A few years ago, Oleg Dorman tried to draw our
attention to the essay Muni (1926) included in Khodasevich's book of
memoirs Necropolis (1939). Muni (S. V. Kissin, 1885-1916, who
chose his pen-name, which almost became his real name, after Sakyamuni, one
of the names of Buddha) was Khodasevich's best friend and alter ego who
developed an alternative personality, Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Beklemishev. In
his turn, Beklemishev wrote the story Letom 190* goda ("In the summer
of 190*," 1908), whose hero, Bolshakov, is tormented by passions and
troubles and decides to find a new incarnation in sedate and happy
Pereyaslavtsev. He succeeds at first but then begins to revolt and finally
Pereyaslavtsev kills him. Recommending the story to Georgiy Chulkov, Akhramovich
(a passionate Roman Catholic who later became a passionate Communist)
described it as "Golyadkin [turned] inside-out." Golyadkin is the hero
of Dostoevsky's The Double.
In his Foreword to Pale Fire Kinbote
mentions his brown beard of a rather rich tint and texture. Khodasevich
says of Muni that he used to conceal his hollow cheeks in a broad and thick
beard. A Jew who was in the Russian army in the World War I (at first as a
soldier and then as a staff officer), Muni sufferred a bad depression
and committed a suicide in March, 1916, in Minsk. Instead of last note, he
wrote the last poem (as Esenin and Mayakovsky later did),
Samostrel'naya.
I'm not sure if it is important in the
context of Pale Fire: like VDN, Nikolay Romanov (the last Russian
tsar, with whose family Dr Botkin was executed) had five children.
Alexey Sklyarenko