At end of his brief note to Oswin Bretwit (in VN's novel Pale Fire, 1962, the former Zemblan consul in Paris whom Gradus visits in the hope to find out the King's address) Baron B. quotes the Latin proverb verba volant, scripta manent (spoken words fly away, written words remain):
I, too, was wont to draw my poet's attention to the idyllic beauty of airplanes in the evening sky. Who could have guessed that on the very day (July 7) Shade penned this lambent line (the last one on his twenty-third card) Gradus, alias Degré, had flown from Copenhagen to Paris, thus completing the second lap of his sinister journey! Even in Arcady am I, says Death in the tombal scripture.
The activities of Gradus in Paris had been rather neatly planned by the Shadows. They were perfectly right in assuming that not only Odon but our former consul in Paris, the late Oswin Bretwit, would know where to find the King. They decided to have Gradus try Bretwit first. That gentleman had a flat in Meudon where he dwelt alone, seldom going anywhere except the National Library (where he read theosophic works and solved chess problems in old newspapers), and did not receive visitors. The Shadows' neat plan sprang from a piece of luck. Suspecting that Gradus lacked the mental equipment and mimic gifts necessary for the impersonation of an enthusiastic Royalist, they suggested he had better pose as a completely apolitical commissioner, a neutral little man interested only in getting a good price for various papers that private parties had asked him to take out of Zembla and deliver to their rightful owners. Chance, in one of its anti-Karlist moods, helped. One of the lesser Shadows whom we shall call Baron A. had a father-in-law called Baron B., a harmless old codger long retired from the civil service and quite incapable of understanding certain Renaissance aspects of the new regime. He had been, or thought he had been (retrospective distance magnifies things), a close friend of the late Minister of Foreign Affairs, Oswin Bretwit's father, and therefore was looking forward to the day when he would be able to transmit to "young" Oswin (who, he understood, was not exactly persona grata with the new regime) a bundle of precious family papers that the dusty baron had come across by chance in the files of a governmental office. All at once he was informed that now the day had come: the documents would be immediately forwarded to Paris. He was also allowed to prefix a brief note to them which read:
Here are some precious papers belonging to your family. I cannot do better than place them in the hands of the son of the great man who was my fellow student in Heidelberg and my teacher in the diplomatic service. Verba volant, scripta manent. (note to Line 286)
In a letter of March 15, 1877, to Annenkov M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin says that Nekrasov is dying and quotes the saying Verba volant, scripta manent:
А кажется, скоро настоящая смерть предстоит, к сожалению, почти несомненная. Некрасов положительно умирает. Нельзя даже представить себе приблизительно, какие он муки испытывает. Вообразите, что уже пять месяцев почти единственное его положение — на карачках, т.е. по образу четвероногого. И при этом непрерывный стон, но такой, что со мной, нервным человеком, почти дурно делается. Замечательно то сочувствие, которое возбуждает этот человек. Отовсюду шлют к нему адреса, из самой глубины России. Verba volant, scripta manent — вот воочию оправдание этого изречения. А он-то, в предвидении смерти, все хлопочет, как бы себя обелить в некоторых поступках. Я же говорю: вот шесть томов, которые будут перед потомством свидетельствовать лучше всяких обличений «Русской старины». Представьте себе: даже перед Стасюлевичем исповедуется. Тот какую-то биографию варакает для своей «Русской библиотеки» — вот Некрасов и объясняется с ним, не понимая, по-видимому, что популярность его спасет от всяких биографий.
A politician who briefly succeeded Stalin as the leader of the Soviet Union, Georgiy Malenkov said that we need our Soviet Gogols and Shchedrins. Kinbote's landlady, Mrs. Goldsworth (Judge Goldsworth's wife) resembles Malenkov:
In the study I found a large picture of their parents, with sexes reversed, Mrs. G. resembling Malenkov, and Mr. G. a Medusa-locked hag, and this I replaced by the reproduction of a beloved early Picasso: earth boy leading raincloud horse. (note to Lines 47-48)
On the following morning Oswin Bretwit is hospitalized and never returns home:
But to return to the roofs of Paris. Courage was allied in Oswin Bretwit with integrity, kindness, dignity, and what can be euphemistically called endearing naïveté. When Gradus telephoned from the airport, and to whet his appetite read to him Baron B.'s message (minus the Latin tag), Bretwit's only thought was for the treat in store for him. Gradus had declined to say over the telephone what exactly the "precious papers" were, but it so happened that the ex-consul had been hoping lately to retrieve a valuable stamp collection that his father had bequeathed years ago to a now defunct cousin. The cousin had dwelt in the same house as Baron B., and with all these complicated and entrancing matters uppermost in his mind, the ex-consul, while awaiting his visitor, kept wondering not if the person from Zembla was a dangerous fraud, but whether he would bring all the albums at once or would do it gradually so as to see what he might get for his pains. Bretwit hoped the business would be completed that very night since on the following morning he was to be hospitalized and possibly operated upon (he was, and died under the knife). (note to Line 286)
In his commentary to Shade's poem Kinbote (Shade's mad commentator who imagines that he is the last self-exiled king of Zembla) mentions Amphitheatricus, a writer of fugitive poetry who dubbed Onhava (the capital of Zembla) "Uranograd:"
Alfin the Vague (1873-1918; regnal dates 1900-1918, but 1900-1919 in most biographical dictionaries, a fumble due to the coincident calendar change from Old Style to New) was given his cognomen by Amphitheatricus, a not unkindly writer of fugitive poetry in the liberal gazettes (who was also responsible for dubbing my capital Uranograd!). (note to Line 71)
In his memoir essay Iz davnikh let ("From the Old Years," 1924) Aleksandr Amfiteatrov (1862-1938) quotes the first part of the saying Verba volant, scripta manent:
Телесному могуществу А. Г. Меньшиковой соответствовал ее пылкий и решительный характер. Наступить себе на ногу она не позволяла. За словом в карман не лазила, состязаться с ее трубными нотами и энергическим лексиконом было мудрено. Когда Александра Григорьевна бывала не в духе, всякое театральное начальство спешило уподобиться той скромной лисичке, которая в дурную погоду благоразумно в свою норку прячется. Потому что, как острил Г. П. Кондратьев:
— Если verba volant, это еще ничего, а вот когда тяжелые предметы летают, это уже менее приятно.
Oswin Bretwit is not exactly persona grata with the new regime. In his Introduction to Augustus Does His Bit: A True-to-Life Farce (1916) Bernard Shaw uses the phrase "persona grata in the highest degree:"
I wish to express my gratitude for certain good offices which Augustus secured for me in January, 1917. I had been invited to visit the theatre of war in Flanders by the Commander-in-Chief: an invitation which was, under the circumstances, a summons to duty. Thus I had occasion to spend some days in procuring the necessary passport and other official facilities for my journey. It happened just then that the Stage Society gave a performance of this little play. It opened the heart of every official to me. I have always been treated with distinguished consideration in my contracts with bureaucracy during the war; but on this occasion I found myself persona grata in the highest degree. There was only one word when the formalities were disposed of; and that was "We are up against Augustus all day." The showing-up of Augustus scandalized one or two innocent and patriotic critics who regarded the prowess of the British army as inextricably bound up with Highcastle prestige. But our Government departments knew better: their problem was how to win the war with Augustus on their backs, well-meaning, brave, patriotic, but obstructively fussy, self-important, imbecile, and disastrous.
Shade's murderer, Jakob Gradus (1915-1959) is also known as Jack Degree, de Grey, d'Argus, Vinogradus, Leningradus, etc. Oswin Bretwit's grand-uncle, Mayor of Odevalla, and a cousin of his, Ferz Bretwit, Mayor of Aros, bring to mind the Mayors mentioned at the beginning of Bernard Shaw's play:
The Mayor's parlor in the Town Hall of Little Pifflington. Lord Augustus Highcastle, a distinguished member of the governing class, in the uniform of a colonel, and very well preserved at forty-five, is comfortably seated at a writing-table with his heels on it, reading The Morning Post. The door faces him, a
little to his left, at the other side of the room. The window is behind him. In the fireplace, a gas stove. On the table a bell button and a telephone. Portraits of past Mayors, in robes and gold chains, adorn the walls. An elderly clerk with a short white beard and whiskers, and a very red nose, shuffles in.
Augustus Does His Bit: A True-to-Life Farce is a comic one-act play by about a dim-witted aristocrat who is outwitted by a female spy during World War I.
According to Kinbote (the author of a book on surnames), the name Bretwit means Chess Intelligence. A character in Bernard Shaw's play says: “Chess is a foolish expedient for making idle people believe they are doing something very clever when they are only wasting their time.”
Augusta Leigh (1783-1851) was Byron's half-sister and mistress. Net, ya ne Bayron, ya drugoy ("No, I'm not Byron, I'm another," 1832) is a poem by Lermontov that ends in the line Ya - ili Bog - ili nikto (Myself- or God - or none at all). Botkin (Shade's, Kinbote's and Gradus' "real" name) is nikto b (none would) in reverse.
Auguste de Montferrand (1786-1858) was a French classicist architect who worked in Russia. His two best known works are the Saint Isaac's Cathedral and the Alexander Column in St. Petersburg (VN's home city).