Onhava + Conmal + M’sieur Pierre + golos/Logos = Havamal + connoisseur + empire + gorlo
From Kinbote’s Index to Shade’s poem:
Onhava, the beautiful capital of Zembla, 12, 71, 130, 149, 171, 181, 275, 579, 894, 1000.
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.
M’sieur Pierre - the executioner in VN's novel Priglashenie na kazn' ("Invitation to a Beheading," 1935)
golos - voice
gorlo - throat
Hávamál (‘Words of Hávi [the High One]’) is presented as a single poem in the Codex Regius, a collection of Old Norse poems from the Viking age. The poem, itself a combination of numerous shorter poems, is largely gnomic, presenting advice for living, proper conduct and wisdom. The verses are attributed to Odin; the implicit attribution to Odin facilitated the accretion of various mythological material also dealing with the same deity.
In his Foreword Kinbote (Shade’s mad commentator who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla) mentions Odin’s Hall (Valhalla):
Oh, there were many such incidents. In a skit performed by a group of drama students I was pictured as a pompous woman hater with a German accent, constantly quoting Housman and nibbling raw carrots; and a week before Shade's death, a certain ferocious lady at whose club I had refused to speak on the subject of "The Hally Vally" (as she put it, confusing Odin's Hall with the title of a Finnish epic), said to me in the middle of a grocery store, "You are a remarkably disagreeable person. I fail to see how John and Sybil can stand you," and, exasperated by my polite smile, she added: "What's more, you are insane."
In his Commentary Kinbote mentions W. F. Kirby (the author of an English translation of the Finnish epic The Kalevala):
Written against this in the margin of the draft are two lines of which only the first can be deciphered. It reads:
The evening is the time to praise the day
I feel pretty sure that my friend was trying to incorporate here something he and Mrs. Shade had heard me quote in my lighter-hearted moments, namely a charming quatrain from our Zemblan counterpart of the Elder Edda, in an anonymous English translation (Kirby's?):
The wise at nightfall praise the day,
The wife when she has passed away,
The ice when it is crossed, the bride
When tumbled, and the horse when tried. (note to Line 79)
As has been pointed out before (https://www.google.ru/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwiomqrO_ZrqAhUmAxAIHdixBnQQFjAAegQIBRAB&url=https%3A%2F%2Fkobaltana.wordpress.com%2F2013%2F11%2F15%2Fthe-strange-case-of-nabokov-and-w-f-kirby%2F&usg=AOvVaw04OtET4qCPOcD7TJWuOxZF), this quatrain is a reworking of Olive Bray’s 1908 translation of Strophe 81 of the Havamal (a portion of the Elder Edda):
Praise the day at even, a wife when dead,
a weapon when tried, a maid when married,
ice when ’tis crossed, and ale when ’tis drunk.
Describing his first meeting with Shade, Kinbote mentions a bottle of good college ale:
A few days later, however, namely on Monday, February 16, I was introduced to the old poet at lunch time in the faculty club. "At last presented credentials," as noted, a little ironically, in my agenda. I was invited to join him and four or five other eminent professors at his usual table, under an enlarged photograph of Wordsmith College as it was, stunned and shabby, on a remarkably gloomy summer day in 1903. His laconic suggestion that I "try the pork" amused me. I am a strict vegetarian, and I like to cook my own meals. Consuming something that had been handled by a fellow creature was, I explained to the rubicund convives, as repulsive to me as eating any creature, and that would include - lowering my voice - the pulpous pony-tailed girl student who served us and licked her pencil. Moreover, I had already finished the fruit brought with me in my briefcase, so I would content myself, I said, with a bottle of good college ale. My free and simple demeanor set everybody at ease. The usual questions were fired at me about eggnogs and milkshakes being or not being acceptable to one of my persuasion. Shade said that with him it was the other way around: he must make a definite effort to partake of a vegetable. Beginning a salad, was to him like stepping into sea water on a chilly day, and he had always to brace himself in order to attack the fortress of an apple. I was not yet used to the rather fatiguing jesting and teasing that goes on among American intellectuals of the inbreeding academic type and so abstained from telling John Shade in front of all those grinning old males how much I admired his work lest a serious discussion of literature degenerate into mere facetiation. Instead I asked him about one of my newly acquired students who also attended his course, a moody, delicate, rather wonderful boy; but with a resolute shake of his hoary forelock the old poet answered that he had ceased long ago to memorize faces and names of students and that the only person in his poetry class whom he could visualize was an extramural lady on crutches. "Come, come," said Professor Hurley, "do you mean, John, you really don't have a mental or visceral picture of that stunning blonde in the black leotard who haunts Lit. 202?" Shade, all his wrinkles beaming, benignly tapped Hurley on the wrist to make him stop. Another tormentor inquired if it was true that I had installed two ping-pong tables in my basement. I asked, was it a crime? No, he said, but why two? "Is that a crime?" I countered, and they all laughed. (Foreword)
According to Kinbote, he became a vegetarian after reading a story about an Italian despot:
When the fallen tyrant is tied, naked and howling, to a plank in the public square and killed piecemeal by the people who cut slices out, and eat them, and distribute his living body among themselves (as I read when young in a story about an Italian despot, which made of me a vegetarian for life), Gradus does not take part in the infernal sacrament: he points out the right instrument and directs the carving. (note to Line 171)
Des Cannibales ("Of Cannibales") is an essay by Montaigne included in his Essais. Shade's murderer, Jakob Gradus is also known as Jack Degree. In his essay De l’experience ("Of Experience") Montaigne says that every place swarms with commentaries, of authors there is great scarcity, and uses the phrase de degré en degré (step by step):
Il y a plus affaire à interpreter les interpretations qu’à interpreter les choses, et plus de livres sur les livres que sur autre subject : nous ne faisons que nous entregloser. Tout fourmille de commentaires ; d’auteurs, il en est grand cherté. Le principal et plus fameux sçavoir de nos siecles, est-ce pas sçavoir entendre les sçavans ? Est-ce pas la fin commune et derniere de tous estudes ? Nos opinions s’entent les unes sur les autres. La premiere sert de tige à la seconde, la seconde à la tierce. Nous eschellons ainsi de degré en degré. Et advient de là que le plus haut monté a souvent plus d’honneur que de mérite ; car il n’est monté que d’un grain sur les espaules du penultime.
There is more ado to interpret interpretations than to interpret things, and more books upon books than upon any other subject; we do nothing but comment upon one another. Every place swarms with commentaries; of authors there is great scarcity. Is it not the principal and most reputed knowledge of our later ages to understand the learned? Is it not the common and final end of all studies? Our opinions are grafted upon one another; the first serves as a stock to the second, the second to the third, and so forth; thus step by step we climb the ladder; whence it comes to pass that he who is mounted highest has often more honor than merit, for he is got up but an inch upon the shoulders of the last, but one. (Essays, Book Three, Chapter XIII)