At the end of his Commentary 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) quotes a Zemblan saying that, as a child, he has heard from his nurse:
Many years ago--how many I would not care to say--I remember my Zemblan nurse telling me, a little man of six in the throes of adult insomnia: "Minnamin, Gut mag alkan, Pern dirstan" (my darling, God makes hungry, the Devil thirsty). Well, folks, I guess many in this fine hall are as hungry and thirsty as me, and I'd better stop, folks, right here.
Yes, better stop. My notes and self are petering out. Gentlemen, I have suffered very much, and more than any of you can imagine. I pray for the Lord's benediction to rest on my wretched countrymen. My work is finished. My poet is dead.
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, health 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)
Zemblan for “my darling,” minnamin blends mon ami (Fr., my friend) with Mignon, a character in Goethe's Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre (“Wilhelm Meister's
Apprenticeship,” 1795-96), and madamina (It., my dear lady), the first word in the Catalogue Aria sung by Leporello (Don Giovanni’s servant) to Elvira in Act One of Mozart’s opera Don Giovanni (1787):
Madamina, il catalogo è questo
Delle belle che amò il padron mio;
un catalogo egli è che ho fatt'io;
Osservate, leggete con me.
In Italia seicento e quaranta;
In Alemagna duecento e trentuna;
Cento in Francia, in Turchia novantuna;
Ma in Ispagna son già mille e tre...
My dear lady, this is the list
Of the beauties my master has loved,
A list which I have compiled.
Observe, read along with me.
In Italy, six hundred and forty;
In Germany, two hundred and thirty-one;
A hundred in France; in Turkey, ninety-one;
But in Spain already one thousand and three...
Il catalogo è questo brings to mind a catalogue raisonné mentioned by Kinbote as he describes his landlord's house:
Whatever I touched on the first day of my stay yielded a specimen of Goldsworthiana. I unlocked the medicine chest in the second bathroom, and out fluttered a message advising me that the slit for discarded safety blades was too full to use. I opened the icebox, and it warned me with a bark that "no national specialties with odors hard to get rid of" should be placed therein. I pulled out the middle drawer of the desk in the study - and discovered a catalogue raisonné of its meager contents which included an assortment of ashtrays, a damask paperknife (described as "one ancient dagger brought by Mrs. Goldsworth's father from the Orient"), and an old but unused pocket diary optimistically maturing there until its calendric correspondencies came around again. (note to Lines 47-48)
In Pushkin’s little tragedy “Mozart and Salieri” (1830) Mozart mentions his bessonnitsa (insomnia) and uses the phrase nikto b (none would):
Когда бы все так чувствовали силу
Гармонии! Но нет: тогда б не мог
И мир существовать; никто б не стал
Заботиться о нуждах низкой жизни;
Все предались бы вольному искусству.
If all could feel like you the power
of harmony! But no: the world
could not go on then. None would
bother about the needs of lowly life;
All would surrender to free art. (Scene II)
The “real” name of the poet Shade, his commentator Kinbote and his murderer Gradus seems to be Botkin (nikto b in reverse). 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). Nadezhda means “hope.” According to Shade, his daughter always nursed a small mad hope. 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.
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,” 1846) is a short novel by Dostoevski and a poem (1909) by Alexander Blok. According to G. Ivanov, to his question "does a sonnet need a coda" Blok replied that he did not know what a coda is. 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 is often 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.
In Gogol’s story Zapiski sumasshedshego (“The Notes of a Madman,” 1835) Poprishchin imagines that he is Ferdinand VIII, the king of Spain. The name Poprishchin comes from poprishche (arena, field, career) and brings to mind Count Uvarov’s remark on the occasion of Pushkin’s death (quoted by Fyodor Godunov-Cherdyntsev in Chapter Four of VN’s novel “The Gift”):
Говоря, что Пушкин был «только слабым подражателем Байрона», Чернышевский чудовищно точно воспроизводил фразу графа Воронцова: «Слабый подражатель лорда Байрона». Излюбленная мысль Добролюбова, что «у Пушкина недостаток прочного, глубокого образования» – дружеское аукание с замечанием того же Воронцова: «Нельзя быть истинным поэтом, не работая постоянно для расширения своих познаний, а их у него недостаточно». «Для гения недостаточно смастерить Евгения Онегина», – писал Надеждин, сравнивая Пушкина с портным, изобретателем жилетных узоров, и заключая умственный союз с Уваровым, министром народного просвещения, сказавшим по случаю смерти Пушкина: «Писать стишки не значит ещё проходить великое поприще».
When Chernyshevski said that Pushkin was “only a poor imitator of Byron,” he reproduced with monstrous accuracy the definition given by Count Vorontsov (Pushkin’s boss in Odessa): “A poor imitator of Lord Byron.” Dobrolyubov’s favorite idea that “Pushkin lacked a solid, deep education” is in friendly chime with Vorontsov’s remark: “One cannot be a genuine poet without constantly working to broaden one’s knowledge, and his is insufficient.” “To be a genius it is not enough to have manufactured Eugene Onegin,” wrote the progressive Nadezhdin, comparing Pushkin to a tailor, an inventor of waistcoat patterns, and thus concluding an intellectual pact with the reactionary Count Uvarov, Minister of Education, who remarked on the occasion of Pushkin’s death: “To write jingles does not mean yet to achieve a great career.”
In Zhizn’ Chernyshevskogo (“The Life of Chernyshevski”), Chapter Four of Dar (“The Gift,” 1937), Fyodor mentions Vsevolod [not “Vladislav”] Kostomarov’s report to his readers that Heine died an unrepentant sinner:
У нас есть три точки: Ч, К, П. Проводится один катет, ЧК. К Чернышевскому власти подобрали отставного уланского корнета Владислава Дмитриевича Костомарова, ещё в августе прошлого года, в Москве, за тайное печатание возмутительных изданий разжалованного в рядовые, – человека с безуминкой, с печоринкой, при этом стихотворца: он оставил в литературе сколопендровый след, как переводчик иностранных поэтов. Проводится другой катет, КП. Писарев в «Русском Слове» пишет об этих переводах, браня автора за «драгоценная тиара занялась на нём как фара» («из Гюго») хваля за «простую и сердечную» передачу куплетов Бернса («прежде всего, прежде всего да будут все честны… Молитесь все… чтоб человеку человек был брат прежде всего»), а по поводу того, что Костомаров доносит читателю, что Гейне умер нераскаянным грешником, критик ехидно советует «грозному обличителю» «полюбоваться на собственную общественную деятельность».
We have three points: C, K, P. A cathetus is drawn, CK. To offset Chernyshevski, the authorities picked out a retired Uhlan cornet, Vladislav Dmitrievich Kostomarov, who the previous August in Moscow had been reduced to the ranks for printing seditious publications—a man with a touch of madness and a pinch of Pechorinism about him, and also a verse-maker: he left a scolopendrine trace in literature as the translator of foreign poets. Another cathetus is drawn, KP. The critic Pisarev in the periodical The Russian Word writes about these translations, scolding the author for “The magnificent tiara’s Coruscation like a pharos” [from Hugo], praising his “simple and heartfelt” rendering of some lines by Burns (which came out as “And first of all, and first of all / Let all men honest be / Let’s pray that man be to each man / A brother first of all… etc.), and in connection with Kostomarov’s report to his readers that Heine died an unrepentant sinner, the critic roguishly advises the “grim denouncer” to “take a good look at his own public activities.”
In the Foreword to his Geständnisse (“Confessions,” 1854) Heinrich Heine (the author of a poem about the Doppelgänger) complains about the pirate editions of his works, mentions Leporello and says that he could have sung a song about his dishonest compatriots with the refrain Aber in Deutschland tausend und drei! (“But in Germany one thousand and three!”):
Sollte ich, in der ethnographischen Weise des Leporello, eine illustrierte Liste von den respektiven Spitzbuben anfertigen, die mir die Tasche geleert, so würden freilich alle zivilisierten Länder darin zahlreich genug repräsentiert werden, aber die Palme bliebe doch dem Vaterlande, welches das Unglaublichste geleistet, und ich könnte davon ein Lied singen mit dem Refrain:
Aber in Deutschland tausend und drei!
In his Memorien (published posthumously in 1884) Heine says that some of his French friends called him, mispronouncing his name, Mr. Un rien (“Mr. Nothing”):
Hier in Frankreich ist mir gleich nach meiner Ankunft in Paris mein Deutscher Name "Heinrich" in "Henry" übersetzt worden, und ich musste mich darin schicken und auch endlich hierzulande selbst so zu nennen, da das Wort Heinrich dem französischen Ohr nicht zusagte und überhaupt die Franzosen sich alle Dinge in der Welt recht bequem machen. Auch den Namen "Henri Heine" haben sie nie recht aussprechen können, und bei den meisten heiβe ich Mr. Enri Enn; von vielen wird dieses in Enrienne zusammengezogen, und einige nannten mich Mr. Un rien.
A German poet who lived in exile in Paris, Heinrich Heine was Jewish. As a boy of six, the Jewish hero (who was born in Germany) of VN's story Signs and Symbols (1948) suffered from insomnia like a grown-up man:
The boy, aged six—that was when he drew wonderful birds with human hands and feet, and suffered from insomnia like a grown-up man. (2)
“Wonderful birds with human hands and feet” drawn by the boy bring to mind a big bird in Kinbote’s garden:
The passage 797 (second part of line)-809, on the poet's sixty-fifth card, was composed between the sunset of July 18 and the dawn of July 19. That morning I had prayed in two different churches (on either side, as it were, of my Zemblan denomination, not represented in New Wye) and had strolled home in an elevated state of mind. There was no cloud in the wistful sky, and the very earth seemed to be sighing after our Lord Jesus Christ. On such sunny, sad mornings I always feel in my bones that there is a chance yet of my not being excluded from Heaven, and that salvation may be granted to me despite the frozen mud and horror in my heart. As I was ascending with bowed head the gravel path to my poor rented house, I heard with absolute distinction, as if he were standing at my shoulder and speaking loudly, as to a slightly deaf man, Shade's voice say: "Come tonight, Charlie." I looked around me in awe and wonder: I was quite alone. I looked around me in awe and wonder: I was quite alone. I at once telephoned. The Shades were out, said the cheeky ancillula, an obnoxious little fan who came to book for them on Sundays and no doubt dreamt of getting the old poet to cuddle her some wifeless day. I retelephoned two hours later; got, as usual, Sybil; insisted on talking to my friend (my "messages" were never transmitted), obtained him, and asked him as calmly as possible what he had been doing around noon when I had heard him like a big bird in my garden. He could not quite remember, said wait a minute, he had been playing golf with Paul (whoever that was), or at least watching Paul play with another colleague. I cried that I must see him in the evening and all at once, with no reason at all, burst into tears, flooding the telephone and gasping for breath, a paroxysm which had not happened to me since Bob left me on March 30. There was a flurry of confabulation between the Shades, and then John said: "Charles, listen. Let's go for a good ramble tonight, I'll meet you at eight." It was my second good ramble since July 6 (that unsatisfactory nature talk); the third one, on July 21, was to be exceedingly brief. (note to Line 802)
VN’s Russian nom de plume was Sirin (after a bird of Russian fairy tales). It seems that Kinbote heard VN’s (not Shade’s) voice. The girl who telephones several times at the end of Signs and Symbols and asks for Charlie also seems to be the author’s medium:
The telephone rang. It was an unusual hour for it to ring. He stood in the middle of the room, groping with his foot for one slipper that had come off, and childishly, toothlessly, gaped at his wife. Since she knew more English than he, she always attended to the calls.
”Can I speak to Charlie?” a girl’s dull little voice said to her now.
“What number do you want? . . . No. You have the wrong number.”
She put the receiver down gently and her hand went to her heart. “It frightened me,” she said.
He smiled a quick smile and immediately resumed his excited monologue. They would fetch him as soon as it was day. For his own protection, they would keep all the knives in a locked drawer. Even at his worst, he presented no danger to other people.
The telephone rang a second time.
The same toneless, anxious young voice asked for Charlie.
“You have the incorrect number. I will tell you what you are doing. You are turning the letter ‘o’ instead of the zero.” She hung up again.
They sat down to their unexpected, festive midnight tea. He sipped noisily; his face was flushed; every now and then he raised his glass with a circular motion, so as to make the sugar dissolve more thoroughly. The vein on the side of his bald head stood out conspicuously, and silvery bristles showed on his chin. The birthday present stood on the table. While she poured him another glass of tea, he put on his spectacles and reexamined with pleasure the luminous yellow, green, and red little jars. His clumsy, moist lips spelled out their eloquent labels—apricot, grape, beach plum, quince. He had got to crab apple when the telephone rang again. (3)
It is up to the reader to attend the phone and hear VN's voice.