Describing his escape from Zembla, 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 Bera Range, a two-hundred-mile-long chain of rugged mountains:
The Bera Range, a two-hundred-mile-long chain of rugged mountains, not quite reaching the northern end of the Zemblan peninsula (cut off basally by an impassable canal from the mainland of madness), divides it into two parts, the flourishing eastern region of Onhava and other townships, such as Aros and Grindelwod, and the much narrower western strip with its quaint fishing hamlets and pleasant beach resorts. The two coasts are connected by two asphalted highways; the older one shirks difficulties by running first along the eastern slopes northward to Odevalla, Yeslove and Embla, and only then turning west at the northmost point of the peninsula; the newer one, an elaborate, twisting, marvelously graded road, traverses the range westward from just north of Onhava to Bregberg, and is termed in tourist booklets a "scenic drive." Several trails cross the mountains at various points and lead to passes none of which exceeds an altitude of five thousand feet; a few peaks rise some two thousand feet higher and retain their snow in midsummer; and from one of them, the highest and hardest, Mt. Glitterntin, one can distinguish on clear days, far out to the east, beyond the Gulf of Surprise, a dim iridescence which some say is Russia. (note to Line 149)
Bera, a mountain range dividing the peninsula lengthwise; described with some of its glittering peaks, mysterious passes and picturesque slopes, 149. (Index)
In music, the range, or chromatic range, of a musical instrument is the distance from the lowest to the highest pitch it can play. The gata bera, the yak bera and the dandu bera are traditional Sri Lankan musical instruments (drums). In VN's novel Camera Obscura (1933) translated into English as Laughter in the Dark (1938) the writer Brück (Baum in LITD), one of the guests at a party thrown by Bruno Kretschmar (Albert Albinus in LITD), had just written a five-hundred-page novel, the scene of which was laid in Ceylon:
Уже за омаром разговор в том конце стола, где сидели Дорианна, Горн, Магда, Кречмар, Марго Денис, сделался громким, но каким-то разнобоким. Магда сразу выпила немало белого вина и теперь сидела очень прямо, сияющими глазами глядя прямо перед собой. Горн, не обращая внимания ни на нее, ни на Дорианну, имя которой его раздражало, спорил наискосок через стол с писателем Брюком о приемах художественной изобразительности. Он говорил: «Беллетрист толкует, например, об Индии, где вот я никогда не бывал, и только от него и слышно, что о баядерках, охоте на тигров, факирах, бетеле, змеях – все это очень напряженно, очень прямо, сплошная, одним словом, тайна Востока, – но что же получается? Получается то, что никакой Индии я перед собой не вижу, а только чувствую воспаление надкостницы от всех этих восточных сладостей. Иной же беллетрист говорит всего два слова об Индии: я выставил на ночь мокрые сапоги, а утром на них уже вырос голубой лес (плесень, сударыня, – обьяснил он Дорианне, которая поднимала одну бровь), – и сразу Индия для меня как живая, – остальное я уж сам воображу».
«Йоги, – сказала Дорианна, – делают удивительные вещи. Они умеют так дышать, что…»
«Но позвольте, господин Горн, – взволнованно кричал Брюк, написавший только что роман, действие коего протекало на Цейлоне, – нужно же осветить всесторонне, основательно, чтобы всякий читатель понял. Если же я описываю, например, плантацию, то обязан, конечно, подойти с самой важной стороны эксплуатации, жестокости белого колониста. Таинственная, огромная мощь Востока…»
«Вот это и скверно», – сказал Горн. (Chapter 15)
By the time the lobsters were being tackled, the talk at the head of the table where (the following string of names would be best arranged in a curve) Dorianna, Rex, Margot, Albinus, Sonia Hirsch and Baum were seated, was in full swing although rather incoherent. Margot had emptied her third wineglass at one gulp and was now sitting very erect with bright eyes, staring straight in front of her.
Rex paid no attention either to her or to Dorianna, whose name annoyed him, but was arguing across the table with Baum, the author, concerning the means of artistic expression.
"A writer for instance," he remarked, "talks about India which I have never seen, and gushes about dancing girls, tiger hunts, fakirs, betel nuts, serpents: the Glamour of the mysterious East. But what does it amount to? Nothing. Instead of visualizing India I merely get a bad toothache from all these Eastern delights. Now, there's the other way as, for instance, the fellow who writes: 'Before turning in I put out my wet boots to dry and in the morning I found that a thick blue forest had grown on them' ("Fungi, Madam," he explained to Dorianna who had raised one eyebrow) and at once India becomes alive for me. The rest is shop."
"Those yogis do marvelous things," said Dorianna. "Apparently they can breathe in such a way that--"
"But excuse me, my good sir," cried Baum excitedly--for he had just written a five-hundred-page novel, the scene of which was laid in Ceylon, where he had spent a sun-helmeted fortnight. "You must illuminate the picture thoroughly, so that every reader can understand. What matters is not the book one writes, but the problem it sets--and solves. If I describe the tropics I'm bound to approach my subject from its most important side, and that is--the exploitation, the cruelty of the white colonist. When you think of the millions and millions--"
"I don't," said Rex. (Chapter 16)
At the same party Robert Horn (Axel Rex in LITD) mentions Sebastiano del Piombo's sonnets:
Фрейлейн Петерс, – с мягкой улыбкой обратился к ней Кречмар, – я хочу вам представить создателя знаменитого зверька».
Магда судорожно обернулась и сказала: «Ах, здравствуйте!» (к чему эти ахи, ведь об этом не раз говорилось…) Горн поклонился, сел и спокойно обратился к Кречмару: «Я читал вашу превосходную статью о Себастиано дель Пиомбо. Вы напрасно только не привели его сонетов, – они прескверные, – но как раз это и пикантно».
"Fraulein Peters," said Albinus in a soothing tone, "this is the man who makes two continents--"
Margot started and swerved round.
"Oh, really, how do you do?"
Rex bowed and, turning to Albinus, remarked quietly:
"I happened to read on the boat your excellent biography of Sebastiano del Piombo. Pity, though, you didn't quote his sonnets."
"Oh, but they are very poor," answered Albinus.
"Exactly," said Rex. "That's what is so charming." (ibid.)
In his Commentary to Shade's poem Kinbote quotes a sonnet that his uncle Conmal (the Zemblan translator of Shakespeare) composed directly in English:
English being Conmal's prerogative, his Shakspere remained invulnerable throughout the greater part of his long life. The venerable Duke was famed for the nobility of his work; few dared question its fidelity. Personally, I had never the heart to check it. One callous Academician who did, lost his seat in result and was severely reprimanded by Conmal in an extraordinary sonnet composed directly in colorful, if not quite correct, English, beginning:
I am not slave! Let be my critic slave.
I cannot be. And Shakespeare would not want thus.
Let drawing students copy the acanthus,
I work with Master on the architrave! (note to Line 962)
In classical architecture, an architrave is the lintel or beam that rests on the capitals of columns. It reminds one of a great painter in Laughter in the Dark moving backward to view better his finished fresco:
A great painter one day, high up on the scaffold, began moving backward to view better his finished fresco. The next receding step would have taken him over, and, as a warning cry might be fatal, his apprentice had the presence of mind to sling the contents of a pail at the masterpiece. Very funny! But how much funnier still, had the rapt master been left to walk back into nothing--with, incidentally, the spectators expecting the pail. The art of caricature, as Rex understood it, was thus based (apart from its synthetic, fooled-again nature) on the contrast between cruelty on one side and credulity on the other. And if, in real life, Rex looked on without stirring a finger while a blind beggar, his stick tapping happily, was about to sit down on a freshly painted bench, he was only deriving inspiration for his next little picture. (Chapter 18)
In Canto Two of his poem Shade quotes Pope's Essay on Man and mentions the blind beggar:
I went upstairs and read a galley proof,
And heard the wind roll marbles on the roof.
"See the blind beggar dance, the cripple sing"
Has unmistakably the vulgar ring
Of its preposterous age. Then came your call,
My tender mockingbird, up from the hall.
I was in time to overhear brief fame
And have a cup of tea with you: my name
Was mentioned twice, as usual just behind
(one oozy footstep) Frost.
"Sure you don't mind?
I'll catch the Exton plane, because you know
If I don't come by midnight with the dough - " (ll. 417-428)
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.”