Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov
Odon, pseudonym of Donald O'Donnell, b. 1915, world-famous actor and Zemblan patriot; learns from K. about secret passage but has to leave for theater, 130; drives K. from theater to foot of Mt. Mandevil, 149; meets K. near sea cave and escapes with him in motorboat, ibid.; directs cinema picture in Paris, 171; stays with Lavender in Lex, 408; ought not to marry that blubber-lipped cinemactress, with untidy hair, 691; see also O'Donnell, Sylvia.
O'Donnell, Sylvia, nee O'Connell, born 1895? 1890?, the much-traveled, much-married mother of Odon (q.v.), 149, 691; after marrying and divorcing college president Leopold O'Donnell in 1915, father of Odon, she married Peter Gusev, first Duke of Rahl, and graced Zembla till about 1925 when she married an Oriental prince met in Chamonix; after a number of other more or less glamorous marriages, she was in the act of divorcing Lionel Lavender, cousin of Joseph, when last seen in this Index.
Oleg, Duke of Rahl, 1916-1931, son of Colonel Gusev, Duke of Rahl (b. 1885, still spry); K.'s beloved playmate, killed in a toboggan accident, 130.
Onhava, the beautiful capital of Zembla, 12, 71, 130, 149, 171, 181, 275, 579, 894, 1000.
Otar, Count, heterosexual man of fashion and Zemblan patriot, b. 1915, his bald spot, his two teenage mistresses, Fleur and Fifalda (later Countess Otar), blue-veined daughters of Countess de Fyler, interesting light effects, 71.
Paberg, see Bera Range.
Payn, Dukes of, escutcheon of, 270; see Disa, my Queen.
Poems, Shade's short: The Sacred Tree, 49; The Swing, 61; Mountain View, 92; The Nature of Electricity, 347; one line from April Rain, 470; one line from Mont Blanc, 782; opening quatrain of Art, 957.
Potaynik, taynik (q.v.).
Religion: contact with God, 47; the Pope, 85; freedom of mind, 101; problem of sin and faith, 549; see Suicide.
Rippleson Caves, sea caves in Blawick, named after a famous glass maker who embodied the dapple-and-ringle play and other circular reflections on blue-green sea water in his extraordinary stained glass windows for the Palace, 130, 149.
Shade, Hazel, S's daughter, 1934-1957; deserves great respect, having preferred the beauty of death to the ugliness of life; the domestic ghost, 230; the Haunted Barn, 347.
Shade, John Francis, poet and scholar, 1898-1959; his work on Pale Fire and friendship with K, Foreword; his physical appearance, mannerisms, habits, etc., ibid.; his first brush with death as visualized by K, and his beginning the poem while K plays chess at the Students' Club, 1; his sunset rambles with K, 12; his dim precognition of G, 17; his house seen by K in terms of lighted windows, 47; his starting on the poem, his completing Canto Two, and about half of Three, and K's three visits at those points of time, ibid.; his parents, Samuel Shade and Caroline Lukin, 71; K's influence seen in a variant, 79; Maud Shade, S's father's sister, 86; K shown S's clockwork memento mori, 143; K on S's fainting fits, 162; S beginning Canto Two, 167; S on critics, Shakespeare, education, etc., 172; K's watching S's guests arriving on his and S's birthday, and S writing Canto Two, 181; his worries over his daughter recalled, 230; his delicacy, or prudence, 231; his exaggerated interest in the local fauna and flora, 238, 270; the complications of K's marriage compared to the plainness of S's, 275; K's drawing S's attention to a pastel smear crossing the sunset sky, 286; his fear that S might leave before finishing their joint composition, 288; his waiting vainly for S on July 15th, 338; his walk with S through old Hentzner's fields and his reconstitution of S's daughter's expeditions to the Haunted Barn, 347; S's pronunciation, 367; S's book on Pope, 384; his grudge against Peter Provost, 385; his work on lines 406-416 synchronized with G's activities in Switzerland, 408; again his prudence, or considerateness, 417; his having possibly glimpsed twenty-six years ago Villa Disa and the little Duchess of Payn with her English governess, 433; his apparent assimilation of the Disa material and K's promise to divulge an ultimate truth, ibid.; S's views on Prejudice, 470; K's views on Suicide, 493; S's and K's views on sin and faith, 549; S's crabbed hospitality and delight in meatless cuisine at my house, 579; rumors about his interest in a female student, ibid.; his denial of a stationmaster's insanity, 629; his heart attack synchronized with K's spectacular arrival in the USA, 691; K's allusion to S in a letter to Disa, 768; his last ramble with S and his joy at learning S is working hard on the "mountain" theme--a tragic misunderstanding, 802; his games of golf with S, 819; his readiness to look up references for S, 887; S's defense of the King of Zembla, 894; his and K's hilarity over the rot in a textbook compiled by Prof. C., psychiatrist and literary expert (!), 929; his beginning his last batch of cards, 949; his revealing to K the completion of his task, 991; his death from a bullet meant for another, 1000.
Shade, Sybil, S's wife, passim.
Shadows, the, a regicidal organization which commissioned Gradus (q.v.) to assassinate the self-banished king; its leader's terrible name cannot be mentioned, even in the Index to the obscure work of a scholar; his maternal grandfather, a well-known and very courageous master builder, was hired by Thurgus the Turgid, around 1885, to make certain repairs in his quarters, and soon after that perished, poisoned in the royal kitchens, under mysterious circumstances, together with his three young apprentices whose pretty first names Yan, Yonny, and Angeling, are preserved in a ballad still to be heard in some of our wilder valleys.
Shalksbore, Baron Harfar, known as Curdy Buff, b. 1921, man of fashion and Zemblan patriot, 433.
Steinmann, Julius, b. 1928, tennis champion and Zemblan patriot, 171.
Sudarg of Bokay, a mirror maker of genius, the patron saint of Bokay in the mountains of Zembla, 80; life span not known.
Suicide, K's views on, 493.
Taynik, Russ., secret place; see Crown Jewels.
Thurgus the Third, surnamed The Turgid, K's grandfather, d. 1900 at seventy-five, after a long dull reign; sponge-bag-capped, and with only one medal on his Jaeger jacket, he liked to bicycle in the park; stout and bald, his nose like a congested plum, his martial mustache bristling with obsolete passion, garbed in a dressing gown of green silk, and carrying a flambeau in his raised hand, he used to meet, every night, during a short period in the middle-Eighties, his hooded mistress, Iris Acht (q.v.) midway between palace and theater in the secret passage later to be rediscovered by his grandson, 130.
Tintarron, a precious glass stained a deep blue, made in Bokay, a medieval place in the mountains of Zembla, 149; see also Sudarg.
Translations, poetical; English into Zemblan, Conmal's versions of Shakespeare, Milton, Kipling, etc., noticed, 962; English into French, from Donne and Marvell, 678; German into English and Zemblan, Der Erlkonig, 662; Zemblan into English, Timon Afinsken, of Athens, 39; Elder Edda, 79; Arnor's Miragarl, 80.
Uran the Last, Emperor of Zembla, reigned 1798-1799; an incredibly brilliant, luxurious, and cruel monarch whose whistling whip made Zembla spin like a rainbow top; dispatched one night by a group of his sister's united favorites, 681.
Vanessa, the Red Admirable (sumpsimus), evoked, 270; flying over a parapet on a Swiss hillside, 408; figured, 470; caricatured, 949; accompanying S's last steps in the evening sunshine, 993.
Variants: the thieving sun and moon, 39-40; planning the Primal Scene, 57; the Zemblan King's escape (K's contribution, 8 lines), 70; the Edda (K's contribution, 1 line), 79; Luna's dead cocoon, 90-93; children finding a secret passage (K's contribution, 4 lines), 130; poor old man Swift, poor--(possible allusion to K), 231; Shade, Ombre, 275; Virginia Whites, 316; The Head of Our Department, 377; a nymphet, 413; additional line from Pope (possible allusion to K), 417; Tanagra dust (a remarkable case of foreknowledge), 596; of this America, 609-614; first two feet changed, 629; parody of Pope, 895-899; a sorry age, and Social Novels, 922.
Waxwings, birds of the genus Bombycilia, 1-4, 131, 1000; Bombycilia shadei, 71; interesting association belatedly realized.
Windows, Foreword; 47, 62, 181.
Word golf, S's predilection for it, 819; see Lass.
Yaruga, Queen, reigned 1799-1800, sister of Uran (q.v.); drowned in an ice-hole w
Yeslove, a fine town, district and bishopric, north of Onhava, 149, 275.
Zembla, a distant northern land.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Vladimir Nabokov was born in St. Petersburg on April 23, 1899. His family fled to Germany in 1919, during the Bolshevik Revolution. Nabokov studied French and Russian literature at Trinity College, Cambridge, from 1919 to 1923, then lived in Berlin (1923-1937) and Paris (1937-1940), where he began writing, mainly in Russian, under the pseudonym Sirin. In 1940 he moved to the United States, where he pursued a brilliant literary career (as a poet, novelist, critic, and translator) while teaching literature at Wellesley College, Stanford, Cornell, and Harvard. The monumental success of his novel Lolita (1955) enabled him to give up teaching and devote himself fully to his writing. In 1961 he moved to Montreux, Switzerland, where he died in 1977. Recognized as one of this century's master prose stylists in both Russian and English, he translated a number of his original English works--including Lolita--into Russian, and collaborated on English translations of his original Russian works.
BOOKS BY VLADIMIR NABOKOV
ADA, OR ARDOR
Ada, or Ardor tells a love story troubled by incest, but is also at once a fairy tale, epic, philosophical treatise on the nature of time, parody of the history of the novel, and erotic catalogue.
Fiction/Literature/978-0-679-72522-0
BEND SINISTER
While it is filled with veiled puns and characteristically delightful wordplay, Bend Sinister is first and foremost a haunting and compelling narrative about a civilized man and his child caught up in the tyranny of a police state.
Fiction/Literature/978-0-679-72727-9
DESPAIR
Extensively revised by Nabokov in 1965, thirty years after its original publication, Despair is the wickedly inventive and richly derisive story of Hermann, a man who undertakes the perfect crime: his own murder.
Fiction/Literature/978-0-679-72343-1
THE ENCHANTER
The Enchanter is the precursor to Nabokov's classic novel, Lolita. At once hilarious and chilling, it tells the story of an outwardly respectable man and his fatal obsession with certain pubescent girls.
Fiction/Literature/978-0-679-72886-3
THE EYE
The Eye is as much farcical detective story as it is a profoundly refractive tale about the vicissitudes of identities and appearances. Smurov is a lovelorn, self-conscious Russian emigre living in prewar Berlin who commits suicide after being humiliated by a jealous husband, only to suffer greater indignities in the afterlife.
Fiction/Literature/978-0-679-72723-1
THE GIFT
The Gift is the last of the novels Nabokov wrote in his native language and the crowning achievement of that period of his literary career. It is the story of Fyodor Godunov-Cherdyntsev, an impoverished emigre who dreams of the book he will someday write.
Fiction/Literature/978-0-679-72725-5
GLORY
Glory is the wryly ironic story of Martin Edelweiss, a young Russian emigre of no account, who is in love with a girl who refuses to marry him. Hoping to impress his love, he embarks on a "perilous, daredevil" project to illegally reenter the Soviet Union.
Fiction/Literature/978-0-679-72724-8
INVITATION TO A BEHEADING
Invitation to a Beheading embodies a vision of a bizarre and irrational world; in an unnamed dream country, the young man Cincinnatus C. is condemned to death by beheading for "gnostical turpitude."
Fiction/Literature/978-0-679-72531-2
KING, QUEEN, KNAVE
Dreyer, a wealthy and boisterous proprietor of a men's clothing store, is ruddy, self-satisfied, and masculine, but repugnant to his exquisite but cold middle-class wife, Martha. Attracted to his money but repelled by his oblivious passion, she longs for their nephew instead.
Fiction/Literature/978-0-679-72340-0
LOLITA
Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov's most famous and controversial novel, tells the story of the aging Humbert Humbert's obsessive, devouring, and doomed passion for the nymphet Dolores Haze.
Fiction/Literature/978-0-679-72316-5
LOOK AT THE HARLEQUINS!
Nabokov's last novel is an ironic play on the Janus-like relationship between fiction and reality. It is the autobiography of the eminent Russian-American author Vadim Vadimovich N. (b. 1899). Focusing on the central figures of his life, the book leads us to suspect that the fictions Vadim has created as an author have crossed the line between his life's work and his life itself.
Fiction/Literature/978-0-679-72728-6
THE LUZHIN DEFENSE
As a young boy, Luzhin is unattractive, distracted, withdrawn, sullen--an enigma to his parents and an object of ridicule to his classmates. He takes up chess as a refuge, and rises to the rank of grandmaster, but at a cost: in Luzhin's obsessive mind, the game of chess gradually supplants reality.
Fiction/Literature/978-0-679-72722-4
PALE FIRE
Pale Fire offers a cornucopia of deceptive pleasures: a 999-line poem by the reclusive genius John Shade; an adoring foreward and commentary by Shade's self-styled Boswell, Dr. Charles Kinbote; a darkly comic novel of suspense, literary idolatry and one-upmanship, and political intrigue.
Fiction/Literature/978-0-679-72342-4
PNIN
Pnin is a professor of Russian at an American college who takes the wrong train to deliver a lecture in a language he cannot master. Pnin is the focal point of subtle academic conspiracies he cannot begin to comprehend, yet he stages a faculty party to end all faculty parties forever.
Fiction/Literature/978-0-679-72341-7
THE REAL LIFE OF SEBASTIAN KNIGHT
Many knew of Sebastian Knight, distinguished novelist, but few knew of the two love affairs that so profoundly influenced his career. After Knight's death, his half brother sets out to penetrate the enigma of his life, starting with clues found in the novelist's private papers.
Fiction/Literature/978-0-679-72726-2
SPEAK, MEMORY
Speak, Memory is an elegant and rich evocation of Nabokov's life and times, even as it offers incisive insights into his major works.
Autobiography/Literature/978-0-679-72339-4
ALSO AVAILABLE
The Annotated Lolita, 978-0-679-72729-3
Laughter in the Dark, 978-0-679-72450-6
Lolita: A Screenplay, 978-0-679-77255-2
Mary, 978-0-679-72620-3
The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov, 978-0-679-72997-6
Strong Opinions, 978-0-679-72609-8
Transparent Things, 978-0-679-72541-1
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Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire
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