Vladimir Nabokov

Colonel Peter Gusev & Birds of Mexico in Pale Fire

By Alexey Sklyarenko, 11 August, 2020

Describing King Alfin’s death, 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 the king’s constant "aerial adjutant," Colonel Peter Gusev:

 

King's Alfin's absent-mindedness was strangely combined with a passion for mechanical things, especially for flying apparatuses. In 1912, he managed to rise in an umbrella-like Fabre "hydroplane" and almost got drowned in the sea between Nitra and Indra. He smashed two Farmans, three Zemblan machines, and a beloved Santos Dumont Demoiselle. A very special monoplane, Blenda IV, was built for him in 1916 by his constant "aerial adjutant" Colonel Peter Gusev (later a pioneer parachutist and, at seventy, one of the greatest jumpers of all time), and this was his bird of doom. On the serene, and not too cold, December morning that the angels chose to net his mild pure soul, King Alfin was in the act of trying solo a tricky vertical loop that Prince Andrey Kachurin, the famous Russian stunter and War One hero, had shown him in Gatchina. Something went wrong, and the little Blenda was seen to go into an uncontrolled dive. Behind and above him, in a Caudron biplane, Colonel Gusev (by then Duke of Rahl) and the Queen snapped several pictures of what seemed at first a noble and graceful evolution but then turned into something else. At the last moment, King Alfin managed to straighten out his machine and was again master of gravity when, immediately afterwards, he flew smack into the scaffolding of a huge hotel which was being constructed in the middle of a coastal heath as if for the special purpose of standing in a king's way. This uncompleted and badly gutted building was ordered razed by Queen Blenda who had it replaced by a tasteless monument of granite surmounted by an improbable type of aircraft made of bronze. The glossy prints of the enlarged photographs depicting the entire catastrophe were discovered one day by eight-year-old Charles Xavier in the drawer of a secretary bookcase. In some of these ghastly pictures one could make out the shoulders and leathern casque of the strangely unconcerned aviator, and in the penultimate one of the series, just before the white-blurred shattering crash, one distinctly saw him raise one arm in triumph, and reassurance. The boy had hideous dreams after that but his mother never found out that he had seen those infernal records. (note to Line 71)

 

Gusev (1890) is a story by Chekhov. In his letters to his brother Alexander Pavlovich Anton Chekhov used to address his brother “Gusev,” “Gusinykh” and even “Gusiadi.” In Moyo otkrytie Ameriki (“My Discovery of America,” 1925-26) Mayakovski (VN’s “late namesake”) describes “zopilotes,” the peaceful crows of Mexico, as birds gusinykh razmerov (the size of a goose), voron'yey chernoty (raven-black):

 

По дороге к вокзалу автомобиль спугнул стаю птиц. Есть чего испугаться.

Гусиных размеров, вороньей черноты, с голыми шеями и большими клювами, они подымались над нами.

Это «зопилоты», мирные вороны Мексики; ихнее дело — всякий отброс.

 

In zopilote there is pilot. The Raven (1845) is a ballad by E. A. Poe. According to Kinbote, Shade’s mother assisted her husband in his work and drew the admirable figures of his Birds of Mexico:

 

A Commentary where placid scholarship should reign is not the place for blasting the preposterous defects of that little obituary. I have only mentioned it because that is where I gleaned a few meager details concerning the poet's parents. His father, Samuel Shade, who died at fifty, in 1902, had studied medicine in his youth and was vice-president of a firm of surgical instruments in Exton. His chief passion, however, was what our eloquent necrologist calls "the study of the feathered tribe," adding that "a bird had been named for him: Bombycilla Shadei" (this should be "shadei," of course). The poet's mother, née Caroline Lukin, assisted him in his work and drew the admirable figures of his Birds of Mexico, which I remember having seen in my friend's house. What the obituarist does not know is that Lukin comes from Luke, as also do Locock and Luxon and Lukashevich. It represents one of the many instances when the amorphous-looking but live and personal hereditary patronymic grows, sometimes in fantastic shapes, around the common pebble of a Christian name. The Lukins are an old Essex family. Other names derive from professions such as Rymer, Scrivener, Linner (one who illuminates parchments), Botkin (one who makes bottekins, fancy footwear) and thousands of others. My tutor, a Scotsman, used to call any old tumble-down building "a hurley-house." But enough of this. (note to Line 71)

 

In Stikhi o sovetskom pasporte (“The Verses about Soviet Passport,” 1929) Mayakovski compares his passport to bomba (a bomb) and to britva oboyudoostraya (a double-edged razor):

 

И вдруг,
И вдруг, как будто
И вдруг, как будто ожогом,
И вдруг, как будто ожогом, рот
скривило
скривило господину.
Это
Это господин чиновник
Это господин чиновник берет
мою
мою краснокожую паспортину.
Берет —
Берет — как бомбу,
Берет — как бомбу, берет —
Берет — как бомбу, берет — как ежа,
как бритву
как бритву обоюдоострую,
берет,
берет, как гремучую
берет, как гремучую в 20 жал
змею
змею двухметроворостую.

 

But suddenly
                    Mr. Officer's face
                                               turns awry,
as if
       he has smelled disaster. 
You've guessed it:
                             the officer's taken my 
red-skinned hulk of a passport. 
He handles it
                     like a hedgehog
                                              or bomb,
like a bee
                to be nipped
                                     by the wings,
like a twisting rattlesnake
                                         three yards long
with a hundred
                        deadly stings.

(tr. D. Rottenberg)

 

Britva (“Razor,” 1926) is a story by VN. In Canto Four of his poem Shade describes shaving:

 

Since my biographer may be too staid

Or know too little to affirm that Shade

Shaved in his bath, here goes: "He'd fixed a sort

Of hinge-and-screw affair, a steel support

Running across the tub to hold in place

The shaving mirror right before his face

And with his toe renewing tap-warmth, he'd

Sit like a king there, and like Marat bleed."

 

The more I weigh, the less secure my skin;

In places it's ridiculously thin;

Thus near the mouth: the space between its wick

And my grimace, invites the wicked nick.

Or this dewlap: some day I must set free

The Newport Frill inveterate in me.

My Adam's apple is a prickly pear:

Now I shall speak of evil and despair

As none has spoken. Five, six, seven, eight,

Nine strokes are not enough. Ten. I palpate

Through strawberry-and-cream the gory mess

And find unchanged that patch of prickliness.

 

I have my doubts about the one-armed bloke

Who in commercials with one gliding stroke

Clears a smooth path of flesh from ear to chin,

Then wipes his face and fondly tries his skin.

I'm in the class of fussy bimanists.

As a discreet ephebe in tights assists

A female in an acrobatic dance,

My left hand helps, and holds, and shifts its stance.

Now I shall speak... Better than any soap

Is the sensation for which poets hope

When inspiration and its icy blaze,

The sudden image, the immediate phrase

Over the skin a triple ripple send

Making the little hairs all stand on end

As in the enlarged animated scheme

Of whiskers mowed when held up by Our Cream.

 

Now I shall speak of evil as none has

Spoken before. I loathe such things as jazz;

The white-hosed moron torturing a black

Bull, rayed with red; abstractist bric-a-brac;

Primitivist folk-masks; progressive schools;

Music in supermarkets; swimming pools;

Brutes, bores, class-conscious Philistines, Freud, Marx,

Fake thinkers, puffed-up poets, frauds and sharks.

 

And while the safety blade with scrape and screak

Travels across the country of my cheek;

Cars on the highway pass, and up the steep

Incline big trucks around my jawbone creep,

And now a silent liner docks, and now

Sunglassers tour Beirut, and now I plough

Old Zembla's fields where my gay stubble grows,

And slaves make hay between my mouth and nose. (ll. 887-938)

 

In “My Discovery of America” Mayakovski describes the bull fight in Mexico and mentions bychye serdtse (the bull’s heart) pierced with a sword:

 

Я не мог и не хотел видеть, как вынесли шпагу главному убийце и он втыкал ее в бычье сердце. Только по бешеному грохоту толпы я понял, что дело сделано. Внизу уже ждали тушу с ножами сдиратели шкур. Единственное, о чем я жалел, это о том, что нельзя установить на бычьих рогах пулеметов и нельзя его выдрессировать стрелять.

 

Mayakovski is the author of Misteriya-Buff (“Mystery-Bouffe,” 1918), a play written for the first anniversary of the October Revolution. Its characters include Seven Pairs of the Clean and Seven Pairs of the Unclean. Nechistaya para ("The Unclean Pair") is a chapter in Ilf and Petrov's novel Dvenadtsat' stuliev ("The Twelve Chairs," 1927). In Ilf and Petrov’s novel Lasker arrives in Vasyuki (as imagined by the Vasyuki chess enthusiasts) descending by parachute:

 

Вдруг на горизонте была усмотрена чёрная точка. Она быстро приближалась и росла, превратившись в большой изумрудный парашют. Как большая редька, висел на парашютном кольце человек с чемоданчиком.

– Это он! – закричал одноглазый. – Ура! Ура! Ура! Я узнаю великого философа-шахматиста, доктора Ласкера. Только он один во всем мире носит такие зелёные носочки.

 

Suddenly a black dot was noticed on the horizon. It approached rapidly, growing larger and  larger until  it finally turned into a large emerald parachute. A man with an attache case was hanging from the harness, like a huge radish.

"Here he is!" shouted one-eye. "Hooray,  hooray, I recognize  the great philosopher and chess player Dr. Lasker. He is the only person in the world who wears those green socks." (Chapter 34 “The Interplanetary Chess Tournament”)

 

Lasker’s izumrudnyi parashyut (emerald parachute) brings to mind Izumrudov, one of the greater Shadows who visits Gradus (Shade’s murderer) in Nice, and Gerald Emerald, a young instructor at Wordsmith University who gives Gradus a lift to Kinbote's house. In 1942 Evgeniy Petrov (Ilya Ilf's co-author) perished in an airplane crash.

 

A clean person, Shade shaves in his bath. In his Commentary and Index to Shade’s poem Kinbote mentions Queen Disa’s cousin Harfar Baron of Shalksbore, a phenomenally endowed young brute who was nicknamed Curdy Buff by his admirers:

 

When the Zemblan Revolution broke out (May 1, 1958), she wrote the King a wild letter in governess English, urging him to come and stay with her until the situation cleared up. The letter was intercepted by the Onhava police, translated into crude Zemblan by a Hindu member of the Extremist party, and then read aloud to the royal captive in a would-be ironic voice by the preposterous commandant of the palace. There happened to be in that letter one - only one, thank God - sentimental sentence: "I want you to know that no matter how much you hurt me, you cannot hurt my love," and this sentence (if we re-English it from the Zemblan) came out as: "I desire you and love when you flog me" He interrupted the commandant, calling him a buffoon and a rogue, and insulting everybody around so dreadfully that the Extremists had to decide fast whether to shoot him at once or let him have the original of the letter.
Eventually he managed to inform her that he was confined to the palace. Valiant Disa hurriedly left the Riviera and made a romantic but fortunately ineffectual attempt to return to Zembla. Had she been permitted to land, she would have been forthwith incarcerated, which would have reacted on the King's flight, doubling the difficulties of escape. A message from the Karlists containing these simple considerations checked her progress in Stockholm, and she flew back to her perch in a mood of frustration and fury (mainly, I think, because the message had been conveyed to her by a cousin of hers, good old Curdy Buff, whom she loathed). Several weeks passed and she was soon in a state of even worse agitation owing to rumors that her husband might be condemned to death. She left Cap Turc again. She had traveled to Brussels and chartered a plane to fly north, when another message, this time from Odon, came, saying that the King and he were out of Zembla, and that she should quietly regain Villa Disa and await there further news. In the autumn of the same year she was informed by Lavender that a man representing her husband would be coining to discuss with her certain business matters concerning property she and her husband jointly owned abroad. She was in the act of writing on the terrace under the jacaranda a disconsolate letter to Lavender when the tall, sheared and bearded visitor with the bouquet of flowers-of-the-gods who had been watching her from afar advanced through the garlands of shade. She looked up - and of course no dark spectacles and no make-up could for a moment fool her.

 

…She had recently lost both parents and had no real friend to turn to for explanation and advice when the inevitable rumors reached her; these she was too proud to discuss with her ladies in waiting but she read books, found out all about our manly Zemblan customs, and concealed her naive distress under the great show of sarcastic sophistication. He congratulated her on her attitude, solemnly swearing that he had given up, or at least would give up, the practices of his youth; but everywhere along the road powerful temptations stood at attention. He succumbed to them from time to time, then every other day, then several times daily - especially during the robust regime of Harfar Baron of Shalksbore, a phenomenally endowed young brute (whose family name, "knave's farm," is the most probable derivation of "Shakespeare"). Curdy Buff - as Harfar was nicknamed by his admirers - had a huge escort of acrobats and bareback riders, and the whole affair rather got out of hand so that Disa, upon unexpectedly returning from a trip to Sweden, found the Palace transformed into a circus. He again promised, again fell, and despite the utmost discretion was again caught. At last she removed to the Riviera leaving him to amuse himself with a band of Eton-collared, sweet-voiced minions imported from England. (note to Lines 433-434)

 

Curdy Buff is a play on coeur de boeuf (bull’s heart). In his Filologicheskie zametki (“Philological Notes,” 1885), O mae (“On May”), Chekhov says that maybeetles, majors and poets à la Maykov are born in May:

 

По мнению россиян, кто женится в мае, тот будет весь век маяться — и это справедливо. У астрономов май занимает в эклиптике третье место и солнце вступает в знак близнецов, у дачниц же он занимает первое место, так как военные выступают в лагери. Если лагери находятся близко к дачам, то знак близнецов может служить предостережением: не увлекайтесь в мае, чтобы зимою не иметь дела с двойнями! В мае родятся майские жуки, майоры и поэты a la Майков.

 

In his autobiography Speak, Memory (1951) VN pairs Apollon Maykov (the author of Mashenka, 1846) with Mayakovski:

 

After 1923, when she moved to Prague, and I lived in Germany and France, I was unable to visit her frequently; nor was I with her at her death, which occurred on the eve of World War Two. Whenever I did manage to go to Prague, there was always that initial pang one feels just before time, caught unawares, again dons its familiar mask. In the pitiable lodgings she shared with her dearest companion, Evgeniya Konstantinovna Hofeld (1884-1957), who had replaced, in 1914, Miss Greenwood (who, in her turn, had replaced Miss Lavington) as governess of my two sisters (Olga, born January 5, 1903, and Elena, born March 31, 1906), albums, in which, during the last years, she had copied out her favorite poems, from Maykov to Mayakovski, lay around her on odds and ends of decrepit, secondhand furniture. (Chapter Two, 4)

 

Chekhov’s letter of Nov. 24, 1887, to his brother Alexander (“dearest Gusev,” as Chekhov calls him this time), in which the writer describes the unexpected success of the first performance of his play Ivanov (1887), is signed “Schiller Shakespearovich Goethe.” In Schiller’s poem Pegasus im Joche (“Pegasus in the Yoke,” 1795) Pegasus (the winged horse of inspiration mentioned by Shade in a discarded variant) is made to plough. The opening lines of Goethe’s Erlkönig (1782), Wer reitet so spät durch Nacht und Wind? / Es ist der Vater mit seinem Kind, are a leitmotif in Shade’s poem. In her essay Poety s istoriey i poety bez istorii ("Poets with History and Poets without History," 1933) Marina Tsvetaev (whose poem to Mayakovski is quoted by Hodasevich at the end of his essay “The Horse in Décolleté Dress,” 1927) mentions Goethe's Faust or simply a poem of thousand lines:

 

Поэты с историей прежде всего поэты воли. Речь не о воле, осуществляющей деяние: никто не усомнится, что такая физическая громада, как "Фауст" или просто поэма в тысячу строк, не может возникнуть сама по себе. Без усилий воли могут возникнуть восемь, шестнадцать, редко двадцать строк – лирический прилив чаще всего приносит к нашим ногам осколки - хотя бы и самые драгоценные. Говорю о воле выбора, о воле - выборе. О решимости не только стать иным, но и именно таким иным. О решимости расстаться с сегодняшним собой. Решить, подобно герою сказки: направо, налево или прямо (но, подобно герою той же сказки, - никогда назад!), Пушкин, проснувшись однажды утром, решает: "Сегодня пишу Моцарта!" Воля выбора Моцарта - отказ от множества других видений и дел, жертва. Поэт с историей отбрасывает все, что не лежит на линии его "стрелы" - его личности, его дара, его истории. Выбирает его непогрешимый инстинкт главного. И после завершения пушкинского пути у нас остается ощущение, что Пушкин не мог не создать того, что создал, и написать то, что он не написал. И никто из нас не жалеет, что он отказался от замысла "Мертвых душ", которые находились на гоголевской генеральной линии. (Поэт с историей имеет ещё и ясный взгляд на других. И Пушкин обладал таким взглядом)

 

In the same paragraph Marina Tsvetaev mentions Pushkin's Mozart and Salieri. In Pushkin's little tragedy Mozart uses the phrase nikto b (none would):

 

Когда бы все так чувствовали силу
Гармонии! Но нет: тогда б не мог
И мир существовать; никто б не стал
Заботиться о нуждах низкой жизни;
Все предались бы вольному искусству.

 

If all could feel like you the power

of harmony! But no: the world

could not go on then. None would

bother about the needs of lowly life;

All would surrender to free art. (Scene II)

 

Nikto b is Botkin in reverse. The “real” name of Shade, Kinbote and Gradus seems to be 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 of Kinbote’s Commentary) who twisted words and read names backward. 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.

 

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”). Dvoynik ("The Double") is a short novel (1846) by Dostoevski and a poem (1909) by Alexander Blok. Blok's poem O doblestyakh, o podvigakh, o slave... (“About valours, about feats, about glory…” 1908) echoes a line in Pushkin's poem "October 19, 1825," o Shillere, o slave, o lyubvi (about Schiller, about glory, about love). Shilleru ("To Schiller," 1855) is a poem by Afanasiy Fet (who married Maria Botkin in 1857).

 

In “My Discovery of America” Mayakovski mentions Chekhov and Blok’s poem “The Twelve” (1918):

 

Русскую литературу любят и уважают, хотя больше понаслышке. Сейчас переводятся (!) Лев Толстой, Чехов, а из новых я видел только «Двенадцать» Блока да мой «Левый марш».

 

In his poem Aviator (“The Aviator,” 1910-12) Blok mentions nedrognuvshiy pilot (the unwavering pilot):

 

Летун отпущен на свободу,
Качнув две лопасти свои,
Как чудище морское — в воду,
Скользнул в воздушные струи.

Его винты поют, как струны...
Смотри: недрогнувший пилот
К слепому солнцу над трибуной
Стремит свой винтовой полет...

 

At the beginning of his essay "Andrey Bely" (1927) Titsian Tabidze calls Andrey Bely and Alexander Blok "the two palpitating wings of Russian Symbolism:"

 

Андрей Белый и Александр Блок -- "два трепетных крыла" русского символизма. Недаром воспоминания Андрея Белого о Блоке разрастаются в эпопею и объемлют историю русской поэзии начала века. Это -- не воспоминания в обычном смысле слова, а разговор с самим собой, наедине. В этой эпопее Андрей Белый вспоминает необычайную историю встречи двух поэтов, историю сиамских близнецов, которым потом пришлось вынести на своих плечах последующую поэзию; здесь в качестве действующих лиц выступают: петербургские туманы, снежная Москва и шахматовские зори.

 

In his essay on Bely Tabidze mentions Nakhlebniki Khlebnikova (“The Dependents of Khlebnikov”), a literary pamphlet by Alvek:

 

Недавно сообщалось, что выходит литературный памфлет Альвэка "Нахлебники Хлебникова"; по всей вероятности, автор будет пытаться доказать, что футуристы всех формаций -- "Нахлебники Хлебникова", т. е. идут от него. Однако это трудно будет доказать, во-первых, потому, что сам Хлебников косноязычным ушёл в могилу, не успев выявить поэтические замыслы, которых у него безусловно было в достатке, а во-вторых, очень сомнительна продукция оставшихся футуристов, чтобы в них искать кристаллизацию мутного начала Хлебникова.

 

A futurist poet (and an ornithologist's son), Velimir Khlebnikov is the author of Tam, gde zhili sviristeli (“Where the Waxwings Lived…” 1908), a poem in which besporyadok dikiy teney (a wild confusion of shadows) is mentioned:

 

В беспорядке диком теней,
Где, как морок старых дней,
Закружились, зазвенели
Стая лёгких времирей.

 

Nakhlebniki ("The Dependents," 1886) is a story by Chekhov. Its hero is seventy years old:

 

Мещанин Михаил Петров Зотов, старик лет семидесяти, дряхлый и одинокий, проснулся от холода и старческой ломоты во всем теле. В комнате было темно, но лампадка перед  образом  уже  не  горела.  Зотов приподнял занавеску и поглядел в окно. Облака, облегавшие небо, начинали уже подергиваться белизной, и воздух становился прозрачным,- стало быть, был пятый час, не больше.

 

MIKHAIL PETROVICH ZOTOV, a decrepit and solitary old man of seventy, belonging to the artisan class, was awakened by the cold and the aching in his old limbs. It was dark in his room, but the little lamp before the ikon was no longer burning. Zotov raised the curtain and looked out of the window. The clouds that shrouded the sky were beginning to show white here and there, and the air was becoming transparent, so it must have been nearly five, not more.

 

A pioneer parachutist, Colonel Peter Gusev is at seventy one of the greatest jumpers of all time. The phrase dva trepetnykh kryla ("two palpitating wings," as Tabidze calls Bely and Blok) occurs in the first line of a sonnet by Vyacheslav Ivanov:

 

Мечты одной два трепетных крыла

И два плеча одной склоненной выи,

Мы понесли восторги огневые,

Всю боль земли и всю пронзенность зла.

 

В одном ярме, упорных два вола,

Мы плуг влекли чрез целины живые,

Доколь в страду и полдни полевые

Единого, щадя, не отпрягла

 

Хозяина прилежная забота.

Так двум была работой красота

Единая, как мёд двойного сота.

 

И тению единого креста

Одних молитв слияли два полёта

Мы, двух теней скорбящая чета.

 

The first line of the second quatrain, V odnom yarme, upornykh dva vola (Two stubborn bulls in one yoke), brings to mind Schiller's "Pegasus in Yoke." Vyacheslav Ivanov's sonnet ends in the line My, dvukh teney skorbyashchaya cheta (We, a grieving couple of two shades). In his memoirs Mezhdu dvukh revolyutsiy (“Between the Two Revolutions,” 1934) Andrey Bely says that for him Chekhov was a Symbolist much more than Maurice Maetterlinck and mentions Vyacheslav Ivanov’s verses about 333 embraces:

                                      

Не любил я привздохов таких, после них пуще прежнего изобличая политику группочки; гневы мои заострились напрасно на Г. И. Чулкове; в прямоте последнего не сомневался; кричал благим матом он; очень бесили "молчальники", тайно мечтавшие на чулковских плечах выплыть к славе, хотя бы под флагом мистического анархизма; открыто признать себя "мистико-анархистами" они не решались; по ним я и бил, обрушиваясь на Чулкова, дававшего повод к насмешкам по поводу лозунгов, которые компрометировали для меня символизм; примазь уличной мистики и дешевого келейного анархизма казались мне профанацией; каждый кадетский присяжный поверенный в эти месяцы, руки засунув в штаны, утверждал: "Я, ведь, собственно... гм... анархист!" Я писал: Чехов более для меня символист, чем Морис Метерлинк; а тут - нате: "неизречённость" вводилась в салон; а анархия становилась свержением штанов под девизами "нового" культа; этого Чулков не желал; но писал неумно; вот "плоды" - лесбианская повесть Зиновьевой-Аннибал и педерастические стихи Кузмина; они вместе с программной лирикой Вячеслава Иванова о "333" объятиях брались слишком просто в эротическом, плясовом, огарочном бреде; "оргиазм" В. Иванова на языке желтой прессы понимался упрощенно: "свальным грехом"; почтенный же оргиаст лишь хитренько помалкивал: "Понимайте, как знаете!"

 

In VN's novel Lolita (1955) Quilty tells Humbert that he has been called the American Maetterlinck:

 

I asked him if he had anything serious to say before dying. The automatic was again ready for use on the person. He looked at it and heaved a big sigh. Now look here, Mac,” he said. “You are drunk and I am a sick man. Let us postpone the matter. I need quiet. I have to nurse my impotence. Friends are coming in the afternoon to take me to a game. This pistol-packing face is becoming a frightful nuisance. We are men of the world, in everything - sex, free verse, marksmanship. If you bear me a grudge, I am ready to make unusual amends. Even an old-fashioned rencontre, sword or pistol, in Rio or elsewhere - is not excluded. My memory and my eloquence are not at their best today, but really, my dear Mr. Humbert, you were not an ideal stepfather, and I did not force your little protégée to join me. It was she made me remove her to a happier home. This house is not as modern as that ranch we shared with dear friends. But it is roomy, cool in summer and winter, and in a word comfortable, so, since I intend retiring to England or Florence forever, I suggest you move in. It is yours, gratis. Under the condition you stop pointing at me that [he swore disgustingly] gun. By the way, I do not know if you care for the bizarre, but if you do, I can offer you, also gratis, as house pet, a rather exciting little freak, a young lady with three breasts, one a dandy, this is a rare and delightful marvel of nature. Now, soyons raisonnables. You will only wound me hideously and then rot in jail while I recuperate in a tropical setting. I promise you, Brewster, you will be happy here, with a magnificent cellar, and all the royalties from my next play - I have not much at the bank right now but I propose to borrow - you know, as the Bard said, with that cold in his head, to borrow and to borrow and to borrow. There are other advantages. We have here a most reliable and bribable charwoman, a Mrs. Vibrissa - curious name - who comes from the village twice a week, alas not today, she has daughters, granddaughters, a thing or two I know about the chief of police makes him my slave. I am a playwright. I have been called the American Maeterlinck. Maeterlinck-Schmetterling, says I. Come on! All this is very humiliating, and I am not sure I am doing the right thing. Never use herculanita with rum. Now drop that pistol like a good fellow. I knew your dear wife slightly. You may use my wardrobe. Oh, another thing - you are going to like this. I have an absolutely unique collection of erotica upstairs. Just to mention one item: the in folio de-luxe Bagration Island  by the explorer and psychoanalyst Melanie Weiss, a remarkable lady, a remarkable work - drop that gun - with photographs of eight hundred and something male organs she examined and measured in 1932 on Bagration, in the Barda Sea, very illuminating graphs, plotted with love under pleasant skies - drop that gun - and moreover I can arrange for you to attend executions, not everybody knows that the chair is painted yellow” (2.35)

 

The Barda Sea seems to hint at bardak (brothel) mentioned by Mayakovski in one of his salacious poems:

 

Все люди бляди,
Весь мир бардак!
Один мой дядя
И тот мудак.

 

All people are whores,
The whole world is a brothel!
My uncle alone…
But even he is a cretin.

 

Humbert finds out Clare Quilty's address from his uncle Ivor, the Ramsdale dentist. There is Barda in bardak and Bard in Barda. Shakespeare (the Bard) said: “All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players.” At the end of his monologue in Shakespeare’s As You Like It (Act II, Scene 7) Jaques repeats the word “sans” four times:

 

All the world’s a stage,

And all the men and women merely players;

They have their exits and their entrances,

And one man in his time plays many parts,

His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant,

Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms.

Then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel

And shining morning face, creeping like snail

Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,

Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad

Made to his mistress’ eyebrow. Then a soldier,

Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,

Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel,

Seeking the bubble reputation

Even in the cannon’s mouth. And then the justice,

In fair round belly with good capon lined,

With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,

Full of wise saws and modern instances;

And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts

Into the lean and slippered pantaloon,

With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;

His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide

For his shrunk shank, and his big manly voice,

Turning again toward childish treble, pipes

And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,

That ends this strange eventful history,

Is second childishness and mere oblivion,

Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

 

At the end of his Commentary Kinbote says that he may turn up yet, on another campus, as an old, happy, healthy heterosexual Russian, a writer in exile, sans fame, sans future, sans audience, sans anything but his art:

 

"And you, what will you be doing with yourself, poor King, poor Kinbote?" a gentle young voice may inquire.

God will help me, I trust, to rid myself of any desire to follow the example of the other two characters in this work. I shall continue to exist. I may assume other disguises, other forms, but I shall try to exist. I may turn up yet, on another campus, as an old, happy, healthy heterosexual Russian, a writer in exile, sans fame, sans future, sans audience, sans anything but his art. I may join forces with Odon in a new motion picture: Escape from Zembla (ball in the palace, bomb in the palace square). I may pander to the simple tastes of theatrical critics and cook up a stage play, an old-fashioned melodrama with three principles: a lunatic who intends to kill an imaginary king, another lunatic who imagines himself to be that king, and a distinguished old poet who stumbles by chance into the line of fire, and perishes in the clash between the two figments. Oh, I may do many things! History permitting, I may sail back to my recovered kingdom, and with a great sob greet the gray coastline and the gleam of a roof in the rain. I may huddle and groan in a madhouse. But whatever happens, wherever the scene is laid, somebody, somewhere, will quietly set out--somebody has already set out, somebody still rather far away is buying a ticket, is boarding a bus, a ship, a plane, has landed, is walking toward a million photographers, and presently he will ring at my door--a bigger, more respectable, more competent Gradus. (note to Line 1000)