That was the end of Charles Xavier’s chaste romance with Fleur, who was pretty yet not repellent (as some cats are less repugnant than others to the good-natured dog told to endure the bitter effluvium of an alien genus). (Kinbote’s note to Line 80)

Good old Sylvia! She had in common with Fleur de Fyler a vagueness of manner, a languor of demeanor which was partly natural and partly cultivated as a convenient alibi for when she was drunk, and in some wonderful way she managed to combine that indolence with volubility reminding one of a slow-speaking ventriloquist who is interrupted by his garrulous doll. (note to Line 691)

Strange. Why should Sybil have to listen to doorbells when, besides the maid and the cook, two white-coated hired boys were around? False pride prevented me from doing what I should have done—taken my royal gift under my arm and serenely marched over to that inhospitable house. Who knows—I might have been rewarded at the back door with a drop of kitchen sherry. I still hoped there had been a mistake, and Shade would telephone. It was a bitter wait, and the only effect that the bottle of champagne I drank all alone now at this window, now at that, had on me was a bad crapula (hangover). (note to Line 181)

As I pointed out before, crapula seems to hint at Crapülinski, one of the two Poles in Heinrich Heine’s poem Zwei Ritter (“Two Knights,” 1851). At the end of Heinrich Heine’s poem K.-Jammer (“Hangover,” 1851) Katzenjammer (hangover; literally: “cats’ cries”) is paired with Hundeelend (dire straits; literally: “dogs’ misery”):

Diese graue Wolkenschar

Stieg aus einem Meer von Freuden;

Heute muß ich dafür leiden,

Daß ich gestern glücklich war.

Ach, in Wermut hat verkehrt

Sich der Nektar! Ach, wie quälend,

Katzenjammer, Hundeelend

Herz und Magen mir beschwert!

This grey mass of clouds

Came up from the sea of delights;

Today I must suffer and pay

For yesterday’s bliss.

Ah, the nectar has turned

Into vermouth! Ah, how painfully

Hangover and utter misery

Burden my heart and stomach.

In a letter of Jan. 10, 1888, to Ivan Leontiev-Shcheglov Chekhov mentions Tat’yanin den’ (Jan. 12, OS, Tatiana’s name day, the students’ feast in Russia), his own birthday (Jan. 17, OS) and the inevitable katsenyamer (Katzenjammer in Russian spelling):

12-го янв<аря> у меня пьянство — Татьянин день.

17-го янв<аря> тоже пьянство — я именинник.

——————————————————

Итого — каценъямер

Kinbote drinks champagne and spies on Shade’s house on his and Shade’s birthday (July 5). Shade’s and Kinbote’s “real” seems to be V. Botkin. In a letter of Dec. 27, 1889, to Suvorin Chekhov mentions Botkin:

Где вырождение и апатия, там половое извращение, холодный разврат, выкидыши, ранняя старость, брюзжащая молодость, там падение искусств, равнодушие к науке, там несправедливость во всей своей форме. Общество, которое не верует в бога, но боится примет и чёрта, которое отрицает всех врачей и в то же время лицемерно оплакивает Боткина и поклоняется Захарьину, не смеет и заикаться о том, что оно знакомо с справедливостью.

Wherever there is degeneration and apathy, there also is sexual perversion, cold depravity, miscarriage, premature old age, grumbling youth, there is a decline in the arts, indifference to science, and injustice in all its forms. A society that does not believe in God but is afraid of tokens and the devil, that denies all doctors, while hypocritically mourning over Botkin [Dr S. P. Botkin who just died] and worshipping Zakharyin [another famous physician], such a society simply has no right to say that it is familiar with justice.

In the same letter to Suvorin Chekhov criticizes the inert Russian intelligentsia that cannot think up a decent sample for their banknotes and believes that den’gi – zlo (money is evil):

Вялая, апатичная, лениво философствующая, холодная интеллигенция, которая никак не может придумать для себя приличного образца для кредитных бумажек, которая не патриотична, уныла, бесцветна, которая пьянеет от одной рюмки и посещает пятидесятикопеечный бордель, которая брюзжит и охотно отрицает всё, так как для ленивого мозга легче отрицать, чем утверждать; которая не женится и отказывается воспитывать детей и т. д. Вялая душа, вялые мышцы, отсутствие движений, неустойчивость в мыслях — и всё это в силу того, что жизнь не имеет смысла, что у женщин бели и что деньги — зло.

It was “verse, wildflowers and foreign currency” that in VN’s story Ultima Thule (1942, a part of VN’s unfinished novel Solus Rex) Sineusov’s wife liked most in life:

Ты помнишь, не правда ли, этого странного шведа, или датчанина, или исландца, чёрт его знает,-- словом, этого длинного, оранжево-загорелого блондина с ресницами старой лошади, который рекомендовался мне "известным писателем" и заказал мне за гонорар, обрадовавший тебя (ты уже не вставала с постели и не могла говорить, но писала мне цветным мелком на грифельной дощечке смешные вещи вроде того, что больше всего в жизни ты любишь "стихи, полевые цветы и иностранные деньги"), заказал мне, говорю я, серию иллюстраций к поэме "Ultima Thule", которую он на своём языке только что написал.

You remember him, don’t you, that strange Swede or Dane—or Icelander, for all I know—anyway, that lanky, orange-tanned blond fellow with the eyelashes of an old horse, who introduced himself to me as “a well-known writer,” and, for a price that gladdened you (you were already confined to your bed and unable to speak, but would write me funny trifles with colored chalk on slate—for instance, that the things you liked most in life were “verse, wildflowers, and foreign currency”), commissioned me to make a series of illustrations for the epic poem Ultima Thule, which he had just composed in his language.

In his conversation with Sineusov Falter (the medium who was once Sineusov’s tutor) says that one can believe in the poetry of a wildflower or the power of money:

Можно верить в поэзию полевого цветка или в силу денег, но ни то, ни другое не предопределяет веры в гомеопатию или в необходимость истреблять антилоп на островках озера Виктория Ньянджи; но, узнав то, что

я узнал,--если можно это назвать узнаванием,-- я получил ключ решительно ко всем дверям и шкатулкам в мире, только незачем мне употреблять его, раз всякая мысль об его прикладном значении уже сама по себе переходит во всю серию откидываемых крышек.

One can believe in the poetry of a wildflower or the power of money, but neither belief predetermines faith in homeopathy or in the necessity to exterminate antelope on the islands of Lake Victoria Nyanza; but in any case, having learned what I have—if this can be called learning—I received a key to absolutely all the doors and treasure chests in the world; only I have no need to use it, since every thought about its practical significance automatically, by its very nature, grades into the whole series of hinged lids.

“The poetry of a wildflower” and money as a form of evil bring to mind Baudelaire’s Fleurs du mal (“Flowers of Evil”) and Fleur de Fyler (the younger daughter of Countess de Fyler, Queen Blenda’s favorite lady in waiting) who attempted to seduce Charles Xavier. In a discarded variant (dated July 6) Shade mentions “poor Baudelaire:”

Strange Other World where all our still-born dwell,
And pets, revived, and invalids, grown well,
And minds that died before arriving there:
Poor old man Swift, poor —-, poor Baudelaire (note to Line 231)

Kinbote suspects that the dash between Swift and Baudelaire stands for his name, but the name omitted by Shade is actually Botkin. The American scholar of Russian descent, V. Botkin seems to have changed several countries (Sweden, France) before he arrived in America. In his poem Slava (“Fame,” 1942) VN says that he “kept changing countries like counterfeit money.” Like VN and his Botkin, Chekhov lived in Nice. In Chekhov’s story Shvedskaya spichka (“A Swedish Match,” 1883) the young detective Dyukovski several times repeats the word alibi:

— Не могу знать, ваше высокоблагородие, — сказал он. — Был выпимши и не помню.

— Alibi! — шепнул Дюковский, усмехаясь и потирая руки…

"I can't say, your Honor," he said. "I was drunk and I don't remember."
"An alibi!" whispered Dyukovski, grinning and rubbing his hands…

— Alibi, — усмехнулся Дюковский. — И какое дурацкое alibi!

"An alibi," laughed Dyukovski, "and what an idiotic alibi."

The name Dyukovski brings to mind Colonel Peter Gusev, Duke of Rahl (King Alfin’s ‘aerial adjutant’), and his son Oleg (Charles Xavier’s first lover who was killed in a toboggan accident). The name Gusev comes from gus’ (goose). In Chekhov’s story Kashtanka (1888) Kashtanka’s room-mates are the cat Fyodor Timofeich and the goose Ivan Ivanych (who dies one night after the circus horse has stepped on him). Kashtanka (the dog that got lost and was picked up by a clown) was renamed by her new master Tyotka (‘Auntie’). Tyotka is the old Russian slang word for “active homosexual.” Kinbote is a tyotka. Interestingly, the characters of VN’s Ada (1969) include Captain Tapper, a “pansy” whose name hints at tapetka (“passive homosexual”), and Colonel Erminin (Greg’s and Grace’s father who, according to Van, “preferred to pass for a Chekhovian colonel”). A member of the Do-Re-La country club, Tapper also brings to mind Tapyor (“The Ballroom Pianist,” 1885), another story by Chekhov.

Alexey Sklyarenko