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), King Alfin's question "What emperor?" has remained his only memorable mot:
Alfin the Vague (1873-1918; regnal dates 1900-1918, but 1900-1919 in most biographical dictionaries, a fumble due to the coincident calendar change from Old Style to New) was given his cognomen by Amphitheatricus, a not unkindly writer of fugitive poetry in the liberal gazettes (who was also responsible for dubbing my capital Uranograd!). King Alfin's absent-mindedness knew no bounds. He was a wretched linguist, having at his disposal only a few phrases of French and Danish, but every time he had to make a speech to his subjects - to a group of gaping Zemblan yokels in some remote valley where he had crash-landed - some uncontrollable switch went into action in his mind, and he reverted to those phrases, flavoring them for topical sense with a little Latin. Most of the anecdotes relating to his naïve fits of abstraction are too silly and indecent to sully these pages; but one of them that I do not think especially funny induced such guffaws from Shade (and returned to me, via the Common Room, with such obscene accretions) that I feel inclined to give it here as a sample (and as a corrective). One summer before the first world war, when the emperor of a great foreign realm (I realize how few there are to choose from) was paying an extremely unusual and flattering visit to our little hard country, my father took him and a young Zemblan interpreter (whose sex I leave open) in a newly purchased custom-built car on a jaunt in the countryside. As usual, King Alfin traveled without a vestige of escort, and this, and his brisk driving, seemed to trouble his guest. On their way back, some twenty miles from Onhava, King Alfin decided to stop for repairs. While he tinkered with the motor, the emperor and the interpreter sought the shade of some pines by the highway, and only when King Alfin was back in Onhava, did he gradually realize from a reiteration of rather frantic questions that he had left somebody behind ("What emperor?" has remained his only memorable mot). Generally speaking, in respect of any of my contributions (or what I thought to be contributions) I repeatedly enjoined my poet to record them in writing, by all means, but not to spread them in idle speech; even poets, however, are human. (note to Line 71)
W. B. Yeats's poem Broken Dreams (1917) written just after Yeats's last proposal to Maud Gonne ends in the line (repeated in the poem twice) "Vague memories, nothing but memories:"
There is grey in your hair.
Young men no longer suddenly catch their breath
When you are passing;
But maybe some old gaffer mutters a blessing
Because it was your prayer
Recovered him upon the bed of death.
For your sole sake—that all heart’s ache have known,
And given to others all heart’s ache,
From meagre girlhood’s putting on
Burdensome beauty—for your sole sake
Heaven has put away the stroke of her doom,
So great her portion in that peace you make
By merely walking in a room.
Your beauty can but leave among us
Vague memories, nothing but memories.
A young man when the old men are done talking
Will say to an old man, ‘Tell me of that lady
The poet stubborn with his passion sang us
When age might well have chilled his blood.’
Vague memories, nothing but memories,
But in the grave all, all, shall be renewed.
The certainty that I shall see that lady
Leaning or standing or walking
In the first loveliness of womanhood,
And with the fervour of my youthful eyes,
Has set me muttering like a fool.
You are more beautiful than any one,
And yet your body had a flaw:
Your small hands were not beautiful,
And I am afraid that you will run
And paddle to the wrist
In that mysterious, always brimming lake
Where those that have obeyed the holy law
Paddle and are perfect; leave unchanged
The hands that I have kissed
For old sake’s sake.
The last stroke of midnight dies.
All day in the one chair
From dream to dream and rhyme to rhyme I have ranged
In rambling talk with an image of air:
Vague memories, nothing but memories.
In his poem Byzantium (1928) W. B. Yeats mentions the Emperor and says that before him floats an image, man or shade, shade more than man, more image than a shade:
The unpurged images of day recede;
The Emperor's drunken soldiery are abed;
Night resonance recedes, night-walkers' song
After great cathedral gong;
A starlit or a moonlit dome disdains
All that man is,
All mere complexities,
The fury and the mire of human veins.
Before me floats an image, man or shade,
Shade more than man, more image than a shade;
For Hades' bobbin bound in mummy-cloth
May unwind the winding path;
A mouth that has no moisture and no breath
Breathless mouths may summon;
I hail the superhuman;
I call it death-in-life and life-in-death.
Miracle, bird or golden handiwork,
More miracle than bird or handiwork,
Planted on the starlit golden bough,
Can like the cocks of Hades crow,
Or, by the moon embittered, scorn aloud
In glory of changeless metal
Common bird or petal
And all complexities of mire or blood.
At midnight on the Emperor's pavement flit
Flames that no faggot feeds, nor steel has lit,
Nor storm disturbs, flames begotten of flame,
Where blood-begotten spirits come
And all complexities of fury leave,
Dying into a dance,
An agony of trance,
In agony of flame that cannot singe a sleeve.
Astraddle on the dolphin's mire and blood,
Spirit after spirit! The smithies break the flood,
The golden smithies of the Emperor!
Marbles of the dancing floor
Break bitter furies of complexity,
Those images that yet
Fresh images beget,
That dolphin-torn, that gong-tormented sea.
In a discarded variant Shade says that he likes his name: Shade, Ombre, almost "man" in Spanish:
After line 274 of Shade’s poem there is a false start in the draft:
I like my name: Shade, Ombre, almost "man"
In Spanish...
One regrets that the poet did not pursue this theme--and spare his reader the embarrassing intimacies that follow. (note to Line 275)
In his autobiographical poem Rosa oranzhevogo chasa ("The Dew of the Orange Hour," 1925) Igor Severyanin says that his ancestor was the emperor of Byzantium:
Все вы, Нелидовы и Дуки,
Лишь призраки истлевших дней,
Для слуха лишь пустые звуки…
Склоняясь ныне над сумой,
Таю, наперекор стихии,
Смешную мысль, что предок мой
Был император Византии!.. (Part One, 4)
King Alfin brings to mind Alphina, the youngest of the four daughters of Judge Goldsworth (Kinbote's landlord). Severyanin’s poem K Al’vine (“To Alvina”) is addressed to a neighbor’s girl who brings milk in the morning and who is surprised that the poet drinks so much wine:
Не удивляйся ничему… К. Фофанов
Соседка, девочка Альвина,
Приносит утром молоко
И удивляется, что вина
Я пью так весело-легко.
Еще бы! — тридцать пять бутылок
Я выпил, много, в десять дней!
Мне позволяет мой затылок
Пить зачастую и сильней…
Послушай, девочка льняная,
Не удивляйся ничему:
Жизнь городская — жизнь больная,
Так что ж беречь ее? к чему?
Так страшно к пошлости прилипнуть, —
Вот это худшая вина.
А если суждено погибнуть,
Так пусть уж лучше от вина!
The epigraph to Severyanin's poem, Ne udivlyaysya nichemu (Don't be surprise by anything), is from Fofanov's poem Vsegda my chuvstvuem pravdivo ("We always feel faithfully"):
Всегда мы чувствуем правдиво,
Но ложно мыслим мы подчас
И от очей ума ревниво
Хороним взор духовных глаз.
Но, друг, живя, не мудрствуй ложно,
Не удивляйся ничему,-
Постигнуть сердцем все возможно
Непостижимое уму.
Konstantin Fofanov (1862-1911) lived and died (on May 30, 1911, Fofanov's forty-ninth birthday) in Gatchina (a town 45 km south-south-west of St. Petersburg). An aviator, King Alfin died when trying a tricky vertical loop that Prince Andrey Kachurin, the famous Russian stunter and War One hero, had shown him in Gatchina:
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)
An Irish Airman Foresees his Death (1919) is a poem by W. B. Yeats. Igor Lotaryov’s pseudonym, Severyanin comes from sever (North) and means "a Northerner." Kinbote’s Zembla is a distant northern land.
A not unkindly writer of fugitive poetry in the liberal gazettes, Amphitheatricus hints at Aleksandr Amfiteatrov (1862-1938). In his essay on Severyanin, Chelovek, kotorogo zhal' ("A Man whom one Pities," 1914), Amfiteatrov compares Severyanin to Poprishchin, the main character in Gogol's story Zapiski sumasshedshego ("The Notes of a Madman," 1835) who imagines that he is Ferdinand VIII, the King of Spain:
И так как Игорь Северянин -- человек даровитый и изобретательный, то, совершенно естественно, он, усердствуя в показании, как он ловок кувыркаться на все лады, да еще сгоряча и заигравшись, перенаглел всю "обнаглевшую бездарь", которую он сам же справедливо презирает и над которой гневно смеется... Отсюда и все его "поприщинские" выходки и выкрики Фердинанда VIII, столь снисходительного, что он даже не требует "знаков верноподданничества".
Amfiteatrov's essay ends in a sonnet:
Читаю вас: вы нежный и простой,
И вы — кривляка пошлый по приметам,
За ваш сонет хлестну и вас сонетом:
Ведь, вы — талант, а не балбес пустой!
Довольно петь кларетный вам отстой,
Коверкая родной язык при этом.
Хотите быть не фатом, а поэтом?
Очиститесь страданья красотой!
Французя, как комми на рандеву,
Венка вам не дождаться на главу:
Жалка притворного юродства драма,
И взрослым быть детинушке пора...
Как жаль, что вас дитёй не секла мама
За шалости небрежного пера!
Shade's poem consists of 999 lines and 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”). The Words Upon the Windowpane (1930) is a play by W. B. Yeats. Dvoynik ("The Double," 1846) is a short novel by Dostoevski. At the end of his poem Po spravedlivosti ("In All Fairness," 1918) Severyanin calls Lenin (who signed a separate peace with Germany) moy dvoynik (my double):
Его бесспорная заслуга
Есть окончание войны.
Его приветствовать, как друга
Людей, вы искренне должны.
Я – вне политики, и, право,
Мне все равно, кто б ни был он.
Да будет честь ему и слава,
Что мир им, первым, заключен.
Когда людская жизнь в загоне,
И вдруг – ее апологет,
Не все ль равно мне – как: в вагоне
Запломбированном иль нет?..
Не только из вагона – прямо
Пускай из бездны бы возник!
Твержу настойчиво-упрямо:
Он, в смысле мира, мой двойник.
Uranograd (as Amphitheatricus called Onhava, the capital of Zembla) brings to mind Uran the Last, the Emperor of Zembla:
Uran the Last, Emperor of Zembla, reigned 1798-1799; an incredibly brilliant, luxurious and cruel monarch whose whistling whip made Zembla spin like a rainbow top; dispatched one night by a group of his sister's united favorites, 681. (Index)
Uran the Last seems to correspond to the Russian tsar Paul I (who reigned in 1796-1801). In the lines 65-88 of his ode Vol’nost’ (“Liberty,” 1817) Pushkin describes the murder of Paul I whom Pushkin calls tiran (tyrant), a word that in Russian rhymes with Uran:
Когда на мрачную Неву
Звезда полуночи сверкает,
И беззаботную главу
Спокойный сон отягощает,
Глядит задумчивый певец
На грозно спящий средь тумана
Пустынный памятник тирана,
Забвенью брошенный дворец —
И слышит Клии страшный глас
За сими страшными стенами,
Калигуллы последний час
Он видит живо пред очами,
Он видит — в лентах и звездах,
Вином и злобой упое́нны
Идут убийцы потае́нны,
На лицах дерзость, в сердце страх.
Молчит неверный часовой,
Опущен молча мост подъёмный,
Врата отверсты в тьме ночной
Рукой предательства наёмной…
О стыд! о ужас наших дней!
Как звери, вторглись янычары!…
Падут бесславные удары…
Погиб увенчанный злодей.
When down upon the gloomy Neva
The star Polaris scintillates
And peaceful slumber overwhelms
The head that is devoid of cares,
The pensive poet contemplates
The grimly sleeping in the mist
Forlorn memorial of a tyrant,
A palace to oblivion cast,
And hears the dreadful voice of Clio
Above yon gloom-pervaded walls
And vividly before his eyes
He sees Caligula's last hours.
He sees: beribanded, bestarred,
With Wine and Hate intoxicated,
They come, the furtive assassins,
Their faces brazen, hearts afraid.
Silent is the untrusty watchman,
The drawbridge silently is lowered,
The gate is opened in the dark
Of night by hired treachery's hand.
O shame! O horror of our days!
Like animals, the Janissaries
Burst in. The infamous blows fall,
And perished has the crowned villain!
(VN’s translation)
Pushkin compares Paul I to Caligula, a Roman Emperor whose nickname means in Latin “little boot.” According to Kinbote (the author of books on surnames), Botkin is the one who makes bottekins (fancy footwear):
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, nee 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, Limner (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 buildings a "hurley-house." But enough of this. (note to Line 71)
A "hurley-house" brings to mind pustynnyi pamyatnik tirana, zabven’yu broshennyi dvorets (forlorn memorial of a tyrant, a palace to oblivion cast), as Pushkin calls the Mikhaylovski castle where Paul I was murdered. On Oct. 31, 1838 (Dostoevski’s seventeenth birthday), Dostoevski (a student of the Military Engineer School housed in the Mikhaylovski castle) wrote a letter to his brother in which he twice used the word gradus (degree). In "The Dew of the Orange Hour" Severyanin says that his father, an officer, finished Inzhenernyi zamok (the Engineer Castle):
Окончив Инженерный замок,
Отец мой вышел в батальон,
Не признавая строгих рамок,
Каких нескопленный мильон
Леонтьевны хотел от сына,
На то была своя причина:
Великолепнейший лингвист,
И образован, и воспитан,
Он был умен, он был начитан;
Любил под соловьиный свист
Немного помечтать; частенько
Бывал он в Comédie Fransaise;
Но вместе с тем и Разин Стенька
В душе, где бродит русский бес,
Обрел себе по праву место:
И оргии, и кутежи
Ему не чужды были. Лжи
Не выносил он лишь. Невеста,
Поэта мать, была одна,
Зато — мильон одна жена… (Part One, 3)