According to 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), he suggested to Shade Solus Rex as the title of his poem:
We know how firmly, how stupidly I believed that Shade was composing a poem, a kind of romaunt, about the King of Zembla. We have been prepared for the horrible disappointment in store for me. Oh, I did not expect him to devote himself completely to that theme! It might have been blended of course with some of his own life stuff and sundry Americana - but I was sure his poem would contain the wonderful incidents I had described to him, the characters I had made alive for him and all the unique atmosphere of my kingdom. I even suggested to him a good title - the title of the book in me whose pages he was to cut: Solus Rex, instead of which I saw Pale Fire, which meant to me nothing. I started to read the poem. I read faster and faster. I sped through it, snarling, as a furious young heir through an old deceiver's testament. Where were the battlements of my sunset castle? Where was Zembla the Fair? Where her spine of mountains? Where her long thrill through the mist? And my lovely flower boys, and the spectrum of the stained windows, and the Black Rose Paladins, and the whole marvelous tale? (note to Line 1000)
Solus Rex brings to mind Axel Rex, the villain in Laughter in the Dark (1938), the English version of VN's most cinematic novel Camera Obscura (1933). Rex Ingram (born Reginald Ingram Montgomery Hitchcock; 15 January 1893 – 21 July 1950) was an Irish film director, producer, writer, and actor. Rex Ingram died of a cerebral hemorrhage on July 21, 1950. In Pale Fire, Shade is killed by Gradus on the evening of July 21, 1959. In 1920 Rex Ingram moved to Metro where he was under the supervision of executive June Mathis. Mathis and Ingram would go on to make four films together: Hearts Are Trumps, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, The Conquering Power, and Turn to the Right. It is believed the two were romantically involved. Ingram and Mathis had begun to grow distant when her new find, Rudolph Valentino, began to overshadow Ingram's own fame. Their relationship ended when Ingram eloped with Alice Terry in 1921. Rodolfo Pietro Filiberto Raffaele Guglielmi di Valentina d'Antonguolla (1895 – 1926), known professionally as Rudolph Valentino or just as Valentino, was an Italian-born actor and dancer. Dubbed the Latin Lover, he became one of the most iconic stars of American silent cinema and an enduring symbol of old Hollywood glamour. Rising to international fame in the early 1920s, Valentino was celebrated for his exotic screen persona, romantic intensity, and expressive performances, which helped redefine male stardom during the silent era. The characters in VN's novel Zashchita Luzhina ("The Luzhin Defense," 1930) include Valentinov, Luzhin's chess tutor who becomes a movie man (the head of a Berlin film studio "Veritas") in emigration. At the end of the novel, Valentinov asks poor Luzhin (a married man now who begins to go mad) to play a cameo part in a film he makes at his studio. On the other hand, the movie star Rudolph Valentino brings to mind Rudolph, in VN's novel Dar ("The Gift," 1937) a German boy in whose soul Yasha Chernyshevski fell in love. After Yasha's suicide, his father, poor Alexander Yakovlevich Chernyshevski, goes mad and begins to see Yasha's ghost. The Chernyshevski couple in The Gift have the same name and patronymic as goluboy vorishka (the bashful chiseller) and his wife in Ilf and Petrov’s novel Dvenadtsat’ stul’yev (“The Twelve Chairs,” 1928):
Завхоз 2-го дома Старсобеса был застенчивый ворюга. Всё существо его протестовало против краж, но не красть он не мог. Он крал, и ему было стыдно. Крал он постоянно, постоянно стыдился, и поэтому его хорошо бритые щёчки всегда горели румянцем смущения, стыдливости, застенчивости и конфуза. Завхоза звали Александром Яковлевичем, а жену его – Александрой Яковлевной. Он называл её Сашхен, она звала его Альхен. Свет не видывал ещё такого голубого воришки, как Александр Яковлевич.
The Assistant Warden of the Second Home of Stargorod Social Security Administration was a shy little thief. His whole being protested against stealing, yet it was impossible for him not to steal. He stole and was ashamed of himself. He stole constantly and was constantly ashamed of himself, which was why his smoothly shaven cheeks always burned with a blush of confusion, shame, bashfulness and embarrassment. The assistant warden's name was Alexander Yakovlevich, and his wife's name was Alexandra Yakovlevna. He used to call her Saschchen, and she used to call him Alchen. The world has never seen such a bashful chiseller as Alexander Yakovlevich. (chapter VIII “The Bashful Chiseller”)
Goluboy being the Russian word for blue, goluboy vorishka (the bashful chiseller) brings to mind "our blue inenubilable Zembla" mentioned by Kinbote a few moments before Shade's death:
"Well," I said, "has the muse been kind to you?"
"Very kind," he replied, slightly bowing his hand-propped head. "exceptionally kind and gentle. In fact, I have here [indicating a huge pregnant envelope near him on the oilcloth] practically the entire product. A few trifles to settle and [suddenly striking the table with his fist] I've swung it, by God."
The envelope, unfastened at one end, bulged with stacked cards.
"Where is the missus?" I asked (mouth dry).
"Help me, Charlie, to get out of here," he pleaded. "Foot gone to sleep. Sybil is at a dinner-meeting of her club."
"A suggestion," I said, quivering. "I have at my place half a gallon of Tokay. I'm ready to share my favorite wine with my favorite poet. We shall have for dinner a knackle of walnuts, a couple of large tomatoes, and a bunch of bananas. And if you agree to show me your 'finished product,' there will be another treat: I promise to divulge to you why I gave you, or rather who gave you, your theme."
"What theme?" said Shade absently, as he leaned on my arm and gradually recovered the use of his numb limb.
"Our blue inenubilable Zembla, and the red-capped Steinmann, and the motorboat in the sea cave, and -"
"Ah," said Shade, "I think I guessed your secret quite some time ago. But all the same I shall sample your wine with pleasure. Okay, I can manage by myself now." (note to Line 991)
and Dr Blue, in VN's novel Lolita (1955), the chief physician at the Elphinstone hospital. A fictional district town where Vorobyaninov (one of the three diamond hunters in Ilf and Petrov's The Twelve Chairs) was the marshal of nobility before the 1917 Revolution, Stargorod ('Oldton') makes one think of Gray Star, a settlement in the remotest Northwest where, according to John Ray, Jr. (the author of the foreword to Humbert Humbert's manuscript), Mrs. “Richard F. Schiller” (Lolita's married name) died in childbed, giving birth to a stillborn girl, on Christmas Day 1952:
For the benefit of old-fashioned readers who wish to follow the destinies of “real” people beyond the “true” story, a few details may be given as received from Mr. “Windmuller,” of “Ramsdale,” who desires his identity suppressed so that “the long shadows of this sorry and sordid business” should not reach the community to which he is proud to belong. His daughter, “Louise,” is by now a college sophomore. “Mona Dahl” is a student in Paris. “Rita” has recently married the proprietor of a hotel in Florida. Mrs. “Richard F. Schiller” died in childbed, giving birth to a stillborn girl, on Christmas Day 1952, in Gray Star, a settlement in the remotest Northwest. ‘Vivian Darkbloom’ has written a biography, ‘My Cue,’ to be published shortly, and critics who have perused the manuscript call it her best book. The caretakers of the various cemeteries involved report that no ghosts walk.
But it seems that, actually, Lolita dies of ague in the Elphinstone hospital on July 4, 1949, and everything what happens after her sudden death (Lolita's escape from the hospital with Quilty, Humbert's affair with Rita, Lolita's marriage and pregnancy, and the murder of Clare Quilty) was invented by Humbert Humbert (whose "real" name is John Ray, Jr.). Ray is Russian for paradise. One of the chapters in The Twelve Chairs is entitled Izgnanie iz raya ("Expulsion from Paradise"). It is followed by the chapter entitled Mezhplanetnyi shakhmatnyi kongress ("The Interplanetary Chess Tournament"). A solus rex (or rex solus) chess problem is a composed puzzle where one side—typically Black—is reduced to having only a lone king left on the board. According to Kinbote, in a conversation with him Shade mentioned those joint authors of genius Ilf and Petrov:
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)
The Head of the bloated Russian Department at Wordsmith University, Professor Pnin is the title character of a novel (1957) by VN. The film director, Rex Ingram brings to mind Ivan Ilyich Gramineev, an incidental character (a landscape painter) in Pnin. He has the same name and patronymic as Ivan Ilyich Golovin, the hero of Tolstoy's story Smert' Ivana Ilyicha ("The Death of Ivan Ilyich," 1886). In his essay Ob Annenskom (“On Annenski,” 1921) Vladislav Hodasevich (a Russian poet, critic and memoirist, 1886-1939) compares Innokentiy Annenski (a Russian poet and essayist, 1855-1909) to Tolstoy's Ivan Ilyich and points out that Annenski regarded his penname Nik. T-o ("Mr. Nobody") as a translation of Greek Outis (the pseudonym under which Odysseus conceals his identity from Polyphemus, the one-eyed Cyclops in Homer’s Odyssey):
Чего не додумал Иван Ильич, то знал Анненский. Знал, что никаким директорством, никаким бытом и даже никакой филологией от смерти по-настоящему не загородиться. Она уничтожит и директора, и барина, и филолога. Только над истинным его "я", над тем, что отображается в "чувствах и мыслях", над личностью -- у неё как будто нет власти. И он находил реальное, осязаемое отражение и утверждение личности -- в поэзии. Тот, чьё лицо он видел, подходя к зеркалу, был директор гимназии, смертный никто. Тот, чьё лицо отражалось в поэзии, был бессмертный некто. Ник. Т-о -- никто -- есть безличный действительный статский советник, которым, как видимой оболочкой, прикрыт невидимый некто. Этот свой псевдоним, под которым он печатал стихи, Анненский рассматривал как перевод греческого "утис", никто, -- того самого псевдонима, под которым Одиссей скрыл от циклопа Полифема своё истинное имя, свою подлинную личность, своего некто. Поэзия была для него заклятием страшного Полифема -- смерти. Но психологически это не только не мешало, а даже способствовало тому, чтобы его вдохновительницей, его Музой была смерть.
According to Hodasevich, Annenski's Muse was death. Just before the poet's death, Kinbote asks Shade if the muse has been kind to him. In his essay Problema Gamleta (“The Problem of Hamlet”) included in Vtoraya kniga otrazheniy ("The Second Book of Reflections,” 1909) Annenski mentions Pushkin's Mozart and says that Hamlet is not Salieri:
Видите ли: зависть художника не совсем то, что наша...
Для художника это - болезненное сознание своей ограниченности и желание делать творческую жизнь свою как можно полнее. Истинный художник и завистлив и жаден... я слышу возражение - пушкинский Моцарт. - Да! Но ведь Гамлет не Сальери. Моцарта же Пушкин, как известно, изменил: его короткая жизнь была отнюдь не жизнью праздного гуляки, а сплошным творческим горением. Труд его был громаден, не результат труда, а именно труд.
At the end of Pushkin’s little tragedy Mozart and Salieri (1830) Mozart uses the phrase nikto b (none would):
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.
If only all so quickly felt the power
of harmony! But no, in that event
the world could not exist; none would care
about the needs of ordinary life,
all would give themselves to free art. (Scene II)
Nikto b is Botkin (Shade’s, Kinbote’s and Gradus’ “real” name) in reverse. 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 October 19, 1959, the anniversary of Pushkin’s Lyceum), Botkin, like Count Vorontsov (a target of Pushkin’s epigrams, “half-milord, half-merchant, etc.”), will be full again.