In his foreword 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 a person (Shade's former literary agent) who wondered with a sneer if Mrs. Shade's tremulous signature under her contract with Kinbote might not have been penned "in some peculiar kind of red ink:"
Immediately after my dear friend's death I prevailed on his distraught widow to forelay and defeat the commercial passions and academic intrigues that were bound to come swirling around her husband's manuscript (transferred by me to a safe spot even before his body had reached the grave) by signing an agreement to the effect that he had turned over the manuscript to me; that I would have it published, without delay, with my commentary by a firm of my choice; that all profits, except the publisher's percentage, would accrue to her; and that on publication day the manuscript would be handed over to the Library of Congress for permanent preservation. I defy any serious critic to find this contract unfair. Nevertheless, it has been called (by Shade's former lawyer) "a fantastic farrago of evil," while another person (his former literary agent) has wondered with a sneer if Mrs. Shade's tremulous signature might not have been penned "in some peculiar kind of red ink." Such hearts, such brains, would be unable to comprehend that one's attachment to a masterpiece may be utterly overwhelming, especially when it is the underside of the weave that entrances the beholder and only begetter, whose own past intercoils there with the fate of the innocent author.
As mentioned, I think, in my last note to the poem, the depth charge of Shade's death blasted such secrets and caused so many dead fish to float up, that I was forced to leave New Wye soon after my last interview with the jailed killer. The writing of the commentary had to be postponed until I could find a new incognito in quieter surroundings, but practical matters concerning the poem had to be settled at once. I took a plane to New York, had the manuscript photographed, came to terms with one of Shade's publishers, and was on the point of clinching the deal when, quite casually, in the midst of a vast sunset (we sat in a cell of walnut and glass fifty stories above the progression of scarabs), my interlocutor observed: "You'll be happy to know, Dr. Kinbote, that Professor So-and-so [one of the members of the Shade committee] has consented to act as our adviser in editing the stuff."
By "some peculiar kind of red ink" Shade's former literary agent meant blood. Vom Lesen und Schreiben ("Reading and Writing"), Zarathustra's seventh discourse in Also sprach Zarathustra: Ein Buch für alle und keinen (Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for All and None), a philosophical novel by Friedrich Nietzsche (a German philosopher, 1844-1900) published in four parts between 1883 and 1885, begins as follows:
Von allem Geschriebenen liebe ich nur Das, was Einer mit seinem Blute schreibt. Schreibe mit Blut: und du wirst erfahren, dass Blut Geist ist.
Es ist nicht leicht möglich, fremdes Blut zu verstehen: ich hasse die lesenden Müssiggänger.
Wer den Leser kennt, der thut Nichts mehr für den Leser. Noch ein Jahrhundert Leser—und der Geist selber wird stinken.
"Of all that is written, I love only what a person hath written with his blood. Write with blood, and thou wilt find that blood is spirit.
It is no easy task to understand unfamiliar blood; I hate the reading idlers.
He who knoweth the reader, doeth nothing more for the reader. Another century of readers—and spirit itself will stink."
In the same discourse "Reading and Writing" Zarathustra says:
Es ist immer etwas Wahnsinn in der Liebe. Es ist aber immer auch etwas Vernunft im Wahnsinn.
Und auch mir, der ich dem Leben gut bin, scheinen Schmetterlinge und Seifenblasen und was ihrer Art unter Menschen ist, am meisten vom Glücke zu wissen.
"There is always some madness in love. But there is always, also, some method in madness.
And to me also, who appreciate life, the butterflies, and soap-bubbles, and whatever is like them amongst us, seem most to enjoy happiness."
According to Polonius (a character in Shakespeare's Hamlet, Ophelia's father), there is a method in Hamlet's madness. In his index entry "Botkin V." Kinbote mentions botkin or bodkin, a Danish stiletto:
Botkin, V., American scholar of Russian descent, 894; kingbot, maggot of extinct fly that once bred in mammoths and is thought to have hastened their phylogenetic end, 247; bottekin-maker, 71; bot, plop, and boteliy, big-bellied (Russ.); botkin or bodkin, a, Danish stiletto.
In his famous soliloquy ("To be or not to be") in Shakespeare's play (3.1), Hamlet mentions a bare bodkin with which one might make his quietus. Zarathustra's twenty-first (penultimate) discourse is entitled Vom freien Tode ("Voluntary Death") and begins as follows:
Viele sterben zu spät, und Einige sterben zu früh. Noch klingt fremd die Lehre: „stirb zur rechten Zeit!“
Stirb zur rechten Zeit: also lehrt es Zarathustra.
Freilich, wer nie zur rechten Zeit lebt, wie sollte der je zur rechten Zeit sterben? Möchte er doch nie geboren sein!—Also rathe ich den Überflüssigen.
"Many die too late, and some die too early. Yet strange soundeth the precept: “Die at the right time!”
Die at the right time: so teacheth Zarathustra.
To be sure, he who never liveth at the right time, how could he ever die at the right time? Would that he might never be born!—Thus do I advise the superfluous ones."
Immediately after completing his work on Shade's poem, on Oct. 19, 1959 (the anniversary of Pushkin's Lyceum), Kinbote commits suicide. There is a hope that, after Kinbote's death, Botkin (Shade's, Kinbote's and Gradus' "real" name), like Count Vorontsov (a target of Pushkin's epigrams, "half-milord, half-merchant, etc."), will be full again.
The poet's wife, Sybil Shade brings to mind die Sibylle, trunken sonder Weins (the Sybil, drunk without wine) whose prophesy Zarathustra quotes in a poem in the Fourth and Final Part of Nietzsche's novel (Chapter LXI. Talk with the Kings):
Einstmals—ich glaub’, im Jahr des Heiles Eins—
Sprach die Sibylle, trunken sonder Weins:
„Weh, nun geht’s schief!
Verfall! Verfall! Nie sank die Welt so tief!
Rom sank zur Hure und zur Huren-Bude,
Rom’s Caesar sank zum Vieh, Gott selbst—ward Jude!“
‘Twas once—methinks year one of our blessed Lord,
—Drunk without wine, the Sybil thus deplored:
—“How ill things go!
Decline! Decline! Ne’er sank the world so low!
Rome now hath turned harlot and harlot-stew,
Rome’s Caesar a beast, and God—hath turned Jew!” (1)
Hure (whore) makes one think of a fiery-haired whore from Exton mentioned by Kinbote in his foreword to Shade's poem:
I have one favorite photograph of him. In this color snapshot taken by a onetime friend of mine, on a brilliant spring day, Shade is seen leaning on a sturdy cane that had belonged to his aunt Maud (see line 86). I am wearing a white windbreaker acquired in a local sports shop and a pair of lilac slacks hailing from Cannes. My left hand is half raised - not to pat Shade on the shoulder as seems to be the intention, but to remove my sunglasses which, however, it never reached in that life, the life of the picture; and the library book under my right arm is a treatise on certain Zemblan calisthenics in which I proposed to interest that young roomer of mine who snapped the picture. A week later he was to betray my trust by taking sordid advantage of my absence on a trip to Washington whence I returned to find he had been entertaining a fiery-haired whore from Exton who had left her combings and reek in all three bathrooms. Naturally we separated at once, and through a chink in the window curtains I saw bad Bob standing rather pathetically, with his crewcut, and shabby valise, and the skis I had given him, all forlorn on the roadside, waiting for a fellow student to drive him away forever. I can forgive everything save treason.
One of the greater Shadows who visits Gradus (Shade's murderer) in Nice and tells him the king's new name and address in America, Izumrudov withdraws - to resume his whoring no doubt:
On the morning of July 16 (while Shade was working on the 698-746 section of his poem) dull Gradus, dreading another day of enforced inactivity in sardonically, sparkling, stimulatingly noisy Nice, decided that until hunger drove him out he would not budge from a leathern armchair in the simulacrum of a lobby among the brown smells of his dingy hotel. Unhurriedly he went through a heap of old magazines on a nearby table. There he sat, a little monument of taciturnity, sighing, puffing out his cheeks, licking his thumb before turning a page, gaping at the pictures, and moving his lips as he climbed down the columns of printed matter. Having replaced everything in a neat pile, he sank back in his chair closing and opening his gabled hands in various constructions of tedium - when a man who had occupied a seat next to him got up and walked into the outer glare leaving his paper behind. Gradus pulled it into his lap, spread it out - and froze over a strange piece of local news that caught his eye: burglars had broken into Villa Disa and ransacked a bureau, taking from a jewel box a number of valuable old medals.
Here was something to brood upon. Had this vaguely unpleasant incident some bearing on his quest? Should he do something about it? Cable headquarters? Hard to word succinctly a simple fact without having it look like a cryptogram. Airmail a clipping? He was in his room working on the newspaper with a safety razor blade when there was a bright rap-rap at the door. Gradus admitted an unexpected visitor - one of the greater Shadows, whom he had thought to be onhava-onhava ("far, far away"), in wild, misty, almost legendary Zembla! What stunning conjuring tricks our magical mechanical age plays with old mother space and old father time!
He was a merry, perhaps overmerry, fellow, in a green velvet jacket. Nobody liked him, but he certainly had a keen mind. His name, Izumrudov, sounded rather Russian but actually meant “of the Umruds,” an Eskimo tribe sometimes seen paddling their umyaks (hide-lined boats) on the emerald waters of our northern shores. Grinning, he said friend Gradus must get together his travel documents, including a health certificate, and take the earliest available jet to New York. Bowing, he congratulated him on having indicated with such phenomenal acumen the right place and the right way. Yes, after a thorough perlustration of the loot that Andron and Niagarushka had obtained from the Queen's rosewood writing desk (mostly bills, and treasured snapshots, and those silly medals) a letter from the King did turn up giving his address which was of all places -- Our man, who interrupted the herald of success to say he had never -- was bidden not to display so much modesty. A slip of paper was now produced on which Izumudrov, shaking with laughter (death is hilarious), wrote out for Gradus their client's alias, the name of the university where he taught, and that of the town where it was situated. No, the slip was not for keeps. He could keep it only while memorizing it. This brand of paper (used by macaroon makers) was not only digestible but delicious. The gay green vision withdrew - to resume his whoring no doubt. How one hates such men! (note to Line 741)
In a letter of April 6, 1873, to Malwida von Meysenbug (a German writer, born Malwida Rivalier, 1816-1903) Nietzsche mentions his dream about Gradus ad Parnassum (a Latin dictionary used for composition and poetry):
Basel, 6. April 1873
Verehrtestes Fräulein!
In Bayreuth hoffe ich wieder Muth und gute Laune zu finden und mich in allem Rechten zu bestärken. Gestern Nacht träumte mir, ich hätte meinen Gradus ad Parnassum ganz selten иnd schön einbinden lassen; die Symbolik, die an dem Einband eines Buches haftet, ist verständlich genug, wenn auch geschmacklos. Und daß unser Leben ein Gradus ad Parnassum sein soll, ist auch eine Wahrheit, die man sich öfter einmal sagen muß. Mein Parnassus der Zukunft ist, wenn ich Sie wiedersehe.
In Treue Ihr
F. Nietzsche
According to his sister, Elizabeth Förster-Nietzsche, Nietzsche wrote a large part of "Zarathustra" in Nice:
In the autumn of 1883 my brother left the Engadine for Germany and stayed there a few weeks. In the following winter, after wandering somewhat erratically through Stresa, Genoa, and Spezia, he landed in Nice, where the climate so happily promoted his creative powers that he wrote the third part of “Zarathustra”. “In the winter, beneath the halcyon sky of Nice, which then looked down upon me for the first time in my life, I found the third ‘Zarathustra’—and came to the end of my task; the whole having occupied me scarcely a year. Many hidden corners and heights in the landscapes round about Nice are hallowed to me by unforgettable moments. That decisive chapter entitled ‘Old and New Tables’ was composed in the very difficult ascent from the station to Eza—that wonderful Moorish village in the rocks. My most creative moments were always accompanied by unusual muscular activity. The body is inspired: let us waive the question of the ‘soul.’ I might often have been seen dancing in those days. Without a suggestion of fatigue I could then walk for seven or eight hours on end among the hills. I slept well and laughed well—I was perfectly robust and patient.”