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more competent Gradus, St. Augustine & psychopompos in Pale Fire
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At the end of his Commentary to Shade's poem Kinbote (one of the three main
characters in VN's novel Pale Fire, 1962) mentions "a bigger, more
respectable, more competent Gradus" whom he will face sooner or later:
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)
"A bigger, more respectable, more competent Gradus" brings to mind the real
Inspector whose arrival is announced at the end of Gogol's play Revizor
("The Inspector," 1836):
Жандарм. Приехавший по именному повелению из Петербурга чиновник требует вас
сей же час к себе. Он остановился в гостинице.
Произнесённые слова поражают как громом всех. Звук изумления единодушно
взлетает из дамских уст; вся группа, вдруг переменивши положение, остаётся в
окаменении.
GENDARME. The Inspector-General sent by Imperial command has arrived, and
requests your attendance at once. He awaits you in the inn.
(They are thunderstruck at this announcement. The ladies utter simultaneous
ejaculations of amazement; the whole group suddenly shift their positions
and remain as if petrified.)
In his book Gogol' i chyort ("Gogol and the Devil," 1906) Merezhkovski
speaks of the ending of Gogol's play, quotes Gogol's words Revizor bez
kontsa ("The Inspector is not finished") and several times mentions Grad
(City):
<По повелению из Петербурга> - вот что оглушает, как громом, всех, не только
действующих лиц и зрителей, но, кажется, и самого Гоголя. Повеление из
Петербурга? Но откуда же, как не из Петербурга - этого самого призрачного,
туманного, <фантастического из всех городов земного шара>, ползёт и
расстилается по всей России тот <ошеломляющий туман>, та страшная мгла
жизни, <египетские тьмы>, чертово марево, в которых ничего не видно, видны
<какие-то свиные рыла вместо лиц, а больше ничего>? Оба ревизора, первый и
второй, простой <елистратишка> и настоящий <генералиссимус>, не одинаково ли
законные дети одной и той же <табели о рангах>, не плоды ли одного и того же
<петербургского периода> русской истории?
Да и весь этот чудовищный уездный город не часть ли всероссийского Града,
гражданства, не отражение ли крошечное, обратное, но совершенно точное, как
в капле воды, самого Петербурга? Петербург вызвал из небытия этот город. По
какому же праву, с какой высоты будет он судить и казнить его? В самом
Петербурге гоголевских времен, что, собственно, произошло такого, что могло
бы разразиться над этим маленьким Содомом не хлестаковским, а действительно
Божиим громом? Что могло бы явиться среди этих <свиных рыл>, не как лицо
жандарма, всё-таки похожее отчасти на лицо Держиморды, а как действительно
человеческое лицо Божеского правосудия?
Нет, <Ревизор> не кончен, не сознан до конца самим Гоголем и не понят
зрителями; узел завязки развязан условно, сценически, но не религиозно. Одна
комедия кончена, начинается или должна бы начаться другая, несколько более
смешная и страшная. Мы её так и не увидим на сцене: но и до сей поры
разыгрывается она за сценою, в жизни. Это сознаёт отчасти Гоголь. <Ревизор
без конца>, - говорит он. Мы могли бы прибавить: Ревизор бесконечен. Это
смех не какой-либо частный, временный, исторический, а именно - бесконечный
смех русской совести над русским Градом. (Part One, III)
According to Merezhkovski, Gogol's play (with the epigraph "There's no use
grumbling at the mirror if your own mug is crooked. A Russian proverb") is
the infinite laughter of Russian conscience over Russian Grad. Merezhkovski
calls Khlestakov (the main character in "The Inspector") "an artificial man,
homunculus who jumped out of Peter's table of ranks as of an alchemical
phial:"
Он весь до мозга костей - петербургский безземельный <пролетарий>,
безродный, искусственный человек - гомункул, выскочивший из <петровской
табели о рангах>, как из алхимической склянки. (Part One, II)
In his book on Gogol (1944) VN points out that there are many homunculi
among Gogol's characters. Shade's murderer, Gradus is also a homunculus.
Khlestakov is an impostor. In his book on Gogol Merezhkovski wonders if
Khlestakov, samozvanets (the impostor), has enough courage to call himself
samoderzhets (an autocrat):
До чего бы дошёл он, если бы не поскользнулся? Назвал ли бы себя, как всякий
самозванец, самодержцем? А, может быть, в наши дни не удовольствовался бы и
царственным, никаким, вообще, человеческим именем, и уже прямо назвал бы
себя <сверхчеловеком>, <человекобогом>? Сказал бы то, что у Достоевского
чёрт советует сказать Ивану Карамазову: <Где станет Бог - там уже место
Божие; где стану я, там сейчас же будет первое место - и всё позволено>!
(Part One, II)
Shade's mad commentator, Kinbote imagines that he is Charles the Beloved,
the last self-exiled king of Zembla (a distant Northern land).
Merezhkovski quotes Ivan Karamazov's words in Dostoevski's novel Brothers
Karamazov (1880): vsyo pozvoleno (all is allowed). In Canto Three of his
poem Shade describes IPH (a lay Institute of Preparation For the Hereafter)
and mentions Fra Karamazov mumbling his inept all is allowed:
In later years it started to decline:
Buddhism took root. A medium smuggled in
Pale jellies and a floating mandolin.
Fra Karamazov, mumbling his inept
All is allowed, into some classes crept;
And to fulfill the fish wish of the womb,
A school of Freudians headed for the tomb. (ll. 638-644)
The phrase russkiy Grad (Russian City) used by Merezhkovski in the sense
"Russian society" brings to mind "Leningradus" (as in his note to Line 171
Kinbote mockingly calls Gradus) and O Grade Bozhyem, the Russian title of
St. Augustine's book De Civitate Dei ("The City of God"). Merezhkovski is
the author of Pavel. Avgustin ("St. Paul and St. Augustine," 1936). In a
theological disputation with Shade Kinbote quotes St. Augustine:
SHADE: There is always a psychopompos around the corner, isn't there?
KINBOTE: Not around that corner, John. With no Providence the soul must rely
on the dust of its husk, on the experience gathered in the course of
corporeal confinement, and cling childishly to small-town principles, local
by-laws and a personality consisting mainly of the shadows of its own prison
bars. Such an idea is not to be entertained one instant by the religious
mind. How much more intelligent it is--even from a proud infidel's point of
view!--to accept God's Presence--a faint phosphorescence at first, a pale
light in the dimness of bodily life, and a dazzling radiance after it? I
too, I too, my dear John, have been assailed in my time by religious doubts.
The church helped me to fight them off. It also helped me not to ask too
much, not to demand too clear an image of what is unimaginable. St.
Augustine said--
SHADE: Why must one always quote St. Augustine to me?
KINBOTE: As St. Augustine said, "One can know what God is not; one cannot
know what He is." I think I know what He is not: He is not despair, He is
not terror, He is not the earth in one's rattling throat, not the black hum
in one's ears fading to nothing in nothing. I know also that the world could
not have occurred fortuitously and that somehow Mind is involved as a main
factor in the making of the universe. In trying to find the right name for
that Universal Mind, or First Cause, or the Absolute, or Nature, I submit
that the Name of God has priority. (note to Line 549)
In his essay Zemlya vo rtu ("The Earth in the Mouth," 1906) Merezhkovski
calls Russia zemlya svyatykh rabov ("the land of saintly slaves"):
"Природа их такова, -- говорит Аристотель о варварах, -- что они не могут и
не должны жить иначе, как в рабстве: quod in Servitute boni, in libertate
mali sunt".
В свободе -- грешные, в рабстве -- святые.
Святые рабы. Святая Русь -- земля святых рабов.
In his book De Trinitate ("On the Trinity") St. Augustine says:
For when we aspire from this depth to that height, it is a step towards no
small knowledge, if, before we can know what God is, we can already know
what He is not. (8.2)
One wonders if in the original St. Augustine uses the word gradus ("step" in
Latin). The Christian doctrine of the Trinity holds that God is three
consubstantial persons or hypostases-the Father, the Son (Jesus Christ), and
the Holy Spirit. Shade, Kinbote and Gradus seem to represent three different
aspects of Botkin's personality. 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 ("Hope," 1894) is a poem by Merezhkovski. A member of
troebratstvo (a bond of three), Merezhkovski is the author of Tayna tryokh:
Egipet i Vavilon ("The Secret of Three: Egypt and Babylon," 1925).
In Greek mythology, psychopompos (guide of the souls) is a creature who
escorts a newly deceased soul from Earth to the afterlife. Shade's
psychopompos seems to be Vanessa atalanta, a butterfly that appears at the
end of his poem:
But it's not bedtime yet. The sun attains
Old Dr. Sutton's last two windowpanes.
The man must be--what? Eighty? Eighty-two?
Was twice my age the year I married you.
Where are you? In the garden. I can see
Part of your shadow near the shagbark tree.
Somewhere horseshoes are being tossed. Click. Clunk.
(Leaning against its lamppost like a drunk.)
A dark Vanessa with crimson band
Wheels in the low sun, settles on the sand
And shows its ink-blue wingtips flecked with white.
And through the flowing shade and ebbing light
A man, unheedful of the butterfly--
Some neighbor's gardener, I guess--goes by
Trundling an empty barrow up the lane. (ll. 985-999)
Like Gogol's Inspector, Shade's poem is not finished. It seems that, to be
completed, it needs not only Line 1000 (identical to Line 1: "I was the
shadow of the waxwing slain"), but also a coda (Line 1001: "By its own
double in the windowpane"). In his fragment Rim ("Rome," 1842) Gogol
describes a carnival in Rome and mentions the great dead poet (il gran poeta
morto) and his sonnet with a coda (sonetto colla coda):
Внимание толпы занял какой-то смельчак, шагавший на ходулях вравне с домами,
рискуя всякую минуту быть сбитым с ног и грохнуться насмерть о мостовую. Но
об этом, кажется, у него не было забот. Он тащил на плечах чучело великана,
придерживая его одной рукою, неся в другой написанный на бумаге сонет с
приделанным к нему бумажным хвостом, какой бывает у бумажного змея, и крича
во весь голос: <Ecco il gran poeta morto. Ecco il suo sonetto colla coda!>
In a footnote Gogol says that in Italian poetry there is a kind of poem
known as sonnet with the tail (con la coda) and explains what a coda is:
В итальянской поэзии существует род стихотворенья, известного под именем
сонета с хвостом (con la coda), - когда мысль не вместилась и ведет за собою
прибавление, которое часто бывает длиннее самого сонета.
Gogol points out that a coda can be longer than the sonnet itself. Not only
(the unwritten) Line 1001 of Shade's poem, but also Kinbote's entire
Foreword, Commentary and Index seem be a coda of Shade's poem. Kinbote's
Foreword to Pale Fire is dated October 19, 1959 (the anniversary of
Pushkin's Lyceum). On this day Kinbote completes his work on Shade's poem
and commits suicide, meeting a bigger, more respectable, more competent
Gradus. There is a hope that, after Kinbote's death, Botkin will be full
again.
Btw., in Jungian psychology, the psychopomp is a mediator between the
unconscious and conscious realms. It is symbolically personified in dreams
as a wise man or woman, or sometimes as a helpful animal. At the end of his
poem Shade mentions old Dr. Sutton's last two windowpanes. To be completed,
Shade's poem needs two lines. In the finished version of Shade's poem the
last word is "windowpane." The first word of Shade's poem is "I." As pointed
out by Merezhkovski, ya ("I") is Khlestakov's favorite word:
Ведь это Хлестаков почти и говорит, по крайней мере, хочет сказать, а если
не умеет, то только потому, что слов таких ещё нет: я сам себя знаю, сам: я,
я, я!.. От этого исступленного самоутверждения личности один шаг до
самообожествления, которое в больной голове Поприщина даёт сумасшедший, но
всё ещё сравнительно скромный вывод: <я король испанский Фердинанд VIII>, а
в метафизической голове Ницше и нигилиста Кирилова, героя <Бесов>, - уже
окончательный, несколько более величественный вывод: <Если нет Бога, то я -
Бог!> (Part One, II)
According to Merezhkovski, from Khlestakov to Poprishchin (the main
character in Gogol's Notes of a Madman, 1835, who imagines that he is the
king of Spain Ferdinand VIII) it is only one step (gradus). The conclusion
drawn by Kirillov (a character in Dostoevski's "The Possessed," 1872), esli
net Boga, to ya - Bog ("if God does not exist, then I'm God"), brings to
mind the last line of Lermontov's poem Net, ya ne Bayron, ya drugoy: ("No,
I'm not Byron, I'm another:" 1832): Ya - ili Bog - ili nikto ("Myself - or
God - or none at all"). Nikto b ("none would"), a phrase used by Mozart in
Pushkin's little tragedy "Mozart and Salieri" (1830), is Botkin in reverse.
Alexey Sklyarenko
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characters in VN's novel Pale Fire, 1962) mentions "a bigger, more
respectable, more competent Gradus" whom he will face sooner or later:
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)
"A bigger, more respectable, more competent Gradus" brings to mind the real
Inspector whose arrival is announced at the end of Gogol's play Revizor
("The Inspector," 1836):
Жандарм. Приехавший по именному повелению из Петербурга чиновник требует вас
сей же час к себе. Он остановился в гостинице.
Произнесённые слова поражают как громом всех. Звук изумления единодушно
взлетает из дамских уст; вся группа, вдруг переменивши положение, остаётся в
окаменении.
GENDARME. The Inspector-General sent by Imperial command has arrived, and
requests your attendance at once. He awaits you in the inn.
(They are thunderstruck at this announcement. The ladies utter simultaneous
ejaculations of amazement; the whole group suddenly shift their positions
and remain as if petrified.)
In his book Gogol' i chyort ("Gogol and the Devil," 1906) Merezhkovski
speaks of the ending of Gogol's play, quotes Gogol's words Revizor bez
kontsa ("The Inspector is not finished") and several times mentions Grad
(City):
<По повелению из Петербурга> - вот что оглушает, как громом, всех, не только
действующих лиц и зрителей, но, кажется, и самого Гоголя. Повеление из
Петербурга? Но откуда же, как не из Петербурга - этого самого призрачного,
туманного, <фантастического из всех городов земного шара>, ползёт и
расстилается по всей России тот <ошеломляющий туман>, та страшная мгла
жизни, <египетские тьмы>, чертово марево, в которых ничего не видно, видны
<какие-то свиные рыла вместо лиц, а больше ничего>? Оба ревизора, первый и
второй, простой <елистратишка> и настоящий <генералиссимус>, не одинаково ли
законные дети одной и той же <табели о рангах>, не плоды ли одного и того же
<петербургского периода> русской истории?
Да и весь этот чудовищный уездный город не часть ли всероссийского Града,
гражданства, не отражение ли крошечное, обратное, но совершенно точное, как
в капле воды, самого Петербурга? Петербург вызвал из небытия этот город. По
какому же праву, с какой высоты будет он судить и казнить его? В самом
Петербурге гоголевских времен, что, собственно, произошло такого, что могло
бы разразиться над этим маленьким Содомом не хлестаковским, а действительно
Божиим громом? Что могло бы явиться среди этих <свиных рыл>, не как лицо
жандарма, всё-таки похожее отчасти на лицо Держиморды, а как действительно
человеческое лицо Божеского правосудия?
Нет, <Ревизор> не кончен, не сознан до конца самим Гоголем и не понят
зрителями; узел завязки развязан условно, сценически, но не религиозно. Одна
комедия кончена, начинается или должна бы начаться другая, несколько более
смешная и страшная. Мы её так и не увидим на сцене: но и до сей поры
разыгрывается она за сценою, в жизни. Это сознаёт отчасти Гоголь. <Ревизор
без конца>, - говорит он. Мы могли бы прибавить: Ревизор бесконечен. Это
смех не какой-либо частный, временный, исторический, а именно - бесконечный
смех русской совести над русским Градом. (Part One, III)
According to Merezhkovski, Gogol's play (with the epigraph "There's no use
grumbling at the mirror if your own mug is crooked. A Russian proverb") is
the infinite laughter of Russian conscience over Russian Grad. Merezhkovski
calls Khlestakov (the main character in "The Inspector") "an artificial man,
homunculus who jumped out of Peter's table of ranks as of an alchemical
phial:"
Он весь до мозга костей - петербургский безземельный <пролетарий>,
безродный, искусственный человек - гомункул, выскочивший из <петровской
табели о рангах>, как из алхимической склянки. (Part One, II)
In his book on Gogol (1944) VN points out that there are many homunculi
among Gogol's characters. Shade's murderer, Gradus is also a homunculus.
Khlestakov is an impostor. In his book on Gogol Merezhkovski wonders if
Khlestakov, samozvanets (the impostor), has enough courage to call himself
samoderzhets (an autocrat):
До чего бы дошёл он, если бы не поскользнулся? Назвал ли бы себя, как всякий
самозванец, самодержцем? А, может быть, в наши дни не удовольствовался бы и
царственным, никаким, вообще, человеческим именем, и уже прямо назвал бы
себя <сверхчеловеком>, <человекобогом>? Сказал бы то, что у Достоевского
чёрт советует сказать Ивану Карамазову: <Где станет Бог - там уже место
Божие; где стану я, там сейчас же будет первое место - и всё позволено>!
(Part One, II)
Shade's mad commentator, Kinbote imagines that he is Charles the Beloved,
the last self-exiled king of Zembla (a distant Northern land).
Merezhkovski quotes Ivan Karamazov's words in Dostoevski's novel Brothers
Karamazov (1880): vsyo pozvoleno (all is allowed). In Canto Three of his
poem Shade describes IPH (a lay Institute of Preparation For the Hereafter)
and mentions Fra Karamazov mumbling his inept all is allowed:
In later years it started to decline:
Buddhism took root. A medium smuggled in
Pale jellies and a floating mandolin.
Fra Karamazov, mumbling his inept
All is allowed, into some classes crept;
And to fulfill the fish wish of the womb,
A school of Freudians headed for the tomb. (ll. 638-644)
The phrase russkiy Grad (Russian City) used by Merezhkovski in the sense
"Russian society" brings to mind "Leningradus" (as in his note to Line 171
Kinbote mockingly calls Gradus) and O Grade Bozhyem, the Russian title of
St. Augustine's book De Civitate Dei ("The City of God"). Merezhkovski is
the author of Pavel. Avgustin ("St. Paul and St. Augustine," 1936). In a
theological disputation with Shade Kinbote quotes St. Augustine:
SHADE: There is always a psychopompos around the corner, isn't there?
KINBOTE: Not around that corner, John. With no Providence the soul must rely
on the dust of its husk, on the experience gathered in the course of
corporeal confinement, and cling childishly to small-town principles, local
by-laws and a personality consisting mainly of the shadows of its own prison
bars. Such an idea is not to be entertained one instant by the religious
mind. How much more intelligent it is--even from a proud infidel's point of
view!--to accept God's Presence--a faint phosphorescence at first, a pale
light in the dimness of bodily life, and a dazzling radiance after it? I
too, I too, my dear John, have been assailed in my time by religious doubts.
The church helped me to fight them off. It also helped me not to ask too
much, not to demand too clear an image of what is unimaginable. St.
Augustine said--
SHADE: Why must one always quote St. Augustine to me?
KINBOTE: As St. Augustine said, "One can know what God is not; one cannot
know what He is." I think I know what He is not: He is not despair, He is
not terror, He is not the earth in one's rattling throat, not the black hum
in one's ears fading to nothing in nothing. I know also that the world could
not have occurred fortuitously and that somehow Mind is involved as a main
factor in the making of the universe. In trying to find the right name for
that Universal Mind, or First Cause, or the Absolute, or Nature, I submit
that the Name of God has priority. (note to Line 549)
In his essay Zemlya vo rtu ("The Earth in the Mouth," 1906) Merezhkovski
calls Russia zemlya svyatykh rabov ("the land of saintly slaves"):
"Природа их такова, -- говорит Аристотель о варварах, -- что они не могут и
не должны жить иначе, как в рабстве: quod in Servitute boni, in libertate
mali sunt".
В свободе -- грешные, в рабстве -- святые.
Святые рабы. Святая Русь -- земля святых рабов.
In his book De Trinitate ("On the Trinity") St. Augustine says:
For when we aspire from this depth to that height, it is a step towards no
small knowledge, if, before we can know what God is, we can already know
what He is not. (8.2)
One wonders if in the original St. Augustine uses the word gradus ("step" in
Latin). The Christian doctrine of the Trinity holds that God is three
consubstantial persons or hypostases-the Father, the Son (Jesus Christ), and
the Holy Spirit. Shade, Kinbote and Gradus seem to represent three different
aspects of Botkin's personality. 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 ("Hope," 1894) is a poem by Merezhkovski. A member of
troebratstvo (a bond of three), Merezhkovski is the author of Tayna tryokh:
Egipet i Vavilon ("The Secret of Three: Egypt and Babylon," 1925).
In Greek mythology, psychopompos (guide of the souls) is a creature who
escorts a newly deceased soul from Earth to the afterlife. Shade's
psychopompos seems to be Vanessa atalanta, a butterfly that appears at the
end of his poem:
But it's not bedtime yet. The sun attains
Old Dr. Sutton's last two windowpanes.
The man must be--what? Eighty? Eighty-two?
Was twice my age the year I married you.
Where are you? In the garden. I can see
Part of your shadow near the shagbark tree.
Somewhere horseshoes are being tossed. Click. Clunk.
(Leaning against its lamppost like a drunk.)
A dark Vanessa with crimson band
Wheels in the low sun, settles on the sand
And shows its ink-blue wingtips flecked with white.
And through the flowing shade and ebbing light
A man, unheedful of the butterfly--
Some neighbor's gardener, I guess--goes by
Trundling an empty barrow up the lane. (ll. 985-999)
Like Gogol's Inspector, Shade's poem is not finished. It seems that, to be
completed, it needs not only Line 1000 (identical to Line 1: "I was the
shadow of the waxwing slain"), but also a coda (Line 1001: "By its own
double in the windowpane"). In his fragment Rim ("Rome," 1842) Gogol
describes a carnival in Rome and mentions the great dead poet (il gran poeta
morto) and his sonnet with a coda (sonetto colla coda):
Внимание толпы занял какой-то смельчак, шагавший на ходулях вравне с домами,
рискуя всякую минуту быть сбитым с ног и грохнуться насмерть о мостовую. Но
об этом, кажется, у него не было забот. Он тащил на плечах чучело великана,
придерживая его одной рукою, неся в другой написанный на бумаге сонет с
приделанным к нему бумажным хвостом, какой бывает у бумажного змея, и крича
во весь голос: <Ecco il gran poeta morto. Ecco il suo sonetto colla coda!>
In a footnote Gogol says that in Italian poetry there is a kind of poem
known as sonnet with the tail (con la coda) and explains what a coda is:
В итальянской поэзии существует род стихотворенья, известного под именем
сонета с хвостом (con la coda), - когда мысль не вместилась и ведет за собою
прибавление, которое часто бывает длиннее самого сонета.
Gogol points out that a coda can be longer than the sonnet itself. Not only
(the unwritten) Line 1001 of Shade's poem, but also Kinbote's entire
Foreword, Commentary and Index seem be a coda of Shade's poem. Kinbote's
Foreword to Pale Fire is dated October 19, 1959 (the anniversary of
Pushkin's Lyceum). On this day Kinbote completes his work on Shade's poem
and commits suicide, meeting a bigger, more respectable, more competent
Gradus. There is a hope that, after Kinbote's death, Botkin will be full
again.
Btw., in Jungian psychology, the psychopomp is a mediator between the
unconscious and conscious realms. It is symbolically personified in dreams
as a wise man or woman, or sometimes as a helpful animal. At the end of his
poem Shade mentions old Dr. Sutton's last two windowpanes. To be completed,
Shade's poem needs two lines. In the finished version of Shade's poem the
last word is "windowpane." The first word of Shade's poem is "I." As pointed
out by Merezhkovski, ya ("I") is Khlestakov's favorite word:
Ведь это Хлестаков почти и говорит, по крайней мере, хочет сказать, а если
не умеет, то только потому, что слов таких ещё нет: я сам себя знаю, сам: я,
я, я!.. От этого исступленного самоутверждения личности один шаг до
самообожествления, которое в больной голове Поприщина даёт сумасшедший, но
всё ещё сравнительно скромный вывод: <я король испанский Фердинанд VIII>, а
в метафизической голове Ницше и нигилиста Кирилова, героя <Бесов>, - уже
окончательный, несколько более величественный вывод: <Если нет Бога, то я -
Бог!> (Part One, II)
According to Merezhkovski, from Khlestakov to Poprishchin (the main
character in Gogol's Notes of a Madman, 1835, who imagines that he is the
king of Spain Ferdinand VIII) it is only one step (gradus). The conclusion
drawn by Kirillov (a character in Dostoevski's "The Possessed," 1872), esli
net Boga, to ya - Bog ("if God does not exist, then I'm God"), brings to
mind the last line of Lermontov's poem Net, ya ne Bayron, ya drugoy: ("No,
I'm not Byron, I'm another:" 1832): Ya - ili Bog - ili nikto ("Myself - or
God - or none at all"). Nikto b ("none would"), a phrase used by Mozart in
Pushkin's little tragedy "Mozart and Salieri" (1830), is Botkin in reverse.
Alexey Sklyarenko
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