Hodinski vs. Botkin in Pale Fire

In his Commentary and Index 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) mentions the Russian adventurer Hodinski, Queen Yaruga’s goliart (court jester) and a poet of genius who is said to have forged in his spare time a famous old Russian chanson de geste:

 

To return to the King: take for instance the question of personal culture. How often is it that kings engage in some special research? Conchologists among them can be counted on the fngers of one maimed hand. The last king of Zembla - partly under the influence of his uncle Conmal, the great translator of Shakespeare (see notes to lines 39 - 40 and 962), had become, despite frequent migraines, passionately addicted to the study of literature. At forty, not long before the collapse of his throne, he had attained such a degree of scholarship that he dared accede to his venerable uncle's raucous dying request: "Teach, Karlik!" Of course, it would have been unseemly for a monarch to appear in the robes of learning at a university lectern and present to rosy youths Finnigans Wake as a monstrous extension of Angus MacDiarmid's "incoherent transactions" and of Southey's Lingo-Grande ("Dear Stumparumper," etc.) or discuss the Zemblan variants, collected in 1798 by Hodinski, of the Kongs-skugg-sio (The Royal Mirror), an anonymous masterpiece of the twelfth century. Therefore he lectured under an assumed name and in a heavy make-up, with wig and false whiskers. All brown-bearded, apple-checked, blue-eyed Zemblans look alike, and I who have not shaved now for a year, resemble my disguised king (see also note to line 894). (note to Line 12)

 

When I was a child, Russia enjoyed quite a vogue at the court of Zembla but that was a different Russia - a Russia that hated tyrants and Philistines, injustice and cruelty, the Russia of ladies and gentlemen and liberal aspirations. We may add that Charles the Beloved could boast of some Russian blood. In medieval times two of his ancestors had married Novgorod princesses. Queen Yaruga (reigned 1799-1800) his great-great-granddam, was half Russian; and most historians believe that Yaruga's only child Igor was not the son of Uran the Last (reigned 1798-1799) but the fruit of her amours with the Russian adventurer Hodinski, her goliart (court jester) and a poet of genius, said to have forged in his spare time a famous old Russian chanson de geste generally attributed to an anonymous bard of the twelfth century. (note to Line 697)

 

Hodinski, Russian adventurer, d. 1800, also known as Hodyna, 681; resided in Zembla 1778-1800; author of a celebrated pastiche and lover of Princess (later Queen) Yaruga (q.v.), mother of Igor II, grandmother of Thurgus (q.v.). (Index)

 

Yaruga, Queen, reigned 1799-1800, sister of Uran (q. v.); drowned in an ice-hole with her Russian lover during traditional New Year's festivities, 681. (Index)

 

In his poem Ne yambom li chetyryokhstopnym… (“Not with the iambic tetrameter…” 1938) Hodasevich says that the first sound of Lomonosov’s Hotinskaya oda (“The Ode on the Taking of Hotin,” 1739) became our first cry of life:

 

Из памяти изгрызли годы,

За что и кто в Хотине пал,

Но первый звук Хотинской оды

Нам первым криком жизни стал.

 

Hodasevich compares the four rapids of the Russian iambic tetrameter to Derzhavin’s great ode Vodopad (“Waterfall,” 1791):

 

С тех пор в разнообразье строгом,

Как оный славный «Водопад»,

По четырем его порогам

Стихи российские кипят.

 

In his MS article Pesn’ o polku Igoreve (“The Song of Igor’s Campaign,” 1836) Pushkin (who did not question the authenticity of Slovo) says that neither Karamzin, nor Derzhavin, nor Lomonosov (the three most talented authors of the 18th century) could have forged the ancient text of Slovo:

 

Других доказательств нет, как слова самого песнотворца. Подлинность же самой песни доказывается духом древности, под который невозможно подделаться. Кто из наших писателей в 18 веке мог иметь на то довольно таланта? Карамзин? но Карамзин не поэт. Державин? но Державин не знал и русского языка, не только языка «Песни о полу Игореве». Прочие не имели все вместе столько поэзии, сколь находится оной в плаче Ярославны, в описании битвы и бегства. Кому пришло бы в голову взять в предмет песни темный поход неизвестного князя? Кто с таким искусством мог затмить некоторые места из своей песни словами, открытыми впоследствии в старых летописях или отысканными в других славянских наречиях, где еще сохранились они во всей свежести употребления? Это предполагало бы знание всех наречий славянских. Положим, он ими бы и обладал, неужто таковая смесь естественна? Гомер, если и существовал, искажен рапсодами.

Ломоносов жил не в XII столетии. Ломоносова оды писаны на русском языке с примесью некоторых выражений, взятых им из Библии, которая лежала пред ним. Но в Ломоносове вы не найдете ни польских, ни сербских, ни иллирийских, ни болгарских, ни богемских, ни молдавских и других наречий славянских.

 

Hodinski was Queen Yaruga’s court jester. In his article Puteshestvie iz Moskvy v Peterburg (“The Journey from Moscow to Petersburg,” 1833-35) Pushkin quotes the words of Lomonosov from his letter to Count Shuvalov (a patron of arts and sciences):

 

Я, ваше высокопревосходительство, не только у вельмож, но ниже Господа моего Бога дураком быть не хочу.

Your Excellency, I do not want to be not only the grandees’, but even my God the Lord’s fool.

 

Lomonosov’s Pis’mo o pol’ze stekla (“Letter on the Use of Glass,” 1752) is addressed to Shuvalov (who is mentioned in the poem’s first line):

 

Неправо о вещах те думают, Шувалов,
Которые Стекло чтут ниже Минералов...

 

According to Kinbote, Gradus (Shade’s murderer) never became a real success in the glass business:

 

Gradus never became a real success in the glass business to which he turned again and again between his wine-selling and pamphlet printing jobs. He started as a maker of Cartesian devils--imps of bottle glass bobbing up and down in methylate-filled tubes hawked during Catkin Week on the boulevards. He also worked as a teazer, and later as a flasher, at governmental factories--and was, I believe, more or less responsible for the remarkably ugly red-and-amber windows in the great public lavatory at rowdy but colorful Kalixhaven where the sailors are. He claimed to have improved the glitter and rattle of the so-called feuilles-d'alarme used by the grape growers and orchardmen to scare the birds. I have staggered the notes referring to him in such a fashion that the first (see note to line 17 where some of his other activities are adumbrated) is the vaguest while those that follow become gradually clearer as gradual Gradus approaches in space and time. (note to Line 171)

 

In his Commentary and Index Kinbote mentions Sudarg of Bokay (Jakob Gradus in reverse), a mirror maker of genius:

 

He awoke to find her standing with a comb in her hand before his - or rather, his grandfather's - cheval glass, a triptych of bottomless light, a really fantastic mirror, signed with a diamond by its maker, Sudarg of Bokay. She turned about before it: a secret device of reflection gathered an infinite number of nudes in its depths, garlands of girls in graceful and sorrowful groups, diminishing in the limpid distance, or breaking into individual nymphs, some of whom, she murmured, must resemble her ancestors when they were young – little peasant garlien combing their hair in shallow water as far as the eye could reach, and then the wistful mermaid from an old tale, and then nothing. (note to Line 80)

 

Sudarg of Bokay, a mirror maker of genius, the patron saint of Bokay in the mountains of Zembla, 80; life span not known. (Index)

 

Sudarg suggest gosudar’ (sovereign) and its feminine form, gosudarynya. Lomonosov is the author of Oda na den’ vosshestviya na prestol eyo velichestva gosudaryni imperatritsy Elisavety Petrovny 1748 goda (“Ode on the Anniversary of the Ascent to the Throne of her Majesty Empress Elizaveta Petrovna of the Year 1748”). In Eugene Onegin (Five: XXV: 1-4) Pushkin parodies the opening lines of Lomonosov’s poem:

 

Но вот багряною рукою 34
Заря от утренних долин
Выводит с солнцем за собою
Весёлый праздник именин.

But lo, with crimson hand 34
Aurora from the morning dales
leads forth, with the sun, after her
the merry name-day festival.
 

Pushkin’s note 34: Пародия известных стихов Ломоносова:

 

Заря багряною рукою
От утренних спокойных вод
Выводит с солнцем за собою, ― и проч.

a parody of Lomonosov’s well-known lines:

Aurora with a crimson hand
from the calm morning waters
leads forth with the sun after her, etc.

 

In Chapter One of EO Pushkin describes Onegin’s day in St. Petersburg and (in One: XVI: 4) and mentions Onegin’s bobrovyi vorotnik (beaver collar):

 

Уж тёмно: в санки он садится.
"Пади, пади!" - раздался крик;
Морозной пылью серебрится
Его бобровый воротник.
К Talon4 помчался: он уверен,
Что там уж ждёт его Каверин.
Вошёл: и пробка в потолок,
Вина кометы брызнул ток,
Пред ним roast-beef окровавленный,
И трюфли, роскошь юных лет,
Французской кухни лучший цвет,
И Стразбурга пирог нетленный
Меж сыром Лимбургским живым
И ананасом золотым.

 

It’s already dark. He gets into a sleigh.
The cry “Way, way!” resounds.
With frostdust silvers
his beaver collar.
To Talon's he has dashed off: he is certain
that there already waits for him [Kaverin];
has entered and the cork goes ceilingward,
the flow of comet wine has spurted,
a bloody roast beef is before him,
and truffles, luxury of youthful years,
the best flower of French cookery,
and a decayless Strasbourg pie
between a living Limburg cheese
and a golden ananas.

Pushkin’s note 4: Well-known restaurateur.

 

In his Eugene Onegin Commentary (note to One: XVI: 5-6) VN discusses the rhyme uveren (certain) / Kaverin and mentions the consonne d’appui (intrusive consonant):

 

As in French orthometry, the punctilious spangle of the consonne d’appui (reckoned tawdry in English) increases the acrobatic brilliance of the Russian rhyme.

 

In Canto Four of his poem Shade mentions his sensual love for the consonne d’appui, Echo’s fey child:

 

Maybe my sensual love for the consonne
D'appui, Echo's fey child, is based upon
A feeling of fantastically planned,
Richly rhymed life. (ll. 967-970)

 

According to Kinbote, he was nicknamed “the great beaver” because of his brown beard:

 

One day I happened to enter the English Literature office in quest of a magazine with the picture of the Royal Palace in Onhava, which I wanted my friend to see, when I overheard a young instructor in a green velvet jacket, whom I shall mercifully call Gerald Emerald, carelessly saying in answer to something the secretary had asked: "I guess My Shade has already left with the great beaver." Of course, I am quite tall, and my brown beard is of a rather rich tint and texture; the silly cognomen evidently applied to me, but was not worth noticing, and after calmly taking the magazine from a pamphlet-cluttered table, I contented myself on my way out with pulling Gerald Emerald's bow-tie loose with a deft jerk of my fingers as I passed by him. (Foreword)

 

Gimn borode (“A Hymn to the Beard,” 1757) is a poem by Lomonosov. In Canto Four of his poem Shade describes shaving and mentions old Zembla fields:

 

And while the safety blade with scrap 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 gray stubble grows,
And slaves make hay between my mouth and nose. (ll. 931-38)

 

In his Commentary Kinbote writes:

 

I am a weary and sad commentator today.
Parallel to the left-hand side of this card (his seventy-sixth) the poet has written, on the eve of his death, a line (from Pope's Second Epistle of the Essay on Man) that he may have intended to cite in a footnote:

At Greenland, Zembla, or the Lord knows where

So this is all treacherous old Shade could say about Zembla--my Zembla? While shaving his stubble off? Strange, strange... (note to Line 937)

 

At the beginning of his poem Pokhvala komaru (“In Praise of the Mosquito,” 1807) Derzhavin mentions Pope (spelling the name as a two-syllable word, Pópe) who glorified the lock of a woman’s hair in his Rape of the Lock (1717) and Lomonosov who praised chest’ usov (the dignity of mustache) in his "Hymn to the Beard:”

 

Пиндар воспевал орла
Митрофанов — сокола́,
А Гомер, хоть для игрушек,
Прославлял в грязи лягушек;
Попе — женских клок власов,
И Вольтер, я мню, в издевку
Величал простую девку,
Ломоносов — честь усов.
Я, в деревне, для забавы,
В подражание их славы,
Проворчу тара-бара.
Стройся, лира восхищенна,
Слышь Виргилья вновь, вселенна:
Я пою днесь Комара!

 

In his book Derzhavin (1931) Hodasevich points out that the author of “Waterfall” loved all winged creatures and dedicated poems not only to different birds but even to the mosquito:

 

Как он любил всё крылатое! Недаром воспел не только орла, соловья, лебедя и павлина, но и ласточку, ястреба, сокола, голубя, аиста, пеночку, зяблика, снигиря, синичку, желну, чечётку, тетерева, бекаса и, наконец, даже комара…

 

In the next paragraph Hodasevich describes Derzhavin’s visit to Countess Branitski (Prince Potyomkin’s beloved niece whose daughter Eliza married Count Vorontsov, the Governor of New Russia and a target of Pushkin’s epigrams) in her Belaya Tserkov’ estate (in the Province of Kiev) in the summer of 1813:

 

26 июля прибыли в Киев, провели там три дня, помолились в Лавре, осмотрели достопримечательности и поехали под Белую Церковь, в имение графини Браницкой, той самой племянницы Потёмкина, на руках у которой он умер дорогою в Николаев. Перед памятью дяди графиня благоговела; в его честь был воздвигнут ею род пантеона, где бюст Державина высился среди прочих. Графа Ксаверия Петровича не случилось дома. Зато Элиза, кокетливая и быстроглазая дочка графини, в любезности не отставала от матери. Державину был оказан приём зараз торжественный и сердечный — как автору «Водопада» и старому другу.

 

In his poem Poltava (1829) Pushkin mentions the moon shining over Belaya Tserkov’ (in the night before the execution of Kochubey and Iskra). The characters in Pushkin's poem include the Swedish king Charles XII.

 

While Charles Xavier Vseslav (the full name of Charles the Beloved) brings to mind Count Ksaveriy Petrovich (Eliza’s father who was absent at the time of Derzhavin’s visit to Countess Branitski), John Francis Shade (Shade’s full name) reminds one of Franciszek Ksawery Branicki (the Count’s Polish name). The three main characters in PF, Shade, Kinbote and Gradus seem to be one and the same person whose “real” name is Botkin. According to Kinbote (the author of a book on surnames), Botkin is one who makes bottekins (fancy footwear). The surname Hodinski most likely comes from Hoda, which means in Ukrainian "footfall, footstep, pace, tread, gait." Apparently, the founder of the Hodinski family had a peculiar gait. Fools often had physical defects (hunchbacks, etc). Shakespeare’s translator into Zemblan, Conmal (the King’s uncle) calls his nephew Karlik (which means in Russian “dwarf”). Perhaps, Hodyna (Charles Xavier's ancestor) had a limp, like Byron. In his poem Net, ya ne Bayron, ya drugoy… (“No, I’m not Byron, I’m another…” 1832) Lermontov compares his soul to the ocean in which nadezhd razbitykh gruz (a load of broken hopes) lies:

 

Нет, я не Байрон, я другой,
Ещё неведомый избранник,
Как он, гонимый миром странник,
Но только с русскою душой.
Я раньше начал, кончу ране,
Мой ум немного совершит;
В душе моей, как в океане,
Надежд разбитых груз лежит.
Кто может, океан угрюмый,
Твои изведать тайны? Кто
Толпе мои расскажет думы?
Я — или Бог — или никто!

 

No, I'm not Byron, I’m another
yet unknown chosen man,
like him, a persecuted wanderer,
but only with a Russian soul.
I started sooner, I will end sooner,
my mind won’t achieve much;
in my soul, as in the ocean,
lies a load of broken hopes.
Gloomy ocean, who can
find out your secrets? Who
will tell to the crowd my thoughts?
Myself – or God – or none at all!

 

The characters in “The Song of Igor’s Campaign” include Wild Bull Vsevolod (Igor’s brother). 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 means “hope.” 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 ("half-milord, half-merchant, etc."), will be full again.