After a perfunctory search in B
Boyd's book on Pale Fire for any reference to Pushkin's
letters to Natalia N. Gontcharova, with no special results, I chose
to bring up one of these letters, written during the poet's quarantine in
Boldino, to indicate its affinity with some of Shade's lines, in Pale
Fire ( "L’if, lifeless tree! Your great Maybe,
Rabelais: The grand potato.") and with Kinbote's commentary to
line 502( "An execrable pun, deliberately placed in
this epigraphic position to stress lack of respect for Death. I remember from my
schoolroom days Rabelais’ soi-disant
"last words" among other bright bits in some French manual: Je m’en vais chercher le grand
peut-être.").]
Puskin writes (the quote is in French): "notre marriage semble toujours fuir devant moi, et cette peste avec ses quarantines n'est elle pas la plus mauvaise plainsanterie que le sort ai pu imaginer" [ ] "c'est un grand peut-être, comme le disait Rabelais du paradis ou de l'eternité. Je suis l´Athée du bonheur."*
Perhaps John Shade (and Nabokov) saw the "otherword" differently. Nabokov most certainly wasn't an "athée du bonheur"
.................................................................
* Pequenas
tragédias,A.S,Púchkin. Tradução, notas e posfácio de Irineu Franco
Perpétuo. Ed. Globo, 2006 (p.109/110)