According to 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), Gradus (Shade’s murderer) is a cross between bat and crab:
The grotesque figure of Gradus, a cross between bat and crab, was not much odder than many other Shadows, such as, for example, Nodo, Odon's epileptic half-brother who cheated at cards, or a mad Mandevil who had lost a leg in trying to make anti-matter. (note to Line 171)
A cross between bat and crab, Gradus brings to mind the monsters in Tatiana's dream in Chapter Five (XVI-XVII) of Pushkin's Eugene Onegin:
Опомнилась, глядит Татьяна:
Медведя нет; она в сенях;
За дверью крик и звон стакана,
Как на больших похоронах;
Не видя тут ни капли толку,
Глядит она тихонько в щёлку,
И что же видит?.. за столом
Сидят чудовища кругом:
Один в рогах с собачьей мордой,
Другой с петушьей головой,
Здесь ведьма с козьей бородой,
Тут остов чопорный и гордый,
Там карла с хвостиком, а вот
Полужуравль и полукот.
Еще страшней, еще чуднее:
Вот рак верхом на пауке,
Вот череп на гусиной шее
Вертится в красном колпаке,
Вот мельница вприсядку пляшет
И крыльями трещит и машет;
Лай, хохот, пенье, свист и хлоп,
Людская молвь и конской топ!
Но что подумала Татьяна,
Когда узнала меж гостей
Того, кто мил и страшен ей,
Героя нашего романа!
Онегин за столом сидит
И в дверь украдкою глядит.
Tatiana comes to, looks:
no bear; she's in a hallway;
behind the door there's shouting and the jingle
of glasses as at some big funeral.
Perceiving not a drop of sense in this,
she furtively looks through the chink
— and what then? She sees... at a table
monsters are seated in a circle:
one horned and dog-faced;
another with a rooster's head;
here is a witch with a goat's beard;
here, prim and proud, a skeleton;
yonder, a dwarf with a small tail; and there,
something half crane, half cat.
More frightful still, and still more wondrous:
there is a crab astride a spider;
there on a goose's neck
twirls a red-calpacked skull;
there a windmill the squat-jig dances
and rasps and waves its vanes.
Barks, laughter, singing, whistling, claps,
the parle of man, the stamp of steed!31
But what were the thoughts of Tatiana
when 'mongst the guests she recognized
him who was dear to her and awesome —
the hero of our novel!
Onegin at the table sits
and through the door stealthily gazes.
31. Reviewers condemned the words hlop [clap], molv' [parle], and top [stamp] as indifferent neologisms. These words are fundamentally Russian. “Bova stepped out of the tent for some fresh air and heard in the open country the parle of man and the stamp of steed” (“The Tale of Bova the Prince”). Hlop and ship are used in plain-folk speech instead of hlópanie [clapping] and shipénie [hissing]:
“he let out a hiss of the snaky sort”
(Ancient Russian Poems).
One should not interfere with the freedom of our rich and beautiful language. (Pushkin's note)
Rak verkhom na pauke (a crab astride a spider) brings to mind not only "a cross between bat and crab," but also "spider, redips" in Canto Two of Shade's poem:
She had strange fears, strange fantasies, strange force
Of character - as when she spent three nights
Investigating certain sounds and lights
In an old barn. She twisted words: pot, top,
Spider, redips. And "powder" was "red wop."
She called you a didactic katydid.
She hardly ever smiled, and when she did,
It was a sign of pain. She'd criticize
Ferociously our projects, and with eyes
Expressionless sit on her tumbled bed
Spreading her swollen feet, scratching her head
With psoriatic fingernails, and moan,
Murmuring dreadful words in monotone. (ll. 344-356)
In his Commentary Kinbote affirms that it was he who observed one day that “spider” in reverse is “redips” and “T.S. Eliot,” “toilest:”
One of the examples her father gives is odd. I am quite sure it was I who one day, when we were discussing "mirror words," observed (and I recall the poet's expression of stupefaction) that "spider" in reverse is "redips," and "T.S. Eliot," "toilest." But then it is also true that Hazel Shade resembled me in certain respects. (note to Lines 347-348)
According to Kinbote, Gradus is a half-man who is half mad:
I have considered in my earlier note (I now see it is the note to line 171) the particular dislikes, and hence the motives, of our "automatic man," as I phrased it at a time when he did not have as much body, did not offend the senses as violently as now; was, in a word, further removed from our sunny, green, grass-fragrant Arcady. But Our Lord has fashioned man so marvelously that no amount of motive hunting and rational inquiry can ever really explain how and why anybody is capable of destroying a fellow creature (this argument necessitates, I know, a temporary granting to Gradus of the status of man), unless he is defending the life of his son, or his own, or the achievement of a lifetime; so that in final judgment of the Gradus versus the Crown case I would submit that if his human incompleteness be deemed insufficient to explain his idiotic journey across the Atlantic just to empty the magazine of his gun; we may concede, doctor, that our half-man was also half mad. (note to Line 949)
A mad Mandevil who had lost a leg in trying to make anti-matter makes one think of dvunogikh tvarey milliony (the millions of two-legged creatures) mentioned by Pushkin in Canto Two (XIV: 6-7) of EO:
Но дружбы нет и той меж нами.
Все предрассудки истребя,
Мы почитаем всех нулями,
А единицами — себя.
Мы все глядим в Наполеоны;
Двуногих тварей миллионы
Для нас орудие одно;
Нам чувство дико и смешно.
Сноснее многих был Евгений;
Хоть он людей, конечно, знал
И вообще их презирал, —
Но (правил нет без исключений)
Иных он очень отличал
И вчуже чувство уважал.
But in our midst there’s even no such friendship:
Having destroyed all the prejudices,
We deem all people naughts
And ourselves units.
We all expect to be Napoleons;
the millions of two-legged creatures
for us are only tools;
feeling to us is weird and ludicrous.
More tolerant than many was Eugene,
though he, of course, knew men
and on the whole despised them;
but no rules are without exceptions:
some people he distinguished greatly
and, though estranged from it, respected feeling.
Odon = Nodo = odno (Odon is the pseudonym of Donald O’Donnell, a world-famous actor and Zemblan patriot who helps the king to escape from Zembla; Odon’s epileptic half-brother, Nodo is a cardsharp and despicable traitor; odno is neut. of odin, one; cf. orudie odno, only tools, a phrase used by Pushkin). At the end of his Commentary Kinbote mentions a million photographers:
"And you, what will you be doing with yourself, poor King, poor Kinbote?" a gentle young voice may inquire.
God will help me, I trust, to rid myself of any desire to follow the example of two other characters in this work. I shall continue to exist. I may assume other disguises, other forms, but I shall try to exist. I may turn up yet, on another campus, as an old, happy, healthy, heterosexual Russian, a writer in exile, sans fame, sans future, sans audience, sans anything but his art. I may join forces with Odon in a new motion picture: Escape from Zembla (ball in the palace, bomb in the palace square). I may pander to the simple tastes of theatrical critics and cook up a stage play, an old-fashioned Melodrama with three principals: a lunatic who intends to kill an imaginary king, another lunatic who imagines himself to be that king, and a distinguished old poet who stumbles by chance into the line of fire, and perishes in the clash between the two figments. Oh, I may do many things! History permitting, I may sail back to my recovered kingdom, and with a great sob greet the gray coastline and the gleam of a roof in the rain. I may huddle and groan in a madhouse. But whatever happens, wherever the scene is laid, somebody, somewhere, will quietly set out - somebody has already set out, somebody still rather far away is buying a ticket, is boarding a bus, a ship, a plane, has landed, is walking toward a million photographers, and presently he will ring at my door - a bigger, more respectable, more competent Gradus. (note to Line 1000)
Btw., mad Mandevil (Baron Mirador) and his brother, Baron Radomir (a man of fashion and Zemblan patriot), bring to mind Bernard Mandeville, or Bernard de Mandeville (1670-1733), an Anglo-Dutch philosopher, political economist, satirist, writer and physician. Born in Rotterdam, he lived most of his life in England and used English for most of his published works. He became famous for The Fable of the Bees (1705). Napoleon chose the bee as the emblem to represent his status as Emperor. He saw it as a symbol of immortality and resurrection and placed the bee on his personal coat of arms. Napoleon's mantle, that he wore during his coronation was covered with golden bees embroideries. According to Pushkin, "we all expect to be Napoleons." In his poem K moryu ("To the Sea," 1824) Pushkin pairs Napoleon (who died on St. Helena in May 1821) with Byron (who died in Greece in April 1824). The name Mandevil fuses together man and the devil and brings to mind a line in Byron’s Don Juan, “Man — and, as we would hope — perhaps the devil:”
But Time, which brings all beings to their level,
And sharp Adversity, will teach at last
Man — and, as we would hope — perhaps the devil,
That neither of their intellects are vast:
While youth’s hot wishes in our red veins revel,
We know not this — the blood flows on too fast;
But as the torrent widens towards the ocean,
We ponder deeply on each past emotion. (Canto the Fourth, II)
In a letter of Feb. 20, 1816, to John Murray Byron mentions his Gradus (prosody handbook):
Dear Sir, — To return to our business — your epistles are vastly agreeable. With regard to the observations on carelessness, etc., I think, with all humility, that the gentle reader has considered a rather uncommon, and designedly irregular versification for haste and negligence. The measure is not that of any of the other poems, which (I believe) were allowed to be tolerably correct, according to Byshe and the fingers — or ears — by which bards write, and readers reckon. Great part of The Siege is in (I think) what the learned call Anapests, (though I am not sure, being heinously forgetful of my metres and my Gradus) and many of the lines intentionally longer or shorter than its rhyming companion ; and the rhyme also occurring at greater or less intervals of caprice or convenience.
I mean not to say that this is right or good, but merely that I could have been smoother, had it appeared to me of advantage; and that I was not otherwise without being aware of the deviation, though I now feel sorry for it, as I would undoubtedly rather please than not. My wish has been to try at something different from my former efforts ; as I endeavoured to make them differ from each other. The versification of The Corsair is not that of Lara ; nor The Giaour that of The Bride; Childe Harold is again varied from these; and I strove to vary the last somewhat from all of the others. Excuse all this damned nonsense and egotism. The fact is, that I am rather trying to think on the subject of this note, than really thinking on it. I did not know you had called ; you are always admitted and welcome when you choose.
Yours, etc., etc.,
Bn.