According to 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), the King saw Disa for the first time at a masked ball in his uncle’s palace:
John Shade and Sybil Swallow (see note to line 247) were married in 1919, exactly three decades before King Charles wed Disa, Duchess of Payn. Since the very beginning of his reign (1936-1958) representatives of the nation, salmon fishermen, non-union glaziers, military groups; worried relatives, and especially the Bishop of Yeslove, a sanguineous and saintly old man, had been doing their utmost to persuade him to give up his copious but sterile pleasures and take a wife. It was a matter not of morality but of succession. As in the case of some of his predecessors, rough alderkings who burned for boys, the clergy blandly ignored our young bachelor's pagan habits, but wanted him to do what an earlier and even more reluctant Charles had done: take a night off and lawfully engender an heir.
He saw nineteen-year-old Disa for the first time on the festive night of July the 5th, 1947, at a masked ball in his uncle's palace. She had come in male dress, as a Tirolese boy, a little knock-kneed but brave and lovely, and afterwards he drove her and her cousins (two guardsmen disguised as flower-girls) in his divine new convertible through the streets to see the tremendous birthday illumination, and the fackeltanz in the park, and the fireworks, and the pale upturned faces. He procrastinated for almost two years but was set upon by inhumanly eloquent advisers, and finally gave in. On the eve of his wedding he prayed most of the night locked up all alone in the cold vastness of the Onhava cathedral. Smug alderkings looked at him from the ruby-and-amethyst windows. Never had he so fervently asked God for guidance and strength (see further my note to lines 433-434). (note to Line 275)
The King’s uncle Conmal, Duke of Aros, is the Zemblan translator of Shakespeare:
Conmal, Duke of Aros, 1855-1955, K.'s uncle, the eldest half-brother of Queen Blenda (q. v.); noble paraphrast, 12; his version of Timon of Athens, 39, 130; his life and work, 962. (Index)
Queen Disa’s favorite lady-in-waiting, Fleur de Fyler brings to mind Baudelaire’s Fleurs du Mal (“The Flowers of Evil”) and “bright defiler of Hymen’s purest bed,” as in Shakespeare’s Timon of Athens (Act IV, Scene 3) Timon calls gold. In Chapter Four (L: 9-14) of Eugene Onegin Pushkin says that, as an enemy of Hymen, he perceives in home life but a series of tedious images, a novel in the genre of Lafontaine:
Он весел был. Чрез две недели
Назначен был счастливый срок.
И тайна брачныя постели,
И сладостной любви венок
Его восторгов ожидали.
Гимена хлопоты, печали,
Зевоты хладная чреда
Ему не снились никогда.
Меж тем как мы, враги Гимена,
В домашней жизни зрим один
Ряд утомительных картин,
Роман во вкусе Лафонтена...26
Мой бедный Ленский, сердцем он
Для оной жизни был рождён.
Merry he was. A fortnight hence
the blissful date was set,
and the nuptial bed's mystery
and love's sweet crown awaited
his transports.
Hymen's cares, woes,
yawnings' chill train,
he never visioned.
Whereas we, enemies of Hymen,
perceive in home life but a series
of tedious images,
a novel in the genre of Lafontaine.26
O my poor Lenski! For the said
life he at heart was born.
Pushkin’s note 26: August Lafontaine, author of numerous family novels.
In Chapter Two of his poem John Shade speaks of his married life and mentions Lafontaine (the author of La Cigale et la Fourmi):
Life is a message scribbled in the dark.
Anonymous.
Espied on a pine’s bark,
As we were walking home the day she died,
An empty emerald case, squat and frog-eyed,
Hugging the trunk; and its companion piece,
A gum-logged ant.
That Englishman in Nice,
A proud and happy linguist: je nourris
Les pauvres cigales - meaning that he
Fed the poor sea gulls! Lafontaine was wrong:
Dead is the mandible, alive the song. (ll. 235-244)
An empty emerald case, squat and frog-eyed, brings to mind not only Gerald Emerald (a young instructor at Wordsmith University) but also Conmal's frogged uniform that he exchanged for a scholar's dressing gown:
English was not taught in Zembla before Mr. Campbell's time. Conmal mastered it all by himself (mainly by learning a lexicon by heart) as a young man, around 1880, when not the verbal inferno but a quiet military career seemed to open before him, and his first work (the translation of Shakespeare's Sonnets) was the outcome of a bet with a fellow officer. He exchanged his frogged uniform for a scholar's dressing gown and tackled The Tempest. A slow worker, he needed half a century to translate the works of him whom he called "dze Bart," in their entirety. After this, in 1930, he went on to Milton and other poets, steadily drilling through the ages, and had just complete Kipling's "The Rhyme of the Three Sealers" ("Now this is the Law of the Muscovite that he proved with shot and steel") when he fell ill and soon expired under his splendid painted bed ceil with its reproductions of Altamira animals, his last words in his last delirium being "Comment dit-on 'mourir' en anglais?"--a beautiful and touching end. (Note to Line 962)
In his epigram on life (Dec. 31, 1797) Karamzin says:
Что наша жизнь? Роман. — Кто автор? Аноним.
Читаем по складам, смеёмся, плачем... спим.
Life? A romance. By whom? Anonymous.
We spell it out; it makes us laugh and weep,
And then put us
To sleep.
In a letter of August 17, 1825, to Zhukovski (whose versions of foreign poetry are not really translations but talented adaptations remarkably melodious and engaging) Pushkin says that he is writing a tragedy (“Boris Godunov,” a drama composed under a strong influence of Shakespeare) and therefore reads only Karamzin (the author of “The History of the Russian State”) and the chronicles:
Отче, в руце твои предаю дух мой. Мне право совестно, что жилы мои так всех вас беспокоят — операция аневризма ничего не значит, и, ей-богу, первый псковской коновал с ними бы мог управиться. Во Псков поеду не прежде как в глубокую осень, оттуда буду тебе писать, светлая душа. — На днях виделся я у Пещурова с каким-то доктором-аматёром: он пуще успокоил меня — только здесь мне кюхельбекерно; согласен, что жизнь моя сбивалась иногда на эпиграмму, но вообще она была элегией в роде Коншина. Кстати об элегиях, трагедия моя идёт, и думаю к зиме её кончить; вследствие чего, читаю только Карамзина да летописи. Что за чудо эти 2 последние тома Карамзина! какая жизнь! c’est palpitant comme la gazette d’hier, писал я Раевскому. Одна просьба, моя прелесть: нельзя ли мне доставить или жизнь Железного колпака, или житие какого-нибудь юродивого. Я напрасно искал Василия Блаженного в Четьих Минеях — а мне бы очень нужно.
Обнимаю тебя от души. Вижу по газетам, что Перовский у вас. Счастливец! он видел и Рим и Везувий.
According to Pushkin, his life was elegiya v rode Konshina (an elegy in the genre of Konshin). The word kyukhelbekerno used by Pushkin hints at Wilhelm Küchelbecker, Pushkin’s Lyceum friend, the author of Shekspirovy dukhi (“Shakespeare’s Spirits,” 1825). At the beginning of his letter to Zhukovski Pushkin quotes Jesus Christ's last words: "Father, into your hands I commit my spirit" (Luke 23:46). According to Kinbote, Lukin (the maiden name of Shade's mother) comes from Luke. 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. 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.
In his Poslanie k tsenzoru (“Epistle to the Censor,” 1822) Pushkin mentions voobrazheniya minutnye tsvety (the ephemeral flowers of imagination):
Остались нам стихи: поэмы, триолеты,
Баллады, басенки, элегии, куплеты,
Досугов и любви невинные мечты,
Воображения минутные цветы. (ll. 55-58)
At the end of his “Epistle” Pushkin says that wife and children are bol’shoe zlo (a big evil):
Жена и дети, друг, поверь — большое зло:
От них всё скверное у нас произошло.
Но делать нечего; так если невозможно
Тебе скорей домой убраться осторожно,
И службою своей ты нужен для царя,
Хоть умного себе возьми секретаря. (ll. 121-126)
Коншин + мальчик + постель = Конмаль + шинель + спич + ток/кот/кто
Конь бледный + огонь мал = Конмаль + Бледный огонь
Коншин - Konshin
мальчик - boy
постель - bed
Конмаль - Conmal
шинель - overcoat (a story by Gogol)
спич - speech
ток - current
кот - tomcat
кто - who
Конь бледный - Pale Horse (of the Apocalypse); cf. Kon' bled ("Pale Horse," 1903), a poem by Bryusov, and Kon' blednyi ("Pale Horse," 1909), a short novel by V. Ropshin (B. Savinkov's penname)
огонь мал - small fire; Balmont’s poem Ogon' ("Fire," 1905) begins with the line Ogon’ v svoyom rozhden'yi mal ("At the moment of birth the fire is small"); see my post of March 5, 2020: "Conmal, Duke of Aros in Pale Fire"
Бледный огонь - Pale Fire