In his Commentary 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) quotes Arnor’s poem about a miragarl (mirage girl), for whose "careful jewels" a dream king in the sandy wastes of time would give tri stana verbalala (three hundred camels) ut tri phantana (and three fountains):
Our Prince was fond of Fleur as of a sister but with no soft shadow of incest or secondary homosexual complications. She had a small pale face with prominent cheekbones, luminous eyes, and curly dark hair. It was rumored that after going about with a porcelain cup and Cinderella's slipper for months, the society sculptor and poet Arnor had found in her what he sought and had used her breasts and feet for his Lilith Calling Back Adam; but I am certainly no expert in these tender matters. Otar, her lover, said that when you walked behind her, and she knew you were walking behind her, the swing and play of those slim haunches was something intensely artistic, something Arab girls were taught in special schools by special Parisian panders who were afterwards strangled. Her fragile ankles, he said, which she placed very close together in her dainty and wavy walk, were the "careful jewels" in Arnor's poem about a miragarl ("mirage girl"), for which "a dream king in the sandy wastes of time would give three hundred camels and three fountains."
On ságaren werém tremkín tri stána
Verbálala wod gév ut trí phantána
(I have marked the stress accents).
The Prince did not heed this rather kitschy prattle (all, probably, directed by her mother) and, let it be repeated, regarded her merely as a sibling, fragrant and fashionable, with a painted pout and a maussade, blurry, Gallic way of expressing the little she wished to express. Her unruffled rudeness toward the nervous and garrulous Countess amused him. He liked dancing with her - and only with her. He hardly squirmed at all when she stroked his hand or applied herself soundlessly with open lips to his cheek which the haggard after-the-ball dawn had already sooted. She did not seem to mind when he abandoned her for manlier pleasures; and she met him again in the dark of a car or in the half-glow of a cabaret with the subdued and ambiguous smile of a kissing cousin.
The forty days between Queen Blenda's death and his coronation was perhaps the most trying stretch of time in his life. He had had no love for his mother, and the hopeless and helpless remorse he now felt degenerated into a sickly physical fear of her phantom. The Countess, who seemed to be near him, to be rustling at his side, all the time, had him attend table-turning séances with an experienced American medium, séances at which the Queen's spirit, operating the same kind of planchette she had used in her lifetime to chat with Thormodus Torfaeus and A. R. Wallace, now briskly wrote in English: "Charles take take cherish love flower flower flower." An old psychiatrist so thoroughly bribed by the Countess as to look, even on the outside, like a putrid pear, assured him that his vices had subconsciously killed his mother and would continue "to kill her in him" if he did not renounce sodomy. A palace intrigue is a special spider that entangles you more nastily at every desperate jerk you try. Our Prince was young, inexperienced, and half-frenzied with insomnia. He hardly struggled at all. The Countess spent a fortune on buying his kamergrum (groom of the chamber), his bodyguard, and even the greater part of the Court Chamberlain. She took to sleeping in a small antechamber next to his bachelor bedroom, a splendid spacious circular apartment at the top of the high and massive South West Tower. This had been his father's retreat and was still connected by a jolly chute in the wall with a round swimming pool in the hall below, so that the young Prince could start the day as his father used to start it by slipping open a panel beside his army cot and rolling into the shaft whence he whizzed down straight into bright water. For other needs than sleep Charles Xavier had installed in the middle of the Persian rug-covered floor a so-called patifolia, that is, a huge, oval, luxuriously flounced, swansdown pillow the size of a triple bed. It was in this ample nest that Fleur now slept, curled up in its central hollow, under a coverlet of genuine giant panda fur that had just been rushed from Tibet by a group of Asiatic well-wishers on the occasion of his ascension to the throne. The antechamber, where the Countess was ensconced, had its own inner staircase and bathroom, but also communicated by means of a sliding door with the West Gallery. I do not know what advice or command her mother had given Fleur; but the little thing proved a poor seducer. She kept trying, as one quietly insane, to mend a broken viola d'amore or sat in dolorous attitudes comparing two ancient flutes, both sad-tuned and feeble. Meantime, in Turkish garb, he lolled in his father's ample chair, his legs over its arm, flipping through a volume of Historia Zemblica, copying out passages and occasionally fishing out of the nether recesses of his seat a pair of old-fashioned motoring goggles, a black opal ring, a ball of silver chocolate wrapping, or the star of a foreign order. (note to Line 80)
Tri stana obviously hints at trista ('three hundred' in Russian), but it also brings to mind Tristan (one of the two title characters of Tristan and Isolde, a medieval chivalric romance) and the Tristia, a collection of poems written in elegiac couplets by the Augustan poet Ovid (43 BC - 17 AD) during the first three years following his banishment from Rome to Tomis on the Black Sea in AD 8. In Book IV (ll. 274-388) of his Metamorphoses (8 AD) Ovid tells the story of Hermaphroditus and the nymph of the spring Salmacis. Salmacis was a fountain, located near the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus (present-day Bodrum, Turkey). In classical times, it had "the slanderous repute, for what reason I do not know, of making effeminate all who drink from it. It seems that the effeminacy of man is laid to the charge of the air or of the water; yet it is not these, but rather riches and wanton living, that are the cause of effeminacy." (Strabo Geography XIV.2.16)
Pushkin’s poem Domik v Kolomne (“A Small House in Kolomna,” 1830), a mock epic in octaves, has in the draft the epigraph from Ovid’s Metamorphoses (Book IV, ll. 279-80): Modo vir, modo femina (now a man, now a woman). Modo brings to mind Odon's half-brother Nodo, a cardsharp and despicable traitor whom Kinbote mentions in his commentary and index to Shade's poem:
Nodo, Odon's half-brother, b .1916, son of Leopold O'Donnell and of a Zemblan boy impersonator; a cardsharp and despicable traitor, 171.
Odevalla, a fine town north of Onhava in E. Zembla, once the mayorship of the worthy Zule ("chessrook") Bretwit, granduncle of Oswin Bretwit (q. v., q. v., as the crows say), 149, 286.
Odon, pseudonym of Donald O'Donnell, b .1915, world-famous actor and Zemblan patriot; learns from K. about secret passage but has to leave for theater, 130; drives K. from theater to foot of Mt. Mandevil, 149; meets K. near sea cave and escapes with him in motorboat, ibid.; directs cinema picture in Paris, 171; stays with Lavender in Lex, 408; ought not to marry that blubber-lipped cinemactress, with untidy hair, 691; see also O'Donnell, Sylvia. (Index)
Cinderella's slipper with which the society sculptor and poet Arnor was going about for months brings to mind metamorphosed Cinderellas in VN's novel Ada (1969):
Marina’s affair with Demon Veen started on his, her, and Daniel Veen’s birthday, January 5, 1868, when she was twenty-four and both Veens thirty.
As an actress, she had none of the breath-taking quality that makes the skill of mimicry seem, at least while the show lasts, worth even more than the price of such footlights as insomnia, fancy, arrogant art; yet on that particular night, with soft snow falling beyond the plush and the paint, la Durmanska (who paid the great Scott, her impresario, seven thousand gold dollars a week for publicity alone, plus a bonny bonus for every engagement) had been from the start of the trashy ephemeron (an American play based by some pretentious hack on a famous Russian romance) so dreamy, so lovely, so stirring that Demon (not quite a gentleman in amorous matters) made a bet with his orchestra-seat neighbor, Prince N., bribed a series of green-room attendants, and then, in a cabinet reculé (as a French writer of an earlier century might have mysteriously called that little room in which the broken trumpet and poodle hoops of a forgotten clown, besides many dusty pots of colored grease, happened to be stored) proceeded to possess her between two scenes (Chapter Three and Four of the martyred novel). In the first of these she had undressed in graceful silhouette behind a semitransparent screen, reappeared in a flimsy and fetching nightgown, and spent the rest of the wretched scene discussing a local squire, Baron d’O., with an old nurse in Eskimo boots. Upon the infinitely wise countrywoman’s suggestion, she goose-penned from the edge of her bed, on a side table with cabriole legs, a love letter and took five minutes to reread it in a languorous but loud voice for no body’s benefit in particular since the nurse sat dozing on a kind of sea chest, and the spectators were mainly concerned with the artificial moonlight’s blaze upon the lovelorn young lady’s bare arms and heaving breasts.
Even before the old Eskimo had shuffled off with the message, Demon Veen had left his pink velvet chair and proceeded to win the wager, the success of his enterprise being assured by the fact that Marina, a kissing virgin, had been in love with him since their last dance on New Year’s Eve. Moreover, the tropical moonlight she had just bathed in, the penetrative sense of her own beauty, the ardent pulses of the imagined maiden, and the gallant applause of an almost full house made her especially vulnerable to the tickle of Demon’s moustache. She had ample time, too, to change for the next scene, which started with a longish intermezzo staged by a ballet company whose services Scotty had engaged, bringing the Russians all the way in two sleeping cars from Belokonsk, Western Estoty. In a splendid orchard several merry young gardeners wearing for some reason the garb of Georgian tribesmen were popping raspberries into their mouths, while several equally implausible servant girls in sharovars (somebody had goofed — the word ‘samovars’ may have got garbled in the agent’s aerocable) were busy plucking marshmallows and peanuts from the branches of fruit trees. At an invisible sign of Dionysian origin, they all plunged into the violent dance called kurva or ‘ribbon boule’ in the hilarious program whose howlers almost caused Veen (tingling, and light-loined, and with Prince N.’s rose-red banknote in his pocket) to fall from his seat.
His heart missed a beat and never regretted the lovely loss, as she ran, flushed and flustered, in a pink dress into the orchard, earning a claque third of the sitting ovation that greeted the instant dispersal of the imbecile but colorful transfigurants from Lyaska — or Iveria. Her meeting with Baron O., who strolled out of a side alley, all spurs and green tails, somehow eluded Demon’s consciousness, so struck was he by the wonder of that brief abyss of absolute reality between two bogus fulgurations of fabricated life. Without waiting for the end of the scene, he hurried out of the theater into the crisp crystal night, the snowflakes star-spangling his top hat as he returned to his house in the next block to arrange a magnificent supper. By the time he went to fetch his new mistress in his jingling sleigh, the last-act ballet of Caucasian generals and metamorphosed Cinderellas had come to a sudden close, and Baron d’O., now in black tails and white gloves, was kneeling in the middle of an empty stage, holding the glass slipper that his fickle lady had left him when eluding his belated advances. The claqueurs were getting tired and looking at their watches when Marina in a black cloak slipped into Demon’s arms and swan-sleigh. (1.2)
Darkbloom ('Notes to Ada'): Raspberries; ribbon: allusions to ludicrous blunders in Lowell’s versions of Mandelshtam’s poems (in the N.Y. Review, 23 December 1965).
Belokonsk: the Russian twin of ‘Whitehorse’ (city in N.W. Canada).
Tristia (1922) is the second collection of poetry by Osip Mandelshtam (1891-1938). Mandelshtam's article Shpigun (1929), a review of N. Shpikovski's film Znakomoe litso ("A Familiar Face," 1929) begins with the sentence Verblyud figura neytral'naya (The camel is a neutral figure):
Верблюд фигура нейтральная. Он одинаково чужд и белым и красным. Хотя Шпиковский и заставляет верблюда чихнуть в лицо бывшему уряднику, осквернив его хлопьями пены, — это неубедительно. Благородный зверь мог осквернить своим поганым чихом любого и красного командира. Верблюду все равно, на кого чихать, — нельзя сделать его орудием политики. Верблюд здесь важен как прием отстранения. Одна только мысль пустить героя на верблюде по Украине уже сама по себе великолепный сценарий. Здесь, кстати, скажем: у киносценария есть свои необоримые физиологические законы. Зритель к ним чрезвычайно чуток, он требует развития именно этих стихийных элементов, заложенных в сценарии. Быть может, прообразом всякого сценария была погоня, преследование, бегство. Для зрителя герой Шпиковского совсем не шкурник, а фантастически‹й› полусказочный «верблюжий шпигун», как метко определил его, рапортуя «его благородию», белый солдат в одной из отличных надписей фильма. Шпиковский сам не заметил, как вступил на путь сказки, а между тем он находится на несомненной фольклорной дорожке, с ее кружением вокруг одной неподвижной точки, с ее повторами, с ее здоровым лукавством.
In his article Mandelshtam mentions metamorfoza (a metamorphosis):
Основной закон сказочности — три ряда повторений в «Шкурнике» все же соблюден: советская командировка на Овечий Брод с верблюдом, для восстановления транспорта, приключения в штабе у белых, где удивительно радует метаморфоза бедного шпигуна в господина начальника Освага (английский френч, машинистки), и наконец опаснейшее знакомство с бандой. Даже в таких мелочах, как одновременное лузгание семечек, игра на гармошке и ловля вшей (трое мешочников на вокзале) — едва ли не лучший кадр «Шкурника» — чувствуется фольклорная троичность.
Nikolay Shpikovski (a Soviet film director, 1897-1977) brings to mind shpiks (plainclothmen) mentioned by Charles the Beloved, as he speaks to Odon:
Waiting for the Russian couple to recede, the King stopped beside the bench. The mosaic-faced man folded his newspaper, and one second before he spoke (in the neutral interval between smoke puff and detonation), the King knew it was Odon.
"All one could do at short notice," said Odon, plucking at his cheek to display how the varicolored semi-transparent film adhered to his face, altering its contours according to stress. "A polite person," he added, "does not, normally, examine too closely a poor fellow's disfigurement."
"I was looking for shpiks [plainclothesmen]" said the King. "All day," said Odon, "they have been patrolling the quay. They are dining at present."
"I'm thirsty and hungry," said the King. "That's young Baron Mandevil - chap who had that duel last year. Let's go now."
"Couldn't we take him too?"
"Wouldn't come - got a wife and a baby. Come on, Charlie, come on, Your Majesty."
"He was my throne page on Coronation Day."
Thus chatting, they reached the Rippleson Caves. I trust the reader has enjoyed this note. (note to Line 149)
Ovid is divo (Russ., marvel) in reverse. Botkin (Shade's, Kinbote's and Gradus' "real" name) is nikto b ("none would," a phrase used by Mozart in Pushkin's little tragedy Mozart and Salieri, 1830) backwards. Nik. T-o ("Mr. Nobody") was the penname of Innokentiy Annenski (a Russian poet and essayist, 1855-1909). In his poem Dozhdik ("A Drizzle," 1909) from Trilistnik dozhdlivyi ("The Rainy Trefoil") Annenski mentions prevrashcheniya (metamorphoses) and pervyi Ovidiev vek (Ovid's first century):
Вот сизый чехол и распорот,—
Не все ж ему праздно висеть,
И с лязгом асфальтовый город
Хлестнула холодная сеть…
Хлестнула и стала мотаться…
Сама серебристо-светла,
Как масло в руке святотатца,
Глазеты вокруг залила.
И в миг, что с лазурью любилось,
Стыдливых молчаний полно,—
Всё темною пеной забилось
И нагло стучится в окно.
В песочной зароется яме,
По трубам бежит и бурлит,
То жалкими брызнет слезами,
То радугой парной горит.
..............
О нет! Без твоих превращений,
В одно что-нибудь застывай!
Не хочешь ли дремой осенней
Окутать кокетливо май?
Иль сделаться Мною, быть может,
Одним из упрямых калек,
И всех уверять, что не дожит
И первый Овидиев век:
Из сердца за Иматру лет
Ничто, мол, у нас не уходит —
И в мокром асфальте поэт
Захочет, так счастье находит.
V odno chto-nibud' zastyvay! (Come to a standstill as one thing!), a line in Annenski's poem, brings to mind Odon and his half-brother.
Btw., Tristan und Isolde (1859) is a music drama by Richard Wagner (a German operatic composer, 1813-83). Describing his insomnias, Kinbote mentions a Wagner record:
The Goldsworth château had many outside doors, and no matter how thoroughly I inspected them and the window shutters downstairs at bedtime, I never failed to discover next morning something unlocked, unlatched, a little loose, a little ajar, something sly and suspicious-looking. One night the black cat, which a few minutes before I had seen rippling down into the basement where I had arranged toilet facilities for it in an attractive setting, suddenly reappeared on the threshold of the music room, in the middle of my insomnia and a Wagner record, arching its back and sporting a neck bow of white silk which it could certainly never have put on all by itself. I telephoned 11111 and a few minutes later was discussing possible culprits with a policeman who relished greatly my cherry cordial, but whoever had broken in had left no trace. It is so easy for a cruel person to make the victim of his ingenuity believe that he has persecution mania, or is really being stalked by a killer, or is suffering from hallucinations. Hallucinations! Well did I know that among certain youthful instructors whose advances I had rejected there was at least one evil practical joker; I knew it ever since the time I came home from a very enjoyable and successful meeting of students and teachers (at which I had exuberantly thrown off my coat and shown several willing pupils a few of the amusing holds employed by Zemblan wrestlers) and found in my coat pocket a brutal anonymous note saying: "You have hal..... s real bad, chum," meaning evidently "hallucinations," although a malevolent critic might infer from the insufficient number of dashes that little Mr. Anon, despite teaching Freshman English, could hardly spell. (note to Line 62)
The society sculptor and poet Arnor makes one think of Fritz Arno Wagner (1889-1958), a German cinematographer who is considered one of the most acclaimed cinematographers in Germany from the 1920s to the 1950s. Wagner played a key role in the Expressionist film movement during the Weimar period and is perhaps best known for excelling "in the portrayal of horror." Wagner collaborated with F. W. Murnau on his classic Nosferatu (1922) and with Hans Deppe on Die tolle Lola ("The Great Lola," 1954), a West German comedy film that brings to mind VN's Lolita (1955). In Canto Three of his poem Shade mentions Hurricane Lolita that swept from Florida to Maine. In 1962 VN's Lolita was made into a film by Stanley Kubrick.