In his Commentary 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 Assistant Professor Misha Gordon, a red-haired musician:
We were talking one day about Prejudice. Earlier, at lunch in the Faculty Club, Prof. H's guest, a decrepit emeritus from Boston - whom his host described with deep respect as "a true Patrician, a real blue-blooded Brahmin" (the Brahmin's grandsire sold braces in Belfast) - had happened to say quite naturally and debonairly, in allusion to the origins of a not very engaging new man in the College Library, "one of the Chosen People, I understand" (enunciated with a small snort of comfortable relish); upon which Assistant Professor Misha Gordon, a red-haired musician, had roundly remarked that "of course, God might choose His people but man should choose his expressions."
As we strolled back, my friend and I, to our adjacent castles, under the sort of light April rain that in one of his lyrical poems he calls:
A rapid pencil sketch of Spring
Shade said that more than anything on earth he loathed Vulgarity and Brutality, and that one found these two ideally united in racial prejudice. He said that, as a man of letters, he could not help preferring "is a Jew" to "is Jewish" and "is a Negro" to "is colored"; but immediately added that this way of alluding to two kinds of bias in one breath was a good example of careless, or demagogic, lumping (much exploited by Left-Wingers) since it erased the distinction between two historical hells: diabolical persecution and the barbarous traditions of slavery. On the other hand (he admitted) the tears of all ill-treated human beings, throughout the hopelessness of all time, mathematically equaled each other; and perhaps (he thought) one did not err too much in tracing a family likeness (tensing of simian nostrils, sickening dulling of eyes) between the jasmine-belt lyncher and the mystical anti-Semite when under the influence of their pet obsessions. I said that a young Negro gardener (see note to line 998) whom I had recently hired - soon after the dismissal of an unforgettable roomer (see Foreword) - invariably used the word "colored." As a dealer in old and new words (observed Shade) he strongly objected to that epithet not only because it was artistically misleading, but also because its sense depended too much upon application and applier. Many competent Negroes (he agreed) considered it to be the only dignified word, emotionally neutral and ethically inoffensive; their endorsement obliged decent non-Negroes to follow their lead, and poets do not like to be led; but the genteel adore endorsements and now use "colored man" for "Negro" as they do "nude" for "naked" or "perspiration" for "sweat"; although of course (he conceded) there might be times when the poet welcomed the dimple of a marble haunch in "nude" or an appropriate beadiness in "perspiration." One also heard it used (he continued) by the prejudiced as a jocular euphemism in a darky anecdote when something funny is said or done by the "colored gentleman" (a sudden brother here of "the Hebrew gentleman" in Victorian novelettes).
I had not quite understood his artistic objection to "colored." He explained it thus: Figures in the first scientific works on flowers, birds, butterflies and so forth were hand-painted by diligent aquarellists. In defective or premature publications the figures on some plates remained blank. The juxtaposition of the phrases "a white" and "a colored man" always reminded my poet, so imperiously as to dispel their accepted sense, of those outlines one longed to fill with their lawful colors - the green and purple of an exotic plant, the solid blue of a plumage, the geranium bar of a scalloped wing. "And moreover [he said] we, whites, are not white at all, we are mauve at birth, then tea-rose, and later all kinds of repulsive colors." (note to Line 470)
The characters in Pasternak’s novel Doctor Zhivago (1957) include Misha Gordon, Zhivago’s schoolmate and close friend (who studies philosophy and philology and becomes a University Professor). In one of his early poems (written in 1912) Pasternak compares bestsvetnyi dozhd’ (the colorless rain) to gibnushchiy patritsiy (a dying Patrician):
Бесцветный дождь... как гибнущий патриций,
Чье сердце смерклось в дар повествований...
Да солнце... песнью капель без названья
И плачем плит заплачено сторицей.
Ах, дождь и солнце... странные собратья!
Один на месте, а другой без места...
Один с землею в пылкости объятья,
А где другого спетая невеста?
И дождь стоит, и думает без шапки,
С грустящей степью, степью за плечами.
А солнце ставит дни, как ставят бабки,
Чтобы сбивать их грязными лучами.
Describing a conversation at the Faculty Club, Kinbote calls a Professor of Physics “Pink” and mentions Soviet achievements including Dr. Zhivago:
Pictures of the King had not infrequently appeared in America during the first months of the Zemblan Revolution. Every now and then some busybody on the campus with a retentive memory, or one of the clubwomen who were always after Shade and his eccentric friend, used to ask me with the inane meaningfulness adopted in such cases if anybody had told me how much I resembled that unfortunate monarch. I would counter with something on the lines of "all Chinese look alike" and change the subject. One day, however, in the lounge of the Faculty Club where I lolled surrounded by a number of my colleagues, I had to put up with a particularly embarrassing onset. A visiting German lecturer from Oxford kept exclaiming, aloud and under his breath, that the resemblance was "absolutely unheard of," and when I negligently observed that all bearded Zemblans resembled one another - and that, in fact, the name Zembla is a corruption not of the Russian zemlya, but of Semblerland, a land of reflections, of "resemblers" - my tormentor said: "Ah, yes, but King Charles wore no beard, and yet it is his very face! I had [he added] the honor of being seated within a few yards of the royal box at a Sport Festival in Onhava which I visited with my wife, who is Swedish, in 1956. We have a photograph of him at home, and her sister knew very well the mother of one of his pages, an interesting woman. Don't you see [almost tugging at Shade's lapel] the astounding similarity of features - of the upper part of the face, and the eyes, yes, the eyes, and the nose bridge?"
"Nay, sir" [said Shade, refolding a leg and slightly rolling in his armchair as wont to do when about to deliver a pronouncement] "there is no resemblance at all. I have seen the King in newsreels, and there is no resemblance. Resemblances are the shadows of differences. Different people see different similarities and similar differences."
Good Netochka, who had been looking singularly uncomfortable during this exchange, remarked in his gentle voice how sad it was to think that such a "sympathetic ruler" had probably perished in prison.
A professor of physics now joined in. He was a so-called Pink, who believed in what so-called Pinks believe in (Progressive Education, the Integrity of anyone spying for Russia, Fall-outs occasioned solely by US-made bombs, the existence in the near past of a McCarthy Era, Soviet achievements including Dr. Zhivago, and so forth): "Your regrets are groundless" [said he]. "That sorry ruler is known to have escaped disguised as a nun; but whatever happens, or has happened to him, cannot interest the Zemblan people. History has denounced him, and that is his epitaph."
Shade: "True, sir. In due time history will have denounced everybody. The King may be dead, or he may be as much alive as you and Kinbote, but let us respect facts. I have it from him [pointing to me] that the widely circulated stuff about the nun is a vulgar pro-Extremist fabrication. The Extremists and their friends invented a lot of nonsense to conceal their discomfiture; but the truth is that the King walked out of the palace, and crossed the mountains, and left the country, not in the black garb of a pale spinster but dressed as an athlete in scarlet wool."
"Strange, strange," said the German visitor, who by some quirk of alderwood ancestry had been alone to catch the eerie note that had throbbed by and was gone.
Shade [smiling and massaging my knee]: "Kings do not die - they only disappear, eh, Charles?"
"Who said that?" asked sharply, as if coming out of a trance, the ignorant, and always suspicious, Head of the English Department.
"Take my own case," continued my dear friend ignoring Mr. H. "I have been said to resemble at least four people: Samuel Johnson; the lovingly reconstructed ancestor of man in the Exton Museum; and two local characters, one being the slapdash disheveled hag who ladles out the mash in the Levin Hall cafeteria."
"The third in the witch row," I precised quaintly, and everybody laughed.
"I would rather say," remarked Mr. Pardon - American History - "that she looks like Judge Goldsworth" ("One of us," interposed Shade inclining his head), "especially when he is real mad at the whole world after a good dinner."
"I hear," hastily began Netochka, "that the Goldsworths are having a wonderful time -"
"What a pity I cannot prove my point," muttered the tenacious German visitor. "If only there was a picture here. Couldn't there be somewhere -"
"Sure," said young Emerald and left his seat.
Professor Pardon now spoke to me: "I was under the impression that you were born in Russia, and that your name was a kind of anagram of Botkin or Botkine?"
Kinbote: "You are confusing me with some refugee from Nova Zembla" [sarcastically stressing the "Nova'"].
"Didn't you tell me, Charles, that kinbote means regicide in your language?" asked my dear Shade.
"Yes, a king's destroyer," I said (longing to explain that a king who sinks his identity in the mirror of exile is in a sense just that).
Shade [addressing the German visitor]: "Professor Kinbote is the author of a remarkable book on surnames. I believe [to me] there exists an English translation?"
"Oxford, 1956," I replied.
"You do know Russian, though?" said Pardon. "I think I heard you, the other day, talking to – what's his name – oh, my goodness" [laboriously composing his lips].
Shade: "Sir, we all find it difficult to attack that name" [laughing].
Professor Hurley: "Think of the French word for 'tire': punoo."
Shade: "Why, Sir, I am afraid you have only punctured the difficulty" [laughing uproariously].
"Flatman," quipped I. "Yes," I went on, turning to Pardon, "I certainly do speak Russian. You see, it was the fashionable language par excellence, much more so than French, among the nobles of Zembla at least, and at its court. Today, of course, all this has changed. It is now the lower classes who are forcibly taught to speak Russian."
"Aren't we, too, trying to teach Russian in our schools?" said Pink.
In the meantime, at the other end of the room, young Emerald had been communing with the bookshelves. At this point he returned with the T-Z volume of an illustrated encyclopedia.
"Well, said he, "here he is, that king. But look, he is young and handsome" ("Oh, that won't do," wailed the German visitor). "Young, handsome, and wearing a fancy uniform," continued Emerald. "Quite the fancy pansy, in fact."
"And you," I said quietly, "are a foul-minded pup in a cheap green jacket."
"But what have I said?" the young instructor inquired of the company, spreading out his palms like a disciple in Leonardo's Last Supper.
"Now, now," said Shade. "I'm sure, Charles, our young friend never intended to insult your sovereign and namesake."
"He could not, even if he had wished," I observed placidly, turning it all into a joke.
Gerald Emerald extended his hand - which at the moment of writing still remains in that position. (note to Line 894)
Pasternak’s “dying Patrician” brings to mind Lermontov’s poem Umirayushchiy gladiator (“The Dying Gladiator,” 1836), a retelling in freely rhymed iambic hexameters of an episode (4: CXXXIX–CCXLII) in Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (1812-18) by George Gordon, Lord Byron. Elvina Krummholz’s son who shows to Gradus (Shade’s murderer) Joe Lavender’s Villa Libitina, Gordon Krummholz is a musical prodigy. Assistant Professor Misha Gordon is a red-haired musician.
According to Kinbote (the author of a book on surnames), Botkin is one who makes bottekins (fancy footwear). When Byron was born, he suffered from lameness and a twisted foot. After May Gray (Byron's nurse) was fired, Byron was put in the care of a "trussmaker to the General hospital", a man named Lavender, in hopes that he could be cured; however, Lavender instead abused the boy and would occasionally use him as a servant. After Byron exposed Lavender as a fool, Gordon took her son to visit Doctor Matthew Baillie in London. They took up residence at Sloane Terrace during the summer of 1799, and there Byron started to receive treatment, such as specially designed boots.
Lermontov's poem Net, ya ne Bayron, ya drugoy ("No, I'm not Byron, I'm another," 1832) ends in the line Ya - ili Bog - ili nikto ("Myself – or God – or none at all"). Nikto b ("none would"), a phrase used by Mozart in Pushkin's little tragedy "Mozart and Salieri" (1830), is Botkin (Shade’s, Kinbote’s and Gradus’s “real” name) in reverse.
The first poem in "The Poems of Yuri Zhivago" (appended to Pasternak's novel) is Gamlet ("Hamlet"). In VN's novel Bend Sinister (1947) Krug's friend Ember translates a difficult passage from Shakespeare's play in which Hamlet mentions two Provincial roses on his razed shoes:
Ne dumaete-li Vy, sudar', shto vot eto (the song about the wounded deer), da les per'ev na shliape, da dve kamchatye rozy na proreznykh bashmakakh, mogli by, kol' fortuna zadala by mne turku, zasluzhit' mne uchast'e v teatralnoy arteli; a, sudar'? (Chapter 7)
Would not this, sir, and a forest of feathers-- if
the rest of my fortunes turn Turk with me--with two
Provincial roses on my razed shoes, get me a
fellowship in a cry of players, sir? (Act III, scene 2)
Hamlet's razed shoes make one think of bottekins (fancy footwear) mentioned by Kinbote.
In 1810 Byron visited Constantinople (cf. Hamlet's words "if the rest of my fortunes turn Turk with me") and swam the Hellespont (in order to lose weight). In his poem Olegov shchit ("Oleg's Shield," 1829) Tyutchev mentions izbrannyi narod (the Chosen People):
«Аллах! пролей на нас твой свет!
Краса и сила правоверных!
Гроза гяуров лицемерных!
Пророк твой — Магомет!..»
«О наша крепость и оплот!
Великий бог! веди нас ныне,
Как некогда ты вёл в пустыне
Свой избранный народ!..»
Глухая полночь! Всё молчит!
Вдруг… из-за туч луна блеснула —
И над воротами Стамбула
Олегов озарила щит.
"Allah, pour your light on us!
Oh beauty and strength of the faithful!
Terror of the two-faced heathens!
Your prophet is Mohammed!
Oh, our fortress and our bulwark!
Great God, lead us now
as once, from the desert,
you led your chosen people!"
Deep midnight! All is still!
Suddenly from behind a cloud the moon shines down
and there above the gates of Istanbul
it lights up Oleg's shield!
(tr. F. Jude)
Olegov shchit ("Oleg's Shield," 1829) is also a poem by Pushkin (who had African blood). In his poem Pushkin calls Oleg (the first Kievan prince of the Rurik family who attacked the Greeks and nearly took Constantinople in 907 A.D.) voinstvennyi varyag (the bellicose Varangian):
Когда ко граду Константина
С тобой, воинственный варяг,
Пришла славянская дружина
И развила победы стяг,A.
Тогда во славу Руси ратной,
Строптиву греку в стыд и страх,
Ты пригвоздил свой щит булатный
На цареградских воротах.
Настали дни вражды кровавой;
Твой путь мы снова обрели.
Но днесь, когда мы вновь со славой
К Стамбулу грозно притекли,
Твой холм потрясся с бранным гулом,
Твой стон ревнивый нас смутил,
И нашу рать перед Стамбулом
Твой старый щит остановил.
When you, O warlike soldier-Viking,
Accompanied by Slav brigade,
At Constantine’s Great City striking
Unfurled the victory banner frayed,
Then to great Russia’s martial glory,
To shame and fear of stubborn Greek,
You pinned amidst the great furore
Your damask shield to gates antique.
The days of bloody strife’s furore
Are here again, we’ve followed you.
But now we’ve come afresh in glory
With menaces on Stamboul too,
Your hill by fearsome roar was shaken,
Resounded loud your jealous moan,
And though Stamboul again was taken
By ancient shield we still were thrown.
(tr. R. Moreton)
According to Kinbote, young Prince Charles and his playmate (and first lover) Oleg were handsome, long-legged specimens of Varangian boyhood:
We shall now go back from mid-August 1958 to a certain afternoon in May three decades earlier when he was a dark strong lad of thirteen with a silver ring on the forefinger of his sun-tanned hand. Queen Blenda, his mother, had recently left for Vienna and Rome. He had several dear playmates but none could compete with Oleg, Duke of Rahl. In those days growing boys of high-born families wore on festive occasions--of which we had so many during our long northern spring--sleeveless jerseys, white anklesocks with black buckle shoes, and very tight, very short shorts called hotinguens. I wish I could provide the reader with cut-out figures and parts of attire as given in paper-doll charts for children armed with scissors. It would brighten a little these dark evenings that are destroying my brain. Both lads were handsome, long-legged specimens of Varangian boyhood. At twelve, Oleg was the best center forward at the Ducal School. When stripped and shiny in the mist of the bath house, his bold virilia contrasted harshly with his girlish grace. He was a regular faunlet. On that particular afternoon a copious shower lacquered the spring foliage of the palace garden, and oh, how the Persian lilacs in riotous bloom tumbled and tossed behind the green-streaming, amethyst-blotched windowpanes! One would have to play indoors. Oleg was late. Would he come at all? (note to Line 130)
Duke of Rahl seems to hint at Carl Rahl (1812-65), a painter who was born in Vienna. Carl Rahl is the author of Die Auffindung von Manfreds Leiche (1836) and Manfreds Einzug in Luceria (1846). In his dramatic poem Manfred (1816-17) Byron calls Mont Blanc “the monarch of mountains:”
Mont Blanc is the monarch of mountains;
They crown'd him long ago. (Act One, scene 1)
In his poem Utikhla biza... legche dyshit ("The Bise died down... lighter breathes," 1864) Tyutchev mentions Belaya gora ("White Mountain," as Tyutchev calls Mont Blanc):
Утихла биза... Легче дышит
Лазурный сонм женевских вод –
И лодка вновь по ним плывет,
И снова лебедь их колышет.
Весь день, как летом, солнце греет,
Деревья блещут пестротой,
И воздух ласковой волной
Их пышность ветхую лелеет.
А там, в торжественном покое,
Разоблаченная с утра,
Сияет Белая гора,
Как откровенье неземное.
Здесь сердце так бы всё забыло,
Забыло б муку всю свою,
Когда бы там – в родном краю –
Одной могилой меньше было...
Biza (the Bise, a cold wind that blows from the Alps) brings to mind Queen Disa (the wife of Charles the Beloved). Duchess of Payn, of Great Payn and Mone, Queen Disa seems to be a cross between Leonardo's Mona Lisa and Desdemona, Othello's wife in Shakespeare's Othello. Describing the conversation at the Faculty Club, Kinbote compares Gerald Emerald to a disciple in Leonardo's Last Supper.
In Canto Three of his poem Shade describes his visit to Mrs. Z. who mentioned Shade’s poem about Mon Blon:
"I can't believe," she said, "that it is you!
I loved your poem in the Blue Review.'
That one about Mon Blon. I have a niece
Who's climbed the Matterhorn. The other piece
I could not understand. I mean the sense.
Because, of course, the sound--But I'm so dense!" (ll. 781-786)
In his Commentary Kinbote writes:
An image of Mont Blanc's "blue-shaded buttresses and sun-creamed domes" is fleetingly glimpsed through the cloud of that particular poem which I wish I could quote but do not have at hand. The "white mountain" of the lady's dream, caused by a misprint to tally with Shade's "white fountain," makes a thematic appearance here, blurred as it were by the lady's grotesque pronunciation. (note to Line 782)
In Canto Three of his poem Shade mentions a tall white fountain that he saw during his heart attack. Fontan (“The Fountain,” 1836) is a poem by Tyutchev:
Смотри, как облаком живым
Фонтан сияющий клубится;
Как пламенеет, как дробится
Его на солнце влажный дым.
Лучом поднявшись к небу, он
Коснулся высоты заветной –
И снова пылью огнецветной
Ниспасть на землю осужден.
О смертной мысли водомёт,
О водомёт неистощимый!
Какой закон непостижимый
Тебя стремит, тебя мятёт?
Как жадно к небу рвешься ты!..
Но длань незримо-роковая
Твой луч упорный, преломляя,
Свергает в брызгах с высоты.
Look, a living cloud,
the radiant fountain throws
its flaming spray, scattering
moist mist towards the sun,
tossing rays up to the sky,
touching forbidden heights
and once again, a fire-coloured dust,
is sentenced to fall back to earth.
Water-course of human thought,
inexhaustible water-course!
What incomprehensible law
tosses and urges you up there?
How greedily you reach out to the sky!
But an invisible, fateful hand
diffracts and pulls your stubborn stream
in showers of spray back down to the land!
(tr. F. Jude)
Bakhchisarayskiy fontan ("The Fountain of Bakhchisaray," 1824) is a narrative poem by Pushkin.
Gordon + pad = god + Pardon
The word “pad” occurs in Hazel’s massage transcribed by Kinbote:
The notes continue for several pages but for obvious reasons I must renounce to give them verbatim in this commentary. There were long pauses and "scratches and scrapings" again, and returns of the luminous circlet. She spoke to it. If asked something that it found deliciously silly ("Are you a will-o-the-wisp?") it would dash to and fro in ecstatic negation, and when it wanted to give a grave answer to a grave question ("Are you dead?") would slowly ascend with an air of gathering altitude for a weighty affirmative drop. For brief periods of time it responded to the alphabet she recited by staying put until the right letter was called whereupon it gave a small jump of approval. But these jumps would get more and more listless, and after a couple of words had been slowly spelled out, the roundlet went limp like a tired child and finally crawled into a chink, out of which it suddenly flew with extravagant brio and started to spin around the walls in its eagerness to resume the game. The jumble of broken words and meaningless syllables which she managed at last to collect came out in her dutiful notes as a short line of simple letter-groups. I transcribe:
pada ata lane pad not ogo old wart alan ther tale feur far rant lant tal told. (note to Line 347)