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 king Thurgus the Third, surnamed The Turgid (grandfather of Charles the Beloved), and his mistress Iris Acht (a celebrated actress):
One August day, at the beginning of his third month of luxurious captivity in the South West Tower, he was accused of using a fop's hand mirror and the sun's cooperative rays to flash signals from his lofty casement. The vastness of the view it commanded was denounced not only as conducive to treachery but as producing in the surveyor an airy sense of superiority over his low-lodged jailers. Accordingly, one evening the King's cot-and-pot were transferred to a dismal lumber room on the same side of the palace but on its first floor. Many years before, it had been the dressing room of his grandfather, Thurgus the Third. After Thurgus died (in 1900) his ornate bedroom was transformed into a kind of chapel and the adjacent chamber, shorn of its full-length multiple mirror and green silk sofa, soon degenerated into what it had now remained for half a century, an old hole of a room with a locked trunk in one corner and an obsolete sewing machine in another. It was reached from a marble-flagged gallery, running along its north side and sharply turning immediately west of it to form a vestibule in the southwest corner of the Palace. The only window gave on an inner court on the south side. This window had once been a glorious dreamway of stained glass, with a fire-bird and a dazzled huntsman, but a football had recently shattered the fabulous forest scene and now its new ordinary pane was barred from the outside. On the west-side wall, above a whitewashed closet door, hung a large photograph in a frame of black velvet. The fleeting and faint but thousands of times repeated action of the same sun that was accused of sending messages from the tower, had gradually patinated this picture which showed the romantic profile and broad bare shoulders of the forgotten actress Iris Acht, said to have been for several years, ending with her sudden death in 1888, the mistress of Thurgus. In the opposite, east-side wall a frivolous-looking door, similar in turquoise coloration to the room's only other one (opening into the gallery) but securely hasped, had once led to the old rake's bedchamber; it had now lost its crystal knob, and was flanked on the east-side wall by two banished engravings belonging to the room's period of decay. They were of the sort that is not really supposed to be looked at, pictures that exist merely as general notions of pictures to meet the humble ornamental needs of some corridor or waiting room: one was a shabby and lugubrious Fête Flammande after Teniers; the other had once hung in the nursery whose sleepy denizens had always taken it to depict foamy waves in the foreground instead of the blurry shapes of melancholy sheep that it now revealed. (note to Line 130)
The last bend of the passage, ending in the green door, contained an accumulation of loose boards across which the fugitive stepped not without stumbling. He unlocked the door and upon pulling it open was stopped by a heavy black drapery. As he began fumbling among its vertical folds for some sort of ingress, the weak light of his torch rolled its hopeless eye and went out. He dropped it: it fell into muffled nothingness. The King thrust both arms into the deep folds of the chocolate-smelling cloth and, despite the uncertainty and the danger of the moment, was, as it were, physically reminded by his own movement of the comical, at first controlled, then frantic undulations of a theatrical curtain through which a nervous actor tries vainly to pass. This grotesque sensation, at this diabolical instant, solved the mystery of the passage even before he wriggled at last through the drapery into the dimly lit, dimly cluttered lumbarkamer which had once been Iris Acht's dressing room in the Royal Theater. It still was what it had become after her death: a dusty hole of a room communicating with a kind of hall whither performers would sometimes wander during rehearsals. Pieces of mythological scenery leaning against the wall half concealed a large dusty velvet-framed photograph of King Thurgus - bushy mustache, pince-nez, medals - as he was at the time when the mile-long corridor provided an extravagant means for his trysts with Iris. (ibid.)
Acht, Iris, celebrated actress, d. 1888, a passionate and powerful woman, favorite of Thurgus the Third (q. v.), 130. She died officially by her own hand; unofficially, strangled in her dressing room by a fellow actor, a jealous young Gothlander, now, at ninety, the oldest, and least important, member of the Shadows (q. v.) group. (Index)
Thurgus the Third, surnamed The Turgid, K's grandfather, d. 1900 at seventy-five, after a long dull reign; sponge-bagcapped, and with only one medal on his Jaeger jacket, he liked to bicycle in the park; stout and bald, his nose like a congested plum, his martial mustache bristling with obsolete passion, garbed in a dressing gown of green silk, and carrying a flambeau in his raised hand, he used to meet, every night, during a short period in the middle-Eighties, his hooded mistress, Iris Acht (q. v.) midway between palace and theater in the secret passage later to be rediscovered by his grandson, 130. (Index)
King Thurgus the Turgid seems to hint at Turgenev. In his essay on Turgenev (in “The Silhouettes of Russian Writers”) Yuli Ayhenvald calls Turgenev “a specialist of rendez-vous:”
У Тургенева все влюблены как-то тенденциозно. И он - специалист rendez-vous. И даже мало ему реальных свиданий, так что нужны ещё и всякие "Сны", и "Песни торжествующей любви", где показал он страсть бессознательную, на расстоянии, телепатию чувства. У него любовь литературна и, так сказать, с цитатами.
On the other hand, King Thurgus makes one think of Fergus (Fergus son of Roach, a key figure in the Ulster cycle, foster-father of Cú Chulainn, lover of Queen Medb, and, as mac Roich, 'son of the great horse,' the most virile man in Ireland). Who Goes with Fergus? (1892) is a poem by W. B. Yeats:
WHO will go drive with Fergus now,
And pierce the deep wood's woven shade,
And dance upon the level shore?
Young man, lift up your russet brow,
And lift your tender eyelids, maid,
And brood on hopes and fear no more.
And no more turn aside and brood
Upon love's bitter mystery;
For Fergus rules the brazen cars,
And rules the shadows of the wood,
And the white breast of the dim sea
And all dishevelled wandering stars.
In Joyce's Ulysses (1922) Buck Mulligan tells Stephen to "give up the moody brooding" about his mother's death and quotes the lines from Yeats's poem: "And no more turn aside and brood / Upon love’s bitter mystery." Edith Wharton (1862-1937) called Joyce's novel "a turgid welter of pornography (the rudest schoolboy kind)." "Edith Wharton" is a large bearded iris. Kinbote was nicknamed the Great Beaver because of his brown beard:
Alas, my peace of mind was soon to be shattered. The thick venom of envy began squirting at me as soon as academic suburbia realized that John Shade valued my society above that of all other people. Your snicker, my dear Mrs. C., did not escape our notice as I was helping the tired old poet to find his galoshes after that dreary get-together party at your house. 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 Mr. 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. There was also the morning when Dr. Nattochdag, head of the department to which I was attached, begged me in a formal voice to be seated, then closed the door, and having regained, with a downcast frown, his swivel chair, urged me "to be more careful." In what sense, careful? A boy had complained to his adviser. Complained of what, good Lord? That I had criticized a literature course he attended ("a ridiculous survey of ridiculous works, conducted by a ridiculous mediocrity"). Laughing in sheer relief, I embraced my good Netochka, telling him I would never be naughty again. I take this opportunity to salute him. He always behaved with such exquisite courtesy toward me that I sometimes wondered if he did not suspect what Shade suspected, and what only three people (two trustees and the president of the college) definitely knew. (Foreword)
Gerald Emerald brings to mind The Emerald Tablet (also known as the Smaragdine Tablet or the Tabula Smaragdina), a compact and cryptic Hermetic text. It was highly regarded by Islamic and European alchemists as the foundation of their art. Though attributed to the legendary Hellenistic figure Hermes Trismegistus, the text of the Emerald Tablet first appears in a number of early medieval Arabic sources, the oldest of which dates to the late eighth or early ninth century. It was translated into Latin several times in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Numerous interpretations and commentaries followed.
Medieval and early modern alchemists associated the Emerald Tablet with the creation of the philosopher's stone and the artificial production of gold.
In his Preface to Michael Robartes and the Dancer (1920) W. B. Yeats mentions Geraldus, the putative author of Speculum Angelorum et Hominum ("The Mirror of Angels and Men"):
A few of these poems may be difficult to understand, perhaps more difficult than I know. Goethe has said that the poet needs all philosophy, but that he must keep it out of his work. After the first few poems I came into possession of Michael Robartes’ exposition of the Speculum Angelorum et Hominum of Geraldus, and in the excitement of arranging and editing could no more keep out philosophy than could Goethe himself at certain periods of his life. I have tried to make understanding easy by a couple of notes, which are at any rate much shorter than those Dante wrote on certain of his odes in the Convito, but I may not have succeeded. It is hard for a writer, who has spent much labour upon his style, to remember that thought, which seems to him natural and logical like that style, may be unintelligible to others. The first excitement over, and the thought changed into settled conviction, his interest in simple, that is to say in normal emotion, is always I think increased; he is no longer looking for candlestick and matches but at the objects in the room.
I have given no account of Robartes himself, nor of his discovery of the explanation of Geraldus’ diagrams and pictures in the traditional knowledge of a certain obscure Arab tribe, for I hope that my selection from the great mass of his letters and table talk, which I owe to his friend John Aherne, may be published before, or at any rate but soon after this little book, which, like all hand-printed books will take a long time for the setting up and printing off and for the drying of the pages.
Acht is German for "eight." At the beginning of Edith Wharton's psychological fable The Eyes (1910) eight men sit around telling ghost stories. The title of Wharton's story brings to mind VN's short novel Soglyadatay ("The Eye," 1930). The characters in Soglyadatay include Vikentiy Lvovich Weinstock, a spiritualist:
Викентий Львович Вайншток, у которого Смуров служил в приказчиках (сменив негодного старика), знал о нем меньше чем кто-либо. В характере у Вайнштока была доля приятной азартности. Этим, вероятно, объясняется, что он дал у себя место малознакомому человеку. Его подозрительность требовала постоянной пищи. Как у иных нормальных и совершенно почтенных людей вдруг оказывается страсть к собиранию стрекоз или гравюр, так и Вайншток, внук старьевщика, сын антиквара, солидный, уравновешенный Вайншток, всю свою жизнь занимавшийся книжным делом, устроил себе некий отдельный маленький мир. Там, в полутьме, происходили таинственные события.
Индия вызывала в нем мистическое уважение; он был одним из тех, кто при упоминании Бомбея представляет себе не английского чиновника, багрового от жары, а непременно факира. Он верил в чох и в жох, в чет и в черта, верил в символы, в силу начертаний и в бронзовые, голопузые изображения. По вечерам он клал руки, как застывший пианист на легонький столик о трех ножках: столик начинал нежно трещать, цыкать кузнечиком и затем, набравшись сил, медленно поднимался одним краем и неуклюже, но сильно ударял ножкой об пол. Вайншток вслух читал азбуку. Столик внимательно следил и на нужной букве стучал. Являлся Цезарь, Магомет, Пушкин и двоюродный брат Вайнштока. Иногда столик начинал шалить, поднимался и повисал в воздухе, а не то предпринимал атаку на Вайнштока, бодал его в живот, и Вайншток добродушно успокаивал духа, словно укротитель, нарочно поддающийся игривости зверя, отступал по всей комнате, продолжая держать пальцы на столике, шедшем вперевалку. Употреблял он для разговоров также и блюдечко с сеткой и еще какое-то сложное приспособленьице с торчавшим вниз карандашом. Разговоры записывались в особые тетрадки. Это были диалоги такого рода:
В а й н ш т о к
Нашел ли ты успокоение?
Л е н и н
Нет. Я страдаю.
В а й н ш т о к
Желаешь ли ты мне рассказать о загробной жизни?
Л е н и н (после паузы)
Нет...
В а й н ш т о к
Почему?
Л е н и н
Там ночь.
Тетрадок было множество, и Вайншток говорил, что когда-нибудь опубликует наиболее значительные разговоры. И очень был забавен некий дух Абум, неизвестного происхождения, глуповатый и безвкусный, который играл роль посредника, устраивая Вайнштоку свидания в разными знаменитыми покойниками. К самому Вайнштоку он относился с некоторым амикошонством:
В а й н ш т о к
Дух, кто ты?
О т в е т
Иван Сергеевич.
В а й н ш т о к
Какой Иван Сергеевич?
О т в е т
Тургенев.
В а й н ш т о к
Продолжаешь ли ты творить?
О т в е т
Дурак.
В а й н ш т о к
За что ты меня ругаешь?
О т в е т (столик буйствует)
Надул. Я - Абум.
Иногда от Абума, начавшего озорничать, нельзя было отделаться во весь сеанс. "Прямо какая-то обезьяна", - жаловался Вайншток.
Vikentiy Lvovich Weinstock, for whom Smurov worked as salesman (having replaced the helpless old man), knew less about him than anyone. There was in Weinstock’s nature an attractive streak of recklessness. This is probably why he hired someone he did not know well. His suspiciousness required regular nourishment. Just as there are normal and perfectly decent people who unexpectedly turn out to have a passion for collecting dragonflies or engravings, so Weinstock, a junk dealer’s grandson and an antiquarian’s son, staid, well-balanced Weinstock who had been in the book business all his life, had constructed a separate little world for himself. There, in the penumbra, mysterious events took place.
India aroused a mystical respect in him: he was one of those people who, at the mention of Bombay, inevitably imagine not a British civil servant, crimson from the heat, but a fakir. He believed in the jinx and the hex, in magic numbers and the Devil, in the evil eye, in the secret power of symbols and signs, and in bare-bellied bronze idols. In the evenings, he would place his hands, like a petrified pianist, upon a small, light, three-legged table. It would start to creak softly, emitting cricketlike chirps, and, having gathered strength, would rise up on one side and then awkwardly but forcefully tap a leg against the floor. Weinstock would recite the alphabet. The little table would follow attentively and tap at the proper letters. Messages came from Caesar, Mohammed, Pushkin, and a dead cousin of Weinstock’s. Sometimes the table would be naughty: it would rise and remain suspended in mid-air, or else attack Weinstock and butt him in the stomach. Weinstock would good-naturedly pacify the spirit, like an animal tamer playing along with a frisky beast; he would back across the whole room, all the while keeping his fingertips on the table waddling after him. For his talks with the dead, he also employed a kind of marked saucer and some other strange contraption with a pencil protruding underneath. The conversations were recorded in special notebooks. A dialog might go thus:
WEINSTOCK: Have you found rest?
LENIN: This is not Baden-Baden.
WEINSTOCK: Do you wish to tell me of life beyond the grave?
LENIN (after a pause): I prefer not to.
WEINSTOCK: Why?
LENIN: Must wait till there is a plenum.
A lot of these notebooks had accumulated, and Weinstock used to say that someday he would have the more significant conversations published. Very entertaining was a ghost called Abum, of unknown origin, silly and tasteless, who acted as intermediary, arranging interviews between Weinstock and various dead celebrities. He treated Weinstock with vulgar familiarity.
WEINSTOCK: Who art thou, O Spirit?
REPLY: Ivan Sergeyevich.
WEINSTOCK: Which Ivan Sergeyevich?
REPLY: Turgenev.
WEINSTOCK: Do you continue to create masterpieces?
REPLY: Idiot.
WEINSTOCK: Why do you abuse me?
REPLY (table convulsed): Fooled you! This is Abum. (Chapter 3)
Weinstock means in German “grapevine.” Kinbote mockingly calls Gradus (Shade's murderer who contends that his name comes from the Russian word for "grape," vinograd, to which a Latin suffix has adhered) “Vinogradus” and “Leningradus:”
All this is as it should be; the world needs Gradus. But Gradus should not kill kings. Vinogradus should never, never provoke God. Leningradus should not aim his peashooter at people even in dreams, because if he does, a pair of colossally thick, abnormally hairy arms will hug him from behind and squeeze, squeeze, squeeze. (note to Line 171)
According to Kinbote, Iris Acht was strangled in her dressing room by a fellow actor, a jealous young Gothlander, now, at ninety, the oldest, and least important, member of the Shadows (a regicidal organization).