам Наполеон. (V)
In his short poem “The Nature of Electricity” (that Kinbote quotes in full in his commentary) Shade mentions a streetlamp number nine-hundred-ninety-nine and the torments of a Tamerlane:
The light never came back but it gleams again in a short poem "The Nature of Electricity," which John Shade had sent to the New York magazine The Beau and the Butterfly, some time in 1958, but which appeared only after his death:
The dead, the gentle dead--who knows?--
In tungsten filaments abide,
And on my bedside table glows
Another man's departed bride.
And maybe Shakespeare floods a whole
Town with innumerable lights,
And Shelley's incandescent soul
Lures the pale moths of starless nights.
Streetlamps are numbered, and maybe
Number nine-hundred-ninety-nine
(So brightly beaming through a tree
So green) is an old friend of mine.
And when above the livid plain
Forked lightning plays, therein may dwell
The torments of a Tamerlane,
The roar of tyrants torn in hell.
Science tells us, by the way, that the Earth would not merely fall apart, but vanish like a ghost, if Electricity were suddenly removed from the world. (note to Line 347)
The poem's last line, "The roar of tyrants torn in hell," brings to mind VN's story Istreblenie tiranov ("Tyrants Destroyed," 1938). In his memoir essay Muni (1926) Vladislav Hodasevich (a poet and memoirist, 1886-1939) mentions the electricity that got gradually accumulated in the air (the thunderstorm struck in 1914):
Мы переживали те годы, которые шли за 1905-м: годы душевной усталости и повального эстетизма. В литературе по пятам модернистской школы, внезапно получившей всеобщее признание как раз за то, что в ней было несущественно или плохо, потянулись бесчисленные низкопробные подражатели. В обществе - тщедушные барышни босиком воскрешали эллинство. Буржуа, вдруг ощутивший волю к "дерзаниям", накинулся на "вопросы пола". Где-то пониже плодились санинцы и огарки. На улицах строились декадентские дома. И незаметно надо всем этим скоплялось электричество. Гроза ударила в 1914 году.
The World War I began on July 28, 1914. 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). In his 1915 poem Voyna ("War") Aleksey Ganin says: "Snova tsarstvuet v mire Nikto (Again Nobody reigns in the world):"
Ты подумай, как страшно теперь...
Мы молиться и плакать устали.
Всюду грозные призраки встали
На путях твоих в горнюю дверь.
Каждый вечер зловещий огонь,
Вместо зорь на небесной пустыне.
В травах кровью дымящийся иней,
Смертоносная, лютая вонь.
Умерла на колосьях пчела.
Высох мёд на губах человека.
И дремавшая в камнях от века
Стальнозубая гибель пришла.
Обезумел испуганный мир,
Поклонился незримому зверю,
И с проклятьем в спасенье не веря,
Глохнет в лязге и звоне секир.
Больше нету весёлых детей,
Всюду когти железа и смерти.
И взывают к грохочущей тверди
Только трупы да горы костей.
Все проглочено пастью литой...
Рыщут ветры по мёртвым дорогам,
Стёрто имя всезрящего Бога,
Снова царствует в мире «Никто».
Тёмной ночью окутана дверь...
Где-то плачется звёздная вьюга...
Мы блуждаем средь мёртвого круга;
Ты подумай, как страшно теперь...
The poem's last line, "Ty podumay, kak strashno teper'... (You just think, how terrifying it is now...)" is identical to Line 1. Shade’s poem is almost finished when the author is killed by Gradus. 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”). Dvoynik ("The Double," 1846) is a short novel by Dostoevski, a writer whom Shade lists among Russian humorists:
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)
Shade's, Kinbote's and Gradus' "real" name, Botkin is nikto b (none would) in reverse. In Pushkin's little tragedy Mozart and Salieri (1830) Mozart calls the man who commissioned him a Requiem "moy chyornyi chelovek (my black man)" and uses the phrase nikto b (none would). Chyornyi chelovek ("The Black Man," 1925) is a famous poem by Sergey Esenin (1895-1925). A poet who was executed on March 30, 1925, in Moscow, Aleksey Ganin (1893-1925) was Esenin's best friend. Esenin brings to mind Yeslove, a fine town, district and bishopric, north of Onhava (the capital of Kinbote's Zembla).