At the end of his commentary to Shade's poem Kinbote (in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962, Shade’s commentator who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla) quotes the words of his Zemblan nurse, "Minnamin, Gut mag alkan, Pern dirstan" (my darling, God makes hungry, the Devil thirsty):
Many years ago--how many I would not care to say--I remember my Zemblan nurse telling me, a little man of six in the throes of adult insomnia: "Minnamin, Gut mag alkan, Pern dirstan" (my darling, God makes hungry, the Devil thirsty). Well, folks, I guess many in this fine hall are as hungry and thirsty as me, and I'd better stop, folks, right here.
Yes, better stop. My notes and self are petering out. Gentlemen, I have suffered very much, and more than any of you can imagine. I pray for the Lord's benediction to rest on my wretched countrymen. My work is finished. My poet is dead.
"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)
The Zemblan word for the Devil, Pern seems to hint at Perun, the ancient Slavic god of thunder. Perun (1907) is the second collection of poetry by Sergey Gorodetskiy (a Russian poet and translator, 1884-1967). In his review of Perun Korney Chukovski (a Russian poet and critic, born Korneychukov, 1882-1969) quotes Gorodetski's poem Yudo ("Monster") in which Yudo says: "Ya est' khochu! Ya pit' khochu! ("I'm hungry! I'm thirsty!):"
Это уже вторая книжка стихов, которую в этом году выпускает молодой поэт. И, в лучшем случае, вторая кажется пародий на первую:
Помогите мне козявы,
Неулыбы, червяки.
Протяните, злые травы,
Ваши руки из реки.
Это и по темпу стиха, и по образам, и по языку — «Ярь». Но не развитее «Яри», не рост ее, а точно воспроизведение. Злое божество «Юда», которому в «Перуне» посвящен цикл прекрасных стихов, не удивляет и не радует. Кажется, где-то уже читал эти торопящиеся, веселые, срывающиеся слова:
Я есть хочу! Я пить хочу!
Где мать моя? Я мать ищу,
Лесам, зверям свищу, кричу.
В лесах, полях скачу, рыщу.
Новое в «Перуне» — риторика на общественные и политические темы:
О, лица, зрелища трущобных катастроф,
Глухие карты тягостных путей!
Невольный голос ваш печален и суров,
Нет повести страшнее ваших повестей.
Впечатление такое будто это вялый перевод с французского. В «Яри» поражало все: смелая космогония, дерзкий, дразнящий язык, пестрота и неожиданность пляшущих образов, — но «Ярь» должна быть единственной. В «Перуне» много заранее обдуманного намерения: такие стихи как «Колдунок», «Яга», «Гость», «Хозяйка», — хорошие сочинения «на тему». Неприятно также встретить в «Перуне» перезвон бальмонтовских созвучий, это дешевность звука и чувства, которой так развращен в последнее время целомудренный русский язык. Темы поэта тоже словно подешевели: эта хозяйка веселого дома, молящая Бога, чтобы он послал ей красивую девицу, чтобы дети ее не померли с голоду, эта проститутка, отказывающая в ласках солдату за то, что войсками убит ее брат-рабочий, может быть и эффектны, но вряд ли достойны С. Городецкого.
On the promenade in Blawick (a Zemblan seaside resort) the King (who is about to leave Zembla in a powerful motorboat) tells Odon that he is thirsty and hungry:
Waiting for the Russian couple to recede, the King stopped beside the bench. The mosaic-faced man folded his newspaper, and one second before he spoke (in the neutral interval between smoke puff and detonation), the King knew it was Odon. "All one could do at short notice," said Odon, plucking at his cheek to display how the varicolored semitransparent transparent film adhered to his face, altering its contours according to stress. "A polite person," he added, "does not, normally, examine too closely a poor fellow's disfigurement." "I was looking for shpiks [plainclothesmen]" said the King. "All day," said Odon, "they have been patrolling the quay. They are dining at present." "I'm thirsty and hungry," said the King. "There's some stuff in the boat. Let those Russians vanish. The child we can ignore." "What about that woman on the beach?" "That's young Baron Mandevil--chap who had that duel last year. Let's go now." "Couldn't we take him too?" "Wouldn't come--got a wife and a baby. Come on, Charlie, come on, Your Majesty." "He was my throne page on Coronation Day." Thus chatting, they reached the Rippleson Caves. I trust the reader has enjoyed this note. (note to Line 149)
At the end of Gorodetski's poem Yudo (the Monster) says: "Ya syt teper', ya syt i p'yan! (I'm full now, I'm full and drunk!):"
Сорвался, лес, стремглав бежит,
И взрытый луг глушит бурьян.
А Юдо мчит, в пустырь кричит:
Я сыт теперь, я сыт и пьян!
According to Korney Chukovski, Perun looks like a parody of Yar' ("Ardor," 1907), Gorodetski's first (and by far the best) collection of poetry. Yar'-medyanka is the Russian word for verdigris (vert-de-gris), the main component of a historic green pigment. It brings to mind Pushkin's poem Mednyi vsadnik ("The Bronze Horseman," 1833), but also makes one think of Gerald Emerald (a young instructor at Wordsmith University who gives Gradus a lift to Kinbote's rented house in New Wye) and Izumrudov (one of the greater Shadows who visits Gradus in Nice and tells him the King's new name and address in America):
On the morning of July 16 (while Shade was working on the 698-746 section of his poem) dull Gradus, dreading another day of enforced inactivity in sardonically, sparkling, stimulatingly noisy Nice, decided that until hunger drove him out he would not budge from a leathern armchair in the simulacrum of a lobby among the brown smells of his dingy hotel. Unhurriedly he went through a heap of old magazines on a nearby table. There he sat, a little monument of taciturnity, sighing, puffing out his cheeks, licking his thumb before turning a page, gaping at the pictures, and moving his lips as he climbed down the columns of printed matter. Having replaced everything in a neat pile, he sank back in his chair closing and opening his gabled hands in various constructions of tedium – when a man who had occupied a seat next to him got up and walked into the outer glare leaving his paper behind. Gradus pulled it into his lap, spread it out – and froze over a strange piece of local news that caught his eye: burglars had broken into Villa Disa and ransacked a bureau, taking from a jewel box a number of valuable old medals.
Here was something to brood upon. Had this vaguely unpleasant incident some bearing on his quest? Should he do something about it? Cable headquarters? Hard to word succinctly a simple fact without having it look like a cryptogram. Airmail a clipping? He was in his room working on the newspaper with a safety razor blade when there was a bright rap-rap at the door. Gradus admitted an unexpected visitor – one of the greater Shadows, whom he had thought to be onhava-onhava ("far, far away"), in wild, misty, almost legendary Zembla! What stunning conjuring tricks our magical mechanical age plays with old mother space and old father time!
He was a merry, perhaps overmerry, fellow, in a green velvet jacket. Nobody liked him, but he certainly had a keen mind. His name, Izumrudov, sounded rather Russian but actually meant "of the Umruds," an Eskimo tribe sometimes seen paddling their umyaks (hide-lined boats) on the emerald waters of our northern shores. Grinning, he said friend Gradus must get together his travel documents, including a health certificate, and take the earliest available jet to New York. Bowing, he congratulataed him on having indicated with such phenomenal acumen the right place and the right way. Yes, after a thorough perlustration of the loot that Andron and Niagarushka had obtained from the Queen's rosewood writing desk (mostly bills, and treasured snapshots, and those silly medals) a letter from the King did turn up giving his address which was of all places – our man, who interrupted the herald of success to say he had never – was bidden not to display so much modesty. A slip of paper was now produced on which Izumrudov, shaking with laughter (death is hilarious), wrote out for Gradus their client's alias, the name of the university where he taught, and that of the town where it was situated. No, the slip was not for keeps. He could keep it only while memorizing it. This brand of paper (used by macaroon makers) was not only digestible but delicious. The gay green vision withdrew – to resume his whoring no doubt. How one hates such men! (note to Line 741)
Gorodetski's fifth collection of poetry is entitled Iva ("The Weeping Willow," 1913). According to Kinbote, the Zemblan word for weeping willow is if:
L'if, lifeless tree! Your great Maybe, Rabelais:
The grand potato.
I.P.H., a lay
Institute (I) of Preparation (P)
For the Hereafter (H), or If, as we
Called it--big if!--engaged me for one term
To speak on death ("to lecture on the Worm,"
Wrote President McAber).
You and I,
And she, then a mere tot, moved from New Wye
To Yewshade, in another, higher state. (ll. 500-509)
Line 501: L'if
The yew in French. It is curious that the Zemblan word for the weeping willow is also "if" (the yew is tas).
Line 502: The grand potato
An execrable pun, deliberately placed in this epigraphic position to stress lack of respect for Death. I remember from my schoolroom days Rabelais' soi-disant "last words" among other bright bits in some French manual: Je m'en vais chercher le grand peut-être.
In his diary (the entry of November 11, 1912) Alexander Blok (a Russian poet, 1880-1921) criticizes Gorodetski's Iva which he reread on the eve:
Кстати, вчера я читал «Иву» Городецкого, увы, она совсем не то, что с первого взгляда: нет работы, все расплывчато, голос фальшивый, все могло бы быть в 10 раз короче, сжатей, отдельные строки и образы блестят — самоценно, большая же часть оставляет равнодушие и скуку.
In his diary (the entry of August 30, 1918) Blok mentions dvoyniki (the dopplegängers) whom he conjured up in 1901 (when he courted Lyubov Mendeleev, his future wife), drugoe ya (alter ego) and Botkinskiy period (the Botkin period) of his life:
К ноябрю началось явное моё колдовство, ибо я вызвал двойников ("Зарево белое...", "Ты - другая, немая...").
Любовь Дмитриевна ходила на уроки к М. М. Читау, я же ждал её выхода, следил за ней и иногда провожал её до Забалканского с Гагаринской - Литейной (конец ноября, начало декабря). Чаще, чем со мной, она встречалась с кем-то - кого не видела и о котором я знал.
Появился мороз, "мятель", "неотвязный" и царица, звенящая дверь, два старца, "отрава" (непосланных цветов), свершающий и пользующийся плодами свершений ("другое я"), кто-то "смеющийся и нежный". Так кончился 1901 год.
Тут - Боткинский период.
Shade’s birthday, July 5, is also Kinbote’s and Gradus’s birthday (while Shade was born in 1898, Kinbote and Gradus were born in 1915). Shade's murderer, Gradus is Kinbote's double. The poet Shade, his commentator Kinbote and his murderer Gradus seem to represent three different aspects of one and the same person whose name is Botkin. An American scholar of Russian descent, Professor Vsevolod Botkin went mad and became Shade, Kinbote and Gradus after the tragic death of his daughter Nadezhda (Hazel Shade's "real" name). Nadezhda means in Russian "hope." There is a hope that, when Kinbote completes his work on Shade’s poem and commits suicide (on Oct. 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.
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 (a writer whom Shade lists among Russian humorists) and a poem (1909) by Alexander Blok. In the last two lines of his poem Lyudskie litsa ("The Faces of People," 1907) included in Perun and quoted by Chukovski in his review of Gorodetski's book Gorodetskiy mentions the horror of one's own face in the faithful mirror:
О лица, зрелища трущобных катастроф,
Глухие карты тягостных путей!
Невольный голос ваш печален и суров,
Нет повести страшнее ваших повестей.
Как рассказать, что рассказал мне тот старик,
Поднявший до виска единственную бровь?
Когда-то в страхе крикнул он — и замер крик,
И рáвны пред его зрачком убийство и любовь.
Взгляни на ту, закутанную в желтый мех,
Подкрасившую на лице глубокий шрам.
Она смеется. Слышишь яркий, женский смех?
Теперь скажи: ты отчего не засмеялся сам?
Вот перешла дорогу женщина в платке.
И просит денег. Дай. Но не смотри в глаза.
Не то на всяком, всяком медном пятаке
В углах чеканки будет рдеть блестящая слеза.
И даже в светлый дом придя к своим друзьям,
Нельзя смотреть на лица чистые детей:
Увидишь жизнь отцов по губкам, глазкам и бровям —
На белом мраморе следы пороков и страстей.
Но и старик, и женщина, и детский лик
Переносимы, как рассказ о житии чужих.
Но что за ужас собственный двойник
В правдивом зеркале! Свой взгляд в глазах своих!
In his commentary and index to Shade's poem Kinbote mentions Sudarg of Bokay (Yakob Gradus in reverse), a mirror maker of genius. On the other hand, Perunu ("To Perun," 1913) is a poem by Velimir Khlebnikov (a Russian futurist poet, 1885-1922), the son of a celebrated ornithologist and author of Tam, gde zhili sviristeli ("There, where the waxwings lived," 1908). In Canto One of his poem Shade (who was raised by dear bizarre Aunt Maud) speaks of his parents (both of whom were ornitholists) and mentions "a preterist, one who collects cold nests." Gut mag alkan (God makes hungry) brings to mind "Alkayu, alkayu (I crave, I crave)," a line Khlebnikov's poem Rossiya, khvoraya (Russia, ailing):
Россия, хворая,
капли донские пила
Устало в бреду.
Холод цыганский...
А я зачем-то бреду
Канта учить
По-табасарански.
Мукденом и Калкою,
Точно больными глазами,
Алкаю, алкаю.
Смотрю и бреду
По горам горя,
Стукаю палкою.
The poem's last line, Stukayu palkoyu (I tap with my stick), brings to mind Felix's palka (stick) in VN's novel Otchayanie ("Despair," 1934). In VN's novel, Hermann (the narrator and main character) murders Felix (a tramp whom Hermann believes to be his perfect double) and forgets Felix's stick, with his name carved on it, in his car.