Vladimir Nabokov

Balthasar, Gradus & Grimm in Pale Fire

By Alexey Sklyarenko, 9 October, 2019

In VN’s novel Pale Fire (1962) Kinbote (Shade’s mad commentator who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla) nicknamed his black gardener “Balthasar, Prince of Loam:”

 

I am happy to report that soon after Easter my fears disappeared never to return. Into Alphina's or Betty's room another lodger moved, Balthasar, Prince of Loam, as I dubbed him, who with elemental regularity fell asleep at nine and by six in the morning was planting heliotropes (Heliotropium turgenevi). This is the flower whose odor evokes with timeless intensity the dusk, and the garden bench, and a house of painted wood in a distant northern land. (note to Line 62)

 

It is Balthasar who saves Kinbote’s life by dealing Gradus a tremendous blow with his spade:

 

One of the bullet that spared me struck him in the side and went through his heart. His presence behind me abruptly failing me caused me to lose my balance, and, simultaneously, to complete the farce of fate, my gardener's spade dealt gunman Jack from behind the hedge a tremendous blow to the pate, felling him and sending his weapon flying from his grasp. (note to Line 1000)

 

Shade’s murderer, Gradus seems to be a gnome. In Brothers Grimm’s fairy tale Rumpelstilzchen the Queen asks the gnome if his name is Balthazar:

 

"I will give you three days, time," said he, "if by that time you find out my name, then shall you keep your child."

So the queen thought the whole night of all the names that she had ever heard, and she sent a messenger over the country to inquire, far and wide, for any other names that there might be. When the manikin came the next day, she began with Caspar, Melchior, Balthazar, and said all the names she knew, one after another, but to every one the little man said, "That is not my name."

 

At the end of the fairy tale the angry gnome tears himself in two:

 

And when soon afterwards the little man came in, and asked, "Now, mistress queen, what is my name?"

At first she said, "Is your name Conrad?"

“No."

"Is your name Harry?"

"No."

"Perhaps your name is Rumpelstiltskin?"

"The devil has told you that! The devil has told you that," cried the little man, and in his anger he plunged his right foot so deep into the earth that his whole leg went in, and then in rage he pulled at his left leg so hard with both hands that he tore himself in two.

 

At the end of his poem Smotryu v okno i prezirayu… (“I look out from a window and despise,” 1921) Hodasevich compares himself to a worm cut in two with a heavy spade:

 

Смотрю в окно — и презираю.
Смотрю в себя — презрен я сам.
На землю громы призываю,
Не доверяя небесам.

Дневным сиянием объятый,
Один беззвёздный вижу мрак...
Так вьётся на гряде червяк,
Рассечен тяжкою лопатой.

 

I look out from a window and despise,

I look into myself with contempt.

Not trusting the skies,

I call thunder on earth.

 

I see only starless dark

In a broad daylight - thus

Cut with a heavy spade,

A worm would whirl on a garden bed.

 

Grom (thunder) rhymes with gnom (gnome) and gromy (the word used by Hodasevch, a solecism), with gnomy (the gnomes). The Russian title of Brothers Grimm’s fairy tale is Gnom-Tikhogrom. Shade's collection Hebe's Cup hints at Tyutchev's poem Vesennyaya groza ("The Spring Thunderstorm," 1829) in which vesenniy pervyi grom (the first vernal thunder) and kubok Geby (Hebe's cup) are mentioned.

 

In his memoir essay Muni (1926) Hodasevich says that, like the devil in Dostoevski’s Brothers Karamazov, Muni attempted to evolve an alternative personality and mentions Muni’s “little tragedy” Oburevaemyi negr (“The Obsessed Negro”):

 

Муни написал две маленькие"трагедии" довольно дикого содержания. Одна называлась "Обу­реваемый негр". Её герой, негр в крахмальной рубашке и в подтяжках, только показывается в разных местах Петербурга: на Зимней Канавке, в модной мастерской, в окне ресторана, где компания адвокатов и дам отплясывает кэк -уок. Появляясь, негр бьёт в барабан и каж­дый раз произносит приблизительно одно и то же:

"Так больше продолжаться не может. Трам-там-там. Я обуреваем". И еще: "Это-го ни-че-го не бу-дет".

В последнем действии на сцене, изображён поперечный разрез трамвая, который, жужжа и качаясь, как бы уходит от публики. В глубине, за стеклом виден вагоновожатый. Поздний вечер. Пассажиры дремлют, покачиваясь. Вдруг раз­даётся треск, вагон останавливается. За сценою замешательство. Затем выходит театральный механик и заявляет:

-- Случилось несчастие. По ходу действия негр попадает под трамвай. Но в нашем театре все декорации устроены так добросовестно и реально, что герой раздавлен на самом деле. Представление отменяется. Недовольные могут получить деньги обратно.

В этой "трагедии" Муни предсказал соб­ственную судьбу. Когда "события", которых он ждал, стали осуществляться, он сам погиб под их "слишком реальными" декорациями.

 

According to Hodasevich, in his little tragedy Muni predicted his own destiny. In the first two lines of his last poem, “I was the shadow of the waxwing slain / By the false azure in the windowpane,” Shade predicted his own destiny. Shade’s poem is almost finished when 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”) is a short novel (1846) by Dostoevski and a poem (1909) by Alexander Blok (a poet who to the question “does a sonnet need a coda” replied that he did not know what a coda is). In a letter of Oct. 31, 1838 (Dostoevski’s seventeenth birthday), to his brother Dostoevski twice uses the word gradus (degree):

 

Философию не надо полагать простой математической задачей, где неизвестное - природа... Заметь, что поэт в порыве вдохновенья разгадывает бога, следовательно, исполняет назначенье философии. Следовательно, поэтический восторг есть восторг философии... Следовательно, философия есть та же поэзия, только высший градус её!..

 

Philosophy should not be regarded as a mere equation where nature is the unknown quantity… Remark that the poet, in the moment of inspiration, comprehends God, and consequently does the philosopher’s work. Consequently poetic inspiration is nothing less than philosophical inspiration. Consequently philosophy is nothing but poetry, a higher degree of poetry!..

 

Друг мой! Ты философствуешь как поэт. И как не ровно выдерживает душа градус вдохновенья, так не ровна, не верна и твоя философия. Чтоб больше знать, надо меньше чувствовать, и обратно, правило опрометчивое, бред сердца.

 

My friend, you philosophize like a poet. And just because the soul cannot be forever in a state of exaltation, your philosophy is not true and not just. To know more one must feel less, and vice versa. Your judgment is featherheaded – it is a delirium of the heart.

 

In Dostoevski’s novella Khozyayka (“The Landlady,” 1847) Ordynov from childhood is haunted by zloy, skvernyi gnom (the evil bad gnome) who takes shape of every toy:

 

То как будто наступали для него опять его нежные, безмятежно прошедшие годы первого детства, с их светлою радостию, с неугасимым счастием, с первым сладостным удивлением к жизни, с роями светлых духов, вылетавших из-под каждого цветка, который срывал он, игравших с ним на тучном зеленом лугу перед маленьким домиком, окруженным акациями, улыбавшихся ему из хрустального необозримого озера, возле которого просиживал он по целым часам, прислушиваясь, как бьётся волна о волну, и шелестивших кругом него крыльями, любовно усыпая светлыми, радужными сновидениями маленькую его колыбельку, когда его мать, склоняясь над нею, крестила, целовала и баюкала его тихою колыбельною песенкой в долгие, безмятежные ночи. Но тут вдруг стало являться одно существо, которое смущало его каким-то недетским ужасом, которое вливало первый медленный яд горя и слёз в его жизнь; он смутно чувствовал, как неведомый старик держит во власти своей все его грядущие годы, и, трепеща, не мог он отвести него глаз своих. Злой старик за ним следовал всюду. Он выглядывал и обманчиво кивал ему головою из-под каждого куста в роще, смеялся и дразнил его, воплощался в каждую куклу ребенка, гримасничая и хохоча в руках его, как злой, скверный гном; он подбивал на него каждого из его бесчеловечных школьных товарищей или, садясь с малютками на школьную скамью, гримасничая, выглядывал из-под каждой буквы его грамматики. Потом, во время сна, злой старик садился у его изголовья... (Chapter II)

 

In one of his conversations with Kinbote Shade listed Gogol and Dostoevski among Russian humorists:

 

Speaking of the Head of the bloated Russian Department, Prof. Pnin, a regular martinet in regard to his underlings (happily, Prof. Botkin, who taught in another department, was not subordinated to that grotesque "perfectionist"): "How odd that Russian intellectuals should lack all sense of humor when they have such marvelous humorists as Gogol, Dostoevski, Chekhov, Zoshchenko, and those joint authors of genius Ilf and Petrov." (note to Line 172)

 

In a footnote to his story Viy (1835) Gogol says that the Viy is nachal’nik gnomov (the king of the gnomes):

 

Вий -- есть колоссальное создание простонародного воображения. Таким именем называется у малороссиян начальник гномов, у которого веки на глазах идут до самой земли.

 

The “Viy” is a monstrous creation of popular fancy. It is the name which the inhabitants of Little Russia give to the king of the gnomes, whose eyelashes reach to the earth.

 

The characters in Gogol's play Zhenit'ba ("The Marriage," 1842) include Baltazar Baltazarovich Zhevakin, a retired lieutenant of the naval service who comes from the threshold of Sicily. According to Kinbote, New Wye is at the latitude of Palermo (a seaport in and the capital of Sicily):

 

February and March in Zembla (the two last of the four "white-nosed months," as we call them) used to be pretty rough too, but even a peasant's room there presented a solid of uniform warmth - not a reticulation of deadly drafts. It is true that, as usually happens to newcomers, I was told I had chosen the worst winter in years - and this at the latitude of Palermo. (Foreword)

 

In his essay on Turgenev (in "The Silhouettes of Russian Writers") Ayhenvald compares Turgenev's heros to Podkolyosin (the main character in Gogol's "Marriage"):

 

И если пленяют отдельные сцены любви, если на всю жизнь ароматным воспоминанием остаются зелёные рощи Кунцева и та часовенка, где узкую, розовую руку Елены целовал Инсаров, то в общем герои Тургенева не столько влюблены, сколько влюбчивы, и в их чувстве нет даже страстной чувственности, а есть сердечная слабость, и почти все его мужчины своей существенной чертой имеют женолюбие, которое соединяется в то же время с каким-то подколёсинством - желанием в решительную минуту выпрыгнуть в окно.

 

In his fragment Rim (“Rome,” 1842) Gogol describes a carnival in Rome, mentions sonetto colla coda and in a footnote explains that in Italian poetry there is a kind of poem known as “a sonnet with the tail” (con la coda), when the idea cannot not be expressed in fourteen lines and entails an appendix which can be longer than the sonnet itself:

 

В италиянской поэзии существует род стихотворенья, известного под именем сонета с хвостом (con la coda), когда мысль не вместилась и ведёт за собою прибавление, которое часто бывает длиннее самого сонета.

 

Not only Line 1001, but Kinbote’s entire Commentary, Index and Foreword (in that order) can be regarded as a coda to Shade’s poem. At the end of his Commentary Kinbote mentions the gleam of a roof in the rain and a bigger, more respectable, more competent Gradus who will presently ring at his door:

 

"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 the other two 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 principles: 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)

 

In VN's novel Lolita (1955) Clare Quilty (the author of Dark Age who refused to be photographed) says that he needs rain on the shingle roof for roses and inspiration:

 

Reader! Bruder! What a foolish Hamburg that Hamburg was! Since his supersensitive system was loath to face the actual scene, he thought he could at least enjoy a secret part of it - which reminds one of the tenth or twentieth soldier in the raping queue who throws the girl’s black shawl over her white face so as not to see those impossible eyes while taking his military pleasure in the sad, sacked village. What I lusted to get was the printed picture that had chanced to absorb my trespassing image while the Gazette’s photographer was concentrating on Dr. Braddock and his group. Passionately I hoped to find preserved the portrait of the artist as a younger brute. An innocent camera catching me on my dark way to Lolita’s bed - what a magnet for Mnemosyne! I cannot well explain the true nature of that urge of mine. It was allied, I suppose, to that swooning curiosity which impels one to examine with a magnifying glass bleak little figures - still life practically, and everybody about to throw up at an early morning execution, and the patient’s expression impossible to make out in the print. Anyway, I was literally gasping for breath, and one corner of the book of doom kept stabbing me in the stomach while I scanned and skimmed… Brute Force and Possessed were coming on Sunday, the 24th, to both theatres. Mr. Purdom, independent tobacco auctioneer, said that ever since 1925 he had been an Omen Faustum smoker. Husky Hank and his petite bride were to be the guests of Mr. and Mrs. Reginald G. Gore, 58 Inchkeith Ave. The size of certain parasites is one sixth of the host. Dunkerque was fortified in the tenth century. Misses’ socks, 39 c. Saddle Oxfords 3.98. Wine, wine, wine, quipped the author of Dark Age who refused to be photographed, may suit a Persian bubble bird, but I say give me rain, rain, rain on the shingle roof for roses and inspiration every time. Dimples are caused by the adherence of the skin to the deeper tissues. Greeks repulse a heavy guerrilla assault and, ah, at last, a little figure in white, and Dr. Braddock in black, but whatever spectral shoulder was brushing against his ample form nothing of myself could I make out. (2.26)

 

According to Kinbote, Sybil Shade (the poet's wife) called him in public "an elephantine tick; a king-sized botfly; a macaco worm; the monstrous parasite of a genius" (note to Line 247). Describing a conversation at the Faculty Club, Kinbote mentions a visiting German lecturer, good Netochka (Dr. Oscar Nattochdag, a distinguished Zemblan scholar), Professor Pardon (American History) and Gerald Emerald (the young instructor who gives Gradus a lift on the day of Shade's assassination):

 

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, are 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)

 

Netochka Nezvanov is an unfinished novel (1849) by Dostoevski. In the first of the two stanzas of his poem On Translating "Eugene Onegin" (1955), written after the meter and rhyme scheme of the EO stanza, VN mentions the parasites who are pardoned, if he (VN) has Pushkin’s pardon:

 

What is translation? On a platter
A poets pale and glaring head,
A parrot's screech, a monkey's chatter,
And profanation of the dead.
The parasites you were so hard on
Are pardoned if I have your pardon,
O, Pushkin, for my stratagem:
I traveled down your secret stem,
And reached the root, and fed upon it;
Then, in a language newly learned,
I grew another stalk and turned
Your stanza patterned on a sonnet,
Into my honest roadside prose--
All thorn, but cousin to your rose.

 

Quilty's address in Parkington is Grimm Road. In his Commentary Kinbote mentions Grimm, the old groom:

 

The following note is not an apology of suicide—it is the simple and sober description of a spiritual situation.
The more lucid and overwhelming one’s belief in Providence, the greater the temptation to get it over with, this business of life, but the greater too one’s fear of the terrible sin implicit in self-destruction. Let us first consider the temptation. As more thoroughly discussed elsewhere in this commentary (see note to line 550), a serious conception of any form of afterlife inevitably and necessarily presupposes some degree of belief in Providence; and, conversely, deep Christian faith presupposes some belief in some sort of spiritual survival. The vision of that survival need not be a rational one, i.e., need not present the precise features of personal fancies or the general atmosphere of a subtropical Oriental park. In fact, a good Zemblan Christian is taught that true faith is not there to supply pictures or maps, but that it should quietly content itself with a warm haze of pleasurable anticipation. To take a homely example: little Christopher’s family is about to migrate to a distant colony where his father has been assigned to a lifetime post. Little Christopher, a frail lad of nine or ten, relies completely (so completely, in fact, as to blot out the very awareness of this reliance) on his elders’ arranging all the details of departure, passage and arrival. He cannot imagine, nor does he try to imagine, the particular aspects of the new place awaiting him but he is dimly and comfortably convinced that it will be even better than his homestead, with the big oak, and the mountain, and his pony, and the park, and the stable, and Grimm, the old groom, who has a way of fondling him whenever nobody is around. (note to Line 493)

 

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. An American scholar of Russian descent, Professor Vsevolod Botkin went mad and became Shade, Kinbote and Gradus after the tragic death of his daughter Nadezhda (Hazel Shade of Kinbote’s Commentary). There is a hazel-brush in Aschenputtel (Brothers Grimm’s German version of the fairy tale about Cinderella).

 

Let me also draw your attention to the updated versions of my latest two posts.