In his short poem “The Nature of Electricity” quoted by 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) in his commentary John Shade mentions tungsten filaments:
The light never came back but it gleams again in a short poem "The Nature of Electricity", which John Shade had sent to the New York magazine The Beau and the Butterfly, some time in 1958, but which appeared only after his death:
The dead, the gentle dead - who knows?
In tungsten filaments abide,
And on my bedside table flows
Another man's departed bride.
And maybe Shakespeare floods a whole
Town with innumerable lights,
And Shelley's incandescent soul
Lures the pale moths of starless nights.
Streetlamps are numbered; and maybe
Number nine-hundred-ninety-nine
(So brightly beaming through a tree
So green) is an old friend of mine.
And when above the livid plain
Forked lightning plays, therein may dwell
The torments of a Tamerlane,
The roar of tyrants torn in hell.
Science tells us, by the way, that the Earth would not merely fall apart, but vanish like a ghost, if Electricity were suddenly removed from the world. (note to Line 347)
In Dmitri Merezhkovski's novel Alexander I (1913) Captain Yakubovich (a Decembrist and duelist), at a party in Ryleev's St. Petersburg flat in the house of the Russian-American Company on the Moyka Canal (not far from the Nabokovs' house in the Bolshaya Morskaya Street), says that the whole nature of women is the finest fleur woven out of the inconspicuous filaments (iz neprimetnykh filamentov sotkannyi):
– Вы, господа кавалеры, считаете нас, женщин, дурами, – бойко лепетала барышня, – а мы умом тонее вашего: веку не станет мужчине узнать все наши женские хитрости. Мужчину в месяц можно узнать, а нас никогда…
– Ваша правда, сударыня, – любезно говорил капитан, поводя черными усами, как жук, – вся натура женская есть тончайший флер, из неприметных филаментов сотканный. Легче найти философский камень, нежели разобрать состав вашего непостоянного пола… (Part Two. Chapter I)
Tonchayshiy flyor (the finest fleur) brings to mind Fleur de Fyler, Countess de Fyler's youngeк daughter, the favorite lady-in-waiting of Queen Disa (the wife of Charles the Beloved):
Our Prince was fond of Fleur as of a sister but with no soft shadow of incest or secondary homosexual complications. She had a small pale face with prominent cheekbones, luminous eyes, and curly dark hair. It was rumored that after going about with a porcelain cup and Cinderella's slipper for months, the society sculptor and poet Arnor had found in her what he sought and had used her breasts and feet for his Lilith Calling Back Adam; but I am certainly no expert in these tender matters. Otar, her lover, said that when you walked behind her, and she knew you were walking behind her, the swing and play of those slim haunches was something intensely artistic, something Arab girls were taught in special schools by special Parisian panders who were afterwards strangled. Her fragile ankles, he said, which she placed very close together in her dainty and wavy walk, were the "careful jewels" in Arnor's poem about a miragarl ("mirage girl"), for which "a dream king in the sandy wastes of time would give three hundred camels and three fountains."
On ságaren werém tremkín tri stána
Verbálala wod gév ut trí phantána
(I have marked the stress accents).
The Prince did not heed this rather kitschy prattle (all, probably, directed by her mother) and, let it be repeated, regarded her merely as a sibling, fragrant and fashionable, with a painted pout and a maussade, blurry, Gallic way of expressing the little she wished to express. Her unruffled rudeness toward the nervous and garrulous Countess amused him. He liked dancing with her - and only with her. He hardly squirmed at all when she stroked his hand or applied herself soundlessly with open lips to his cheek which the haggard after-the-ball dawn had already sooted. She did not seem to mind when he abandoned her for manlier pleasures; and she met him again in the dark of a car or in the half-glow of a cabaret with the subdued and ambiguous smile of a kissing cousin. (note to Line 80)
The name of Fleur de Fyler's elder sister, Fifalda, means in Old English "butterfly." Shade's poem "The Nature of Electricity" appeared in the New York magazine The Beau and the Butterfly. In the last line of his poem "The Nature of Electricity" Shade mentions the roar of tyrants torn in hell. In Merezhovski's novel Alexander I Odoevski calls Yakubovich nash glavnyi tiranoubiytsa (our chief destroyer of tyrants), Brutus and Marat in one person:
Одоевский, подойдя незаметно к трельяжу, подслушивал и, едва удерживаясь от смеха, подмигивал Голицыну. Они познакомились и сошлись очень быстро.
– И этот – член Общества? – спросил Голицын Одоевского, отходя в сторону.
– Да еще какой! Вся надежда Рылеева. Брут и Марат вместе, наш главный тираноубийца. А что, хорош?
– Да, знаете, ежели много таких…
– Ну, таких, пожалуй, немного, а такого много во всех нас. Чухломское байронство… И каким только ветром надуло, черт его знает! За то, что чином обошли, крестика не дали, —
Готов царей низвергнуть с тронов
И Бога в небе сокрушить, —
как говорит Рылеев. Скверно то, что не одни дураки подражают и завидуют Якубовичу: сам Пушкин когда-то жалел, что не встретил его, чтобы списать с него «Кавказского пленника»… (Part Two. Chapter I)
According to Odoevski, Yakubich is vsya nadezhda Ryleeva (all hope of Ryleev). The "real" name of Hazel Shade (the poet's daughter) seems to be Nadezhda Botkin. After her tragic death her father, Professor Vsevolod Botkin (an American scholar of Russian descent), went mad and became the poet Shade, his commentator Kinbote and his murderer Gradus. Nadezhda means "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. Sybil Shade (the poet's wife) and Queen Disa seem to be one and the same person whose "real" name is Sofia Botkin, born Lastochkin. In Griboedov's play in verse Gore ot uma ("Woe from Wit," 1824) Sofia is Famusov's daughter with whom Chatski is in love. In 1818 Yakubovich (Sheremetev's second in the duel of the four) fought a pistol duel with Griboedov (Zavadovski's second) in Tiflis.
In his book Tolstoy and Dostoevski (1902) Merezhkovski several times quotes his wife’s poem Elektrichestvo (“Electricity”):
Две нити вместе свиты,
Концы обнажены.
То "да" и "нет" не слиты,
Не слиты - сплетены.
Их тёмное сплетенье
И тесно и мертво;
Но ждёт их воскресенье,
И ждут они его:
Концы соприкоснутся,
Проснутся "да" и "нет".
И "да", и "нет" сольются,
И смерть их будет свет.
Two wires are wrapped together,
The loose ends naked, exposed
A yes and no, not united,
Not united, but juxtaposed.
A dark, dark juxtaposition --
So close together, dead.
But resurrection awaits them;
And they await what waits ahead.
End will meet end in touching
Yes -- no, left and right,
The yes and no awakening,
Inseparably uniting
And their death will be - Light.
"The light never came back but it gleams again in a short poem "The Nature of Electricity", which John Shade had sent to the New York magazine The Beau and the Butterfly, some time in 1958, but which appeared only after his death."
In his book Gryadushchiy Kham ("The Future Kham," 1906) Merezhkovski mentions the Tamerlanes, Attilas, Borgias:
Когда вглядываешься в лица тех, от кого зависят ныне судьбы Европы, - вспоминаются предсказания Милля и Герцена о неминуемой победе духовного Китая. Прежде бывали в истории изверги, Тамерланы, Аттилы, Борджиа. Теперь уже не изверги, а люди как люди. Вместо скипетра - аршин, вместо Библии - счетная книга, вместо алтаря - прилавок. Какая самодовольная пошлость и плоскость в выражении лиц! Смотришь и "дивишься удивлением великим", как сказано в Апокалипсисе: откуда взялись эти коронованные лакеи Смердяковы, эти торжествующие хамы? (III)