odd dark word in Pale Fire

According to 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), he superstitiously cannot write out the odd dark word employed by his black gardener with respect to Gradus:

 

He had worked for two years as a male nurse in a hospital for Negroes in Maryland. He was hard up. He wanted to study landscaping, botany and French ("to read in the original Baudelaire and Dumas"). I promised him some financial assistance. He started to work at my place the very next day. He was awfully nice and pathetic, and all that, but a little too talkative and completely impotent which I found discouraging. Otherwise he was a strong strapping fellow, and I hugely enjoyed the aesthetic pleasure of watching him buoyantly struggle with earth and turf or delicately manipulate bulbs, or lay out the flagged path which may or may not be a nice surprise for my landlord, when he safely returns from England (where I hope no bloodthirsty maniacs are stalking him!). How I longed to have him (my gardener, not my landlord) wear a great big turban, and shalwars, and an ankle bracelet. I would certainly have him attired according to the old romanticist notion of a Moorish prince, had I been a northern king – or rather had I still been a king (exile becomes a bad habit). You will chide me, my modest man, for writing so much about you in this note, but I feel I must pay you this tribute. After all, you saved my life. You and I were the last people who saw John Shade alive, and you admitted afterwards to a strange premonition which made you interrupt your work as you noticed us from the shrubbery walking toward the porch where stood – (Superstitiously I cannot write out the odd dark word you employed.) (note to Line 998)

 

Zembla is a corruption not of the Russian zemlya, but of Semberland, a land of reflections, of resemblers. Shade's murderer, Gradus resembles Kinbote, his coeval (in fact, they were born on the same day). The only difference between them is that, unlike Gradus, Kinbote is bearded. The odd dark word employed by Kinbote's gardener seems to be “thou” (an archaic second person pronoun used in the phrase “thou shalt not kill”). Ty i vy (“Thou and You,” 1828) is a poem by Pushkin:

 

Пустое вы сердечным ты
Она, обмолвясь, заменила,
И все счастливые мечты
В душе влюбленной возбудила.
 

Пред ней задумчиво стою;
Свести очей с нее нет силы;
И говорю ей: “как вы милы!”
И мыслю: “как тебя люблю!”

 

The empty you with heartfelt thou –
That slip she made, so accidental –
And all my happy dreams were now
Bestirred by soul’s love fundamental.
 

I faced her, by the moment caught;
To hold her gaze I had not power:
I said to her: “You’re precious flower!”
But “How I love thee!” was my thought.

(tr. R. Moreton)

 

A superstitious man, in his poem Primety (“Omens,” 1829) Pushkin mentions suevernye primety (the tokens of superstition):

 

Я ехал к вам: живые сны
За мной вились толпой игривой,
И месяц с правой стороны
Сопровождал мой бег ретивый.

 

Я ехал прочь: иные сны...
Душе влюбленной грустно было,
И месяц с левой стороны
Сопровождал меня уныло.

 

Мечтанью вечному в тиши
Так предаемся мы, поэты;
Так суеверные приметы
Согласны с чувствами души.

 

I drove to you: my dreams were bright

And winding behind me like playing;

The crescent, set on my right side,

Was gaily following my traveling.

 

I drove back: my dreams were blind,

My loving soul was in sadness;

The crescent, set on my left side,

Was accompanying me – the hapless.

 

Thus, in a silence, every bard

Falls in his dreams’ eternal vision; 

Thus tokens of superstition,

Well-coincide with moods of heart.

(tr. E. Bonver)

 

In the description of the Onegin-Lenski duel in Chapter Six of Eugene Onegin and in his poem Brozhu li ya vdol’ ulits shumnykh… (“Whether I wander along noisy streets,” 1829) Pushkin predicted his death in a duel with d’Anthès. In his poem January 29th, 1837 Tyutchev calls d’Anthès tsareubiytsa (a regicide), summons peace onto the Poet’s shade and says that Russia’s heart, like first love, will never forget Pushkin (“thee”). A kinbote is a bote or compensation given by a homicide to the kin of his victim. At the end of his poem Smert’ poeta (“Death of the Poet,” 1837) Lermontov says that the black blood of Pushkin’s enemies will not wash away the poet's sacred blood:

 

А вы, надменные потомки
Известной подлостью прославленных отцов,
Пятою рабскою поправшие обломки
Игрою счастия обиженных родов!
Вы, жадною толпой стоящие у трона,
Свободы, Гения и Славы палачи!
     Таитесь вы под сению закона,
     Пред вами суд и правда — всё молчи!..
Но есть и божий суд, наперсники разврата!
     Есть грозный суд: он ждет;
     Он не доступен звону злата,
И мысли и дела он знает наперед.
Тогда напрасно вы прибегнете к злословью:
     Оно вам не поможет вновь,
И вы не смоете всей вашей черной кровью
     Поэта праведную кровь!

 

And you, the offspring arrogant

Of fathers known for malice,

Crushing with slavish heels the ruins

Of clans aggrieved by fortune's game!

You, greedy hordes around the throne,

Killers of Freedom, Genius and Glory!

     You hide beneath the canopy of law

     Fall silent  -  truth and justice before you...

But justice also comes from God, corruption's friends!

     The judge most terrible awaits you:

     He's hardened to the clink of gold,

He knows your future thoughts and deeds.

Then will you turn in vain to lies:

     They will no longer help.

And your black blood won't wash away

     The poet's sacred blood!

 

Chyornaya krov’ (“The Black Blood,” 1909-14) is a cycle of verses by Alexander Blok. In his poem Predchuvstvuyu tebya. Goda prokhodyat mimo (“I forefeel you. The years pass by…” 1901) Blok repeats twice “But I fear: You will change your form:”

 

Предчувствую Тебя. Года проходят мимо —
Всё в облике одном предчувствую Тебя.

Весь горизонт в огне — и ясен нестерпимо,
И молча жду, — тоскуя и любя.

Весь горизонт в огне, и близко появленье,
Но страшно мне: изменишь облик Ты,

И дерзкое возбудишь подозренье,
Сменив в конце привычные черты.

О, как паду — и горестно, и низко,
Не одолев смертельные мечты!

Как ясен горизонт! И лучезарность близко.
Но страшно мне: изменишь облик Ты.

 

I apprehend You. The years pass by -
Yet in constant form, I apprehend You.

 

The whole horizon is aflame - impossibly sharp,
And mute, I wait, - with longing and with love.

 

The whole horizon is aflame, and your appearance near.
And yet I fear that You will change your form,

 

Give rise to impudent suspicion
By changing Your familiar contours in the end.

 

Oh, how I'll fall - so low and bitter,
Defeated by my fatal dreams!

 

How sharp is the horizon! Radiance is near.
And yet I fear that You will change your form.

 

Describing the faces of criminals, Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Lolita, 1955) suggests a cinematic trick:

 

With Lo’s knowledge and assent, the two post offices given to the Beardsley postmaster as forwarding addresses were P. O. Wace and P. O. Elphinstone. Next morning we visited the former and had to wait in a short but slow queue. Serene Lo studied the rogues’ gallery. Handsome Bryan Bryanski, alias Anthony Bryan, alias Tony Brown, eyes hazel, complexion fair, was wanted for kidnapping. A sad-eyed old gentleman’s faux-pas was mail fraud, and, as if that were not enough, he was cursed with deformed arches. Sullen Sullivan came with a caution: Is believed armed, and should be considered extremely dangerous. If you want to make a movie out of my book, have one of these faces gently melt into my own, while I look. And moreover there was a smudgy snapshot of a Missing Girl, age fourteen, wearing brown shoes when last seen, rhymes. Please notify Sheriff Buller. (2.19)

 

The policeman tells Kinbote that Jack Grey (one of Gradus' aliases) escaped from the Institute for the Criminal Insane:

 

The gardener took the glass of water I had placed near a flowerpot beside the porch steps and shared it with the killer, and then accompanied him to the basement toilet, and presently the police and the ambulance arrived, and the gunman gave his name as Jack Grey, no fixed abode, except the Institute for the Criminal Insane, ici, good dog, which of course should have been his permanent address all along, and which the police thought he had just escaped from. (note to Line 1000)

At the last moment Gradus’ form changes and his face gently melts into Kinbote’s. In the two last lines (that remained unwritten) of his poem, “I was the shadow of the waxwing slain / By its own double in the windowpane,” Shade predicts his death.