In a variant of ll. 231-234 quoted by Kinbote in his Commentary (note to Line 231) Shade mentions “pets, revived, and invalids, grown well” who dwell in a strange Other World ... In his poem Pamyati kota Murra (“In Memory of the Tomcat Murr,” 1934) Hodasevich mentions poetov i zverey vozlyublennye teni (the beloved shades of poets and animals) enjoying the deserved rest of eternity in the gardens beyond the river of fire:

In this interesting post, you neglected to mention that Tom Cat Murr (Kater Murr) is one of the longer tales of E. T. A. Hoffmann. The Wikipedia says that it was first published in 1819-1821 as Lebens-Ansichten des Katers Murr nebst fragmentarischer Biographie des Kapellmeisters Johannes Kreisler in zufälligen Makulaturblättern, in two volumes. A planned third volume was never completed. It was Hoffmann's final novel and is considered his masterpiece.

I tried once to read Hoffmann's nutcracker story and if I managed to do it, I don't recall. That it was a hard slog, that I remember all too well. I tried it in English - which may be the reason it gave me such a hard time. I suppose I might give the original a try, but I'm not too keen.

For some reason that I no longer recall, I thought to read Kater Murr in conjunction with Pale Fire but never did. I suppose it must have had to do with Hodge. In any event after the Nutcracker (or as Mark Morris called his version of the ballet, The Hard Nut) I was fairly put off Hoff, man.

Still and all thank you Alexey for the Khodasevich and the extract from Pushkin's Proserpina which I intend to read, Russian verse being much easier to read than even translated German prose. But what has the one-armed theater goer to do with it? And what is Zina's surname?

Carolyn

P.S. Interesting that Pushkin's Pluto is bledniy (pale). I never came across Aida (Hades) that I can recall. How does it relate to ad? if it does. Interesting too that the initial H is simply dropped instead of turning into the usual hard G as in galshtuk (from Halstuck) or Gamlet.