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), King Alfin's question "What emperor?" has remained his only memorable mot:
Alfin the Vague (1873-1918; regnal dates 1900-1918, but 1900-1919 in most biographical dictionaries, a fumble due to the coincident calendar change from Old Style to New) was given his cognomen by Amphitheatricus, a not unkindly writer of fugitive poetry in the liberal gazettes (who was also responsible for dubbing my capital Uranograd!). King Alfin's absent-mindedness knew no bounds. He was a wretched linguist, having at his disposal only a few phrases of French and Danish, but every time he had to make a speech to his subjects - to a group of gaping Zemblan yokels in some remote valley where he had crash-landed - some uncontrollable switch went into action in his mind, and he reverted to those phrases, flavoring them for topical sense with a little Latin. Most of the anecdotes relating to his naïve fits of abstraction are too silly and indecent to sully these pages; but one of them that I do not think especially funny induced such guffaws from Shade (and returned to me, via the Common Room, with such obscene accretions) that I feel inclined to give it here as a sample (and as a corrective). One summer before the first world war, when the emperor of a great foreign realm (I realize how few there are to choose from) was paying an extremely unusual and flattering visit to our little hard country, my father took him and a young Zemblan interpreter (whose sex I leave open) in a newly purchased custom-built car on a jaunt in the countryside. As usual, King Alfin traveled without a vestige of escort, and this, and his brisk driving, seemed to trouble his guest. On their way back, some twenty miles from Onhava, King Alfin decided to stop for repairs. While he tinkered with the motor, the emperor and the interpreter sought the shade of some pines by the highway, and only when King Alfin was back in Onhava, did he gradually realize from a reiteration of rather frantic questions that he had left somebody behind ("What emperor?" has remained his only memorable mot). Generally speaking, in respect of any of my contributions (or what I thought to be contributions) I repeatedly enjoined my poet to record them in writing, by all means, but not to spread them in idle speech; even poets, however, are human. (note to Line 71)
Russkiy literator i rimskiy imperator ("A Russian Writer and a Roman Emperor," 1904) is an essay by Alexander Amfiteatrov (a journalist and novelist, 1862-1938), a review of Dmitri Merezhkovski's novel Smert' bogov ("The Death of Gods," 1895). In his essay Amfiteatrov mentions svyashchennye gusi (the sacred geese):
Шестая глава первой части "Смерти богов" изображает скитания переодетого Галла по Селевкии Сирийской. Картина порта и рынка, как и все декорации г. Мережковского, написана живо и легко. Эпизод, как цезарь, влюбясь в танцовщицу, увлекает ее в храм Приапа, а там нападают на них священные гуси, и драка с ними вызывает огромный уличный скандал - очень удачен и дышит древностью. Но "Сатирикон" рассказывает этот эпизод еще забавнее и несравненно талантливее.
Svyashchennye gusi and Petronius (the author of the Satyricon, a work mentioned by Amfiteatrov) bring to mind Colonel Peter Gusev, King Alfin's constant "aerial adjutant:"
King Alfin's absent-mindedness was strangely combined with a passion for mechanical things, especially for flying apparatuses. In 1912, he managed to rise in an umbrella-like Fabre "hydroplane" and almost got drowned in the sea between Nitra and Indra. He smashed two Farmans, three Zemblan machines, and a beloved Santos Dumont Demoiselle. A very special monoplane, Blenda IV, was built for him in 1916 by his constant "aerial adjutant" Colonel Peter Gusev (later a pioneer parachutist and, at seventy, one of the greatest jumpers of all time), and this was his bird of doom. On the serene, and not too cold, December morning that the angels chose to net his mild pure soul, King Alfin was in the act of trying solo a tricky vertical loop that Prince Andrey Kachurin, the famous Russian stunter and War One hero, had shown him in Gatchina. Something went wrong, and the little Blenda was seen to go into an uncontrolled dive. Behind and above him, in a Caudron biplane, Colonel Gusev (by then Duke of Rahl) and the Queen snapped several pictures of what seemed at first a noble and graceful evolution but then turned into something else. At the last moment, King Alfin managed to straighten out his machine and was again master of gravity when, immediately afterwards, he flew smack into the scaffolding of a huge hotel which was being constructed in the middle of a coastal heath as if for the special purpose of standing in a king's way. This uncompleted and badly gutted building was ordered razed by Queen Blenda who had it replaced by a tasteless monument of granite surmounted by an improbable type of aircraft made of bronze. The glossy prints of the enlarged photographs depicting the entire catastrophe were discovered one day by eight-year-old Charles Xavier in the drawer of a secretary bookcase. In some of these ghastly pictures one could make out the shoulders and leathern casque of the strangely unconcerned aviator, and in the penultimate one of the series, just before the white-blurred shattering crash, one distinctly saw him raise one arm in triumph, and reassurance. The boy had hideous dreams after that but his mother never found out that he had seen those infernal records. (note to Line 71)
Gusev (1890) is a story by Anton Chekhov (1860-1904), a writer whom Shade lists 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)
The capital of Kinbote's Zembla, Onhava seems to hint at heaven (onhava-onhava means in Zemblan "far, far away"). Amphitheatricus dubbed Onhava 'Uranograd.' Aphrodite Urania is the daughter of the sky-god Ouranos. In Merezhkovski's novel The Death of Gods Emperor Julian kisses the feet of the effigy of pure Aphrodite Urania:
Когда он проснулся, было темно. В четырехугольнике открытого неба сверкали звезды. Серп луны кидал сияние на голову Афродиты.
Юлиан встал. Должно быть, Олимпиодор приходил, но не заметил или не хотел разбудить мальчика, угадав его горе. Теперь на бронзовом треножнике рдели угли, и струйки благовонного дыма подымались к лицу богини.
Юлиан подошел, взял из хризолитовой чаши между ногами треножника несколько зерен душистой смолы и бросил на угли алтаря. Дым заклубился обильнее. И розовый отблеск огня вспыхнул, как легкий румянец жизни на лице богини, сливаясь с блеском новорожденного месяца. Чистая Афродита-Урания как будто сходила от звезд на землю. Юлиан наклонился и поцеловал ноги изваяния.
Он молился ей:
- Афродита! Афродита! Я буду любить тебя вечно.
И слезы падали на мраморные ноги изваяния. (Chapter V)
The author of Gospoda Obmanovy (“The Obmanov Family,” 1902), a satire on the Russian imperial family (the Romanovs), Amfitearov, in his book Zver’ iz bezdny (“Beast from the Abyss,” 1911), speaks of the phenomenon that K. H. Ulrichs dubbed uranizm (Urningism):
С 1864 по 1880 год в Лейпциге у Отто и Кадлера вышла целая серия работ по социальной физиологии некоего советника Ульрикса, озаглавленных в большинстве латинскими титулами — Vindex-Inclusa, Vindicta, Formatrix, Ara spei, Gladius furens. Критические стрелы. Идея этих статей — что «половое чувство не имеет отношения к полу». В мужском теле может заключаться женская и женскими страстями одаренная душа (anima muliebris in corpore virili inclusa) и, наоборот, женщина по телу может обладать душою и страстями мужчины. Ульрикс настаивал, что явление это, которое он назвал «уранизмом», есть лишь физиологическое исключение, а отнюдь не патологическая аномалия. На этом основании он требовал, чтобы закон и общество относились к любви урнингов как к явлению совершенно дозволительному и естественному и советовал даже разрешать браки между лицами одного и того же пола, которых судьба создала с урнингическими наклонностями. Нельзя не согласиться, что мальчишеские выходки развратного и пьяного юноши-язычника, которому было «все дозволено», оставлены обдуманной и научно поставленной теорией Ульрикса, старого ученого-христианина, далеко за флагом. А процесс Оскара Уайльда? А столь много нашумевшие разоблачения «Pall Mall Gazette» о подвигах английской родовой и коммерческой аристократии в лондонских трущобах? А записки Горона? А Эйленбург? А гомосексуальные радения — «лиги любви» — в современной России? А повести, в которых участники гомосексуального приключения предварительно молятся коленопреклоненно пред «иконами, приведшими де нас к общей радости»? Если урнингизм пытается переползти порог этики, его воспрещающей, — это симптом, пожалуй, поярче того, что две тысячи лет тому назад он откровенно переползал порог этики, к нему совершенно равнодушной.
«Я слыхал от некоторых, — говорит Светоний, — будто Нерон высказывал твердое убеждение, что стыд не свойствен природе человеческой, равно как нет в человеческом теле частей, обреченных на целомудрие, но что большинство людей только скрывают свои половые пороки и ловко притворяются целомудренными. Поэтому он извинял все другие пороки тем, кто откровенно предавался в его обществе похабству (professis apud se obscoenitatem»). Эта проповедь упразднения стыда откровенно развивалась в XV веке забубенною литературою Италии, в XVII — Англии, в XVIII — Франции, в конце XIX и в XX — России. В одном подпольно-порнографическом французском романе, приписываемом перу Альфреда де Мюссе, изображается общество, члены которого обязывались клятвою именно — как требовал Нерон — совершенно упразднить половой стыд и стараться довести тело своё до такой изощрённости, чтобы каждую часть его можно было использовать в целях сладострастия. (vol. III, “The Orgy,” chapter 1)
Amfiteatrov’s “beast from the abyss” is Nero (37-68 AD), the last Roman emperor of the Julio-Claudian dynasty. Kinbote's landlord, Judge Goldsworth is an authority on Roman law. In Chekhov’s story Ionych (1898) Ivan Petrovich Turkin (the jovial punster) mentions rimskoe pravo (Roman law), and his wife Vera Iosifovna tells Dr. Startsev that her husband is an Othello:
-- Здравствуйте пожалуйста, -- сказал Иван Петрович, встречая его на крыльце. -- Очень, очень рад видеть такого приятного гостя. Пойдёмте, я представлю вас своей благоверной. Я говорю ему, Верочка, -- продолжал он, представляя доктора жене, -- я ему говорю, что он не имеет никакого римского права сидеть у себя в больнице, он должен отдавать свой досуг обществу. Не правда ли, душенька?
-- Садитесь здесь, -- говорила Вера Иосифовна, сажая гостя возле себя. -- Вы можете ухаживать за мной. Мой муж ревнив, это Отелло, но ведь мы постараемся вести себя так, что он ничего не заметит.
"How do you do, if you please?" said Ivan Petrovich, meeting him on the steps. "Delighted, delighted to see such an agreeable visitor. Come along; I will introduce you to my better half. I tell him, Verochka," he went on, as he presented the doctor to his wife --"I tell him that he has no human right* to sit at home in a hospital; he ought to devote his leisure to society. Oughtn't he, darling?"
"Sit here," said Vera Iosifovna, making her visitor sit down beside her. "You can dance attendance on me. My husband is jealous -- he is an Othello; but we will try and behave so well that he will notice nothing." (chapter I)
*“he has no Roman law/right” in the original (in Russian pravo means “law” and “right”).
Duchess of Payn, of Great Payn and Mone, Queen Disa (the wife of Charles the Beloved) seems to be a cross between Leonardo’s Mona Lisa and Desdemona, Othello’s wife in Shakespeare’s Othello. Voskresshie bogi. Leonardo da Vinchi ("Resurrected Gods. Leonardo da Vinci," 1900) is a novel by Merezhkovski, the second part of his Christ and Antichrist trilogy. Describing a conversation at the Faculty Club, Kinbote compares Gerald Emerald (a young instructor at Wordsmith University who gives Gradus, Shade's murderer, a lift to Kinbote's rented house in New Wye) to a disciple in Leonardo's Last Supper:
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, our 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)