Describing his rented house, 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) says that he has no desire to twist and batter an unambiguous apparatus criticus into the monstrous semblance of a novel:
In the Foreword to this work I have had occasion to say something about the amenities of my habitation. The charming, charmingly vague lady (see note to line 691), who secured it for me, sight unseen, meant well, no doubt, especially since it was widely admired in the neighborhood for its "old-world spaciousness and graciousness." Actually, it was an old, dismal, white-and-black, half-timbered house, of the type termed wodnaggen in my country, with carved gables, drafty bow windows and a so-called "semi-noble" porch, surmounted by a hideous veranda. Judge Goldsworth had a wife, and four daughters. Family photographs met me in the hallway and pursued me from room to room, and although I am sure that Alphina (9), Betty (10), Candida (12), and Dee (14) will soon change from horribly cute little schoolgirls to smart young ladies and superior mothers, I must confess that their pert pictures irritated me to such an extent that finally I gathered them one by one and dumped them all in a closet under the gallows row of their cellophane-shrouded winter clothes. In the study I found a large picture of their parents, with sexes reversed, Mrs. G. resembling Malenkov, and Mr. G. a Medusa-locked hag, and this I replaced by the reproduction of a beloved early Picasso: earth boy leading raincloud horse. I did not bother, though, to do much about the family books which were also all over the house - four sets of different Children's Encyclopedias, and a stolid grown-up one that ascended all the way from shelf to shelf along a flight of stairs to burst an appendix in the attic. Judging by the novels in Mrs. Goldsworth's boudoir, her intellectual interests were fully developed, going as they did from Amber to Zen. The head of this alphabetic family had a library too, but this consisted mainly of legal works and a lot of conspicuously lettered ledgers. All the layman could glean for instruction and entertainment was a morocco-bound album in which the judge had lovingly pasted the life histories and pictures of people he had sent to prison or condemned to death: unforgettable faces of imbecile hoodlums, last smokes and last grins, a strangler's quite ordinary-looking hands, a self-made widow, the close-set merciless eyes of a homicidal maniac (somewhat resembling, I admit, the late Jacques d'Argus), a bright little parricide aged seven ("Now, sonny, we want you to tell us -"), and a sad pudgy old pederast who had blown up his blackmailer. What rather surprised me was that he, my learned landlord, and not his "missus," directed the household. Not only had he left me a detailed inventory of all such articles as cluster around a new tenant like a mob of menacing natives, but he had taken stupendous pains to write out on slips of paper recommendations, explanations, injunctions and supplementary lists. Whatever I touched on the first day of my stay yielded a specimen of Goldsworthiana. I unlocked the medicine chest in the second bathroom, and out fluttered a message advising me that the slit for discarded safety blades was too full to use. I opened the icebox, and it warned me with a bark that "no national specialties with odors hard to get rid of" should be placed therein. I pulled out the middle drawer of the desk in the study - and discovered a catalogue raisonné of its meager contents which included an assortment of ashtrays, a damask paperknife (described as "one ancient dagger brought by Mrs. Goldsworth's father from the Orient"), and an old but unused pocket diary optimistically maturing there until its calendric correspondencies came around again. Among various detailed notices affixed to a special board in the pantry, such as plumbing instructions, dissertations on electricity, discourses on cactuses and so forth, I found the diet of the black cat that came with the house:
Mon, Wed, Fri: Liver
Tue, Thu, Sat: Fish
Sun: Ground meat
(All it got from me was milk and sardines; it was a likable little creature but after a while its movements began to grate on my nerves and I farmed it out to Mrs. Finley, the cleaning woman.) But perhaps the funniest note concerned the manipulations of the window curtains which had to be drawn in different ways at different hours to prevent the sun from getting at the upholstery. A description of the position of the sun, daily and seasonal, was given for the several windows, and if I had heeded all this I would have been kept as busy as a participant in a regatta. A footnote, however, generously suggested that instead of manning the curtains, I might prefer to shift and reshift out of sun range the more precious pieces of furniture (two embroidered armchairs and a heavy "royal console") but should do it carefully lest I scratch the wall moldings. I cannot, alas, reproduce the meticulous schedule of these transposals but seem to recall that I was supposed to castle the long way before going to bed and the short way first thing in the morning. My dear Shade roared with laughter when I led him on a tour of inspection and had him find some of those bunny eggs for himself. Thank God, his robust hilarity dissipated the atmosphere of damnum infectum in which I was supposed to dwell. On his part, he regaled me with a number of anecdotes concerning the judge's dry wit and courtroom mannerisms; most of these anecdotes were doubtless folklore exaggerations, a few were evident inventions, and all were harmless. He did not bring up, my sweet old friend never did, ridiculous stories about the terrifying shadows that Judge Goldsworth's gown threw across the underworld, or about this or that beast lying in prison and positively dying of raghdirst (thirst for revenge) - crass banalities circulated by the scurrilous and the heartless - by all those for whom romance, remoteness, sealskin-lined scarlet skies, the darkening dunes of a fabulous kingdom, simply do not exist. But enough of this. Let us turn to our poet's windows. I have no desire to twist and batter an unambiguous apparatus criticus into the monstrous semblance of a novel. (note to Lines 47-48)
In textual criticism of primary source material, apparatus criticus (a critical apparatus) is an organized system of notations to represent, in a single text, the complex history of that text in a concise form useful to diligent readers and scholars. In his essay Posmertnyi tom "Zhizni i trudov Pgodina" N. P. Barsukova ("The Posthumous Volume of The Life and Works of Pogodin by N. P. Barsukov," 1910) Vasiliy Rozanov (a Russian philosopher and writer, 1856-1919) calls the Index (Volume XXII of Nikolay Barsukov's monstrous The Life and Works of Pogodin) compiled by Alexander Barsukov (late Nikolay's younger brother) "the so-called criticus apparatus:"
Труд Барсукова, конечно, не "ученый" в смысле тех мертвых украшений, какие на себе несет наша мертвая наука, сплошь переводная, подражательная и копирующая. Это так называемый "criticus apparatus", "критический аппарат" или еще "ученый аппарат", коим в виде многоязычных "примечаний" снабжаются наши магистерские и докторские диссертации. Как-то проходил раз я по аудитории Московского университета. Ожидалась лекция профессора-юриста. Аудитория была почти пуста. Кое-где были группы разговаривающих студентов, да на партах лежали изредка книги, принесенные с собою слушателями, которые вышли покурить и "заняли места" книгою. Книги -- конечно, только что взятые из университетской библиотеки: иначе как же они попали в аудиторию. И вот я вижу: лежит толстая книга, величиной с Библию или словарь Макарова, и на ней тоненькая. Я взял сверху лежавшую тоненькую и по интересному сюжету долго ее всю рассматривал. Это не был "Курс лекций" или общее изложение науки, а специальное сочинение на специальную интересную тему, -- положим, "Налоги во Франции во вторую половину XVIII века" (т.е. перед революцией). Книга была известного и хорошего русского профессора, достаточно хорошего. Конечно, она сопровождалась отличным "ученым аппаратом", в виде всяких примечаний, ссылок на литературу предмета, на "предшественников" и проч., и проч. Окончив просмотр, я взял в руки следующую, лежавшую под нею книгу, -- величиной с Библию. Едва я поднял крышку переплета, как увидал точь-в-точь то же специальное заглавие, -- (положим) "Французские налоги во вторую половину XVIII века". Сверил года, и русская книга была лет на шесть моложе иностранной. Не составляя перевода, ни (конечно!) заимствования, она была как труд, как работа, как задача и тема повторением чьей-то немецкой работы; она была самостоятельна как "везение воза": но куда его провезти и какою дорогою провезти -- это все уже было повторением. "Какой-то немец раньше провез"... Провез "то самое" и "тою же дорогою". Русский ученый "ехал вторым возом" за ним... Вот вся русская наука и едет таким "вторым возом", -- за немецкой, французской и английскою литературою, заключая оригинального в себе только русский язык и фамилию на "ов", "ев" и "ский" автора. Исключения из этого, конечно, встречаются, -- но как они редки... (II)
In his essay Pamyati Sergeya Sergeyevicha Botkina ("In Memory of Sergey Sergeyevich Botkin," 1910) Rozanov describes Sergey Botkin's museum-like flat in St. Petersburg (the Furshtadtskaya Street, 62) and mentions golovy Meduzy, nimfy i geroi (the heads of Medusa, nymphs and heroes) on the shelves in Botkin's study:
С этажерочек, полочек его кабинета также смотрели головы Медузы, нимфы и герои: все, что окружало его ученую и врачебную работу, -- этот мир искусства, которым он окружал себя, а из зала неслось: "Иди же несть печаль и воздыхание" и "прегрешения вольные и невольные". Боже, как все ужасно в мире, ужасно и кратко! Огромная толпа людей, очевидно горячо любивших покойного, стеснилась в его большой квартире-музее.
According to Kinbote, Judge Goldsworth resembles a Medusa-locked hag. A son of the celebrated physician, Sergey Sergeyevich Botkin (a doctor and art collector, 1859-1910) was the elder brother of Dr. Eugene Botkin (1865-1918), the court physician of Emperor Nicholas II and his wife Alexandra Fyodorovna who was executed with his patients, their children and servants (July 17, 1918). The three main characters in Pale Fire, the poet Shade, his commentator Kinbote and his murderer Gradus, seem to represent three different aspects of mad Botkin’s personality. 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). In his epigram on Count Vorontsov (the governor general of New Russia, the poet's boss in Odessa) Pushkin mentions nadezhda (hope):
Полу-милорд, полу-купец,
Полу-мудрец, полу-невежда,
Полу-подлец, но есть надежда,
Что будет полным наконец.
Half-milord, half-merchant,
Half-sage, half-ignoramus,
Half-scoundrel, but there is a hope
That he will be a full one at last.
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 will be full again.