In Canto One of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN's novel Pale Fire, 1962) says that a thousand years ago five minutes were equal to forty ounces of fine sand:
And there's the wall of sound: the nightly wall
Raised by a trillion crickets in the fall.
Impenetrable! Halfway up the hill
I'd pause in thrall of their delirious trill.
That's Dr. Sutton's light. That's the Great Bear.
A thousand years ago five minutes were
Equal to forty ounces of fine sand.
Outstare the stars. Infinite foretime and
Infinite aftertime: above your head
They close like giant wings, and you are dead. (ll. 115-124)
In his commentary to Shade's poem Kinbote (Shade’s mad commentator who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla) writes:
Line 119: Dr. Sutton
This is a recombination of letters taken from two names. one beginning in "Sut," the other ending in "ton." Two distinguished medical men, long retired from practice, dwelt, on our hill. Both were very old friends of the Shades; one had a daughter, president of Sybil's club - and this is the Dr. Sutton I visualize in my notes to lines 181 and 1000. He is also mentioned in Line 986.
Lines 120-121: five minutes were equal to forty ounces, etc.
In the left margin and parallel to it: "In the Middle Ages an hour was equal to 480 ounces of fine sand or 22,560 atoms." I am unable to check either this statement or the poet's calculations in regard to five minutes, i.e., three hundred seconds, since I do not see how 480 can be divided by 300 or vice versa, but perhaps I am only tired. On the day (July 4) John Shade wrote this, Gradus the Gunman was getting ready to leave Zembla for his steady blunderings through two hemispheres (see note to line 181).
In the New Testament (2 Peter 3:8) the apostle says: "But, beloved, do not forget this one thing, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like one day." Describing a conversation at the Faculty Club, Kinbote uses the phrase "one day" ("One day, however, in the lounge of the Faculty Club, etc.") and compares Gerald Emerald (a young instructor at Wordsmith University who gives Gradus, Shade's murderer, a lift to Kinbote's rented house in New Wye) to a disciple in Leonardo's Last Supper:
Pictures of the King had not infrequently appeared in America during the first months of the Zemblan Revolution. Every now and then some busybody on the campus with a retentive memory, or one of the clubwomen who were always after Shade and his eccentric friend, used to ask me with the inane meaningfulness adopted in such cases if anybody had told me how much I resembled that unfortunate monarch. I would counter with something on the lines of "all Chinese look alike" and change the subject. One day, however, in the lounge of the Faculty Club where I lolled surrounded by a number of my colleagues, I had to put up with a particularly embarrassing onset. A visiting German lecturer from Oxford kept exclaiming, aloud and under his breath, that the resemblance was "absolutely unheard of," and when I negligently observed that all bearded Zemblans resembled one another - and that, in fact, the name Zembla is a corruption not of the Russian zemlya, but of Semblerland, a land of reflections, of "resemblers" - my tormentor said: "Ah, yes, but King Charles wore no beard, and yet it is his very face! I had [he added] the honor of being seated within a few yards of the royal box at a Sport Festival in Onhava which I visited with my wife, who is Swedish, in 1956. We have a photograph of him at home, and her sister knew very well the mother of one of his pages, an interesting woman. Don't you see [almost tugging at Shade's lapel] the astounding similarity of features - of the upper part of the face, and the eyes, yes, the eyes, and the nose bridge?"
"Nay, sir" [said Shade, refolding a leg and slightly rolling in his armchair as wont to do when about to deliver a pronouncement] "there is no resemblance at all. I have seen the King in newsreels, and there is no resemblance. Resemblances are the shadows of differences. Different people see different similarities and similar differences."
Good Netochka, who had been looking singularly uncomfortable during this exchange, remarked in his gentle voice how sad it was to think that such a "sympathetic ruler" had probably perished in prison.
A professor of physics now joined in. He was a so-called Pink, who believed in what so-called Pinks believe in (Progressive Education, the Integrity of anyone spying for Russia, Fall-outs occasioned solely by US-made bombs, the existence in the near past of a McCarthy Era, Soviet achievements including Dr. Zhivago, and so forth): "Your regrets are groundless" [said he]. "That sorry ruler is known to have escaped disguised as a nun; but whatever happens, or has happened to him, cannot interest the Zemblan people. History has denounced him, and that is his epitaph."
Shade: "True, sir. In due time history will have denounced everybody. The King may be dead, or he may be as much alive as you and Kinbote, but let us respect facts. I have it from him [pointing to me] that the widely circulated stuff about the nun is a vulgar pro-Extremist fabrication. The Extremists and their friends invented a lot of nonsense to conceal their discomfiture; but the truth is that the King walked out of the palace, and crossed the mountains, and left the country, not in the black garb of a pale spinster but dressed as an athlete in scarlet wool."
"Strange, strange," said the German visitor, who by some quirk of alderwood ancestry had been alone to catch the eerie note that had throbbed by and was gone.
Shade [smiling and massaging my knee]: "Kings do not die--they only disappear, eh, Charles?"
"Who said that?" asked sharply, as if coming out of a trance, the ignorant, and always suspicious, Head of the English Department.
"Take my own case," continued my dear friend ignoring Mr. H. "I have been said to resemble at least four people: Samuel Johnson; the lovingly reconstructed ancestor of man in the Exton Museum; and two local characters, one being the slapdash disheveled hag who ladles out the mash in the Levin Hall cafeteria."
"The third in the witch row," I precised quaintly, and everybody laughed.
"I would rather say," remarked Mr. Pardon--American History--"that she looks like Judge Goldsworth" ("One of us," interposed Shade inclining his head), "especially when he is real mad at the whole world after a good dinner."
"I heard," hastily began Netochka, "that the Goldsworths are having a wonderful time--"
"What a pity I cannot prove my point," muttered the tenacious German visitor. "If only there was a picture here. Couldn't there be somewhere--"
"Sure," said young Emerald and left his seat.
Professor Pardon now spoke to me: "I was under the impression that you were born in Russia, and that your name was a kind of anagram of Botkin or Botkine?"
Kinbote: "You are confusing me with some refugee from Nova Zembla [sarcastically stressing the "Nova"].
"Didn't you tell me, Charles, that kinbote means regicide in your language?" asked my dear Shade.
"Yes, a king's destroyer," I said (longing to explain that a king who sinks his identity in the mirror of exile is in a sense just that).
Shade [addressing the German visitor]: "Professor Kinbote is the author of a remarkable book on surnames. I believe [to me] there exists an English translation?"
"Oxford, 1956," I replied.
"You do know Russian, though?" said Pardon. "I think I heard you, the other day, talking to--what's his name--oh, my goodness" [laboriously composing his lips].
Shade: "Sir, we all find it difficult to attack that name" [laughing].
Professor Hurley: "Think of the French word for 'tire': punoo."
Shade: "Why, sir, I am afraid you have only punctured the difficulty" [laughing uproariously].
"Flatman," quipped I. "Yes," I went on, turning to Pardon, "I certainly do speak Russian. You see, it was the fashionable language par excellence, much more so than French, among the nobles of Zembla at least, and at its court. Today, of course, all this has changed. It is now the lower classes who are forcibly taught to speak Russian."
"Aren't we, too trying to teach Russian in our schools?" said Pink.
In the meantime, at the other end of the room, young Emerald had been communing with the bookshelves. At this point he returned with the the T-Z volume of an illustrated encyclopedia.
"Well," said he, "here he is, that king. But look, he is young and handsome" ("Oh, that won't do," wailed the German visitor.) "Young, handsome, and wearing a fancy uniform," continued Emerald. "Quite the fancy pansy, in fact."
"And you," I said quietly, "are a foul-minded pup in a cheap green jacket."
"But what have I said?" the young instructor inquired of the company, spreading out his palms like a disciple in Leonardo's Last Supper.
"Now, now," said Shade. "I'm sure, Charles, are young friend never intended to insult your sovereign and namesake."
"He could not, even if he had wished," I observed placidly, turning it all into a joke.
Gerald Emerald extended his hand--which at the moment of writing still remains in that position. (note to Line 894)
Voskresshie bogi. Leonardo da Vinchi ("Resurrected Gods. Leonardo da Vinci," 1900) is a novel by Dmitri Merezhkovski (a Russian poet and writer, 1865-1941), the second part of his trilogy Christ and Antichrist (1895-1905). In his poem Monakh ("The Monk," 1889) Merezhkovski quotes St. Peter's words (attributing them to St. Paul) "with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like one day:"
Над Новым Заветом склонился монах молодой,
Он полон святой, бесконечной отрады;
На древнем пергаменте с тихой зарей
Сливается отблеск лампады;
И тусклые желтые грани стекла
В готических окнах денница зажгла.
Прочел он то место, где пишет в послании Павел:
«Как день перед Господом — тысячи лет!» —
И Новый Завет
В раздумье оставил
Смущенный монах, и, сомненьем объят,
Печальный идет он из кельи, не видит, не слышит,
Как утро в лицо ему дышит,
Как свеж монастырский запущенный сад.
Но вдруг, как из рая, послышалось чудное пенье
Какой-то неведомой птицы в росистых кустах —
И в сладких мечтах
Забыл он сомненье,
Забыл он себя и людей.
Он слушает жадно, не может наслушаться вволю,
Всё дальше и дальше, по роще и полю
Идет он за ней.
Той песней вполне не успел он еще насладиться,
Когда уж заметил, что — поздно, что с темных небес
Вечерние росы упали на долы, на лес,
Пора в монастырь возвратиться.
Подходит он к саду, глядит — и не верит очам:
Не те уже башни, не те уже стены, и гуще
Деревьев зеленые кущи.
Стучится в ворота. «Кто там?» —
Привратник глядит на него изумленный.
Он видит — всё чуждо и ново кругом,
Из братьев-монахов никто не знаком...
И в трапезу робко вступил он, смущенный.
«Откуда ты, странник?» — «Я брат ваш!» — «Тебя никогда
Никто здесь не видел»... Он годы свои называет —
Те юные годы умчались давно без следа...
Седая, как лунь, борода
На грудь упадает.
Тогда из-за трапезы встал
Игумен; толпа расступилась пред ним молчаливо,
Он кипу пергаментов пыльных достал из архива
И долго искал...
И в хронике древней они прочитали
О том, как однажды поутру весной
Пошел из обители в поле монах молодой...
Без вести пропал он, и больше его не видали...
С тех пор три столетья прошло...
Он слушал — и тенью печали
Покрылось чело.
«Увы! три столетья... о, птичка, певунья лесная!
Казалось — на миг, на один только миг
Забылся я, песне твоей сладкозвучной внимая —
Века пролетели минутой!» — и, очи смежая,
Промолвил он: «Вечность я понял!» — главою поник
И тихо скончался старик.
"A thousand years ago" in Canto One of Shade's poem and the bird's song (to which the Monk in Merezhkovski's poem listens for three centuries) bring to mind tysyacha let (a thousand years) mentioned by Delvig in his letter of September 10, 1824, to Pushkin:
Милый Пушкин, письмо твоё и «Прозерпину» я получил и тоже в день получения благодарю тебя за них. «Прозерпина» не стихи, а музыка: это пенье райской птички, которое слушая, не увидишь, как пройдёт тысяча лет. Эти двери давно мне знакомы. Сквозь них, ещё в Лицее, меня [иногда] часто выталкивали из Элизея. Какая искусная щеголиха у тебя истина. Подобных цветов мороз не тронет!
According to Delvig (Pushkin's Lyceum friend who in November 1824 married Sofia Saltykov), Pushkin’s poem Proserpina (1824) is pure music, a bird of paradise's singing that one can listen for a thousand years without noticing the passage of time. Monakh ("The Monk," 1813) is a frivolous poem by young Pushkin. In Chapter Five (VI: 9) of Eugene Onegin Pushkin mentions chyornyi monakh (a black monk):
Она дрожала и бледнела.
Когда ж падучая звезда
По небу темному летела
И рассыпалася, — тогда
В смятенье Таня торопилась,
Пока звезда еще катилась,
Желанье сердца ей шепнуть.
Когда случалось где-нибудь
Ей встретить черного монаха
Иль быстрый заяц меж полей
Перебегал дорогу ей,
Не зная, что начать со страха,
Предчувствий горестных полна,
Ждала несчастья уж она.
she trembled and grew pale.
Or when a falling star
along the dark sky flew
and dissipated, then
in agitation Tanya hastened
to whisper, while the star still rolled,
her heart's desire to it.
When anywhere she happened
a black monk to encounter,
or a swift hare amid the fields
would run across her path,
so scared she knew not what to undertake,
full of grievous forebodings,
already she expected some mishap.
Chyornyi monakh ("The Black Monk," 1894) is a story by Chekhov. The crux of the legend in Chekhov's story is that 1,000 years after the day the monk walked, his mirage will return to earth and reappear to men. According to Kinbote, Shade listed Chekhov 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)
In a conversation at the Faculty Club Professor Pardon tries to pronounce the name Pnin. In his fragment Rim ("Rome," 1842) Gogol (a writer whom, according to Kinbote, Shade listed among Russian humorists) describes a carnival in Rome and mentions the great dead poet (il gran poeta morto) and his sonnet with a coda (sonetto colla coda):
Внимание толпы занял какой-то смельчак, шагавший на ходулях вравне с домами, рискуя всякую минуту быть сбитым с ног и грохнуться насмерть о мостовую. Но об этом, кажется, у него не было забот. Он тащил на плечах чучело великана, придерживая его одной рукою, неся в другой написанный на бумаге сонет с приделанным к нему бумажным хвостом, какой бывает у бумажного змея, и крича во весь голос: "Ecco il gran poeta morto. Ecco il suo sonetto colla coda!"
In a footnote Gogol says that in Italian poetry there is a kind of poem known as sonnet with the tail (con la coda) and explains what a coda is:
В итальянской поэзии существует род стихотворенья, известного под именем сонета с хвостом (con la coda), - когда мысль не вместилась и ведет за собою прибавление, которое часто бывает длиннее самого сонета.
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”). Gogol points out that a coda can be longer than the sonnet itself. Not only (the unwritten) Line 1001 of Shade's poem, but Kinbote's entire commentary, index and foreword to Shade's poem can be regarded as a coda of Shade's poem. 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 ("Hope," 1894) is a poem by Merezhkovski. 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 epigrams, "half-milord, half-merchant, etc."), will be full again.