Among the combinations in which 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) finds the name of Shade's murderer is "a prig rad us:"
We all know those dreams in which something Stygian soaks through and Lethe leaks in the dreary terms of defective plumbing. Following this line, there is a false start preserved in the draft-and I hope the reader will feel something of the chill that ran down my long and supple spine when I discovered this variant:
Should the dead murderer try to embrace
His outraged victim whom he now must face?
Do objects have a soul? Or perish must
Alike great temples and Tanagra dust?
The last syllable of Tanagra and the first three letters of "dust" form the name of the murderer whose shargar (puny ghost) the radiant spirit of our poet was soon to face. "Simple chance!" the pedestrian reader may cry. But let him try to see, as I have tried to see, how many such combinations are possible and plausible. "Leningrad used to be Petrograd?" "A prig rad (obs. past tense of read) us?"
This variant is so prodigious that only scholarly discipline and a scrupulous regard for the truth prevented me from inserting it here, and deleting four lines elsewhere (for example, the weak lines 627-630) so as to preserve the length of the poem.
Shade composed these lines on Tuesday, July 14th. What was Gradus doing that day? Nothing. Combinational fate rests on its laurels. We saw him last on the late afternoon of July 10th when he returned from Lex to his hotel in Geneva, and there we left him.
For the next four days Gradus remained fretting in Geneva. The amusing paradox with these men of action is that they constantly have to endure long stretches of otiosity that they are unable to fill with anything, lacking as they do the resources of an adventurous mind. As many people of little culture, Gradus was a voracious reader of newspapers, pamphlets, chance leaflets and the multilingual literature that comes with nose drops and digestive tablets; but this summed up his concessions to intellectual curiosity, and since his eyesight was not too good, and the consumability of local news not unlimited, he had to rely a great deal on the torpor of sidewalk cafes and on the makeshift of sleep.
How much happier the wide-awake indolents, the monarchs among men, the rich monstrous brains deriving intense enjoyment and rapturous pangs from the balustrade of a terrace at nightfall, from the lights and the lake below, from the distant mountain shapes melting into the dark apricot of the afterglow, from the black conifers outlined against the pale ink of the zenith, and from the garnet and green flounces of the water along the silent, sad, forbidden shoreline. Oh my sweet Boscobel! And the tender and terrible memories, and the shame, and the glory, and the maddening intimation, and the star that no party member can ever reach.
On Wednesday morning, still without news, Gradus telegraphed headquarters saying that he thought it unwise to wait any longer and that he would be staying at Hotel Lazuli, Nice. (note to Line 596)
Just as in "a prig rad us" there is Gradus, in priglashenie (Russ., invitation) there is prig. The characters in VN’s novel Priglashenie na kazn’ (“Invitation to a Beheading,” 1935) include Cincinnatus’s brothers-in-law who, with their sister, visit Cincinnatus in the fortress. One of them sings from an opera:
Примятые звуки постепенно начинали расправляться. Брат Марфиньки, брюнет, прочистил горло и пропел вполголоса: "Mali e trano t'amesti..." - осёкся и посмотрел на брата, который сделал страшные глаза. Адвокат, чему-то улыбаясь, опять принялся за платок. Марфинька на кушетке перешёптывалась со своим кавалером, который упрашивал её накинуть шаль, - тюремный воздух был сыроват. Они говорили на "вы", но с каким грузом нежности проплывало это "вы" на горизонте их едва уловимой беседы... Старичок, ужасно дрожа, встал со стула, передал портрет старушке и, заслоняя дрожавшее, как он сам, пламя, подошёл к своему зятю, а Цинциннатову тестю, и хотел ему --. Но пламя потухло, и тот сердито поморщился:
- Надоели, право, со своей дурацкой зажигалкой, - сказал он угрюмо, но уже без гнева, - и тогда воздух совсем оживился, и сразу заговорили все.
"Mali e trano t'amesti..." - полным голосом пропел Марфинькин брат.
Диомедон, оставь моментально кошку, - сказала Марфинька, - позавчера ты уже одну задушил, нельзя же каждый день. Отнимите, пожалуйста, у него, Виктор, милый.
The various trampled sounds began to straighten up. Marthe’s brother, the brunette, cleared his throat and softly began to sing Mali e trano t’amesti...’ He stopped short and looked at his brother, who made terrible eyes at him. The lawyer, smiling at something, again applied himself to his handkerchief. On the couch, Marthe was talking in a whisper with her escort, who was pleading with her to throw the shawl over herself— the prison air was a little damp. When they spoke they used the formal second person plural, but with what a cargo of tenderness this second person plural was laden as it sailed along the horizon of their barely audible conversation . . . The little old man, trembling awfully, got up from his chair, handed the portrait to his old woman and, shielding the flame that was trembling like himself, went up to Cincinnatus’s father-in-law, and was going to light his . . . But the flame went out, and the latter frowned angrily.
‘You have really become a nuisance with your stupid lighter, said he glumly, but already without wrath; then the atmosphere really grew animated, and everybody began talking simultaneously.
'Mali e trano t’amesti...’ Marthe’s brother sang in full voice; ‘Diomedon, leave the cat alone this instant,’ said Marthe. ‘You already strangled one the other day, one every day is too much.' (Chapter Nine)
The cats that Diomedon (Marthe's son) methodically kills bring to mind Hodge, Samuel Johnson' cat that shall not be shot (in the epigraph to Pale Fire). Describing his rented house, Kinbote mentions the black that came with the house. As pointed out by G. Barabtarlo, mali e trano t’amesti is an anagram of smert’ mila, eto tayna (death is sweet, this is a secret). Cincinnatus’s brothers-in-law seem to be Thanatos (the personification of death in Greek mythology) and his blond twin brother Hypnos (the personification of sleep). In Tyutchev’s poem Bliznetsy (“Twins,” 1851) the two pairs of twins are Smert' i Son (Death and Sleep) and Samoubiystvo i Lyubov' (Suicide and Love). Tanagra dust = Tanat (the Russian name of Thanatos) + Gradus. Tanagra dust in Shade’s variant brings to mind pyl’naya vaza Tanagra (a dusty pseudo-Tanagra vase) mentioned by Fyodor Godunov-Cherdyntsev in VN’s novel Dar (“The Gift,” 1937):
Это была очень небольшая, пошловато обставленная, дурно освещённая комната с застрявшей тенью в углу и пыльной вазой танагра на недосягаемой полке, и когда наконец прибыл последний гость, и Александра Яковлевна, ставшая на минуту – как это обычно бывает – замечательно похожа на свой же (синий с бликом) чайник, начала разливать чай, теснота помещения претворилась в подобие какого-то трогательного уездного уюта. На диване, среди подушек – все неаппетитных, заспанных цветов – подле шелковой куклы с бескостными ногами ангела и персидским разрезом очей, которую оба сидящих поочередно мяли, удобно расположились: огромный, бородатый, в довоенных носках со стрелками, Васильев и худенькая, очаровательно дохлая, с розовыми веками барышня – в общем вроде белой мыши; ее звали Тамара (что лучше пристало бы кукле), а фамилия смахивала на один из тех немецких горных ландшафтов, которые висят у рамочников. Около книжной полки сидел Федор Константинович и, хотя в горле стоял кубик, старался казаться в духе. Инженер Керн, близко знавший покойного Александра Блока, извлекал из продолговатой коробки, с клейким шорохом, финик. Внимательно осмотрев кондитерские пирожные на большой тарелке с плохо нарисованным шмелем, Любовь Марковна, вдруг скомкав выбор, взяла тот сорт, на котором непременно бывает след неизвестного пальца: пышку. Хозяин рассказывал старинную первоапрельскую проделку медика первокурсника в Киеве… Но самым интересным из присутствующих был сидевший поодаль, сбоку от письменного стола, и не принимавший участия в общем разговоре, за которым, однако, с тихим вниманием следил, юноша… чем-то действительно напоминавший Федора Константиновича: он напоминал его не чертами лица, которые сейчас было трудно рассмотреть, но тональностью всего облика, – серовато-русым оттенком круглой головы, которая была коротко острижена (что по правилам поздней петербургской романтики шло поэту лучше, чем лохмы), прозрачностью больших, нежных, слегка оттопыренных ушей, тонкостью шеи с тенью выемки у затылка. Он сидел в такой же позе, в какой сиживал и Федор Константинович, – немножко опустив голову, скрестив ноги и не столько скрестив, сколько поджав руки, словно зяб, так что покой тела скорее выражался острыми уступами (колено, локти, щуплое плечо) и сжатостью всех членов, нежели тем обычным смягчением очерка, которое бывает, когда человек отдыхает и слушает. Тень двух томов, стоявших на столе, изображала обшлаг и угол лацкана, а тень тома третьего, склонившегося к другим, могла сойти за галстук. Он был лет на пять моложе Федора Константиновича и, что касается самого лица, то, судя по снимкам на стенах комнаты и в соседней спальне (на столике, между плачущими по ночам постелями), сходства, может быть, и не существовало вовсе, ежели не считать известной его удлиненности при развитости лобных костей, да темной глубины глазниц – паскальевой, по определению физиогномистов, – да ещё, пожалуй, в широких бровях намечалось что-то общее… но нет, дело было не в простом сходстве, а в одинаковости духовной породы двух нескладных по-разному, угловато-чувствительных людей. Он сидел, этот юноша, не поднимая глаз, с чуть лукавой чертой у губ, скромно и не очень удобно, на стуле, вдоль сидения которого блестели медные кнопки, слева от заваленного словарями стола, и, – как бы теряя равновесие, с судорожным усилием, Александр Яковлевич снова открывал взгляд на него, продолжая рассказывать всё то молодецки смешное, чем обычно прикрывал свою болезнь.
It was a smallish, rather tastelessly furnished, badly lighted room with a shadow lingering in one corner and a pseudo-Tanagra vase standing on an unattainable shelf, and when at last the final guest had arrived and Mme. Chernyshevski, becoming for a moment—as usually happens—remarkably similar to her own (blue, gleaming) teapot, began to pour tea, the cramped quarters assumed the guise of a certain touching, provincial coziness. On the sofa, among cushions of various hue—all of them unappetizing and blurry—a silk doll with an angel’s limp legs and a Persian’s almond-shaped eyes was being squeezed alternately by two comfortably settled persons: Vasiliev, huge, bearded, wearing prewar socks arrowed above the ankle; and a fragile, charmingly debilitated girl with pink eyelids, in general appearance rather like a white mouse; her first name was Tamara (which would have better suited the doll), and her last was reminiscent of one of those German mountain landscapes that hang in picture-framing shops. Fyodor sat by the bookshelf and tried to simulate good spirits, despite the lump in his throat. Kern, a civil engineer, who prided himself on having been a close acquaintance of the late Alexander Blok (the celebrated poet), was producing a gluey sound as he extracted a date from an oblong carton. Lyubov Markovna carefully examined the pastries on a large plate with a poorly pictured bumblebee and, suddenly botching her investigation, contented herself with a bun—the sugar-powdered kind that always bears an anonymous fingerprint. The host was telling an ancient story about a medical student’s April Fool’s prank in Kiev…. But the most interesting person in the room sat a little distance apart, by the writing desk, and did not take part in the general conversation—which, however, he followed with quiet attention. He was a youth somewhat resembling Fyodor—not so much in facial features (which at that moment were difficult to distinguish) but in the tonality of his general appearance: the dunnish auburn shade of the round head which was closely cropped (a style which, according to the rules of latter-day St. Petersburg romanticism, was more becoming to a poet than shaggy locks); the transparency of the large, tender, slightly protruding ears; the slenderness of the neck with the shadow of a hollow at its nape. He sat in the same pose Fyodor sometimes assumed—head slightly lowered, legs crossed, arms not so much crossed as hugging each other, as if he felt chilled, so that the repose of the body was expressed more by angular projections (knee, elbow, thin shoulder) and the contraction of all the members rather than by the general softening of the frame when a person is relaxing and listening. The shadows of two volumes standing on the desk mimicked a cuff and the corner of a lapel, while the shadow of a third volume, which was leaning against the others, might have passed for a necktie. He was about five years younger than Fyodor and, as far as the face itself was concerned, if one judged by the photographs on the walls of the room and in the adjacent bedroom (on the little table between twin beds that wept at night), there was perhaps no resemblance at all, if you discounted a certain elongation of outline combined with prominent frontal bones and the dark depth of the eye sockets—Pascal-like, according to the physiognomists—and also there might have been something in common in the breadth of the eyebrows… but no, it was not a matter of ordinary resemblance, but of generic spiritual similarity between two angular and sensitive boys, each odd in his own way. This youth sat with downcast eyes and a trace of mockery on his lips, in a modest, not very comfortable position, on a chair along whose seat copper tacks glinted, to the left of the dictionary-cluttered desk; and Alexander Yakovlevich Chernyshevski, with a convulsive effort, as if regaining lost balance, would tear his gaze away from that shadowy youth, as he went on with the jaunty banter behind which he tried to conceal his mental sickness. (Chapter I)
Poor Alexander Yakovlevich Chernyshevski went mad after the suicide of his son Yasha. An American scholar of Russian descent, Professor Vsevolod Botkin went mad and became the poet Shade, his commentator Kinbote and his murderer Gradus after the tragic death of his daughter Nadezhda (Hazel Shade’s “real” name). Nadezhda means "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. Obsolete past tense of read, rad is dar (gift) in reverse.
In his commentary and index to Shade's poem Kinbote mentions Sudarg of Bokay, a mirror maker of genius. Sudarg of Bokay is Jakob Gradus in reverse. Cincinnatus's brother-in-law, the wit, suggests that Cincinnatus reads the word ropot (murmur, grumble) backward:
Возьми-ка слово "ропот", - говорил Цинциннату его шурин, остряк, - и прочти обратно. А? Смешно получается? Да, брат, - вляпался ты в историю. В самом деле, как это тебя угораздило?
"Take the word 'anxiety,'" Cincinnatus's brother-in-law, the wit, was saying to him. "Now take away the word 'tiny', Eh? Comes out funny, doesn't it? Yes, friend, you've really got yourself in a mess. In truth, what made you do such a thing?" (Chapter Nine)
Ropot in reverse is topor (axe). The words ropot and topor occur in a close proximity to each other in Canto One (ll. 451-455) of Pushkin’s poem Poltava (1829):
Он заглушает ропот сонный.
Он говорит: «В неравный спор
Зачем вступает сей безумец?
Он сам, надменный вольнодумец,
Сам точит на себя топор.»
But he remorselessly suppresses
The sleepy grumbling in his heart.
He says: “But why’d the madman challenge
A foe so far beyond his measure?
That arrogant free thinker brought
The axe upon his neck himself.
(tr. I. Eubanks)
Ropot sonnyi (the sleepy grumbling) brings to mind the mausoleum and the statue of Kapitan Sonnyi (Captain Somnus), the founder of the State in which Cincinnatus lives:
Стоя в тюремном коридоре и слушая полновесный звон часов, которые как раз начали свой неторопливый счет, он представил себе жизнь города такой, какой она обычно бывала в этот свежий утренний час: Марфинька, опустив глаза, идет с корзинкой из дому по голубой панели, за ней в трех шагах черноусый хват; плывут, плывут по бульвару сделанные в виде лебедей или лодок электрические вагонетки, в которых сидишь, как в карусельной люльке; из мебельных складов выносят для проветривания диваны, кресла, и мимоходом на них присаживаются отдохнуть школьники, и маленький дежурный с тачкой, полной общих тетрадок и книг, утирает лоб, как взрослый артельщик; по освеженной, влажной мостовой стрекочут заводные двухместные "часики", как зовут их тут в провинции (а ведь это выродившиеся потомки машин прошлого, тех великолепных лаковых раковин... почему я вспомнил? да - снимки в журнале); Марфинька выбирает фрукты; дряхлые, страшные лошади, давным-давно переставшие удивляться достопримечательностям ада, развозят с фабрик товар по городским выдачам; уличные продавцы хлеба, с золотистыми лицами, в белых рубахах, орут, жонглируя булками: подбрасывая их высоко, ловя и снова крутя их; у окна, обросшего глициниями, четверо веселых телеграфистов пьют, чокаются и поднимают бокалы за здоровье прохожих; знаменитый каламбурист, жадный хохлатый старик в красных шёлковых панталонах, пожирает, обжигаясь, поджаренные хухрики в павильоне на Малых Прудах; вот облака прорвались, и под музыку духового оркестра пятнистое солнце бежит по пологим улицам, заглядывает в переулки; быстро идут прохожие; пахнет липой, карбурином, мокрой пылью; вечный фонтан у мавзолея капитана Сонного широко орошает, ниспадая, каменного капитана, барельеф у его слоновых ног и колышимые розы; Марфинька, опустив глаза, идет домой с полной корзиной, за ней в двух шагах белокурый франт... Так Цинциннат смотрел и слушал сквозь стены, пока били часы, и хотя всё в этом городе на самом деле было всегда совершенно мертво и ужасно по сравнению с тайной жизнью Цинцинната и его преступным пламенем, хотя он знал это твёрдо и знал, что надежды нет, а все-таки в эту минуту захотелось попасть на знакомые, пёстрые улицы... но вот часы дозвенели, мыслимое небо заволоклось, и темница опять вошла в силу.
Standing in the prison corridor and listening to the ample sonorities of the clock, which had just begun its leisurely enumeration, he imagined life in the city as it generally was at this fresh morning hour: Marthe, eyes lowered, is walking with an empty basket from the house along the blue sidewalk, followed at a distance of three paces by a dark-moustachioed young blade; the electric wagonets in the shape of swans or gondolas, where you sit as in a carrousel cradle, keep gliding in an endless stream along the boulevard; couches and armchairs are being carried out of furniture warehouses for airing, and passing schoolchildren sit down on them to rest, while the little orderly, his wheelbarrow loaded with all their books, mops his brow like a full-grown labourer; spring-powered, two-seat ‘clocklets’, as they are called here in the provinces, click along over the freshly sprinkled pavement (and to think that these are the degenerate descendants of the machines of the past, of those splendid lacquered stream-lined automobiles . . . what made me think of that? ah yes, the photos in the magazine); Marthe picks out some fruit; decrepit, dreadful horses, which have long since ceased to marvel at the sights of hell, deliver merchandise from the factories to the city distributors; street bread vendors, white-shirted, with gilded faces, shout as they juggle their baton loaves, tossing them high in the air, catching them and twirling them once again; at a window overgrown with wisteria a gay foursome of telegraph workers are clinking glasses and drinking toasts to the health of passersby: a famed punster, a gluttonous, coxcombed old man in red silk trousers, is gorging himself on fried chuckricks at a pavilion on the Lesser Ponds; the clouds disperse, and, to the accompaniment of a brass band, dappled sunlight runs along the sloping streets, and visits the side alleys; pedestrians walk briskly; the smell of lindens, of carburine and of damp gravel is in the air; the perpetual fountain at the mausoleum of Captain Somnus profusely irrigates with its spray the stone captain, the bas-relief at his elephantine feet and the quivering roses; Marthe, her eyes lowered, is walking homeward with a full basket, followed at a distance of three paces by a fair-haired fop . . . These are the things that Cincinnatus saw and heard through the walls as the clock struck, and, even though in reality everything in this city was always quite dead and awful by comparison with the secret life of Cincinnatus and his guilty flame, even though he knew this perfectly well and knew also that there was no hope, yet at this moment he still longed to be on those bright familiar streets . . . but then the clock finished ringing, the imaginary sky grew overcast, and the jail was back in force. (Chapter Six)
От статуи капитана Сонного оставались только ноги до бёдер, окружённые розами, - очевидно, её тоже хватила гроза.
Где-то впереди духовой оркестр нажаривал марш "Голубчик". Через всё небо подвигались толчками белые облака, - по-моему, они повторяются, по-моему, их только три типа, по-моему, всё это сетчато и с подозрительной прозеленью...
- Но, но, пожалуйста, без глупостей, - сказал м-сье Пьер. - Не сметь падать в обморок. Это недостойно мужчины.
All that remained of the statue of Captain Somnus was the legs up to the hips, surrounded by roses — it too must have been struck by lightning. Somewhere ahead a brass band was scorching away at the march Golubchik. White clouds moved jerkily across the whole sky — I think the same ones pass over and over again, I think there are only three kinds, I think it is all stage-setting, with a suspicious green tinge . . .
‘Now, now, come on, no foolishness,’ said M’sieur Pierre. ‘Don’t you dare start fainting. It’s unworthy of a man.’ (Chapter Twenty)