Describing the King's escape from Zembla, 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) mentions Silfhar Falls:
A handshake, a flash of lightning. As the King waded into the damp, dark bracken, its odor, its lacy resilience, and the mixture of soft growth and steep ground reminded him of the times he had picnicked hereabouts - in another part of the forest but on the same mountainside, and higher up, as a boy, on the boulderfield where Mr. Campbell had once twisted an ankle and had to be carried down, smoking his pipe, by two husky attendants. Rather dull memories, on the whole. Wasn't there a hunting box nearby - just beyond Silfhar Falls? Good capercaillie and woodcock shooting - a sport much enjoyed by his late mother, Queen Blenda, a tweedy and horsy queen. Now as then, the rain seethed in the black trees, and if you paused you heard your heart thumping, and the distant roar of the torrent. What is the time, kot or? He pressed his repeater and, undismayed, it hissed and tinkled out ten twenty-one. (note to Line 149)
Silfhar seems to be Zemblan for "sylph hair" or "silk hair." Silfhar Falls combine Silchar, a city in Northeast India, with Silver Falls State Park in Oregon, USA. VN's poem Lines Written in Oregon (1953) ends in the line "Esmeralda, immer, immer." Immer is German for "always." The Russian word for "always" is vsegda. Nadolgo, navsegda (for long, forever) is a phrase used by Pushkin at the end of Eugene Onegin (Eight: XLVIII: 10):
Она ушла. Стоит Евгений,
Как будто громом поражен.
В какую бурю ощущений
Теперь он сердцем погружен!
Но шпор незапный звон раздался,
И муж Татьянин показался,
И здесь героя моего,
В минуту, злую для него,
Читатель, мы теперь оставим,
Надолго... навсегда. За ним
Довольно мы путем одним
Бродили по свету. Поздравим
Друг друга с берегом. Ура!
Давно б (не правда ли?) пора!
She has gone. Eugene stands
as if by thunder struck.
In what a tempest of sensations
his heart is now immersed!
But there resounds a sudden clink of spurs,
and there appears Tatiana's husband,
and here my hero,
at an unfortunate minute for him,
reader, we now shall leave
for long... forever.... After his
sufficiently along one path
we've roamed the world. Let us congratulate
each other on attaining land. Hurrah!
It long (is it not true?) was time.
Esmeralda (a butterfly) brings to mind Gerald Emerald, a young instructor at Wordsmith University who gives Gradus (Shade's murderer) a lift to Kinbote's rented house in New Wye. Jakob Gradus is a member of the Shadows (a regicidal organization). Describing the Zemblan Revolution, Kinbote mentions a Hindu member of the Extremist party who translated Queen Disa's letter to her husband:
In 1933, Prince Charles was eighteen and Disa, Duchess of Payn, five. The allusion is to Nice (see also line 240) where the Shades spent the first part of that year; but here again, as in regard to so many fascinating facets of my friend's past life, I am not in the possession of particulars (who is to blame, dear S. S.?) and not in the position to say whether or not, in the course of possible excursions along the coast, they ever reached Cap Turc and glimpsed from an oleander-lined lane, usually open to tourists, the Italianate villa built by Queen Disa's grandfather in 1908; and called then Villa Paradiso, or in Zemblan Villa Paradisa, later to forego the first half of its name in honor of his favorite granddaughter. There she spent the first fifteen summers of her life; thither did she return in 1953, "for reasons of health" (as impressed on the nation) but really, a banished queen; and there she still dwells.
When the Zemblan Revolution broke out (May 1, 1958), she wrote the King a wild letter in governess English, urging him to come and stay with her until the situation cleared up. The letter was intercepted by the Onhava police, translated into crude Zemblan by a Hindu member of the Extremist party, and then read aloud to the royal captive in a would-be ironic voice by the preposterous commandant of the palace. There happened to be in that letter one - only one, thank God - sentimental sentence: "I want you to know that no matter how much you hurt me, you cannot hurt my love," and this sentence (if we re-English it from the Zemblan) came out as: "I desire you and love when you flog me." He interrupted the commandant, calling him a buffoon and a rogue, and insulting everybody around so dreadfully that the Extremists had to decide fast whether to shoot him at once or let him have the original of the letter. (note to Lines 433-434)
In his Foreword to Shade's poem Kinbote compares himself to an exiled prince who is unaware of the Golconda in his cuff links:
Imagine a soft, clumsy giant; imagine a historical personage whose knowledge of money is limited to the abstract billions of a national debt; imagine an exiled prince who is unaware of the Golconda in his cuff links! This is to say - oh, hyperbolically - that I am the most impractical fellow in the world. Between such a person and an old fox in the book publishing business, relations are at first touchingly carefree and chummy, with expansive banterings and all sorts of amiable tokens. I have no reason to suppose that anything will ever happen to prevent this initial relationship with good old Frank, my present publisher, from remaining a permanent fixture.
A ruined city in Southern India known for its diamond industry, Golconda rhymes with Gioconda. Duchess of Payn, of Great Payn and Mone, Queen Disa seems to be a cross between Leonardo's Mona Lisa (La Gioconda) and Desdemona, Othello's wife in Shakespeare's Othello. In Chapter Two of VN’s novel Dar (“The Gift,” 1937) Fyodor quotes Suhoshchokov, an invented memoirist who describes a performance of Othello in a St. Petersburg theater:
В тот же вечер мы повели нашего гостя в театр. Вышло, впрочем, не совсем удачно. Вместо того, чтобы его попотчевать новой русской комедией, мы показали ему "Отелло" со знаменитым чернокожим трагиком Ольдриджем в главной роли. Нашего плантатора сперва как бы рассмешило появление настоящего негра на сцене. К дивной мощи его игры он остался равнодушен и больше занимался разглядыванием публики, особливо наших петербургских дам (на одной из которых вскоре после того женился), поглощенных в ту минуту завистью к Дездемоне.
"Посмотрите, кто с нами рядом, -- вдруг обратился вполголоса мой братец к Ч. -- Да вот, справа от нас". В соседней ложе сидел старик... Небольшого роста, в поношенном фраке, желтовато-смуглый, с растрепанными пепельными баками и проседью в жидких, взъерошенных волосах, он преоригинально наслаждался игрою африканца: толстые губы вздрагивали, ноздри были раздуты, при иных пассажах он даже подскакивал и стучал от удовольствия по барьеру, сверкая перстнями.
"Кто же это?" -- спросил Ч.
"Как, не узнаете? Вглядитесь хорошенько".
"Не узнаю".
Тогда мой брат сделал большие глаза и шепнул: "Да ведь это Пушкин!".
That night we took our guest to the theater. It did not turn out too well, however. Instead of treating him to a new Russian comedy we showed him Othello with the famous black tragedian Aldridge. At first our American planter seemed to be highly amused by the appearance of a genuine Negro on the stage. But he remained indifferent to the marvelous power of his acting and was more taken up with examining the audience, especially our St. Petersburg ladies (one of whom he soon afterwards married), who were devoured at that moment with envy for Desdemona.
“Look who’s sitting next to us,” my brother suddenly said to Ch. in a low voice, “There, to our right.”
In the neighboring box there sat an old man…. Of shortish stature, in a worn tailcoat, with a sallow and swarthy complexion, disheveled ashen side-whiskers, and sparse, gray-streaked tousled hair, he was taking a most eccentric delight in the acting of the African: his thick lips twitched, his nostrils were dilated, and at certain bits he even jumped up and down in his seat and banged with delight on the parapet, his rings flashing.
“Who’s that?” asked Ch.
“What, don’t you recognize him? Look closer.”
“I don’t recognize him.”
Then my brother made big eyes and whispered, “Why, that’s Pushkin!”
Describing a conversation at the Faculty Club, Kinbote compares Gerald Emerald to a disciple in Leonardo's Last Supper:
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 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)
In VN's novel Camera Obscura (1933) translated into English as Laughter in the Dark (1938) the writer Brück (Baum in Laughter in the Dark), one of the guests at a party thrown by Bruno Kretschmar (Albert Albinus in Laughter in the Dark), had just written a five-hundred-page novel, the scene of which was laid in Ceylon (Sri Lanka, an island in the Indian Ocean, SE of the Indian subcontinent):
Уже за омаром разговор в том конце стола, где сидели Дорианна, Горн, Магда, Кречмар, Марго Денис, сделался громким, но каким-то разнобоким. Магда сразу выпила немало белого вина и теперь сидела очень прямо, сияющими глазами глядя прямо перед собой. Горн, не обращая внимания ни на нее, ни на Дорианну, имя которой его раздражало, спорил наискосок через стол с писателем Брюком о приемах художественной изобразительности. Он говорил: «Беллетрист толкует, например, об Индии, где вот я никогда не бывал, и только от него и слышно, что о баядерках, охоте на тигров, факирах, бетеле, змеях – все это очень напряженно, очень прямо, сплошная, одним словом, тайна Востока, – но что же получается? Получается то, что никакой Индии я перед собой не вижу, а только чувствую воспаление надкостницы от всех этих восточных сладостей. Иной же беллетрист говорит всего два слова об Индии: я выставил на ночь мокрые сапоги, а утром на них уже вырос голубой лес (плесень, сударыня, – обьяснил он Дорианне, которая поднимала одну бровь), – и сразу Индия для меня как живая, – остальное я уж сам воображу».
«Йоги, – сказала Дорианна, – делают удивительные вещи. Они умеют так дышать, что…»
«Но позвольте, господин Горн, – взволнованно кричал Брюк, написавший только что роман, действие коего протекало на Цейлоне, – нужно же осветить всесторонне, основательно, чтобы всякий читатель понял. Если же я описываю, например, плантацию, то обязан, конечно, подойти с самой важной стороны эксплуатации, жестокости белого колониста. Таинственная, огромная мощь Востока…»
«Вот это и скверно», – сказал Горн. (Chapter 15)
By the time the lobsters were being tackled, the talk at the head of the table where (the following string of names would be best arranged in a curve) Dorianna, Rex, Margot, Albinus, Sonia Hirsch and Baum were seated, was in full swing although rather incoherent. Margot had emptied her third wineglass at one gulp and was now sitting very erect with bright eyes, staring straight in front of her.
Rex paid no attention either to her or to Dorianna, whose name annoyed him, but was arguing across the table with Baum, the author, concerning the means of artistic expression.
"A writer for instance," he remarked, "talks about India which I have never seen, and gushes about dancing girls, tiger hunts, fakirs, betel nuts, serpents: the Glamour of the mysterious East. But what does it amount to? Nothing. Instead of visualizing India I merely get a bad toothache from all these Eastern delights. Now, there's the other way as, for instance, the fellow who writes: 'Before turning in I put out my wet boots to dry and in the morning I found that a thick blue forest had grown on them' ("Fungi, Madam," he explained to Dorianna who had raised one eyebrow) and at once India becomes alive for me. The rest is shop."
"Those yogis do marvelous things," said Dorianna. "Apparently they can breathe in such a way that--"
"But excuse me, my good sir," cried Baum excitedly--for he had just written a five-hundred-page novel, the scene of which was laid in Ceylon, where he had spent a sun-helmeted fortnight. "You must illuminate the picture thoroughly, so that every reader can understand. What matters is not the book one writes, but the problem it sets--and solves. If I describe the tropics I'm bound to approach my subject from its most important side, and that is--the exploitation, the cruelty of the white colonist. When you think of the millions and millions--"
"I don't," said Rex. (Chapter 16)
"The millions and millions" mentioned by Baum (the surname means in German "tree") bring to mind a million photographers mentioned by Knbote at the end of his Commentary:
"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)
Shade's poem is almost finished when, in the evening of July 21, 1959, 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," 1846) is a short novel by Dostoevski (the writer whom Shade listed among Russian humorists). In The Gift Fyodor compares Dostoevski to a room in which a lamp burns during the day:
Фёдор Константинович собрался было восвояси, когда его сзади окликнул шепелявый голос: он принадлежал Ширину, автору романа "Седина" (с эпиграфом из книги Иова), очень сочувственно встреченного эмигрантской критикой. ("Господи, отче -- --? По Бродвею, в лихорадочном шорохе долларов, гетеры и дельцы в гетрах, дерясь, падая, задыхаясь, бежали за золотым тельцом, который, шуршащими боками протискиваясь между небоскребами, обращал к электрическому небу изможденный лик свой и выл. В Париже, в низкопробном притоне, старик Лашез, бывший пионер авиации, а ныне дряхлый бродяга, топтал сапогами старуху-проститутку Буль-де-Сюиф. Господи отчего -- --? Из московского подвала вышел палач и, присев у конуры, стал тюлюкать мохнатого щенка: Махонький, приговаривал он, махонький... В Лондоне лорды и лэди танцевали джими и распивали коктейль, изредка посматривая на эстраду, где на исходе восемнадцатого ринга огромный негр кнок-оутом уложил на ковер своего белокурого противника. В арктических снегах, на пустом ящике из-под мыла, сидел путешественник Эриксен и мрачно думал: Полюс или не полюс?.. Иван Червяков бережно обстригал бахрому единственных брюк. Господи, отчего Вы дозволяете все это?"). Сам Ширин был плотный, коренастый человек, с рыжеватым бобриком, всегда плохо выбритый, в больших очках, за которыми, как в двух аквариумах, плавали два маленьких, прозрачных глаза, совершенно равнодушных к зрительным впечатлениям. Он был слеп как Мильтон, глух как Бетховен, и глуп как бетон. Святая ненаблюдательность (а отсюда – полная неосведомленность об окружающем мире -- и полная неспособность что-либо именовать) -- свойство, почему-то довольно часто встречающееся у русского литератора-середняка, словно тут действует некий благотворный рок, отказывающий безталанному в благодати чувственного познания, дабы он зря не изгадил материала. Бывает, конечно, что в таком темном человеке играет какой-то собственный фонарик, -- не говоря о том, что известны случаи, когда по прихоти находчивой природы, любящей неожиданные приспособления и подмены, такой внутренний свет поразительно ярок -- на зависть любому краснощекому таланту. Но даже Достоевский всегда как-то напоминает комнату, в которой днём горит лампа.
Fyodor was about to walk home when a lisping voice called him from behind: it belonged to Shirin, author of the novel The Hoary Abyss (with an Epigraph from the Book of Job) which had been received very sympathetically by the émigré critics. (“Oh Lord, our Father! Down Broadway in a feverish rustle of dollars, hetaeras and businessmen in spats, shoving, falling and out of breath, were running after the golden calf, which pushed its way, rubbing against walls between the skyscrapers, then turned its emaciated face to the electric sky and howled. In Paris, in a low-class dive, the old man Lachaise, who had once been an aviation pioneer but was now a decrepit vagabond, trampled under his boots an ancient prostitute, Boule de Suif. Oh Lord, why—? Out of a Moscow basement a killer came out, squatted by a kennel and began to coax a shaggy pup: little one, he repeated, little one… In London, lords and ladies danced the Jimmie and imbibed cocktails, glancing from time to time at a platform where at the end of the eighteenth ring a huge Negro had laid his fair-haired opponent on the carpet with a knockout. Amid arctic snows the explorer Ericson sat on an empty soapbox and thought gloomily: The pole or not the pole?… Ivan Chervyakov carefully trimmed the fringe of his only pair of pants. Oh Lord, why dost Thou permit all this?”) Shirin himself was a thickset man with a reddish crew cut, always badly shaved and wearing large spectacles behind which, as in two aquariums, swam two tiny, transparent eyes—which were completely impervious to visual impressions. He was blind like Milton, deaf like Beethoven, and a blockhead to boot. A blissful incapacity for observation (and hence complete uninformedness about the surrounding world—and a complete inability to put a name to anything) is a quality quite frequently met with among the average Russian literati, as if a beneficent fate were at work refusing the blessing of sensory cognition to the untalented so that they will not wantonly mess up the material. It happens, of course, that such a benighted person has some little lamp of his own glimmering inside him—not to speak of those known instances in which, through the caprice of resourceful nature that loves startling adjustments and substitutions, such an inner light is astonishingly bright—enough to make the envy of the ruddiest talent. But even Dostoevski always brings to mind somehow a room in which a lamp burns during the day. (Chapter Five)
In his speech on Dostoevski (delivered on the hundredth anniversary of Dostoevski's birth) Lunacharski (the minister of education in Lenin’s government) takes the example of water in order to explain Dostoevski’s treatment of man’s psyche. According to Lunacharski, to understand the dynamics of water one must imagine a fantastic Niagara Falls, a hundred times more grandiose than the real one:
Чтобы понять, что делает Достоевский с психикой - возьмём хотя бы такой пример - вода. Для того, чтобы дать человеку полное представление о воде, заставить его объять все её свойства, надо ему показать воду, пар, лёд, разделить воду на составные части, показать, что такое тихое озеро, величаво катящая свои волны река, водопад, фонтан и проч. Словом - ему нужно показать все свойства, всю внутреннюю динамику воды. И, однако, этого всё-таки будет мало. Может быть, для того, чтобы понять динамику воды, нужно превысить данные возможности и фантастически представить человеку Ниагару, в сотню раз грандиознейшую, чем подлинная. Вот Достоевский и стремится превозмочь реальность и показать дух человеческий со всеми его неизмеримыми высотами и необъяснимыми глубинами со всех сторон. Как Микель Анджело скручивает человеческие тела в конвульсиях, в агонии, так Достоевский дух человеческий то раздувает до гиперболы, то сжимает до полного уничтожения, смешивает с грязью, низвергает его в глубины ада, то потом вдруг взмывает в самые высокие эмпиреи неба. Этими полётами человеческого духа Достоевский не только приковывает наше внимание, захватывает нас, открывает нам новые неизведанные красоты, но даёт очень много и нашему познанию, показывая нам неподозреваемые нами глубины души.
Dinamika vody (the dynamics of water) brings to mind a certain stupendous Dynamo goalkeeper whose mannerisms Niagarin (one of the two Soviet experts whom the new Zemblan government hired to find the crown jewels) can imitate to perfection:
All this is the rule of a supernal game, all this is the immutable fable of fate, and should not be construed as reflecting on the efficiency of the two Soviet experts - who, anyway, were to be marvelously successful on a later occasion with another job (see note to line 747). Their names (probably fictitious) were Andronnikov and Niagarin. One has seldom seen, at least among waxworks, a pair of more pleasant, presentable chaps. Everybody admired their clean-shaven jaws, elementary facial expressions, wavy hair, and perfect teeth. Tall handsome Andronnikov seldom smiled but the crinkly little rays of his orbital flesh bespoke infinite humor while the twin furrows descending from the sides of his shapely nostrils evoked glamorous associations with flying aces and sagebrush heroes. Niagarin, on the other hand, was of comparatively short stature, had somewhat more rounded, albeit quite manly features, and every now and then would flash a big boyish smile remindful of scoutmasters with something to hide, or those gentlemen who cheat in television quizzes. It was delightful to watch the two splendid Sovietchiks running about in the yard and kicking a chalk-dusty, thumping-tight soccer ball (looking so large and bald in such surroundings). Andronnikov could tap-play it on his toe up and down a dozen times before punting it pocket straight into the melancholy, surprised, bleached, harmless heavens; and Niagarin could imitate to perfection the mannerisms of a certain stupendous Dynamo goalkeeper. They used to hand out to the kitchen boys Russian caramels with plums or cherries depicted on the rich luscious six-cornered wrappers that enclosed a jacket of thinner paper with the mauve mummy inside; and lustful country girls were known to creep up along the drungen (bramble-choked footpaths) to the very foot of the bulwark when the two silhouetted against the now flushed sky sang beautiful sentimental military duets at eventide on the rampart. Niagarin had a soulful tenor voice, and Andronnikov a hearty baritone, and both wore elegant jackboots of a soft black leather, and the sky turned away showing its ethereal vertebrae. (note to line 681)
At the same party at Kretschmar's (Albinus's in Laughter in the Dark) Robert Horn (Axel Rex in Laughter in the Dark) mentions Sebastiano del Piombo (an Italian painter, 1485-1547) and his sonnets:
Фрейлейн Петерс, – с мягкой улыбкой обратился к ней Кречмар, – я хочу вам представить создателя знаменитого зверька».
Магда судорожно обернулась и сказала: «Ах, здравствуйте!» (к чему эти ахи, ведь об этом не раз говорилось…)
Горн поклонился, сел и спокойно обратился к Кречмару:
«Я читал вашу превосходную статью о Себастиано дель Пиомбо. Вы напрасно только не привели его сонетов, – они прескверные, – но как раз это и пикантно».
"Fraulein Peters," said Albinus in a soothing tone, "this is the man who makes two continents--"
Margot started and swerved round.
"Oh, really, how do you do?"
Rex bowed and, turning to Albinus, remarked quietly:
"I happened to read on the boat your excellent biography of Sebastiano del Piombo. Pity, though, you didn't quote his sonnets."
"Oh, but they are very poor," answered Albinus.
"Exactly," said Rex. "That's what is so charming." (Chapter 16)
In his Commentary Kinbote quotes the first four lines of a sonnet that his uncle Conmal (the Zemblan translator of Shakespeare) composed directly in English:
English being Conmal's prerogative, his Shakspere remained invulnerable throughout the greater part of his long life. The venerable Duke was famed for the nobility of his work; few dared question its fidelity. Personally, I had never the heart to check it. One callous Academician who did, lost his seat in result and was severely reprimanded by Conmal in an extraordinary sonnet composed directly in colorful, if not quite correct, English, beginning:
I am not slave! Let be my critic slave.
I cannot be. And Shakespeare would not want thus.
Let drawing students copy the acanthus,
I work with Master on the architrave! (note to Line 962)
In classical architecture, an architrave is the lintel or beam that rests on the capitals of columns. It reminds one of a great painter in Camera Obscura (Laughter in the Dark) moving backward to view better his finished fresco:
Очень забавен, конечно, анекдотический ученик, который, чтобы остановить и этим спасти великого мастера, обливает из ведра только что оконченную фреску, заметив, что мастер, щурясь и пятясь с кистью в руке, сейчас дойдет до конца площадки и рухнет с лесов в пропасть храма, - но насколько смешнее спокойно дать великому мастеру вдохновенно допятиться... Самые смешные рисунки в журналах именно и основаны на этой тонкой жестокости, с одной стороны, и глуповатой доверчивости - с другой: Горн, бездейственно глядевший, как, скажем, слепой собирается сесть на свежевыкрашенную скамейку, только служил своему искусству. (Chapter 17)
A great painter one day, high up on the scaffold, began moving backward to view better his finished fresco. The next receding step would have taken him over, and, as a warning cry might be fatal, his apprentice had the presence of mind to sling the contents of a pail at the masterpiece. Very funny! But how much funnier still, had the rapt master been left to walk back into nothing--with, incidentally, the spectators expecting the pail. The art of caricature, as Rex understood it, was thus based (apart from its synthetic, fooled-again nature) on the contrast between cruelty on one side and credulity on the other. And if, in real life, Rex looked on without stirring a finger while a blind beggar, his stick tapping happily, was about to sit down on a freshly painted bench, he was only deriving inspiration for his next little picture. (Chapter 18)
In Canto Two of his poem Shade quotes Pope's Essay on Man and mentions the blind beggar:
I went upstairs and read a galley proof,
And heard the wind roll marbles on the roof.
"See the blind beggar dance, the cripple sing"
Has unmistakably the vulgar ring
Of its preposterous age. Then came your call,
My tender mockingbird, up from the hall.
I was in time to overhear brief fame
And have a cup of tea with you: my name
Was mentioned twice, as usual just behind
(one oozy footstep) Frost.
"Sure you don't mind?
I'll catch the Exton plane, because you know
If I don't come by midnight with the dough - " (ll. 417-428)
In his Commentary Kinbote writes:
Line 417-421: I went upstairs, etc.
The draft yields an interesting variant:
417 I fled upstairs at the first quawk of jazz
And read a galley proof: "Such verses as
'See the blind beggar dance, the cripple sing,
The sot a hero, lunatic a king'
Smack of their heartless age." Then came your call
This is, of course, from Pope's Essay on Man. One knows not what to wonder at more: Pope's not finding a monosyllable to replace "hero" (for example, "man") so as to accommodate the definite article before the next word, or Shade's replacing an admirable passage by the much flabbier final text. Or was he afraid of offending an authentic king? In pondering the near past I have never been able to ascertain retrospectively if he really had "guessed my secret," as he once observed (see note to line 991).
Line 426: Just behind (one oozy footstep) Frost
The reference is, of course, to Robert Frost (b 1874). The line displays one of those combinations of pun and metaphor at which our poet excels. In the temperature charts of poetry high is low, and low high, so that the degree at which perfect crystallization occurs is above that of tepid facility. This is what our modest poet says, in effect, respecting the atmosphere of his own fame.
Frost is the author of one of the greatest short poems in the English language, a poem that every American boy knows by heart, about the wintry woods, and the dreary dusk, and the little horsebells of gentle remonstration in the dull darkening air, and that prodigious and poignant end - two closing lines identical in every syllable, but one personal and physical, and the other metaphysical and universal. I dare not quote from memory lest I displace one small precious word.
With all his excellent gifts, John Shade could never make his snowflakes settle that way.
"At Greenland, Zembla, or the Lord knows where" is a line in Pope's Essay on Man (Epistle Two, V):
But where th' extreme of vice, was ne'er agreed:
Ask where's the North? at York, 'tis on the Tweed;
In Scotland, at the Orcades; and there,
At Greenland, Zembla, or the Lord knows where:
No creature owns it in the first degree,
But thinks his neighbour farther gone than he!
The name of Shade's murderer, Gradus means in Russian "degree." According to Kinbote, Gradus contended that the real origin of his name should be sought in the Russian word for grape, vinograd, to which a Latin suffix had adhered, making it Vinogradus:
Jakob Gradus called himself variously Jack Degree or Jacques de Grey, or James de Gray, and also appears in police records as Ravus, Ravenstone, and d'Argus. Having a morbid affection for the ruddy Russia of the Soviet era, he contended that the real origin of his name should be sought in the Russian word for grape, vinograd, to which a Latin suffix had adhered, making it Vinogradus. His father, Martin Gradus, had been a Protestant minister in Riga, but except for him and a maternal uncle (Roman Tselovalnikov, police officer and part-time member of the Social-Revolutionary party), the whole clan seems to have been in the liquor business. Martin Gradus died in 1920, and his widow moved to Strasbourg where she soon died, too. (note to Line 17)
Fyodor’s rival poet in The Gift, Koncheyev mentions vinograd (ripening vines) in the lines quoted in a review by Valentin Linyov (the ignorant critic):
Он еще просмотрел еженедельный иллюстрированный журнальчик, выходивший в Варшаве, и нашел рецензию на тот же предмет, но совсем другого пошиба. Это была критика-буфф. Тамошний Валентин Линев, из номера в номер безформенно, забубенно и не вполне грамотно изливавший свои литературные впечатления, был славен тем, что не только не мог разобраться в отчетной книге, но по-видимому, никогда не дочитывал ее до конца. Бойко творя из-под автора, увлекаясь собственным пересказом, выхватывая отдельные фразы в подтверждение неправильных заключений, плохо понимая начальные страницы, а в следующих энергично пускаясь по ложному следу, он добирался до предпоследней главы в блаженном состоянии пассажира еще не знающего (а в его случае так и не узнающего), что сел не в тот поезд. Неизменно бывало, что, долистав вслепую длинный роман или коротенькую повесть (размер не играл роли), он навязывал книге собственное окончание, - обыкновенно как раз противоположное замыслу автора. Другими словами, если бы, скажем, Гоголь приходился ему современником, и Линев о нем писал, то он прочно остался бы при невинном убеждении, что Хлестаков - ревизор в самом деле. Когда же, как сейчас, он писал о стихах, то простодушно употреблял прием так называемых межцитатных мостиков . Его разбор кончеевской книги сводился к тому, что он за автора отвечал на какую-то подразумеваемую альбомную анкету (Ваш любимый цветок? Любимый герой? Какую добродетель вы больше всего цените?): "Поэт, - писал о Кончееве Линев, - любит (следовала цепочка цитат, искаженных насилием их сочетания и винительных падежей). Его пугает (опять обрубки стихов). Он находит утешение в - (та же игра); но с другой стороны - (три четверти стиха, обращенных посредством кавычек в плоское утверждение); иногда же ему кажется, что" - и тут Линев, ненароком выковырнул что-то более или менее целое:
Виноград созревал, изваянья в аллеях синели.
Небеса опирались на снежные плечи отчизны...
- и это было так, словно голос скрипки вдруг заглушил болтовню патриархального кретина.
He also looked through a little illustrated weekly published by Russian émigrés in Warsaw and found a review on the same subject, but of a completely different cut. It was a critique-bouffe. The local Valentin Linyov, who from issue to issue used to pour out his formless, reckless, and not altogether grammatical literary impressions, was famous not only for not being able to make sense of the book he reviewed but also for not having, apparently, read it to the end. Jauntily using the author as a springboard, carried away by his own paraphrase, extracting isolated phrases in support of his incorrect conclusions, misunderstanding the initial pages and thereafter energetically pursuing a false trail, he would make his way to the penultimate chapter in the blissful state of a passenger who still does not know (and in his case never finds out) that he has boarded the wrong train. It invariably happened that having leafed blindly through a long novel or a short story (size played no part in it) he would provide the book with his own ending—usually exactly opposite to the author’s intention. In other words, if, say, Gogol had been a contemporary and Linyov were writing about him, Linyov would remain firmly of the innocent conviction that Hlestakov was indeed the inspector-general. But when, as now, he wrote about poetry, he artlessly employed the device of so-called “inter-quotational footbridges.” His discussion of Koncheyev’s book boiled down to his answering for the author a kind of implied album questionnaire (Your favorite flower? Favorite hero? Which virtue do you prize most?): “The poet,” Linyov wrote of Koncheyev, “likes [there followed a string of quotations, forcibly distorted by their combination and the demands of the accusative case]. He dreads [more bleeding stumps of verse]. He finds solace in—[même jeu]; but on the other hand [three-quarters of a line turned by means of quotes into a flat statement]; at times it seems to him that”—and here Linyov inadvertently extricated something more or less whole:
Days of ripening vines! In the avenues, blue-shaded statues.
The fair heavens that lean on the motherland’s shoulders of snow.
—and it was as if the voice of a violin had suddenly drowned the hum of a patriarchal cretin. (Chapter Three)
In Chapter Two of The Gift Fyodor speaks of his father, the entomologist who perished during his last Asian expedition, and mentions India:
А иногда мне сдается, что всё это вздорный слух, вялая легенда, что создана она из тех же сомнительных крупиц приблизительного знания, которым пользуюсь я, когда путается моя мечта в областях, известных мне лишь понаслышке да из книг, так что первый же бывалый человек, видавший на самом деле упомянутые места в те годы, откажется признать их, высмеет экзотичность моей мысли, холмы моей печали, обрывы воображения, и найдет в догадках моих столько же топографических ошибок, сколько анахронизмов. Тем лучше. Раз слух о гибели отца -- вымысел, не следует ли допустить, что самый его путь из Азии лишь приделан в виде хвоста к вымыслу (вроде того змея, который молодой Гринев мастерил из географической карты), и что может быть, по причинам еще неизвестным, мой отец, если и пустился в обратный путь (а не разбился в пропасти, не завяз в плену у буддийских монахов), избрал совершенно другую дорогу. Мне приходилось даже слышать предположения (звучащие, как запоздалый совет), что ведь мог он пойти на запад в Ладак, чтобы спуститься в Индию, или почему было ему не отправиться в Китай, а оттуда на любом корабле -- в любой порт на свете?
But sometimes I get the impression that all this is a rubbishy rumor, a tired legend, that it has been created out of those same suspicious granules of approximate knowledge that I use myself when my dreams muddle through regions known to me only by hearsay or out of books, so that the first knowledgeable person who has really seen at the time the places referred to will refuse to recognize them, will make fun of the exoticism of my thoughts, the hills of my sorrow, the precipices of my imagination, and will find in my conjectures just as many topographical errors as he will anachronisms. So much the better. Once the rumor of my father’s death is a fiction, must it not then be conceded that his very journey out of Asia is merely attached in the shape of a tail to this fiction (like that kite which in Pushkin’s story young Grinyov fashioned out of a map), and that perhaps, if my father even did set out on this return journey (and was not dashed to pieces in an abyss, not held in captivity by Buddhist monks) he chose a completely different road? I have even had occasion to hear surmises (sounding like belated advice) that he could well have proceeded west to Ladakh in order to go south into India, or why could he not have pushed on to China and from there, on any ship to any port in the world?