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 Colonel Peter Gusev (King Alfin’s constant "aerial adjutant") and his son Oleg (the beloved playmate of Prince Charles Xavier Vseslav):
King 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)
We shall now go back from mid-August 1958 to a certain afternoon in May three decades earlier when he was a dark strong lad of thirteen with a silver ring on the forefinger of his sun-tanned hand. Queen Blenda, his mother, had recently left for Vienna and Rome. He had several dear playmates but none could compete with Oleg, Duke of Rahl. In those days growing boys of high-born families wore on festive occasions-of which we had so many during our long northern springsleeveless jerseys, white anklesocks with black buckle shoes, and very tight, very short shorts called hotinguens. I wish I could provide the reader with cut-out figures and parts of attire as given in paper-doll charts for children armed with scissors. It would brighten a little these dark evenings that are destroying my brain. Both lads were handsome, long-legged specimens of Varangian boyhood. At twelve, Oleg was the best center forward at the Ducal School. When stripped and shiny in the mist of the bath house, his bold virilia contrasted harshly with his girlish grace. He was a regular faunlet. On that particular afternoon a copious shower lacquered the spring foliage of the palace garden, and oh, how the Persian lilacs in riotous bloom tumbled and tossed behind the green-streaming, amethyst-blotched windowpanes! One would have to play indoors. Oleg was late. Would he come at all? (note to Line 130)
Oleg, Duke of Rahl, 1916-1931, son of Colonel Gusev, Duke of Rahl (b .1885, still spry); K.'s beloved playmate, killed in a toboggan accident, 130. (Index)
The surname Gusev comes from gus' (Russian for "goose"). King Alfin’s "aerial adjutant," Colonel Peter Gusev, and his son Oleg make one think of Chudesnoe puteshestvie Nil'sa s dikimi gusyami ("Nils's Wonderful Journey with the Wild Geese"), the Russian title of Selma Lagerlöf's The Wonderful Adventures of Nils (1907). Nils Runeberg is the main character of J. L. Borges's story Tres versiones de Judas ("Three Versions of Judas," 1944). Borges's story begins as follows:
In Asia Minor or in Alexandria, in the second century of our faith, when Basilides disseminated the idea that the cosmos was the reckless or evil improvisation of deficient angels, Nils Runeberg would have directed, with singular intellectual passion, one of the Gnostic conventicles. Dante would have assigned him, perhaps, a fiery grave; his name would extend the list of lesser heresiarchs, along with Satornilus and Carpocrates; some fragment of his preachings, embellished with invective, would survive in the apocryphal Liber adversus omnes haereses or would have perished when the burning of a monastery library devoured the last copy of the Syntagma. Instead, God afforded Runeberg the twentieth century and the university town of Lund. There, in 1904, he published the first edition of Kristus och Judas and, in 1909, his major book, Den hemlige Frälsaren. (Of the latter there is a German translation, made in 1912 by Emil Schering; it is called Der heimliche Heiland.)
Nils Runeberg's book Kristus och Judas (Christ and Judas) brings to mind Dr. Nattochdag, the head of Kinbote's department whose name means in Swedish "night and day" and who was nicknamed Netochka by his colleagues:
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)
Netochka Nezvanov (1849) is an unfinished novel by Dostoevski. Gusev (1890) is a story (written in Ceylon and set on a ship in the Indian Ocean) by Chekhov. According to Kinbote, Shade listed Dostoevski and Chekhov among Russian humorists:
Speaking of the Head of the bloated Russian Department, Prof. Pnin, a regular martinet in regard to his underlings (happily, Prof. Botkin, who taught in another department, was not subordinated to that grotesque "perfectionist"): "How odd that Russian intellectuals should lack all sense of humor when they have such marvelous humorists as Gogol, Dostoevski, Chekhov, Zoshchenko, and those joint authors of genius Ilf and Petrov." (note to Line 172)
The characters in Ilf and Petrov's novel Zolotoy telyonok ("The Golden Calf," 1932) include gusekrad (snatcher of geese) Panikovski. The members of the Antelope Gnu team, Ostap Bender, Balaganov and Panikovski pose as the sons of Lieutenant Schmidt (one of the leaders of the Sevastopol Uprising during the Russian Revolution of 1905). In Canto Three of his poem Shade mentions Captain Schmidt and Captain Smith:
If on some nameless island Captain Schmidt
Sees a new animal and captures it,
And if, a little later, Captain Smith
Brings back a skin, that island is no myth. (ll. 759-762)
In Ilf and Petrov's novel Bender tells Balaganov that zagranitsa (foreign lands) is the afterlife myth: whoever gets there never comes back:
— А как Рио-де-Жанейро? — возбужденно спросил Балаганов. — Поедем?
— Ну его к черту! — с неожиданной злостью сказал Остап. — Все это выдумка. Нет никакого Рио-де-Жанейро, и Америки нет, и Европы нет, ничего нет. И вообще последний город — это Шепетовка, о которую разбиваются волны Атлантического океана.
— Ну и дела! — вздохнул Балаганов.
– Мне один доктор всё объяснил, -- продолжал Остап, -- заграница -- это миф о загробной жизни. Кто туда попадает, тот не возвращается.
“So what about Rio de Janeiro?” asked Balaganov excitedly. “Are we going?”
“To hell with it!” said Ostap, suddenly angry. “It’s all a fantasy: there is no Rio de Janeiro, no America, no Europe, nothing.
Actually, there isn’t anything past Shepetovka, where the waves of the Atlantic break against the shore.”
“No kidding!” sighed Balaganov.
“A doctor I met explained everything to me,” continued Ostap, “other countries—that’s just a myth of the afterlife. (Chapter 32: “The Gates of Great Opportunities”).
Colonel Peter Gusev has the same first name as the tsar Peter I (1672-1725), a key figure in a major conflict with Sweden, the Great Northern War (1700–1721). The Russian tsars held the honorary title of colonel, especially within the Imperial Guard. The young Prince's playmate and catamite, Oleg is a namesake of veshchiy Oleg (Oleg the Wise, d. 912 AD), was a Varangian prince of the Rus' who became prince of Kiev, and laid the foundations of the Kievan Rus' state.
In a letter of Nov. 25, 1892, to Suvorin Chekhov says that Amfiteatrov's stories are written as if they were a translation from the Swedish:
Фельетоны Амфитеатрова гораздо лучше, чем его рассказы. Точно перевод со шведского.
The father of Charles the Beloved, King Alfin was given his cognomen by Amphitheatricus:
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!). (note to Line 71)
Alexander Amfiteatrov (1862-1938) is the author of Gospoda Obmanovy (“The Obmanov Family,” 1902), a satire on the Russian imperial family (the Romanovs). Obman means in Russian "deception, fraud." J. L. Borges and his Nils Runeberg bring to mind Niels Bohr (1885-1962), a Danish theoretical physicist who made foundational contributions to understanding atomic structure and quantum theory, for which he received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1922. A Swedish writer, Selma Lagerlöf (1858-1940) was the first woman to receive the Novel Prize in literature (in 1909). While Uranograd (as Amphitheatricus dubbed Onhava, the capital of Kinbote's Zembla) seems to hint at the atomic bombs, Niels Bohr's quantum theory makes one think of "At least I can stay here until tomorrow and sleep my fill, quantum satis" (Astrov's words in Chekhov's play Uncle Vanya, 1898) and of quantum satis Branda voli (quantum satis of strong-willed Brand) at the end of Alexander Blok's poem Vozmezdie ("Retribution," 1910-21). Quantum satis means in Latin “the amount which is enough.” At the beginning of a letter of Jan. 31, 1831, to Pletnyov (to whom Eugene Onegin is dedicated) Pushkin thanks Pletnyov for the Boris Godunov money and quotes the words of St. Francis Xavier "satis est, Domine, satis est:"
Сейчас получил 2000 р., мой благодетель. Satis est, domine, satis est.
Shade's full name is John Francis Shade; the full name of Charles the Beloved is Charles Xavier Vseslav. In a letter of Apr. 11, 1831, to Pletnyov Pushkin asks Pletnyov (who was slow to reply to Pushkin’s letters) if he is still alive and calls him ten’ vozlyublennaya (the beloved shade):
Воля твоя, ты несносен: ни строчки от тебя не дождёшься. Умер ты, что ли? Если тебя уже нет на свете, то, тень возлюбленная, кланяйся от меня Державину и обними моего Дельвига.
Shade’s poem 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”). Dvoynik (“The Double”) is a short novel (1846) by Dostoevski and a poem (1909) by Blok.