Describing his rented house, 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 a damask paperknife (described as "one ancient dagger brought by Mrs. Goldsworth's father from the Orient"):
In the Foreword to this work I have had occasion to say something about the amenities of my habitation. The charming, charmingly vague lady (see note to line 691), who secured it for me, sight unseen, meant well, no doubt, especially since it was widely admired in the neighborhood for its "old-world spaciousness and graciousness." Actually, it was an old, dismal, white-and-black, half-timbered house, of the type termed wodnaggen in my country, with carved gables, drafty bow windows and a so-called "semi-noble" porch, surmounted by a hideous veranda. Judge Goldsworth had a wife, and four daughters. Family photographs met me in the hallway and pursued me from room to room, and although I am sure that Alphina (9), Betty (10), Candida (12), and Dee (14) will soon change from horribly cute little schoolgirls to smart young ladies and superior mothers, I must confess that their pert pictures irritated me to such an extent that finally I gathered them one by one and dumped them all in a closet under the gallows row of their cellophane-shrouded winter clothes. In the study I found a large picture of their parents, with sexes reversed, Mrs. G. resembling Malenkov, and Mr. G. a Medusa-locked hag, and this I replaced by the reproduction of a beloved early Picasso: earth boy leading raincloud horse. I did not bother, though, to do much about the family books which were also all over the house - four sets of different Children's Encyclopedias, and a stolid grown-up one that ascended all the way from shelf to shelf along a flight of stairs to burst an appendix in the attic. Judging by the novels in Mrs. Goldsworth's boudoir, her intellectual interests were fully developed, going as they did from Amber to Zen. The head of this alphabetic family had a library too, but this consisted mainly of legal works and a lot of conspicuously lettered ledgers. All the layman could glean for instruction and entertainment was a morocco-bound album in which the judge had lovingly pasted the life histories and pictures of people he had sent to prison or condemned to death: unforgettable faces of imbecile hoodlums, last smokes and last grins, a strangler's quite ordinary-looking hands, a self-made widow, the close-set merciless eyes of a homicidal maniac (somewhat resembling, I admit, the late Jacques d'Argus), a bright little parricide aged seven ("Now, sonny, we want you to tell us -"), and a sad pudgy old pederast who had blown up his blackmailer. What rather surprised me was that he, my learned landlord, and not his "missus," directed the household. Not only had he left me a detailed inventory of all such articles as cluster around a new tenant like a mob of menacing natives, but he had taken stupendous pains to write out on slips of paper recommendations, explanations, injunctions and supplementary lists. Whatever I touched on the first day of my stay yielded a specimen of Goldsworthiana. I unlocked the medicine chest in the second bathroom, and out fluttered a message advising me that the slit for discarded safety blades was too full to use. I opened the icebox, and it warned me with a bark that "no national specialties with odors hard to get rid of" should be placed therein. I pulled out the middle drawer of the desk in the study - and discovered a catalogue raisonné of its meager contents which included an assortment of ashtrays, a damask paperknife (described as "one ancient dagger brought by Mrs. Goldsworth's father from the Orient"), and an old but unused pocket diary optimistically maturing there until its calendric correspondencies came around again. Among various detailed notices affixed to a special board in the pantry, such as plumbing instructions, dissertations on electricity, discourses on cactuses and so forth, I found the diet of the black cat that came with the house:
Mon, Wed, Fri: Liver
Tue, Thu, Sat: Fish
Sun: Ground meat
(All it got from me was milk and sardines; it was a likable little creature but after a while its movements began to grate on my nerves and I farmed it out to Mrs. Finley, the cleaning woman.) But perhaps the funniest note concerned the manipulations of the window curtains which had to be drawn in different ways at different hours to prevent the sun from getting at the upholstery. A description of the position of the sun, daily and seasonal, was given for the several windows, and if I had heeded all this I would have been kept as busy as a participant in a regatta. A footnote, however, generously suggested that instead of manning the curtains, I might prefer to shift and reshift out of sun range the more precious pieces of furniture (two embroidered armchairs and a heavy "royal console") but should do it carefully lest I scratch the wall moldings. I cannot, alas, reproduce the meticulous schedule of these transposals but seem to recall that I was supposed to castle the long way before going to bed and the short way first thing in the morning. My dear Shade roared with laughter when I led him on a tour of inspection and had him find some of those bunny eggs for himself. Thank God, his robust hilarity dissipated the atmosphere of damnum infectum in which I was supposed to dwell. On his part, he regaled me with a number of anecdotes concerning the judge's dry wit and courtroom mannerisms; most of these anecdotes were doubtless folklore exaggerations, a few were evident inventions, and all were harmless. He did not bring up, my sweet old friend never did, ridiculous stories about the terrifying shadows that Judge Goldsworth's gown threw across the underworld, or about this or that beast lying in prison and positively dying of raghdirst (thirst for revenge) - crass banalities circulated by the scurrilous and the heartless - by all those for whom romance, remoteness, sealskin-lined scarlet skies, the darkening dunes of a fabulous kingdom, simply do not exist. But enough of this. Let us turn to our poet's windows. I have no desire to twist and batter an unambiguous apparatus criticus into the monstrous semblance of a novel. (note to Lines 47-48)
"One ancient dagger brought by Mrs. Goldsworth's father from the Orient" makes one think of Lermontov's poem Kinzhal ("The Dagger," 1838):
Люблю тебя, булатный мой кинжал,
Товарищ светлый и холодный.
Задумчивый грузин на месть тебя ковал,
На грозный бой точил черкес свободный.
Лилейная рука тебя мне поднесла
В знак памяти, в минуту расставанья,
И в первый раз не кровь вдоль по тебе текла,
Но светлая слеза — жемчужина страданья.
И черные глаза, остановясь на мне,
Исполнены таинственной печали,
Как сталь твоя при трепетном огне,
То вдруг тускнели, то сверкали.
Ты дан мне в спутники, любви залог немой,
И страннику в тебе пример не бесполезный:
Да, я не изменюсь и буду тверд душой,
Как ты, как ты, мой друг железный.
My damask dagger with a soul of steel,
I love you! Comrade chill and bright,
Forged by a brooding Georgian for revenge.
A free Circassian honed you for the fight.
A lily-hand brought you to me in parting,
A keepsake of a time too brief
And then for once not blood flowed down your edge
But a light tear: a pearl of grief.
Fixated onto mine, her two black eyes
Filled with a sad mysterious dream
Like your steel by the light of tremulous fire
Were dim one instant, then agleam.
Love's wordless pledge, bestowed as my companion
In travel, give me council to the end.
Yea I will never change, my spirit steeled
Like you, like you, my damask friend.
(transl. A. Z. Foreman)
The dagger in Lermontov's poem was forged by a brooding Georgian for revenge. The name of the capital of Georgia, Tbilisi (in Lermontov's time, Tiflis) is consonant with Iblis (in Islam, the personal name of the Devil). A near-anagram of Sybil (the name of Shade's wife), Iblis brings to mind Drago Ibler (a Croatian architect and pedagogue, 1894-1964), the founder and leader of Grupa Zemlja (Zemlja Association of Artists, 1929-35). Drago Ibler was a pupil of Le Corbusier (1887-1965), a Swiss-French architect, designer, painter, urban planner and writer, one of the pioneers of what is now regarded as modern architecture. In a canceled variant (quoted by Kinbote in his commentary) Shade mentions your modern architect who is in collusion with psychanalysts:
Line 57: The phantom of my little daughter's swing
After this Shade crossed out lightly the following lines in the draft:
The light is good; the reading lamps, long-necked;
All doors have keys. Your modern architect
Is in collusion with psychanalysts:
When planning parents' bedrooms, he insists
On lockless doors so that, when looking back,
The future patient of the future quack
May find, all set for him, the Primal Scene.
"Your modern architect" brings to mind a well-known and very courageous master builder mentioned by Kinbote in his Index to Shade's poem:
Shadows, the, a regicidal organization which commissioned Gradus (q. v.) to assassinate the self-banished king; its leader's terrible name cannot be mentioned, even in the Index to the obscure work of a scholar; his maternal grandfather, a well-known and very courageous master builder, was hired by Thurgus the Turgid, around 1885, to make certain repairs in his quarters, and soon after that perished, poisoned in the royal kitchens, under mysterious circumstances, together with his three young apprentices whose first names Yan, Yonny, and Angeling, are preserved in a ballad still to be heard in some of our wilder valleys. (Index)
Prishli i stali teni nochi (“The shadows of the night came and mounted guard at my door,” 1842) is a poem by Yakov Polonski. The terrible name of the leader of the Shadows that cannot be mentioned, even in the Index to the obscure work of a scholar, seems to be Stalin. Soso (Iosif) Dzhugashvili (Stalin's real name) was a Georgian from Gori (a city in eastern Georgia). The pseudonym Stalin comes from stal' (steel). In the third stanza of his poem Kinzhal Lermontov compares his mistress's black eyes to the dagger's steel by the light of tremulous fire (kak stal' tvoya pri trepetnom ogne). Mrs. Goldsworth resembles Malenkov (a Soviet politician who briefly succeeded Stalin as the leader of the Soviet Union). Kinbote's Zembla is a land of reflections, of "resemblers" (according to Kinbote, the name Zembla is a corruption not of the Russian zemlya, but of Semblerland, a land of reflections, of "resemblers"):
Pictures of the King had not infrequently appeared in America during the first months of the Zemblan Revolution. Every now and then some busybody on the campus with a retentive memory, or one of the clubwomen who were always after Shade and his eccentric friend, used to ask me with the inane meaningfulness adopted in such cases if anybody had told me how much I resembled that unfortunate monarch. I would counter with something on the lines of "all Chinese look alike" and change the subject. One day, however, in the lounge of the Faculty Club where I lolled surrounded by a number of my colleagues, I had to put up with a particularly embarrassing onset. A visiting German lecturer from Oxford kept exclaiming, aloud and under his breath, that the resemblance was "absolutely unheard of," and when I negligently observed that all bearded Zemblans resembled one another - and that, in fact, the name Zembla is a corruption not of the Russian zemlya, but of Semblerland, a land of reflections, of "resemblers" - my tormentor said: "Ah, yes, but King Charles wore no beard, and yet it is his very face! I had [he added] the honor of being seated within a few yards of the royal box at a Sport Festival in Onhava which I visited with my wife, who is Swedish, in 1956. We have a photograph of him at home, and her sister knew very well the mother of one of his pages, an interesting woman. Don't you see [almost tugging at Shade's lapel] the astounding similarity of features - of the upper part of the face, and the eyes, yes, the eyes, and the nose bridge?" (note to Line 894)
In VN's novel Dar ("The Gift," 1937) Fyodor twice imagines a dialogue with Koncheyev (the rival poet). In the first of these dialogues Fyodor mentions an amazing resemblance:
"... Но постойте, постойте, я вас провожу. Вы, поди, полунощник, и не мне, стать, учить вас черному очарованию каменных прогулок. Так вы не слушали бедного чтеца?"
"В начале только - и то в полуха. Однако я вовсе не думаю, что это было так уж скверно".
"Вы рассматривали персидские миниатюры. Не заметили ли вы там одной - разительное сходство! - из коллекции петербургской публичной библиотеки - ее писал, кажется, Riza Abbasi, лет триста тому назад: на коленях, в борьбе с драконятами, носатый, усатый... Сталин".
They said good-by. “Brr, what a wind!”
“Wait, wait a minute though—I’ll see you home. Surely you’re a night owl like me and I don’t have to expound to you on the black enchantment of stone promenades. So you didn’t listen to our poor lecturer?”
“Only at the beginning, and then only with half an ear. However, I don’t think it was quite as bad as that.”
“You were examining Persian miniatures in a book. Did you not notice one—an amazing resemblance!—from the collection of the St. Petersburg Public Library—done, I think, by Riza Abbasi, say about three hundred years ago: that man kneeling, struggling with baby dragons, big-nosed, mustachioed—Stalin!” (Chapter One)
The second time a person whom Fyodor imagines to be Koncheyev turns out to be a young German who resembles Koncheyev:
"Herrliches Wetter, -- in der Zeitung steht es aber, dass es morgen bestimmt regnen wird", -- проговорил, наконец, сидящий на скамье, рядом с Федором Константиновичем молодой немец, показавшийся ему похожим на Кончеева.
Опять, значит, воображение, -- а как жаль! Даже покойную мать ему придумал для приманки действительности... Почему разговор с ним никак не может распуститься явью, дорваться до осуществления? Или это и есть осуществление, и лучшего не нужно... -- так как подлинная беседа была бы только разочарованием, -- пеньками запинок, жмыхами хмыканья, осыпью мелких слов?
"Da kommen die Wolken schon", -- продолжал кончеевовидный немец, указывая пальцем полногрудое облако, поднимавшееся с запада. (Студент, пожалуй. Может быть, с философской или музыкальной прожилкой. Где теперь Яшин приятель? Вряд ли сюда заглядывает).
"Halb fünf ungefähr", -- добавил он на вопрос Федора Константиновича и, забрав свою трость, покинул скамейку. Его темная, сутулая фигура удалилась по тенистой тропе. (Может быть, поэт? Ведь есть же в Германии поэты. Плохенькие, местные, -- но всё-таки, не мясники. Или только гарнир к мясу?).
“Herrliches Wetter—in der Zeitung steht es aber, dass es morgen bestimmt regnen wird,” said finally the young German who was sitting beside Fyodor on the bench and who had seemed to him to resemble Koncheyev.
Imagination again—but what a pity! I had even thought up a dead mother for him in order to trap truth…. Why can a conversation with him never blossom out into reality, break through to realization? Or is this a realization, and nothing better is needed… since a real conversation would be only disillusioning—with the stumps of stuttering, the chaff of hemming and hawing, the debris of small words?
“Da kommen die Wolken schon,” continued the Koncheyevoid German, pointing his finger at a full-breasted cloud rising in the west. (A student, most probably. Perhaps with a philosophical or musical vein. Where is Yasha’s friend now? He would hardly be likely to come here.)
“Halb fünf ungefähr,” he added in response to Fyodor’s question, and gathering his cane he left the bench. His dark, stooping figure receded along the shady footpath. (Perhaps a poet? After all, there must be poets in Germany. Puny ones, local ones—but all the same not butchers. Or only a garnish for the meat?) (Chapter Five)
A question that Fyodor asks the Koncheyevoid German, wie spät ist es (what is the time), brings to mind kot or (a play on kotoryi chas, "what is the time" in Russian), a phrase used by Kinbote when he describes the King's escape from Zembla:
A handshake, a flash of lightning. As the King waded into the damp, dark bracken, its odor, its lacy resilience, and the mixture of soft growth and steep ground reminded him of the times he had picnicked hereabouts - in another part of the forest but on the same mountainside, and higher up, as a boy, on the boulderfield where Mr. Campbell had once twisted an ankle and had to be carried down, smoking his pipe, by two husky attendants. Rather dull memories, on the whole. Wasn't there a hunting box nearby - just beyond Silfhar Falls? Good capercaillie and woodcock shooting - a sport much enjoyed by his late mother, Queen Blenda, a tweedy and horsy queen. Now as then, the rain seethed in the black trees, and if you paused you heard your heart thumping, and the distant roar of the torrent. What is the time, kot or? He pressed his repeater and, undismayed, it hissed and tinkled out ten twenty-one. (note to Line 149)
Safe in exile, Kinbote fears for his life. The Soviet ruler in 1924-53, Joseph Stalin (1878-1953) was a vindictive person (cf. raghdirst, thirst for revenge). In August 1940 Leon Trotsky (a Russian revolutionary, Soviet politician, and political theorist, 1879-1940) was assassinated in Mexico. The architect Drago Ibler brings to mind drago, a Mexican tree (Pterocarpus acapulcensis) with large yellow flowers and a red juice that forms a resin similar to kino. According to Kinbote, tree in Zemblan is grados:
Line 49: shagbark
A hickory. Our poet shared with the English masters the noble knack of transplanting trees into verse with their sap and shade. Many years ago Disa, our King's Queen, whose favorite trees were the jacaranda and the maidenhair, copied out in her album a quatrain from John Shade's collection of short poems Hebe's Cup, which I cannot refrain from quoting here (from a letter I received on April 6, 1959, from southern France):
THE SACRED TREE
The gingko leaf, in golden hue, when shed,
A muscat grape,
Is an old-fashioned butterfly, ill-spread
In shape.
When the new Episcopal church in New Wye (see note to line 549) was built, the bulldozers spared an arc of those sacred trees planted by a landscaper of genius (Repburg) at the end of the so-called Shakespeare Avenue, on the campus. I do not know if it is relevant or not but there is a cat-and-mouse game in the second line, and "tree" in Zemblan is grados.