In Canto Three of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) describes IPH (a lay
Institute of Preparation for the Hereafter) and mentions le grand néant (the great nothing):
Nor can one help the exile, the old man
Dying in a motel, with the loud fan
Revolving in the torrid prairie night
And, from the outside, bits of colored light
Reaching his bed like dark hands from the past
He suffocates and conjures in two tongues
The nebulae dilating in his lungs.
A wrench, a rift - that's all one can foresee.
Maybe one finds le grand néant; maybe
Again one spirals from the tuber's eye.
As you remarked the last time we went by
The Institute: "I really could not tell
The differences between this place and Hell." (ll. 609-622)
In his essay Manera, litso i stil' ("The Manner, the Face and the Style," 1912) Vyacheslav Ivanov (1866-1949) mentions le Grand Néant:
В самом деле, как избавиться нам от бездушного эклектизма иначе, как проникнув все наше творчество дыханием души живой? И где найти эту душу живу, если не в целостной личности? А как возможна целостная личность, если, изверившись в свое субстанциальное единство, не утвердив такового актом воли, она не знает иного самоопределения, кроме модального, — если вся она, в каждое изживаемое мгновение, не res, а только modus? — Как сделать искусство жизненным, если оно бежит жизни? Если же оно осталось в жизни, то, конечно, неправильно видит свое назначение в том только, чтобы пассивно отражать жизнь. Тогда начинает в нем преобладать элемент миметический, который, по справедливому мнению Платона, есть лишь первородный грех искусства, его отрицательный полюс. «Художник — не обезьяна», скажем мы, повторяя слова одного античного трагического поэта Эсхиловой школы, который так обозвал знаменитого актера своего времени, тянувшего трагедию Софокла к психологизму и натурализму. Чтобы искусство было жизненно, художник должен жить; а жить не значит произвольно и беспочвенно мечтать (иначе говоря — отрицать жизнь, покрывая ее облачными чарами сонной грезы, миражными проекциями наших человеческих, слишком человеческих вожделений и маленьких, мелких страстей). В эпоху декадентства, снобы и отчаявшиеся восклицали: «цветов, цветов, чтобы прикрыть ими черную дыру», — le néant, или, если угодно, le Grand Néant. Мы уже не хотим быть костюмерами скелетов, факельщиками похоронного шествия, которое провожает на кладбище истории всю святую семью сестер: Любви, Веры и Надежды, вместе с их матерью Мудростью, ибо лучший дар из даров, которыми не обделили нас музы, есть художественное прозрение и пророчественная вера в истину воскресения. (III)
In his essay Vyacheslav Ivanov mentions the entire holy family of sisters: Lyubov' (Love), Vera (Faith) and Nadezhda (Hope), along with their mother Mudrost' (Wisdom in Russian). Actually, the name of Lyubov's, Vera's and Nadezhda's mother is Sofia (Wisdom in Greek). The "real" name of both Sybil Shade (the poet's wife) and Queen Disa (the wife of King Charles the Beloved) seems to be Sofia Botkin. Her husband, Professor Vsevolod Botkin (an American scholar of Russian descent), went mad and became the poet Shade, his commentator Kinbote (who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla) and his murderer Gradus after the tragic death of his daughter Nadezhda (Hazel Shade's "real" name). 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.
In his poem Na Bashne ("On the Tower") and elsewhere Vyacheslav Ivanov calls his first wife, Lydia Zinoviev-Annibal (1866-1907), moya tsraritsa (my Queen) and Sivilla (Sybil):
Пришелец, на башне притон я обрел
С моею царицей — Сивиллой,
Над городом — мороком, — смурый орел
С орлицей ширококрылой.
Стучится, вскрутя золотой листопад,
К товарищам ветер в оконца:
«Зачем променяли свой дикий сад,
Вы, дети-отступники Солнца,
Зачем променяли вы ребра скал
И шопоты вещей пещеры,
И ропоты моря у гордых скал,
И пламенноликие сферы —
На тесную башню над городом мглы?
Со мной, — на родные уступы!...»
И клегчет Сивилла: «Зачем орлы
Садятся, где будут трупы?»
In 1912 (five years after his first wife's death) Vyacheslav Ivanov married his stepdaughter, Vera Shvarsalon (1889-1920), who died in Italy eight years later. Describing IPH in Canto Three of his poem, Shade mentions a widower who lost two wives:
Time means succession, and succession, change:
Hence timelessness is bound to disarrange
Schedules of sentiment. We give advice
To widower. He has been married twice:
He meets his wives; both loved, both loving, both
Jealous of one another. Time means growth.
And growth means nothing in Elysian life.
Fondling a changeless child, the flax-haired wife
Grieves on the brink of a remembered pond
Full of a dreamy sky. And, also blond,
But with a touch of tawny in the shade,
Feet up, knees clasped, on a stone balustrade
The other sits and raises a moist gaze
Toward the blue impenetrable haze.
How to begin? Which first to kiss? What toy
To give the babe? Does that small solemn boy
Know of the head-on crash which on a wild
March night killed both the mother and the child?
And she, the second love, with instep bare
In ballerina black, why does she wear
The earrings from the other's jewel case?
And why does she avert her fierce young face? (ll. 567-588)
Describing IPH, Shade mentions Fra Karamazov mumbling his inept All is allowed:
In later years it started to decline:
Buddhism took root. A medium smuggled in
Pale jellies and a floating mandolin.
Fra Karamazov, mumbling his inept
All is allowed, into some classes crept;
And to fulfill the fish wish of the womb,
A school of Freudians headed for the tomb. (ll. 638-644)
At the beginning of his essay Ideya nepriyatiya mira (“The Idea of the Rejection of the World,” 1906) Vyacheslav Ivanov quotes Ivan Karamazov’s words in Dostoevski’s novel Brothers Karamazov (1880):
Иван Карамазов говорит Алеше, что не Бога он отрицает, а мира Его не принимает: и Алеша называет это неприятие мира — бунтом. Но не иначе «бунтует» и праведный Иов. Неприятие мира — одна из древних форм богоборства.
Ivan Karamazov tells Alyosha that he is not denying God, but that he does not accept His world. According to Ivan, if God does not exists, then all is allowed. In his essay V. Ivanov mentions three symbols of the rejection of the world (Michelangelo’s Last Judgment, Raphael’s Transfiguration and Leonardo’s Last Supper):
Три великих современника эпохи Возрождения оставили векам в трех религиозных творениях кисти символы трех типов неприятия мира. Мы разумеем «Страшный Суд» Микель-Анджело, «Преображение» Рафаэля и «Тайную Вечерю» Леонардо да Винчи.
Describing a conversation at the Faculty Club, Kinbote compares Gerald Emerald (a young instructor at Wordsmith University who gives Gradus a lift to Kinbote's rented house in New Wye) to a disciple in Leonardo's Last Supper:
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?"
"Nay, sir" [said Shade, refolding a leg and slightly rolling in his armchair as wont to do when about to deliver a pronouncement] "there is no resemblance at all. I have seen the King in newsreels, and there is no resemblance. Resemblances are the shadows of differences. Different people see different similarities and similar differences."
Good Netochka, who had been looking singularly uncomfortable during this exchange, remarked in his gentle voice how sad it was to think that such a "sympathetic ruler" had probably perished in prison.
A professor of physics now joined in. He was a so-called Pink, who believed in what so-called Pinks believe in (Progressive Education, the Integrity of anyone spying for Russia, Fall-outs occasioned solely by US-made bombs, the existence in the near past of a McCarthy Era, Soviet achievements including Dr. Zhivago, and so forth): "Your regrets are groundless" [said he]. "That sorry ruler is known to have escaped disguised as a nun; but whatever happens, or has happened to him, cannot interest the Zemblan people. History has denounced him, and that is his epitaph."
Shade: "True, sir. In due time history will have denounced everybody. The King may be dead, or he may be as much alive as you and Kinbote, but let us respect facts. I have it from him [pointing to me] that the widely circulated stuff about the nun is a vulgar pro-Extremist fabrication. The Extremists and their friends invented a lot of nonsense to conceal their discomfiture; but the truth is that the King walked out of the palace, and crossed the mountains, and left the country, not in the black garb of a pale spinster but dressed as an athlete in scarlet wool."
"Strange, strange," said the German visitor, who by some quirk of alderwood ancestry had been alone to catch the eerie note that had throbbed by and was gone.
Shade [smiling and massaging my knee]: "Kings do not die--they only disappear, eh, Charles?"
"Who said that?" asked sharply, as if coming out of a trance, the ignorant, and always suspicious, Head of the English Department.
"Take my own case," continued my dear friend ignoring Mr. H. "I have been said to resemble at least four people: Samuel Johnson; the lovingly reconstructed ancestor of man in the Exton Museum; and two local characters, one being the slapdash disheveled hag who ladles out the mash in the Levin Hall cafeteria."
"The third in the witch row," I precised quaintly, and everybody laughed.
"I would rather say," remarked Mr. Pardon--American History--"that she looks like Judge Goldsworth" ("One of us," interposed Shade inclining his head), "especially when he is real mad at the whole world after a good dinner."
"I heard," hastily began Netochka, "that the Goldsworths are having a wonderful time--"
"What a pity I cannot prove my point," muttered the tenacious German visitor. "If only there was a picture here. Couldn't there be somewhere--"
"Sure," said young Emerald and left his seat.
Professor Pardon now spoke to me: "I was under the impression that you were born in Russia, and that your name was a kind of anagram of Botkin or Botkine?"
Kinbote: "You are confusing me with some refugee from Nova Zembla [sarcastically stressing the "Nova"].
"Didn't you tell me, Charles, that kinbote means regicide in your language?" asked my dear Shade.
"Yes, a king's destroyer," I said (longing to explain that a king who sinks his identity in the mirror of exile is in a sense just that).
Shade [addressing the German visitor]: "Professor Kinbote is the author of a remarkable book on surnames. I believe [to me] there exists an English translation?"
"Oxford, 1956," I replied.
"You do know Russian, though?" said Pardon. "I think I heard you, the other day, talking to--what's his name--oh, my goodness" [laboriously composing his lips].
Shade: "Sir, we all find it difficult to attack that name" [laughing].
Professor Hurley: "Think of the French word for 'tire': punoo."
Shade: "Why, sir, I am afraid you have only punctured the difficulty" [laughing uproariously].
"Flatman," quipped I. "Yes," I went on, turning to Pardon, "I certainly do speak Russian. You see, it was the fashionable language par excellence, much more so than French, among the nobles of Zembla at least, and at its court. Today, of course, all this has changed. It is now the lower classes who are forcibly taught to speak Russian."
"Aren't we, too trying to teach Russian in our schools?" said Pink.
In the meantime, at the other end of the room, young Emerald had been communing with the bookshelves. At this point he returned with the the T-Z volume of an illustrated encyclopedia.
"Well," said he, "here he is, that king. But look, he is young and handsome" ("Oh, that won't do," wailed the German visitor.) "Young, handsome, and wearing a fancy uniform," continued Emerald. "Quite the fancy pansy, in fact."
"And you," I said quietly, "are a foul-minded pup in a cheap green jacket."
"But what have I said?" the young instructor inquired of the company, spreading out his palms like a disciple in Leonardo's Last Supper.
"Now, now," said Shade. "I'm sure, Charles, our young friend never intended to insult your sovereign and namesake."
"He could not, even if he had wished," I observed placidly, turning it all into a joke.
Gerald Emerald extended his hand--which at the moment of writing still remains in that position. (note to Line 894)
At the beginning of his essay Predchuvstviya i predvestiya (“Premonitions and Omens,” 1909) Vyacheslav Ivanov says that the works of modern artists are marked by a pointing gesture similar to a finger that points at something outside the canvas in the paintings of Leonardo da Vinci:
Видеть ли в современном символизме возврат к романтическому расколу между мечтой и жизнью? Или слышна в нем пророческая весть о новой жизни, и мечта его только упреждает действительность? Вопрос, так поставленный, может возбудить недоумения. Прежде всего: в каком объеме принимается термин символизма? Поспешим разъяснить, что не искусство лишь, взятое само по себе, разумеем мы, но шире — современную душу, породившую это искусство, произведения которого отмечены как бы жестом указания, подобным протянутому и на что-то за гранью холста указующему пальцу на картинах Леонардо да Винчи. Речь идет, следовательно, не о пророчественном или ином значении отдельных созданий нового искусства и не об отдельных теоретических утверждениях новой мысли, но об общей ориентировке душевного пейзажа, о характеристике внутреннего и наполовину подсознательного тяготения творческих энергий. Итак, романтична или пророчественна душа современного символизма?
"Vecherya", Leonardo ("Leonardo's Last Supper") is a connet by Vyacheslav Ivanov included in his collection Kormchie zvyozdy ("Pilot Stars," 1903):
Гость Севера! когда твоя дорога
Ведет к вратам единственного града,
Где блещет храм, чья снежная громада
Эфирней гор встает у их порога,
Но Красота смиренствует, убога,
Средь нищих стен, как бледная лампада:
Туда иди из мраморного сада
И гостем будь за вечерею Бога!
Дерзай! Здесь мира скорбь, и желчь потира!
Ты зришь ли луч под тайной бренных линий?
И вызов Зла смятенным чадам Мира?
Из тесных окон светит вечер синий:
Се, Красота из синего эфира,
Тиха, нисходит в жертвенный триклиний.
Edinstvennyi grad ("the only city," as V. Ivanov calls Milan) brings to mind Gradus (Shade's murderer whom Kinbote calls Vinogradus and Leningradus).