In his commentary 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) describes his rented house and mentions the three conjoined lakes called Omega, Ozero, and Zero:
Higher up on the same wooded hill stood, and still stands I trust, Dr. Sutton’s old clapboard house and, at the very top, eternity shall not dislodge Professor C.’s ultramodern villa from whose terrace one can glimpse to the south the larger and sadder of the three conjoined lakes called Omega, Ozero, and Zero (Indian names garbled by early settlers in such a way as to accommodate specious derivations and commonplace allusions). On the northern side of the hill Dulwich Road joins the highway leading to Wordsmith University to which I shall devote here only a few words partly because all kinds of descriptive booklets should be available to the reader by writing to the University's Publicity Office, but mainly because I wish to convey, in making this reference to Wordsmith briefer than the notes on the Goldsworth and Shade houses, the fact that the college was considerably farther from them than they were from one another. It is probably the first time that the dull pain of distance is rendered through an effect of style and that a topographical idea finds its verbal expression in a series of foreshortened sentences. (note to Lines 47-48)
In the last line of his sonnet Voyelles (“Vowels,” 1871) Arthur Rimbaud (a French poet, 1854-1891) mentions l’Oméga, rayon violet de Ses yeux (Omega, the violet ray of her eyes):
A noir, E blanc, I rouge, U vert, O bleu, voyelles,
Je dirai quelque jour vos naissances latentes.
A, noir corset velu des mouches éclatantes
Qui bombillent autour des puanteurs cruelles,
Golfes d’ombre : E, candeur des vapeurs et des tentes,
Lance des glaciers fiers, rois blancs, frissons d’ombelles;
I, pourpres, sang craché, rire des lèvres belles
Dans la colère ou les ivresses pénitentes;
U, cycles, vibrements divins des mers virides,
Paix des pâtis semés d’animaux, paix des rides
Que l’alchimie imprime aux grands fronts studieux
O, suprême Clairon plein de strideurs étranges,
Silences traversés des Mondes et des Anges :
— O l’Oméga, rayon violet de Ses yeux !
Black A, white E, red I, green U, blue O: you vowels,
Some day I'll tell the tale of where your mystery lies:
Black A, a jacket formed of hairy, shiny flies
That buzz among harsh stinks in the abyss's bowels;
White E, the white of kings, of moon-washed fogs and tents,
Of fields of shivering chervil, glaciers' gleaming tips;
Red I, magenta, spat-up blood, the curl of lips
In laughter, hatred, or besotted penitence;
Green U, vibrating waves in viridescent seas,
Or peaceful pastures flecked with beasts – furrows of peace
Imprinted on our brows as if by alchemies;
Blue O, great Trumpet blaring strange and piercing cries
Through Silences where Worlds and Angels pass crosswise;
Omega, O, the violet brilliance of Those Eyes!
(tr. G. J. Dance)
Victor Hugo called Rimbaud (the author of Ophélie who stopped writing poetry at age 20) "infant Shakespeare." In Shakespeare’s play Romeo and Juliet (3.1) Mercutio mentions Benvolio’s hazel eyes:
Thou wilt quarrel with a man for cracking nuts, having no other reason but because thou hast hazel eyes.
According to Kinbote, eternity shall not dislodge Professor C.’s ultramodern villa. Ultramodern villa brings to mind ultraviolet radiation. L’Éternité (1872) is a poem by Rimbaud:
Elle est retrouvée.
Quoi ? — L’Éternité.
C’est la mer allée
Avec le soleil.
Âme sentinelle,
Murmurons l’aveu
De la nuit si nulle
Et du jour en feu.
Des humains suffrages,
Des communs élans
Là tu te dégages
Et voles selon.
Puisque de vous seules,
Braises de satin,
Le Devoir s’exhale
Sans qu’on dise : enfin.
Là pas d’espérance,
Nul orietur.
Science avec patience,
Le supplice est sûr.
Elle est retrouvée.
Quoi ? — L’Éternité.
C’est la mer allée
Avec le soleil.
It has been found again.
What ? - Eternity.
It is the sea fled away
With the sun.
Sentinel soul,
Let us whisper the confession
Of the night full of nothingness
And the day on fire.
From human approbation,
From common urges
You diverge here
And fly off as you may.
Since from you alone,
Satiny embers,
Duty breathes
Without anyone saying: at last.
Here is no hope,
No orietur.
Knowledge and fortitude,
Torture is certain.
It has been found again.
What ? - Eternity.
It is the sea fled away
With the sun.
Là pas d’espérance (There is no hope) in the poem's penultimate stanza brings to mind Nadezhdy net il' ochen' malo (There is no hope or very little), a phrase (a self-reference to a line in Pushkin's frivolous poem Tsar Nikita and his Forty Daughters, 1822) used by Pushkin in a letter of December 1, 1826, to Alekseev (the poet's Kishinev pal):
Был я в Москве и думал: авось, бог милостив, увижу где-нибудь чинно сидящего моего черного друга, или в креслах театральных или в ресторации за бутылкой. Нет — так и уехал во Псков — так и теперь опять еду в белокаменную. Надежды нет иль очень мало. По крайней мере пиши же мне почаще, а я за новости кишенев<ские> стану тебя подчивать новостями московскими. Буду тебе сводничать старых твоих любовниц — я чай дьявольски состарелись. Напиши кто? Я готов доныне идти по твоим следам, утешаясь мыслию — что орогачу друга.
The “real” name of Hazel Shade (the poet’s daughter who drowned in Lake Omega) seems to be Nadezhda Botkin. After her tragic death, her father, Professor Vsevolod Botkin, went mad and became the poet Shade, his commentator Kinbote and his murderer Gradus. Nadezhda means in Russian "hope." There is a hope that, when Kinbote completes his work on Shade’s poem and commits suicide (on October 19, 1959, the anniversary of Pushkin’s Lyceum), Botkin, like Count Vorontsov (a target of Pushkin’s epigrams, “half-milord, half-merchant, etc.”) will be full again.
Odon/Nodo/odno + Omega = modo/mood/doom + Onega
Onega + zero = Ozero + nega
Onega - a river and a lake in NW Russia
nega - Russ., mollitude
odno - neut. of odin, Russ., one
modo - Lat., just now (cf. modo vir, modo femina in Ovid's Metamorphoses)
Odon - pseudonym of Donald O'Donnell, b. 1915, world-famous actor and Zemblan patriot who helps the King to escape from Zembla
Nodo - Odon's half-brother, b. 1916, son of Leopold O'Donnell and of a Zemblan boy impersonator; a cardsharp and despicable traitor
Zero [from Arabic sifrom an empty thing cf cipher] As a mathematical idea, the absolute zero obtained by the subtraction of equal quantities (expressed by a - a), or the ideal zero denoting the imaginary limit of an infinite diminution (expressed by the quotient a/b, where a is indefinitely smaller than b). In physical measurement, a lower limit or point of origin, as in the zero of a scale or the absolute zero of temperature.
As a symbol, the absence of all number or quantity, necessary in our system of notation in order to preserve the principle of positional value by occupying positions which would otherwise be filled by one of the nine digits. In scales of notation where the radix is other than 10, the value of the zero sign would be altered correspondingly. Though in one sense no number, yet in ordinal reckoning it has to be counted as a member of the series.
Its symbol, the circle, represents at once nothing and everything; it is the symbol of boundless infinity; and a circle may be defined either as a single undivided and unterminated line, or as an infinite number of infinitely short lines. Ends meet; there is no essential difference between the infinitely great and infinitesimal. The zero point is the vanishing point, the laya or neutral state. In mathematics it is the neutral position between the series of positive and negative numbers. It is also the neutral state of matter between two planes; when physical matter is reduced to the zero or laya-state, it is ready to become manifest on the next higher plane, or vice versa. The same applies to consciousness and its planes.
Absolute nihility is a term which has no meaning in reality; and we find in algebra that a to the 0 power = 1, which is a formulation of the fact that an entity in the zero state is not abolished but is still a monad. The symbol
, or unity within zero, symbolizes manifest divinity, the hierarchical universe, and complete man — in other words, full manifestation, all contained within the monad having emanated from it and established the unfolded entity; and a symbol which also is sometimes numerically figurated as 10. These two symbols, the circle denoting immaculate mother nature, and the line denoting the fructifying spirit, make up the number ten in the denary scale of notation.
The use of the zero to secure position value in a scale of decimal nation came to us, through the Arabs, from India. Modern scholarship seeks among the records of antiquity for some date which it may assign as the origin of decimal notation; but the fact that other systems were in use does not prove that it was unknown, as it may have been kept secret; and indeed we have other systems, besides the decimal, in use of the earth today. In discussing the matter we must distinguish between the decimal notation with the zero, and a mere method of counting in groups of ten and using special signs for ten, a hundred, etc. Blavatsky points to the symbolical character of the upright stroke and the circle, as denoting the number ten and also the masculine and feminine principles; the inference being that the antiquity and universality of this symbol implies a knowledge of decimal notation. (Encyclopedic Theosophical Glossary)