Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0026709, Fri, 18 Dec 2015 15:09:03 +0300

Subject
Kinbote's beard & religion in Pale Fire
Date
Body
Of course, I am quite tall, and my brown beard is of a rather rich tint and texture; the silly cognomen [“the great beaver”] evidently applied to me, but was not worth noticing, and after calmly taking the magazine from a pamphlet-cluttered table, I contented myself on my way out with pulling Gerald Emerald's bow-tie loose with a deft jerk of my fingers as I passed by him. (Kinbote’s Foreword)



Kinbote finishes his Foreword to Shade’s poem and commits suicide on Oct. 19, 1959. In his celebrated letter (written in French) of Oct. 19, 1836, to Chaadaev (who just published in Nadezhdin’s magazine Telescope a Russian translation of one of his Letters philosophiques and sent a copy to Pushkin) Pushkin agrees with his friend that contemporary Orthodox clergy is backward. But, according to Pushkin, it is only because the priests are bearded:



Je conviens que notre clergé actuel est en retard. En voulez-vous savoir la raison? c’est qu’il est barbu; voilà tout.



Chaadaev, who disliked the Orthodox church (and the Russian life in general), had converted to Roman Catholicism. In his “striking” Sovremennaya pesnya (“A Contemporary Song,” 1836) Denis Davydov (the hero of the anti-Napoleon war of 1812 whose “Borodino beard” became legendary) calls Chaadaev malen’kiy abbatik (“a little abbé”):



Старых барынь духовник,
Маленький аббатик,
Что в гостиных бить привык
В маленький набатик. (ll. 97-100)



In Davydov’s poem abbatik rhymes with nabatik (a fanciful diminutive of nabat, “the alarm bell”).



nabatik + oko + voda + akt/kat = Nabokov + oda + taktika

oko +akt/kat = Oka + kot/tok/kto

Borodino + vrag + ad/da = boroda + vinograd



oko – obs., eye

voda – water

akt – act

kat – obs., executioner

oda – ode

taktika – tactics

Oka – river in central Russia, the Volga’s tributary

kot – tomcat

tok – current

kto – who

Borodino – site of the greatest battle in the Patriotic war of 1812

vrag – enemy

ad – hell

da – yes

boroda – beard

vinograd – grape (cf. “Vinogradus”)



Like Chaadaev, Kinbote is a Roman Catholic. But, unlike Chaadaev, Davydov and Pushkin, he is “quite tall.” Nevertheless, K.’s uncle Conmal (Zemblan translator of Shakespeare and other English poets) calls him Karlik (Dwarf), playing on his first name Charles (in Russian, Karl):



At forty, not long before the collapse of his throne, he had attained such a degree of scholarship that he dared accede to his venerable uncle's raucous dying request: "Teach, Karlik!" (note to Line 12)



In Pushkin’s Ruslan and Lyudmila (1820) the strength of karla (obs., the dwarf) Chernomor (the evil sorcerer who kidnapped Lyudmila) is in his monstrously long beard.



In Line 12 of his poem Shade mentions “that crystal land.” In Pushkin’s Skazka o myortvoy tsarevne i semi bogatyryakh ("The Fairy Tale about the Dead Princess and the Seven Knights," 1833) the dead Princess sleeps in a crystal coffin that hangs by chains from six pillars:



Там за речкой тихоструйной
Есть высокая гора,
В ней глубокая нора;
В той норе, во тьме печальной,
Гроб качается хрустальный
На цепях между столбов.



Where a quiet stream is flowing
Stands a mountain high and steep
In it lies a cavern deep;
In this cave in darkness dismal
Sways a coffin, made of crystal.
Hung by chains from pillars six.



In Line 37 of his poem Byla pora: nash prazdnik molodoy… (“There was a time: our young celebration…”) that he read at the last Lyceum celebration he attended (Oct. 19, 1836, the very day on which he wrote his letter to Chaadaev) Pushkin mentions groza dvenadtsatogo goda (the tempest of year 12). Pushkin died in 1837, at the age of 37.



Describing the King’s flight from Zembla, Kinbote uses the phrase kot or (“what is the time” in Zemblan):



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. (Kinbote’s note to Line 149, “one foot upon a mountain”)



Kot or is a play on the Russian phrase kotoryi chas (“what is the time”), but it also hints at kot (the tomcat) that in Pushkin’s great introductory poem to Ruslan and Lyudmila walks around the green oak along the golden chain (Fr., chaîne d’or). In his Foreword to Shade’s poem Kinbote mentions Shade looking at his wrist watch:



He consulted his wrist watch. A snowflake settled upon it. "Crystal to crystal," said Shade.



Re Gerald Emerald and “the great beaver” (Kinbote’s nickname): in Pushkin’s Skazka o tsare Saltane (“The Fairy Tale about Tsar Saltan,” 1831) the squirrel in the Buyan island cracks golden nuts with emerald kernels. Like squirrels, beavers are rodents. According to a saying, ubit’ bobra – ne vidat’ dobra (if one kills a beaver, one won’t be happy).



In his Contemporary Song Davydov also mentions “Filipp Filippych – the bedbug, an effeminate male:”



И мурашка-филантроп,
И червяк голодный,
И Филипп Филиппыч — клоп,
Муж… женоподобный (ll. 89-92)



It is the same Filipp Filippovich Vigel whom Pushkin, in an Epistle of 1823, asks to spare his zad (arse-hole). Bedbugs stink. In Chapter Four of VN’s novel Dar (“The Gift,” 1937) Fyodor mentions the fact that Turgenev, Grigorovich and Tolstoy called Chernyshevski klopovonyayushiy gospodin (the bedbug-stinking person). According to an anonymous joker, Kinbote (like Vigel, a great lover of boys) has halitosis (bad breath):



Well did I know that among certain youthful instructors whose advances I had rejected there was at least one evil practical joker; I knew it ever since the time I came home from a very enjoyable and successful meeting of students and teachers (at which I had exuberantly thrown off my coat and shown several willing pupils a few of the amusing holds employed by Zemblan wrestlers) and found in my coat pocket a brutal anonymous note saying: “You have has..… s real bad, chum,” meaning evidently “hallucinations,” although a malevolent critic might infer from the insufficient number of dashes that little Mr. Anon, despite teaching Freshman English, could hardly spell. (note to Line 62)



In his EO Commentary (vol. II, pp. 104-105) VN points out that Davydov’s Contemporary Song prefigures Nekrasov’s satirical style. In Chapter Four of “The Gift” Fyodor compares Chernyshevski to Christ, Vsevolod [sic, instead of Vladislav] Kostomarov, to Judas, and Nekrasov, to Peter (the apostle who became the first Pope ordained by Jesus):



Проследим и другую, тему «ангельской ясности». Она в дальнейшем развивается так: Христос умер за человечество, ибо любил человечество, которое я тоже люблю, за которое умру тоже. «Будь вторым Спасителем», – советует ему лучший друг, – и как он вспыхивает, робкий! слабый! (почти гоголевский восклицательный знак мелькает в его «студентском» дневнике). Но «Святой Дух» надобно заменить «Здравым Смыслом». Ведь бедность порождает порок; ведь Христу следовало сперва каждого обуть и увенчать цветами, а уж потом проповедовать нравственность. Христос второй прежде всего покончит с нуждой вещественной (тут поможет изобретенная нами машина). И странно сказать, но… что-то сбылось, – да, что-то как будто сбылось. Биографы размечают евангельскими вехами его тернистый путь (известно, что чем левее комментатор, тем питает большую слабость к выражениям вроде «Голгофа революции»). Страсти Чернышевского начались, когда он достиг Христова возраста. Вот, в роли Иуды, – Всеволод Костомаров; вот, в роли Петра – знаменитый поэт, уклонившийся от свидания с узником. Толстый Герцен, в Лондоне сидючи, именует позорный столб «товарищем Креста». И в некрасовском стихотворении – опять о Распятии, о том, что Чернышевский послан был «рабам (царям) земли напомнить о Христе». Наконец, когда он совсем умер, и тело его обмывали, одному из его близких эта худоба, эта крутизна рёбер, темная бледность кожи и длинные пальцы ног смутно напомнили «Снятие со Креста», Рембрандта, что ли. Но и на этом тема не кончается: есть ещё посмертное надругание, без коего никакая святая жизнь несовершенна. Так, серебряный венок с надписью на ленте «Апостолу правды от высших учебных заведений города Харькова» был спустя пять лет выкраден из железной часовни, причём беспечный святотатец, разбив тёмно-красное стекло, нацарапал осколком на раме имя свое и дату. И еще третья тема готова развиться – и развиться довольно причудливо, коли не доглядеть: тема «путешествия», которая может дойти Бог знает до чего – до тарантаса с небесного цвета жандармом, а там и до якутских саней, запряженных шестёркой собак. Господи, да ведь вилюйского исправника звать Протопоповым! Но покамест все очень мирно. Катится удобная дорожная повозка; дремлет, прикрыв лицо платком, николина мать Евгения Егоровна, а рядом, лежа, сын читает книжку, – и ухаб теряет значение ухаба, становясь лишь типографской неровностью, скачком строки, – и вот опять ровно проходят слова, проходят деревья, проходит тень их по страницам. И вот, наконец, Петербург.



Let us follow another theme-that of "angelic clarity." This is how it develops subsequently: Christ died for mankind because he loved mankind, which I also love, for which I shall also die. "Be a second Savior," his best friend advises him-and how he glows-oh, timid! Oh, weak! (an almost Gogolian exclamation mark appears fleetingly in his student diary). But the "Holy Ghost" must be replaced by "Common Sense." Is not poverty the mother of vice? Christ should first have shod everybody and crowned them with flowers and only then have preached morality. Christ the Second would begin by putting an end to material want (aided here by the machine which we have invented). And strange to say, but… something came true-yes, it was as if something came true. His biographers mark his thorny path with evangelical signposts (it is well known that the more leftist the Russian commentator the greater is his weakness for expressions like "the Golgotha of the revolution"). Chernyshevski's passions began when he reached Christ's age. Here the role of Judas was filled by Vsevolod Kostomarov; the role of Peter by the famous poet Nekrasov, who declined to visit the jailed man. Corpulent Herzen, ensconced in London, called Chernyshevski's pillory column "The companion piece of the Cross." And in a famous Nekrasov iambic there was more about the Crucifixion, about the fact that Chernyshevski had been "sent to remind the earthly kings of Christ." Finally, when he was completely dead and they were washing his body, that thinness, that steepness of the ribs, that dark pallor of the skin and those long toes vaguely reminded one of his intimates of "The Removal from the Cross"-by Rembrandt, is it? But even this isn't the end of the theme: there is still the posthumous outrage, without which no holy life is complete. Thus the silver wreath with the inscription on its ribbon To THE APOSTLE OF TRUTH FROM THE INSTITUTIONS OF HIGHER EDUCATION OF THE CITY OF KHARKOV was stolen five years later from the ironworked chapel; moreover the cheerful sacrilegist broke the dark-red glass and scratched his name and the date on the frame with a splinter of it. And then a third theme is ready to unfold-and to unfold quite fantastically if we don't keep an eye on it: the theme of "traveling," which can lead to God knows what-to a tarantass with a gendarme in azure uniform, and even more-to a Yakutsk sled harnessed to half a dozen dogs. Goodness, that Vilyuisk captain of the police is also called Protopopov! But for the time being all is very pacific. The comfortable traveling carriage rolls on, Nikolay's mother Eugenia Egorovna dozes with a handkerchief spread over her face, while her son reclines beside her reading a book-and a hole in the road loses its meaning of hole, becoming merely a typographical unevenness, a jump in the line-and now again the words pass evenly by, the trees pass by and their shadow passes over the pages. And here at last is St. Petersburg.



St. Petersburg (VN’s home city) was founded by the tsar Peter I. It was Peter I who made the boyars shave their beards. In his letter to Chaadaev Pushkin mentions “Pierre le Grand:”



Et Pierre le Grand qui à lui seul est une histoire universelle!



In 1924-91 the name of VN’s home city was Leningrad. In his Commentary Kinbote mockingly calls the killer Gradus (who should never provoke God) “Vinogradus” and “Leningradus:”



All this is as it should be; the world needs Gradus. But Gradus should not kill things. Vinogradus should never, never provoke God. Leningradus should not aim his peashooter at people even in dreams, because if he does, a pair of colossally thick, abnormally hairy arms will hug him from behind and squeeze, squeeze, squeeze. (note to Line 171, “a great conspiracy”)



Alexey Sklyarenko


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