My previous post (“shaving, Beirut, old Zembla's fields, empires of rhyme, Indies of calculus & Count Komarovski in Pale Fire”) is incomplete and should be continued as follows:

In Speak, Memory VN describes his Staunton chessmen and compares a small crimson crown on the brow of the king’s knight to the round mark on a happy Hindu’s forehead:

My Staunton chessmen (a twenty-year-old set given to me by my father’s Englished brother, Konstantin), splendidly massive pieces, of tawny or black wood, up to four and a quarter inches tall, displayed their shiny contours as if conscious of the part they played. Alas, if examined closely, some of the men were seen to be chipped (after traveling in their box through the fifty or sixty lodgings I had changed during those years); but the top of the king’s rook and the brow of the king’s knight still showed a small crimson crown painted upon them, recalling the round mark on a happy Hindu’s forehead. (Chapter Fourteen, 3)

Describing his best chess problem, VN mentions the false scent in which a pawn becomes a knight:

The false scent, the irresistible “try” is: Pawn to b8, becoming a knight, with three beautiful mates following in answer to disclosed checks by Black; but Black can defeat the whole brilliant affair by not checking White and making instead a modest dilatory move elsewhere on the board. (ibid.)

In VN’s novel The Real Life of Sebastian Knight (1941) the narrator (Sebastian’s half-brother V.) is a black pawn (on b7) at the beginning that becomes a knight (on a1) at the end. The characters of TRLSK include Mr. Goodman, Sebastian’s biographer. The narrator compares Mr. Goodman’s face to a cow’s udder:

'My name,' she said, 'is Helen Pratt. I have overheard as much of your conversation as I could stand and there is a little thing I want to ask you. Clare Bishop is a great friend of mine. There's something she wants to find out. Could I talk to you one of these days?'
I said yes, most certainly, and we fixed the time.
'I knew Mr Knight quite well,' she added, looking at me with bright round eyes.
'Oh, really,' said I, not quite knowing what else to say.
'Yes,' she went on, 'he was an amazing personality, and I don't mind telling you that I loathed Goodman's book about him.'
'What do you mean?' I asked. 'What book?'
'Oh, the one he has just written. I was going over the proofs with him this last week. Well, I must be running. Thank you so much.'
She darted away and very slowly I descended the steps. Mr Goodman's large soft pinkish face was, and is, remarkably like a cow's udder. (Chapter Six)

One of Sebastian Knight’s books is entitled Lost Property. Dobro being Russian for “goods, property,” the name Goodman brings to mind the Russian saying ne ubit’ bobra, ne nazhit’ dobra (one cannot make a fortune without killing a beaver). A tall bearded man, Kinbote was nicknamed the Great Beaver:

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. (Foreword)

Kinbote’s Foreword to Pale Fire is dated Oct. 19, 1959. On this day (the Lyceum anniversary) Kinbote completes his work on Shade’s poem and commits suicide. There is a hope that, after Kinbote’s death, Botkin (Shade’s, Kinbote’s and Gradus’ “real” name) Botkin will be “full” again. In TRLSK the narrator quotes a passage from Lost Property:

“All things belong to the same order of things, for such is the oneness of human perception, the oneness of individuality, the oneness of matter, whatever matter may be. The only real number is one, the rest are mere repetition” (ibid.,
page 83). (Chapter 11)

The title of Mr Goodman’s book, The Tragedy of Sebastian Knight, brings to mind VN’s play in blank verse Tragediya gospodina Morna (“The Tragedy of Mr Morn,” 1924) which, in turn, reminds one of Gumilyov’s play Krasota Morni (“The Beauty of Morni,” 1921). In his poem Ya vezhliv s zhizn’yu sovremennoyu… (“I’m polite with modern life…” 1913) Gumilyov says that he is not geroy tragicheskiy (a tragic hero):

Но нет, я не герой трагический,
Я ироничнее и суше,
Я злюсь, как идол металлический
Среди фарфоровых игрушек.

Yet I'm no tragic hero - way too rough,
Ironic, jaded, dryly chiding,
An iron idol that's consumed with wrath
Amongst the statuettes of china.

The (imperfect) rhyme sushe (more dryly) – igrushek (toys) brings to mind the rhyme igrushek – lyagushek (frogs) in Derzhavin’s poem “In Praise of the Mosquito” (see the quote in my previous post).

At the end of TRLSK the narrator says that, despite Sebastian’s death, the hero remains:

And then the masquerade draws to a close. The bald little prompter shuts his book, as the light fades gently. The end, the end. They all go back to their everyday life (and Clare goes back to her grave) – but the hero remains, for, try as I may, I cannot get out of my part: Sebastian's mask clings to my face, the likeness will not be washed off. I am Sebastian, or Sebastian is I, or perhaps we both are someone whom neither of us knows. (chapter 20)

Sebastian dies in a sanatorium in St Damier. Damier is French for “chessboard.” In his Commentary Kinbote mentions Oswin Bretwit, a retired diplomat whose surname means in Zemblan “Chess Intelligence.” In Paris Gradus (Shade’s murderer) offers to Oswin Bretwit the correspondence between Oswin’s grand-uncle Zule and his cousin Ferz:

The scripta in question were two hundred and thirteen long letters which had passed some seventy years ago between Zule Bretwit, Oswin's grand-uncle, Mayor of Odevalla, and a cousin of his Ferz Bretwit, Mayor of Aros. (note to Line 286)

Ferz’ is Russian for “chess queen.” In a letter of the first part of January – February 14, 1825, to Katenin Griboedov (the future Russian envoy in Teheran) compares Sofia (a character in Griboedov’s play “Woe from Wit,” 1824) to ferz’:

Кто-то со злости выдумал об нём, что он сумасшедший, никто не поверил, и все повторяют, голос общего недоброхотства и до него доходит, притом и нелюбовь к нему той девушки, для которой единственно он явился в Москву, ему совершенно объясняется, он ей и всем на­плевал в глаза и был таков. Ферзь тоже разочарована насчёт своего сахара медовича.

Sybil Shade’s “real” name seems to be Sofia Botkin (born Lastochkin). Lastochka (“The Swallow,” 1792-94) is a poem by Derzhavin. In the poem’s closing lines (written after the death of ‘Plenira,’ the poet’s first wife) Derzhavin compares his soul to the swallow:

Душа моя! гостья ты мира:
Не ты ли перната сия? —
Воспой же бессмертие, лира!
Восстану, восстану и я, —
Восстану, — и в бездне эфира
Увижу ль тебя я, Пленира?

Explaining his comedy to Katenin, Griboedov says that Chatski (the main character in “Woe from Wit”) ey i vsem napleval v glaza (spat in the eyes of Sofia and everybody). In his poem Shade says that we should spit into the eyes of our executioners (see the quote in my previous post). In the same letter to Katenin Griboedov compares himself to Molière and discusses Molière’s characters:

Да! и я коли не имею талан­та Мольера, то по крайней мере чистосердечнее его; портреты, и только портреты, входят в состав комедии и трагедии, в них, однако, есть черты, свойственные многим другим лицам, а иные всему роду человеческому настолько, насколько каждый человек похож на всех своих двуногих собратий. Карикатур ненавижу, в моей картине ни одной не найдёшь. Вот моя поэтика; ты волен просветить меня, и, коли лучше что выдумаешь, я позай­мусь от тебя с благодарностию. Вообще я ни перед кем не таился и сколько раз повторяю (свидетельствуюсь Жандром, Шаховским, Гречем, Булгариным еtс., еtс., еtс.), что тебе обязан зрелостию, объёмом и даже оригинальностию моего дарования, если оно есть во мне. Одно при­бавлю о характерах Мольера: «Мещанин во дворян­стве», «Мнимый больной» — портреты, и превосходные; «Скупец» — антропос собственной фабрики, и несносен.

In a letter of May 16, 1835, to Pushkin Katenin paraphrases the words of Boileau (the author of Epistle II A M. Molière):

Своя Семья мила, в Аристофане целая идея, и будь всё как второй акт, вышла бы в своем роде хорошая комедия; князь не тщательный художник и не великий поэт, но вопреки Boileau:

Il est bien des degrés du médiocre au pire

сиречь до Кукольника; и какими стихами, с тех пор как они взбунтовались противу всех правил, они пишут!

In L’Art Poétique (Chant IV) Boileau says: Il n'est point de degré du médiocre au pire (he is not a degree from mediocre to worst). Gradus is Russian for “degree.”

In a letter to his brother Sebastian mentions osskomina (a word used in the phrase nabit’ oskominu, “set the teeth on edge”) and vypolziny (shed snake-skins or pupae shed by insects):

I am fed up [osskomina] with a number of tortuous things and especially with the patterns of my shed snake-skins [vypolziny] so that now I find a poetic solace in the obvious and the ordinary which for some reason or other I had overlooked in the course of my life. (chapter 19)

Sebastian’s vypolziny bring to mind the opening and closing lines of Gumilyov’s poem Pamyat’ (“Memory,” 1921):

Только змеи сбрасывают кожи,

Чтоб душа старела и росла.

Мы, увы, со змеями не схожи,

Мы меняем души, не тела.

Only snakes shed their skin,

So their souls can age and grow.

We, alas, do not resemble snakes,

We change souls, not bodies.

Крикну я... но разве кто поможет,

Чтоб моя душа не умерла?

Только змеи сбрасывают кожи,

Мы меняем души, не тела.

I will cry out... but who can prevent

My soul from dying?

Only snakes shed their skin

We change souls, not bodies.

In one of his last articles, “Bez bozhestva, bez vdokhnoven’ya” (“Without Divinity, without Inspiration,” 1921), Alexander Blok criticizes Gumilyov and the acmeists who, according to Blok, deliberately hush up what is most significant and precious in them, the soul:

Когда отбросишь все эти горькие шутки, становится грустно; ибо Н. Гумилёв и некоторые другие "акмеисты", несомненно даровитые, топят самих себя в холодном болоте бездушных теорий и всяческого формализма; они спят непробудным сном без сновидений; они не имеют и не желают иметь тени представления о русской жизни и о жизни мира вообще; в своей поэзии (а следовательно, и в себе самих) они замалчивают самое главное, единственно ценное: душу. (3)

In his essay Blok mentions oskomina (one of Blok’s favorite words that also occurs in his diaries):

Мы привыкли к окрошке, ботвинье и блинам, и французская травка с уксусом в виде отдельного блюда может понравиться лишь гурманам. Так и "чистая поэзия" лишь на минуту возбуждает интерес и споры среди "специалистов"; споры эти потухают так же быстро, как вспыхнули, и после них остаётся одна оскомина; а "большая публика", никакого участия в этом не принимающая и не обязанная принимать, а требующая только настоящих, живых художественных произведений, верхним чутьём догадывается, что в литературе не совсем благополучно, и начинает относиться к литературе новейшей совсем иначе, чем к литературе старой. (1)

Blok borrowed the title of his article from Pushkin’s poem a K*** (“To***,” 1825):

Я помню чудное мгновенье:

Передо мной явилась ты,

Как мимолетное виденье,

Как гений чистой красоты.

В томленьях грусти безнадежной

В тревогах шумной суеты,

Звучал мне долго голос нежный,

И снились милые черты.

Шли годы.  Бурь порыв мятежной

Рассеял прежние мечты,

И я забыл твой голос нежный,

Твои небесные черты.

В глуши, во мраке заточенья

Тянулись тихо дни мои

Без божества, без вдохновенья,

Без слёз, без жизни, без любви.

Душе настало пробужденье:

И вот опять явилась ты,

Как мимолетное виденье,

Как гений чистой красоты.

И сердце бьётся в упоенье,

И для него воскресли вновь

И божество, и вдохновенье,

И жизнь, и слёзы, и любовь.

I still recall the wondrous moment

When you appeared before my eyes,

Just like a fleeting apparition,

Just like pure beauty's distillation.

When'er I languished in the throes of hopeless grief

Amid the troubles of life's vanity,

Your sweet voice lingered on in me,

Your dear face came to me in dreams.

Years passed. The raging, gusty storms

Dispersed my former reveries,

And I forgot your tender voice,

Your features so divine.

In exile, in confinement's gloom,

My uneventful days wore on,

Without divinity, without inspiration

Without tears, without life, without love.

My soul awakened once again:

And once again you came to me,

Just like a fleeting apparition

Just like pure beauty's distillation.

My heart again resounds in rapture,

Within it once again arise

Feelings of awe and inspiration,

Of life itself, of tears, and love.

The repetition of words and even of whole lines in Pushkin’s poem brings to mind “sure returns of expected rhymes” mentioned by Pope in Essay on Criticism. This seems to suggest that the first line of Shade’s poem should be repeated again at the end and that the rhyme slain-windowpane should also return:

I was the shadow of the waxwing slain

By its own double in the windowpane. (ll. 1000-1001)

Dvoynik (“The Double,” 1914) is a poem by Blok. According to G. Ivanov, when he asked Blok “does a sonnet need a coda,” Blok replied that he did not know what a coda is. Line 1001 of Shade’s poem is its coda.

Alexey Sklyarenko