The poet in VN's novel Pale Fire (1962), John Shade is killed by Jakob Gradus (a member of the Shadows, a regicidal organization) on the evening of July 21, 1959. The Battle of the Pyramids, also known as the Battle of Embabeh, was fought on 21 July 1798 during the French invasion of Egypt and Syria. Occurring near the village of Embabeh, Ottoman Egypt, the battle was named by Napoleon after the distant Great Pyramid of Giza. Napoleon Bonaparte's last battle was the Battle of Waterloo (fought on Sunday, June 18, 1815). In Chekhov's short novel Drama na okhote ("The Shooting Party," 1884) Kamyshev (the narrator and main character) mentions a soldier who was wounded at Waterloo, went mad, and afterwards assured everybody—and believed it himself—that he had died at Waterloo, and that what was now considered to be him was only his shade, a reflection of the past:
Самоубийцей называется тот, кто, под влиянием психической боли или угнетаемой невыносимым страданием, пускает себе пулю в лоб; для тех же, кто дает волю своим жалким, опошляющим душу страстям в святые дни весны и молодости, нет названия на человеческом языке. За пулей следует могильный покой, за погубленной молодостью следуют годы скорби и мучительных воспоминаний. Кто профанировал свою весну, тот понимает теперешнее состояние моей души. Я еще не стар, не сед, но я уже не живу. Психиатры рассказывают, что один солдат, раненный при Ватерлоо, сошел с ума и впоследствии уверял всех и сам в то верил, что он убит при Ватерлоо, а что то, что теперь считают за него, есть только его тень, отражение прошлого. Нечто похожее на эту полусмерть переживаю теперь и я...
A man who under the influence of mental pain or unbearably oppressive suffering sends a bullet through his own head is called a suicide; but for those who give freedom to their pitiful, soul-debasing passions in the holy days of spring and youth, there is no name in man's vocabulary. After the bullet follows the peace of the grave: ruined youth is followed by years of grief and painful recollections. He who has profaned his spring will understand the present condition of my soul. I am not yet old, or grey, but I no longer live. Psychiatrists tell us that a soldier, who was wounded at Waterloo, went mad, and afterwards assured everybody—and believed it himself—that he had died at Waterloo, and that what was now considered to be him was only his shade, a reflection of the past. I am now experiencing something resembling this semi-death.… (Chapter V)
In the preceding chapter of Chekhov's short novel Kamyshev tells his host, Count Karneyev, that he should put up a signboard: ‘Madhouse’ over the gate of his estate and calls it "a real Bedlam:"
Через минуту я сидел с графом в карете, слушал раскаты грома и злился...
— Выжил-таки нас из домика этот Петр Егорыч, чёрт его возьми! — ворчал я, не на шутку рассердясь. — Так и не дал разглядеть эту Оленьку! Я не съел бы ее у него... Старый дурак! Всё время от ревности лопался... Он влюблен в эту девочку...
— Да, да, да... Представь, и я это заметил! И не впускал он нас в домик только из ревности и за экипажем послал из ревности... Ха-ха!
— Седина в бороду, а бес в ребро... Впрочем, брат, трудно не влюбиться в эту девушку в красном, видя ее каждый день такой, какой мы ее сегодня видели! Чертовски хорошенькая! Только не по его рылу она... Он должен это понимать и не ревновать так эгоистически... Люби, но не мешай и другим, тем более, что знаешь, что она не про тебя писана... Этакий ведь старый болван!
— Помнишь, как он вскипел, когда Кузьма за чаем упомянул ее имя? — хихикнул граф. — Я думал, что он всех нас побьет тогда... Так горячо не заступаются за честное имя женщины, к которой равнодушны...
— Заступаются, брат... Но дело не в этом... Важно вот что... Если он нами так командовал сегодня, то что выделывает он с маленькими людьми, с теми, которые находятся в его распоряжении! Небось, ключникам, экономам, охотникам и прочим малым лира сего и подступиться к ней не дает! Любовь и ревность делают человека несправедливым, бессердечным, человеконенавистником... Держу пари, что он заел уж из-за этой Оленьки не одного служащего под его начальством. Умно поэтому сделаешь, если будешь давать поменьше веры его жалобам на служащих и докладам о необходимости изгнания того или другого. Вообще на время ограничь его власть... Любовь пройдет — ну, тогда нечего будет бояться. Он добрый и честный малый...
— А как тебе нравится ее папенька? — засмеялся граф.
— Сумасшедший... Ему нужно в сумасшедшем доме сидеть, а не лесами заведовать... Вообще не солжешь, если на воротах своей усадьбы повесишь вывеску: «Сумасшедший дом»... У тебя здесь настоящий Бедлам! Лесничий этот, Сычиха, Франц, помешанный на картах, влюбленный старик, экзальтированная девушка, спившийся граф... чего лучше?
— А ведь этот лесничий жалованье получает! Как же он служит, если он сумасшедший?
— Очевидно, Урбенин держит его только из-за дочери... Урбенин говорит, что на Николая Ефимыча находит почти каждое лето... Но это едва ли... Не каждое лето, а постоянно болен этот лесничий... К счастью, твой Петр Егорыч редко лжет и выдает себя, если соврет что-нибудь...
— В прошлом году Урбенин уведомлял меня, что старый лесничий Ахметьев едет в монахи на Афон, и рекомендовал мне «опытного, честного и заслуженного» Скворцова... Я, конечно, дал согласие, как и всегда его даю. Письма ведь не лица: не выдают себя, если лгут.
A minute later I was sitting with the Count in the carriage, listening to the peals of thunder and feeling very angry.
“We've been nicely turned out of the little house by that Pyotr Egorych, the devil take him!” I grumbled, getting really angry. “So he's prevented us from examining Olenka properly! I would not have eaten her!… The old fool! The whole time he was bursting with jealousy.… He's in love with that girl.…”
“Yes, yes, yes.… Would you believe it, I noticed that, too! He would not let us go into the house from jealousy. And he sent for the carriage only from jealousy.… Ha, ha, ha!”
“The later love comes the more it burns.… Besides, brother, it's difficult not to fall in love with this girl in red, if one sees her every day as we saw her to-day! She's devilish pretty! But she's not for his net.… He ought to understand it and not be jealous of others so egoistically.… Why can't he love and not stand in the way of others, all the more as he must know she's not destined for him?… What an old blockhead!”
“Do you remember how enraged he was when Kuz'ma mentioned her name at tea-time?” the Count sniggered. “I thought he was going to thrash us all.… A man does not defend the good fame of a woman so hotly if he's indifferent to her.…”
“Some men will, brother.… But this is not the question.… What's important is this.… If he can command us in the way he has done to-day, what does he do with the small people, with those who are at his disposal? Doubtless, the stewards, the butlers, the huntsmen and the rest of the small fry are prevented by him from even approaching her! Love and jealousy make a man unjust, heartless, misanthropical.… I don't mind betting that for the sake of this Olenka he has worried more than one of the people under his control. It will, therefore, be wise on your part if you put less trust in his complaints of the people in your service and his demands for the dismissal of this or that one. In general, to limit his power for a time.… Love will pass—well, and then there will be nothing to fear. He's a kind and honest fellow.…”
“And what do you think of her papa?” the Count asked, laughing.
“A madman.… He ought to be in a madhouse and not looking after forests. In general you won't be far from the truth if you put up a signboard: ‘Madhouse’ over the gate of your estate.… You have a real Bedlam here! This forester, the Scops-Owl, Franz, who is mad on cards, this old man in love, an excitable girl, a drunken Count.… What do you want more?”
“Why, this forester receives a salary! How can he do his work if he is mad?”
“Urbenin evidently only keeps him for his daughter's sake.… Urbenin says that Nikolai Efimych has these attacks every summer.… That's not likely.… This forester is ill, not every summer, but always.… By good luck, your Pyotr Egorych seldom lies, and he gives himself away when he does lie about anything.…”
“Last year Urbenin informed me that our old forester Akhmet'ev was going to become a monk on Mount Athos, and he recommended me to take the ‘experienced, honest and worthy Skvortsov’ … I, of course, agreed as I always do. Letters are not faces: they do not give themselves away when they lie.” (Chapter IV)
In his first imaginary dialogue with Koncheyev (the rival poet) Fyodor Konstantinovich Godunov-Cherdyntsev, the narrator and main character in VN's novel Dar ("The Gift," 1937), calls Dostoevski's writings obratnoe prevrashchenie Bedlama v Vifleem (Bedlam turned back into Bethlehem):
Они простились. Фу, какой ветер…
«…Но постойте, постойте, я вас провожу. Вы, поди, полунощник, и не мне, стать, учить вас черному очарованию каменных прогулок. Так вы не слушали бедного чтеца?»
«Вначале только – и то вполуха. Однако я вовсе не думаю, что это было так уж скверно».
«Вы рассматривали персидские миниатюры. Не заметили ли вы там одной – разительное сходство! – из коллекции петербургской публичной библиотеки – ее писал, кажется, Riza Abbasi, лет триста тому назад: на коленях, в борьбе с драконятами, носатый, усатый… Сталин».
«Да, это, кажется, самый крепкий. Кстати, мне сегодня попалось в “Газете”, – не знаю уж, чей грех: “На Тебе, Боже, что мне негоже”. Я в этом усматриваю обожествление калик».
«Или память о каиновых жертвоприношениях».
«Сойдемся на плутнях звательного падежа, – и поговорим лучше “о Шиллере, о подвигах, о славе”, – если позволите маленькую амальгаму. Итак, я читал сборник ваших очень замечательных стихов. Собственно, это только модели ваших же будущих романов».
«Да, я мечтаю когда-нибудь произвести такую прозу, где бы “мысль и музыка сошлись, как во сне складки жизни”».
«Благодарю за учтивую цитату. Вы как – по-настоящему любите литературу?»
«Полагаю, что да. Видите ли, по-моему, есть только два рода книг: настольный и подстольный. Либо я люблю писателя истово, либо выбрасываю его целиком».
«Э, да вы строги. Не опасно ли это? Не забудьте, что как-никак вся русская литература, литература одного века, занимает – после самого снисходительного отбора – не более трех – трех с половиной тысяч печатных листов, а из этого числа едва ли половина достойна не только полки, но и стола. При такой количественной скудости, нужно мириться с тем, что наш пегас пег, что не все в дурном писателе дурно, а в добром не все добро».
«Дайте мне, пожалуй, примеры, чтобы я мог опровергнуть их».
«Извольте: если раскрыть Гончарова или…»
«Стойте! Неужто вы желаете помянуть добрым словом Обломова? “Россию погубили два Ильича”, – так что ли? Или вы собираетесь поговорить о безобразной гигиене тогдашних любовных падений? Кринолин и сырая скамья? Или может быть – стиль? Помните, как у Райского в минуты задумчивости переливается в губах розовая влага? – точно так же, скажем, как герои Писемского в минуту сильного душевного волнения рукой растирают себе грудь»?
«Тут я вас уловлю. Разве вы не читали у того же Писемского, как лакеи в передней во время бала перекидываются страшно грязным, истоптанным плисовым женским сапогом? Ага! Вообще, коли уж мы попали в этот второй ряд… Что вы скажете, например, о Лескове?»
«Да что ж… У него в слоге попадаются забавные англицизмы, вроде “это была дурная вещь” вместо “плохо дело”. Но всякие там нарочитые “аболоны”… – нет, увольте, мне не смешно. А многословие… матушки! “Соборян” без урона можно было бы сократить до двух газетных подвалов. И я не знаю, что хуже, – его добродетельные британцы или добродетельные попы».
«Ну, а все-таки. Галилейский призрак, прохладный и тихий, в длинной одежде цвета зреющей сливы? Или пасть пса с синеватым, точно напомаженным, зевом? Или молния, ночью освещающая подробно комнату, – вплоть до магнезии, осевшей на серебряной ложке?»
«Отмечаю, что у него латинское чувство синевы: lividus. Лев Толстой, тот был больше насчет лилового, – и какое блаженство пройтись с грачами по пашне босиком! Я, конечно, не должен был их покупать».
«Вы правы, жмут нестерпимо. Но мы перешли в первый ряд. Разве там вы не найдете слабостей? “Русалка”…»
«Не трогайте Пушкина: это золотой фонд нашей литературы. А вон там, в Чеховской корзине, провиант на много лет вперед, да щенок, который делает “уюм, уюм, уюм”, да бутылка крымского».
«Погодите, вернемся к дедам. Гоголь? Я думаю, что мы весь состав его пропустим. Тургенев? Достоевский?»
«Обратное превращение Бедлама в Вифлеем, – вот вам Достоевский. “Оговорюсь”, как выражается Мортус. В Карамазовых есть круглый след от мокрой рюмки на садовом столе, это сохранить стоит, – если принять ваш подход».
They said good-by. “Brr, what a wind!”
“Wait, wait a minute though—I’ll see you home. Surely you’re a night owl like me and I don’t have to expound to you on the black enchantment of stone promenades. So you didn’t listen to our poor lecturer?”
“Only at the beginning, and then only with half an ear. However, I don’t think it was quite as bad as that.”
“You were examining Persian miniatures in a book. Did you not notice one—an amazing resemblance!—from the collection of the St. Petersburg Public Library—done, I think, by Riza Abbasi, say about three hundred years ago: that man kneeling, struggling with baby dragons, big-nosed, mustachioed—Stalin!”
“Yes, I think that one is the strongest of the lot. By the way, I’ve read your very remarkable collection of poems. Actually, of course, they are but the models of your future novels.”
“Yes, some day I’m going to produce prose in which ‘thought and music are conjoined as are the folds of life in sleep.’ “
“Thanks for the courteous quotation. You have a genuine love of literature, don’t you?”
“I believe so. You see, the way I look at it, there are only two kinds of books: bedside and wastebasket. Either I love a writer fervently, or throw him out entirely.”
“A bit severe, isn’t it? And a bit dangerous. Don’t forget that the whole of Russian literature is the literature of one century and, after the most lenient eliminations, takes up no more than three to three and a half thousand printed sheets, and scarcely one-half of this is worthy of the bookshelf, to say nothing of the bedside table. With such quantitative scantiness we must resign ourselves to the fact that our Pegasus is piebald, that not everything about a bad writer is bad, and not all about a good one good.”
“Perhaps you will give me some examples so that I can refute them.”
“Certainly: if you open Goncharov or—”
“Stop right there! Don’t tell me you have a kind word for Oblomov—that first ‘Ilyich’ who was the ruin of Russia—and the joy of social critics? Or you want to discuss the miserable hygienic conditions of Victorian seductions? Crinoline and damp garden bench? Or perhaps the style? What about his ‘Precipice’ where Rayski at moments of pensiveness is shown with ‘rosy moisture shimmering between his lips’?—which reminds me somehow of Pisemski’s protagonists, each of whom under the stress of violent emotion ‘massages his chest with his hand!’ ”
“Here I shall trap you. Aren’t there some good things in the same Pisemski? For example, those footmen in the vestibule, during a ball, who play catch with a lady’s velveteen boot, horribly muddy and worn. Aha! And since we are speaking of second-rank authors, what do you think of Leskov?”
“Well, let me see…. Amusing Anglicisms crop up in his style, such as ‘eto byla durnaya veshch’ [this was a bad thing] instead of simply ‘plokho delo.’ As to his contrived punning distortions—No, spare me, I don’t find them funny. And his verbosity—Good God! His ‘Soboryane’ could easily be condensed to two newspaper feuilletons . And I don’t know which is worse—his virtuous Britishers or his virtuous clerics.”
“And yet… how about his image of Jesus ‘the ghostly Galilean, cool and gentle, in a robe the color of ripening plum’? Or his description of a yawning dog’s mouth with ‘its bluish palate as if smeared with pomade’? Or that lightning of his that at night illumines the room in detail, even to the magnesium oxide left on a silver spoon?”
“Yes, I grant you he has a Latin feeling for blueness: lividus . Lyov Tolstoy, on the other hand, preferred violet shades and the bliss of stepping barefoot with the rooks upon the rich dark soil of plowed fields! Of course, I should never have bought them.”
“You’re right, they pinch unbearably. But we have moved up to the first rank. Don’t tell me you can’t find weak spots there too? In such stories as ‘The Blizzard’—
“Leave Pushkin alone: he is the gold reserve of our literature. And over there is Chekhov’s hamper, which contains enough food for years to come, and a whimpering puppy, and a bottle of Crimean wine.”
“Wait, let’s go back to the forebears. Gogol? I think we can accept his ‘entire organism.’ Turgenev? Dostoevski?”
“Bedlam turned back into Bethlehem—that’s Dostoevski for you. ‘With one reservation,’ as our friend Mortus says. In the ‘Karamazovs’ there is somewhere a circular mark left by a wet wine glass on an outdoor table. That’s worth saving if one uses your approach.” (Chapter One)
The characters in The Gift include the Chernyshevski couple, Alexander Yakovlevich (who went mad after the suicide of his son Yasha) and his wife Alexandra Yakovlevna. They have the same name and patronymic as goluboy vorishka (the bashful chiseller) and his wife in Ilf and Petrov’s novel Dvenadtsat’ stul’yev (“The Twelve Chairs,” 1928):
Завхоз 2-го дома Старсобеса был застенчивый ворюга. Всё существо его протестовало против краж, но не красть он не мог. Он крал, и ему было стыдно. Крал он постоянно, постоянно стыдился, и поэтому его хорошо бритые щёчки всегда горели румянцем смущения, стыдливости, застенчивости и конфуза. Завхоза звали Александром Яковлевичем, а жену его – Александрой Яковлевной. Он называл её Сашхен, она звала его Альхен. Свет не видывал ещё такого голубого воришки, как Александр Яковлевич.
The Assistant Warden of the Second Home of Stargorod Social Security Administration was a shy little thief. His whole being protested against stealing, yet it was impossible for him not to steal. He stole and was ashamed of himself. He stole constantly and was constantly ashamed of himself, which was why his smoothly shaven cheeks always burned with a blush of confusion, shame, bashfulness and embarrassment. The assistant warden's name was Alexander Yakovlevich, and his wife's name was Alexandra Yakovlevna. He used to call her Sashchen, and she used to call him Alchen. The world has never seen such a bashful chiseller as Alexander Yakovlevich. (chapter VIII “The Bashful Chiseller”)
According to Kinbote (Shade’s mad commentator who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla), Shade listed Dostoevski and Chekhov among Russian humorists, along with Ilf and Petrov:
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)
Balthasar, Prince of Loam (as Kinbote dubs his black gardener who saves his master's life by dealing Gradus a tremendous blow on the head with his spade) brings to mind Balthasar, one of the three Magi ("wise men from the East") who were inspired by the Star of Bethlehem to travel to Jeruasalem. According to Kinbote, he writes his commentary, index and foreword (in that order) to Shade's poem in Cedarn, Utana. But it seems that he actually writes them in a madhouse near Quebec, in the same sanatorium where Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Lolita, 1955) writes his poem "Wanted" after Lolita's escape from the Elphinstone hospital. According to Humbert, his photogenic mother died in a freak accident (picnic, lightning) when he was three:
I was born in 1910, in Paris. My father was a gentle, easy-going person, a salad of racial genes: a Swiss citizen, of mixed French and Austrian descent, with a dash of the Danube in his veins. I am going to pass around in a minute some lovely, glossy-blue picture-postcards. He owned a luxurious hotel on the Riviera. His father and two grandfathers had sold wine, jewels and silk, respectively. At thirty he married an English girl, daughter of Jerome Dunn, the alpinist, and granddaughter of two Dorset parsons, experts in obscure subjectspaleopedology and Aeolian harps, respectively. My very photogenic mother died in a freak accident (picnic, lightning) when I was three, and, save for a pocket of warmth in the darkest past, nothing of her subsists within the hollows and dells of memory, over which, if you can still stand my style (I am writing under observation), the sun of my infancy had set: surely, you all know those redolent remnants of day suspended, with the midges, about some hedge in bloom or suddenly entered and traversed by the rambler, at the bottom of a hill, in the summer dusk; a furry warmth, golden midges. (1.2)
In Chekhov’s Drama na okhote Olenka tells Kamyshev that her mother was killed by a storm and that people killed in storms or in war, and women who have died after a difficult labour, go to paradise:
— Вы боитесь грозы? — спросил я Оленьку.
Та прижала щеку к круглому плечу и поглядела на меня детски доверчиво.
— Боюсь, — прошептала она, немного подумав. — Гроза убила у меня мою мать... В газетах даже писали об этом... Моя мать шла по полю и плакала... Ей очень горько жилось на этом свете... Бог сжалился над ней и убил со своим небесным электричеством.
— Откуда вы знаете, что там электричество?
— Я училась... Вы знаете? Убитые грозой и на войне и умершие от тяжелых родов попадают в рай... Этого нигде не написано в книгах, но это верно. Мать моя теперь в раю. Мне кажется, что и меня убьет гроза когда-нибудь и что и я буду в раю... Вы образованный человек?
— Да...
— Стало быть, вы не будете смеяться... Мне вот как хотелось бы умереть. Одеться в самое дорогое, модное платье, какое я на днях видела на здешней богачке, помещице Шеффер, надеть на руки браслеты... Потом стать на самый верх Каменной Могилы и дать себя убить молнии так, чтобы все люди видели... Страшный гром, знаете, и конец...
— Какая дикая фантазия! — усмехнулся я, заглядывая в глаза, полные священного ужаса перед страшной, но эффектной смертью. — А в обыкновенном платье вы не хотите умирать?
— Нет... — покачала головой Оленька. — И так, чтобы все люди видели.
— Ваше теперешнее платье лучше всяких модных и дорогих платьев... Оно идет к вам. В нем вы похожи на красный цветок зеленого леса.
— Нет, это неправда! — наивно вздохнула Оленька. — Это платье дешевое, не может быть оно хорошим.
‘Are you afraid of thunderstorms?’ I asked Olenka.
She pressed her cheek to her round shoulder and looked at me with the trustfulness of a child.
‘Yes I am,’ she whispered after a moment’s thought. ‘My mother was killed by a storm. It was even in the papers… Mother was crossing an open field and she was crying. She led a really wretched life in this world. God took pity on her and killed her with his heavenly electricity.’
‘How do you know there’s electricity in heaven?’
‘I’ve learned about it. Did you know that people killed in storms or in war, and women who have died after a difficult labour, go to paradise! You won’t find that in any books, but it’s true. My mother’s in paradise now. I think that one day I’ll be killed in a storm and I too will go to paradise. Are you an educated man?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then you won’t laugh at me. Now, this is how I’d like to die. To put on the most fashionable, expensive dress – like the one I saw that rich, local landowner Sheffer wearing the other day – and deck my arms with bracelets… Then to stand on the very top of Stone Grave and let myself be struck by lightning, in full view of everyone. A terrifying thunderclap, you know, and then – the end!’
‘What a wild fantasy!’ I laughed, peering into those eyes that were filled with holy terror at the thought of a terrible but dramatic death. ‘So, you don’t want to die in an ordinary dress?’
‘No,’ replied Olenka, with a shake of the head. ‘To die, so that everyone can see me!’
‘The frock you’re wearing now is nicer than any fashionable and expensive dress. It suits you. It makes you look like a red flower from the green woods.’
‘No, that’s not true,’ Olenka innocently sighed. ‘It’s a cheap dress, it can’t possibly be nice.’ (chapter IV)
Chekhov's short novel Drama na okhote brings to mind Prival Zacharovannykh Okhotnikov (The Enchanted Hunters in the Russian Lolita, 1967), a hotel in Briceland where Humbert and Lolita spend their first night together. According to John Ray, Jr. (the author of the foreword to Humbert’s manuscript), Mrs. “Richard F. Schiller” (Lolita’s married name) outlived Humbert (who had died in legal captivity, of coronary thrombosis, on November 16, 1952) by forty days and died in childbed, giving birth to a stillborn girl, on Christmas Day 1952, in Gray Star, a settlement in the remotest Northwest:
For the benefit of old-fashioned readers who wish to follow the destinies of “real” people beyond the “true” story, a few details may be given as received from Mr. “Windmuller,” of “Ramsdale,” who desires his identity suppressed so that “the long shadows of this sorry and sordid business” should not reach the community to which he is proud to belong. His daughter, “Louise,” is by now a college sophomore. “Mona Dahl” is a student in Paris. “Rita” has recently married the proprietor of a hotel in Florida. Mrs. “Richard F. Schiller” died in childbed, giving birth to a stillborn girl, on Christmas Day 1952, in Gray Star, a settlement in the remotest Northwest. ‘Vivian Darkbloom’ has written a biography, ‘My Cue,’ to be published shortly, and critics who have perused the manuscript call it her best book. The caretakers of the various cemeteries involved report that no ghosts walk.
But it seems that, actually, Lolita dies of ague in the Elphinstone hospital on July 4, 1949, and everything what happens after her sudden death (Lolita's escape from the hospital with Quilty, Humbert's affair with Rita, Lolita's marriage and pregnancy, and the murder of Clare Quilty) was invented by Humbert Humbert (whose "real" name is John Ray, Jr.). In Pale Fire, July 5 is Shade's, Kinbote's and Gradus' birthday (while Shade was born in 1898, Kinbote and Gradus were born in 1915). The poet Shade, his commentator Kinbote and his murderer Gradus seem to represent three different aspects of one and the same person whose "real" name is Botkin. 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’s "real" name). Nadezhda means in Russian "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; on 19 Oct. 1888 Chekhov was awarded the Pushkin Prize for his story The Steppe), Botkin, like Count Vorontsov (a target of Pushkin’s epigrams, “half-milord, half-merchant, etc.”), will be full again.