In his Commentary to Shade’s poem Kinbote calls Gradus (Shade’s murderer in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) “half-man” and says that he is half mad:
I have considered in my earlier note (I now see it is the note to line 171) the particular dislikes, and hence the motives, of our "automatic man," as I phrased it at a time when he did not have as much body, did not offend the senses as violently as now; was, in a word, further removed from our sunny, green, grass-fragrant Arcady. But Our Lord has fashioned man so marvelously that no amount of motive hunting and rational inquiry can ever really explain how and why anybody is capable of destroying a fellow creature (this argument necessitates, I know, a temporary granting to Gradus of the status of man), unless he is defending the life of his son, or his own, or the achievement of a lifetime; so that in final judgment of the Gradus versus the Crown case I would submit that if his human incompleteness be deemed insufficient to explain his idiotic journey across the Atlantic just to empty the magazine of his gun; we may concede, doctor, that our half-man was also half mad. (note to Line 949)
"Half-man half mad" brings to mind "a collection of half droll, half sad chapter," as in the Prefatory Piece to Eugene Onegin Pushkin calls his novel in verse:
Не мысля гордый свет забавить,
Вниманье дружбы возлюбя,
Хотел бы я тебе представить
Залог достойнее тебя,
Достойнее души прекрасной,
Святой исполненной мечты,
Поэзии живой и ясной,
Высоких дум и простоты;
Но так и быть — рукой пристрастной
Прими собранье пёстрых глав,
Полусмешных, полупечальных,
Простонародных, идеальных,
Небрежный плод моих забав,
Бессониц, лёгких вдохновений,
Незрелых и увядших лет,
Ума холодных наблюдений
И сердца горестных замет.
Not thinking to amuse the haughty world,
having grown fond of friendship's heed,
I wish I could present you with a gage
that would be worthier of you —
be worthier of a fine soul
full of a holy dream,
of live and limpid poetry,
of high thoughts and simplicity.
But so be it. With partial hand
take this collection of pied chapters:
half droll, half sad,
plain-folk, ideal,
the careless fruit of my amusements,
insomnias, light inspirations,
unripe and withered years,
the intellect's cold observations,
and the heart's sorrowful remarks.
Pushkin’s EO is dedicated to Pletnyov (Pushkin’s friend and publisher to whom the Prefatory Piece is addressed). In a letter of April 11, 1831, to Pletnyov Pushkin calls Pletnyov ten’ vozlyublennaya (the beloved shade) and asks Pletnyov (who did not respond to Pushkin’s letters for a long time), if he is already dead, to bow to Derzhavin and to embrace Delvig (who died at the beginning of 1831):
Воля твоя, ты несносен: ни строчки от тебя не дождёшься. Умер ты, что ли? Если тебя уже нет на свете, то, тень возлюбленная, кланяйся от меня Державину и обними моего Дельвига.
The beloved shade combines, as it were, the poet Shade with his commentator (and the publisher of Shade’s last poem) Kinbote who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla. Shade, Kinbote and Gradus seem to represent three aspects of 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 of Kinbote’s Commentary). There is nadezhda (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.
Kinbote is Shade’s dangerous neighbor. Opasnyi sosed (“The Dangerous Neighbor,” 1811) is a poem of Pushkin’s uncle Vasiliy Lvovich. Its main character, Buyanov (Pushkin’s “first cousin”), appears in Chapter Five of EO as one of the guests at Tatiana’s name-day party.
In a letter of Sept. 9, 1830, to Pletnyov Pushkin quotes his uncle’s last words, kak skuchny statyi Katenina! (“How dull are the articles of Katenin!”):
Бедный дядя Василий! знаешь ли его последние слова? приезжаю к нему, нахожу его в забытьи, очнувшись, он узнал меня, погоревал, потом, помолчав: как скучны статьи Катенина! и более ни слова. Каково? вот что значит умереть честным воином, на щите, le cri de guerre a la bouche!
In a letter of May 16, 1835, to Pushkin Katenin compares Kukolnik (a schoolmate of Gogol) to Prince Shakhovskoy and says that, contrary to Boileau’s words, il est bien des degrés du médiocre au pire (there are many degrees from mediocre to worst):
Судя по твоим, увы! слишком правдоподобны м словам, ты умрёшь (дай бог тебе много лет здравствовать!) Вениямином русских поэтов, юнейшим из сынов Израиля, а новое поколение безъимянное; ибо имена, подобные Кукольнику, sentent fort le Perrault. Где ему до Шаховского? У того везде кое-что хорошо. Своя Семья мила, в Аристофане целая идея, и будь всё как второй акт, вышла бы в своём роде хорошая комедия; князь не тщательный художник и не великий поэт, но вопреки Boileau:
Il est bien des degrés du médiocre au pire
сиречь до Кукольника; и какими стихами, с тех пор как они взбунтовались противу всех правил, они пишут!
Katenin quotes Pushkin’s prediction that he (Pushkin) will die Veniaminom russkikh poetov, yuneyshim iz synov Izrailya (as the Benjamin of Russian poets, the youngest if Israel’s sons).
Jakob Gradus is also known as Jack Degree. Il n'est point de degré du médiocre au pire (there is no degree from mediocre to worst) is a line from Canto Four of Boileau’s L'Art poétique (1674). Canto Four of Boileau's L'Art poétique begins as follows:
Dans Florence, jadis, vivait un médecin,
Savant hâbleur, dit-on, et célèbre assassin.
In Florence once lived a physician,
skilful boaster, they say, and celebrated killer.
Un médecin (a physician) brings to mind lekarstvo (medicine) mentioned by Pushkin in EO's first stanza:
Мой дядя самых честных правил,
Когда не в шутку занемог,
Он уважать себя заставил
И лучше выдумать не мог.
Его пример другим наука;
Но, боже мой, какая скука
С больным сидеть и день и ночь,
Не отходя ни шагу прочь!
Какое низкое коварство
Полуживого забавлять,
Ему подушки поправлять,
Печально подносить лекарство,
Вздыхать и думать про себя:
Когда же чёрт возьмёт тебя!”
“My uncle has most honest principles:
when he was taken gravely ill,
he forced one to respect him
and nothing better could invent.
To others his example is a lesson;
but, good God, what a bore
to sit by a sick man both day and night,
not moving a step away!
what base perfidiousness
to entertain one half-alive,
adjust for him his pillows,
sadly serve him his medicine,
sigh — and think inwardly
when will the devil take you?”
Gradus being Latin for "step," the name of Shade's murderer seems to hint at ne otkhodya ni shagu proch' (not moving a step away), Line 8 of EO's first stanza. The stanza's Line 6, No, bozhe moy, kakaya skuka (But, good God, what a bore), brings to mind the Russian ejaculation used by Gradus:
Gradus returned to the Main Desk.
"Too bad," said the girl, "I just saw him leave."
"Bozhe moy, Bozhe moy," muttered Gradus, who sometimes at moments of stress used Russian ejaculations.
"You'll find him in the directory," she said pushing it towards him, and dismissing the sick man's existence to attend to the wants of Mr. Gerald Emerald who was taking out a fat bestseller in a cellophane jacket.
Moaning and shifting from one foot to the other, Gradus started leafing through the college directory but when he found the address, he was faced with the problem of getting there.
"Dulwich Road," he cried to the girl. "Near? Far? Very far, probably?"
"Are you by any chance Professor Pnin's new assistant?" asked Emerald.
"No," said the girl. "This man is looking for Dr. Kinbote, I think. You are looking for Dr. Kinbote, aren't you?"
"Yes, and I can’t any more,” said Gradus.
“I thought so,” said the girl. “Doesn’t he live somewhere near Mr. Shade, Gerry?”
“Oh, definitely,” said Gerry, and turned to the killer: “I can drive you there if you like. It is on my way.”
Did they talk in the car, these two characters, the man in green and the man in brown? Who can say? They did not. After all, the drive took only a few minutes (it took me, at the wheel of my powerful Kramler, four and a half).
“I think I’ll drop you here,” said Mr. Emerald. “It’s that house up there.”
One finds it hard to decide what Gradus alias Grey wanted more at that minute: discharge his gun or rid himself of the inexhaustible lava in his bowels. As he began hurriedly fumbling at the car door, unfastidious Emerald leaned, close to him, across him, almost merging with him, to help him open it—and then, slamming it shut again, whizzed on to some tryst in the valley. My reader will, I hope appreciate all the minute particulars I have taken such trouble to present to him after a long talk I had with the killer; he will appreciate them even more if I tell him that, according to the legend spread later by the police, Jack Grey had been given a lift, all the way from Roanoke, or somewhere, by a lonesome trucker! One can only hope that an impartial search will turn up the trilby forgotten in the Library—or in Mr. Emerald’s car. (note to Line 949)
Gradus alias Grey brings to mind Thomas Gray whose Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard (1751) was translated into Russian by Zhukovski. In his Zapiska Zhukovskomu ("A Note to Zhukovski," 1817-20) Pushkin mentions, among other poets, Gray:
Штабс-капитану, Гёте, Грею,
Томсону, Шиллеру привет!
Им поклониться честь имею,
Но сердцем истинно жалею,
Что никогда их дома нет.
I salute the staff captain, Goethe, Gray,
Thomson and Schiller!
I have the honor to bow to them,
but in my heart I truly regret
that they are never home.
The poem's last two words, doma net (not home), remind one of the idiom ne vse doma ([have] a screw loose). The doctor (“we may concede, doctor, that our half-man was also half mad”) to whom Kinbote addresses suggests that Botkin writes PF in a madhouse.
Pushkin's Zapiska Zhukovskomu brings to mind Gogol's story Zapiski sumasshedshego ("The Notes of a Madman," 1835). “A bigger, more respectable, more competent Gradus” mentioned by Kinbote at the end of his Commentary (note to Line 1000) seems to hint at the real Inspector whose arrival is announced at the end of Gogol's play Revizor ("The Inspector," 1836).