), was the most scientist man between all his compatriots: as a child he traveled around Europe, lived in Rome, observed customs, knew languages and ancient writers. However, all this at first did him a disservice. Even earlier, he won the confidence of the people by his courage and great talents, but, having become king, he soon lost popularity. He had little respect for the knowledge and experience of the great council of the people, called the “assembly of the wise,” because he was imbued with the idea of unlimited power, so often found among Roman writers, he ardently desired government reforms and came up with innovations that were unclear and suspicious for the people. He was very strict, and in this the Saxons saw an attack on their ancient freedom. The arrogance of the king, according to contemporaries, was so great that he "did not honor petitioners with receiving and listening to their complaints, did not condescend to the weak and revered them for nothing." The gradual estrangement between the king and his people led to the heavy defeats that the Anglo-Saxons suffered at the hands of the Danes. In order to give the ruined country a respite, Alfred made peace with the Danes in the first year of his reign. Kent and Wessex got rid of their raids for a while, but the rest of England, left without help, was conquered by the Vikings, who settled in the north of the country and formed their own kingdom. Fighting with them, Alfred himself began to hire the Vikings and with their help led a naval war against the aliens. He tried to cut off their connection with Scandinavia, from where they constantly received reinforcements, but did not succeed in this plan.
In 878 full-scale land warfare resumed. King Guthrun, chosen by the Danes, moved south with a significant military force, took possession of London, penetrated Wessex, and stopped at Avon to spend the winter there. Despondency and fear then seized the Saxons. Desperate to win, they either fled the country or submitted to the invaders. In vain Alfred called on the people to fight, in vain he sent with a naked sword and arrow through the cities and villages to call for volunteers - fewer and fewer people came. The king found himself without an army, surrounded by only a small number of true friends. Then, according to ancient historians, Alfred left his warriors and his commanders, renounced the whole people and fled just to save his life. Wandering through the forests and wastelands, he reached the border of the Cornish Britons at the confluence of the rivers Tona and Pareta. Here, on a peninsula surrounded by swamps, Alfred settled under a false name in a fisherman's hut. He himself baked bread for his livelihood from what his poor host gave him for hospitality. The Danish army entered his kingdom without hindrance, where almost no one knew what had become of the king. The Saxons very soon became convinced that the calamities of conquest were incomparably worse than anything they had undergone during the reign of Alfred, which at one time seemed unbearable to them. On the other hand, Alfred himself, having gone through many severe trials, became simpler and wiser. There is a legend that once Alfred took refuge in a shepherd's hut. The owner's wife instructed him to watch the bread in the oven, and he, having been busy repairing his weapon, forgot about it and burned the bread. Then the angry woman scolded him severely, and the king listened to the reproaches with humility. Meanwhile, the war continued. A small group gathered around Alfred. The Saxons fortified the island with earthen ramparts and a wall in order to protect themselves from surprise attacks, and waged a stubborn struggle against the Danes: they attacked small detachments, robbed rich Saxons who had come to the service of the new government. Gradually, Alfred's strength grew. But only after six months of war, which took place in surprise raids, ambushes and night attacks, did he decide to declare his name and openly attack the main camp of the Danes under the Anglo-Saxon banner. This camp was at Ethandun, on the border of the regions of Wiltes and Somerset, near the so-called Great Forest. But first, Alfred wanted to personally examine the situation of the enemies. Disguised as a harpist, he entered their camp and amused the Danish warriors with Saxon songs. He went through the tents, and on his return set to his work and sent to all the surrounding places to call the Saxons to arms and war, assigning them a gathering place at Egbert's stone on the eastern edge of the Great Forest, a few miles from the Danish camp. For three days, armed men singly or in small groups arrived from all directions to the appointed place.
So all the warriors from Somerset, Wiltshire and Hampshire converged on Alfred. They were very glad to see their king again. Alfred led them to the fortifications of Aetendaun from their weakest side, took them, and, according to the expression of the Saxon Chronicle, remained master of the battlefield. The defeated Danes took refuge in the fortress, which the Saxons kept under siege for two weeks. Finally, King Guthrun entered into negotiations with Alfred and peace was soon concluded. Guthrun promised to leave Wessex and be baptized. Three weeks later, he came to Alfred in Hor, along with 30 of the best warriors. The king was his godfather at the time of the baptism, which took place in Wedmore. Here, an agreement was concluded on the division of England between the Danish king and the king of Wessex. The boundary line was to run up the Thames and its tributary Lea, reach the Ouse via Bradford, and finally reach the ancient Roman road, which the Saxons called "the road of the sons of the Willow." Ostanglia, Essex, together with their ruined capital London, all of Northumbria and the eastern half of Mercia became part of the Danish territory of Danlo. The rest of the lands went to Wessex, which increased in volume due to the annexation of Sussex, Kent and West Mercia.
Peace with Gutrun gave the Anglo-Saxons several years of calm, but the Vikings, who then plundered the regions along the Seine and the Meuse, also sailed to the shores of England, hoping to take possession of the coast. However, Alfred either prevented their landing or inflicted defeats, preventing them from gaining a foothold on the coast. In 884 he forced the Normans to lift the siege of Rochester. His ships constantly guarded the piers where robbers could land. In 886 he finally took London. This city suffered greatly from the Danes, who devastated and burned it. Alfred restored the destroyed houses and made the renewed city his second residence (Winchester, the main city of Wessex, remained the capital of England). Having suffered several defeats, the Vikings stopped sailing to the shores of England. Alfred, taking advantage of the time of peace, built many large ships, rebuilt the ruined cities and castles, erected new fortifications, and organized a special militia in all those places that could be attacked. He tried to ensure peace for his people and thereby raise their fallen spirit. Many old customs and laws were revived by him with the greatest care. During the war years, the old law fell into decay. The nobles arbitrarily constrained the people, the judges did not respect the jury. Alfred took care to draw up a code of laws from the codes written under the former kings. He introduced order into the administration, restored the old division of the country into communities and counties, appointed worthy people as earls and judges. The people's court began to be carried out in the same order and enjoy the former confidence of the population, so that the royal court no longer needed to decide all the processes.
The king spent a lot of effort on the development of agriculture. He handed out empty lands and held a new demarcation. Alfred took care of trade and industry. Under him, roads were built and ships were built. Wanting the Anglo-Saxons to learn good shipbuilding, he called on skilled Frisian craftsmen. There was a restoration of the destroyed cities and monasteries. In his houses and rural residences, Alfred built buildings stronger and better than those that the Anglo-Saxons used to have, in this he was helped by the memories and knowledge that he acquired in his youth when traveling to Rome. But most of all the king cared about the church, about the religious and mental education of the people. During the war years, the cultural level in the country fell very low. Alfred repaired dozens of monasteries at his own expense and established schools under them. Those few scientists who remained in his state, he brought closer to himself, gave them honorary positions and encouraged them to literary works. He replenished the lack of such people by inviting scientists from other lands. Alfred himself set an example for them, and among many state affairs he found time for literary works. So he translated into Anglo-Saxon the famous work of Boethius "On the Consolation of Philosophy"; The “History” of Bede the Venerable, in its revision, became for centuries the favorite reading of the people; he translated the "History" of Orosius and inserted into it a description of the Germanic and northern lands according to the stories of two navigators who visited these places. He translated and revised the work of Pope Gregory the Great "Care for the Soul". They also write that he translated some chapters from the Bible and the writings of Blessed Augustine, Aesop's fables and some other books. Despite the constant weakness of his health, Alfred worked tirelessly until his death. Thanks to abstinence and right living, he managed to do amazingly much. His day was divided into three equal parts: one of them was devoted to food and rest, the other to state affairs, the third to prayer and learning. In his expenses he observed the strictest economy, just as in the expenditure of public funds.
In the early 90s. England experienced a new invasion of the Vikings, who thought to take possession of the beautiful and fertile valleys of the south, as their compatriots took possession of Ostanglia and Northumbria. At the same time, Gutrun died. His successor was not inclined to observe the concluded peace. But this time the Normans ran into fierce resistance from the Saxons. The brave leader of the Vikings, Gaeston, tried for three years from 893 to 896 to seize some part of southern England, but Alfred and his brave son Edward drove the Vikings out of all the fortifications, constantly lay in wait and stopped all their movements. Pressed on all sides, the Normans suffered from hunger and were finally forced to sail away from England. The state began to enjoy security, and Alfred devoted the last years of his reign to exclusively peaceful pursuits.
England and Scandinavia
The good Zemblan Christian is taught that true faith does not exist to supply it with pictures or geographical maps…
Charles Kinbote
(Pale fire, 208, note. to line 493)
Thou, by Thy strong holiness drives from far
In the way that Thou wiliest each worshiping star;
And through Thy great power, the sun from the night
Drags darkness away by the might of her light.
The moon, at Thy word, with his pale-shining rays
Softens and shadows the stars as they blaze,
And even the sun of her brightness bereaves
Whenever upon her too closely he cleaves.
(King Alfred. A Psalm to God
If, in search of the origins of his Russian heritage, Nabokov turns to the very beginning of Russian literature - the Tale of Igor's Campaign created in the 12th century, then he localizes his English cultural roots in the circle of the writings of King Alfred. At the end of the ninth century, Alfred the Great, "the founder of English prose," translated the most significant works of his time into Anglo-Saxon, thus laying the foundation for British literature.
In Pale Fire, this material is also reflected in Charles Kinbote's distorted mirror. Not discovering in Shade's poem the story of his flight from the Zemblan revolution, a disappointed Kinbote laments in a commentary that during one of his walks the poet turned away from talking to him.
an insulting anecdote about King Alfred, who is said to have loved the stories of his Norwegian confidant, but turned him away when he was busy with other things. “Well, here you are,” the impolite Alfred used to say to the mild-mannered Norwegian who came to tell a subtly different version of some old Scandinavian myth that he had already told before, “well, here you are again!” - and it so happened, my dears, that this fabulous exile, this divinely inspired northern bard, is known today to English schoolchildren under the trivial nickname "Nuvot" (161, note on line 238).
In the history of English culture, King Alfred the Great (848? - 900) is revered immeasurably more than other English monarchs, because at the cost of numerous battles that overshadowed the beginning of his reign, he expelled the Danes from England and thereby "saved English culture from destruction", and also translated into Anglo-Saxon language a number of classical texts. In January 878, he suffered the worst defeat of his life: at Chippenham, where he was spending Christmas, the king was suddenly attacked by the Danes. As the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle says, “they destroyed almost all of them, but King Alfred escaped and with a small detachment, passing through the forest, reached an impregnable place among the swamps ... By Easter of the next year, King Alfred with a handful of close associates erected a small fortress in Ethelney.” In the end, the king defeated the Danes, their leader Guthrum converted to Orthodoxy, and by 879 Alfred cleared Wessex and Mercia from the invaders. For four months separating the escape from Chippenham from the Easter victory, the king hid in secret in a shepherd's hut; as stated in the commentary on Alfred the Great's poem "A Moment of Despair", these were "the days when our abandoned king confided his sorrows to a lute alone, hiding in a shepherd's hut or in the marshes of Ætheling." This hut is the setting for the famous legend of King Alfred and the pie, known to everyone. English child: the shepherd's wife asked Alfred to look after the pie, but the king was so busy with state thoughts that the pie burned down.
Nabokov introduces a reference to the episode of Alfred's flight in the Ætheling in Pale Fire in his characteristic evasive manner. Atheling is an obsolete English name for a prince, in ancient English language it was written as æpeling. In a commentary on Shade's poem, Kinbote, describing the evening his mother died, says that he spent time with his "platonic friend" Otar, "a pleasant and cultured young aristocrat" ("a pleasant and cultured young adeling") (100, note to line 71). Young people received the news of the death of the queen, being outside the gates of the castle, in the company of several other people, among whom was “a peasant woman with a small pie that she baked herself” (101). Taken together, these details refer to King Alfred, who fled from the Danes, a lonely exile hiding under a false name. Kinbote imagines himself to be an exiled king who hides under an assumed name in swampy New England, a detail that directly alludes to his self-identification with Alfred. Equally, Kinbote's story of his flight from Zembla echoes the dramatic story of Charles II's escape dressed as a servant after an unsuccessful attempt to contest the throne from Cromwell. Kinbote says that John Shade "provided a royal [Zemblan] fugitive a haven in the treasury of variants he had saved..." (77, note on line 42). Both the English kings, Alfred and Charles II, endured much suffering and eventually won a historic victory - and Kinbote also hopes for a restoration on his supposedly lost throne. In the footnote to line 275, the mutual reflections of the stories of the two fugitive kings flicker:
From the very beginning of his reign ... alarmed relatives and especially Bishop Yeslovsky, a sanguine and pious old man, did everything they could to convince him ... to marry.<…>As had been the case with his predecessors, the primitive alderkings, who had a passion for boys, the clergy quietly ignored the pagan customs of our young bachelor, but would like him to do what the earlier and even more intractable Karl did - take one night off and produced legal heir (164).
History has preserved evidence of the debauchery that Charles II of England indulged in with Nell Gwyn, as well as attempts to marry the king; Bede reports on the desire of the clergy to convert the first pagan kings of England to Christianity. In the word "alderkings" one can detect an allusion to King Alfred (who married at the age of twenty): the marshes of the Æthelinge are surrounded by thickets of alder (alder).
By illuminating Kinbote's account of his royal escape with the glimpses of Alfred and Charles' flight, Nabokov reveals a recurring pattern in the fabric of British history, which, in turn, echoes the author's own flight from the Russian Revolution. In the reign of Alfred, English culture was threatened by rude and warlike barbarians; under Charles I, narrow-minded Puritans. In Pale Fire, both threats are associated with Zemblan extremists and with Shadows, which parody 20th-century variations on the theme.
In addition to æpeling, Nabokov gradually introduces several more significant Anglo-Saxon words into Pale Fire. The name of Oswin Bretwit, referred to in the Kinbote Index as a "diplomat and Zemblan patriot" (289), echoes the word bretwalda, which literally means "British ruler", i.e. "ruler of rulers", "high king of Britain". Oswin was the brother of the 9th-century Anglo-Saxon king Oswald. The Danes besieged their fortress and forced them to give out treasures, but later the brother-kings won a major battle. Kinbote translates the name Bretwit as "chess mind" (171, note on line 286). In an episode with Oswin Bretwit, Gradus attempts to ferret out the whereabouts of a fugitive Zemblan king under the pretense of delivering some scripta to him. culture was preserved in England at a very high level. The headquarters of secret agents representing the extremist organization "Shadows" is located in Denmark; Gradus travels to meet Oswin Bretwit via Copenhagen. The Danish motif indicates that Gradus, a rude "man of action" who tempts Bretwit with his alleged scripta, is a threat to Zemblan culture, and the Bretwit episode turns out to be a comic reflection of an event in ancient English history.
The introduction of the motif scripta into the text indicates that Nabokov was interested in the theme of the written word. The writer deliberately emphasizes the role of King Alfred as the founder of English literature. Having cleared England of the Danes, Alfred took up the task of educating his people. For this purpose, he gathered monks from several countries to help him translate the fundamental texts of the time from Latin into Anglo-Saxon. The monks selected works for translation that provided basic information about the world. These were:
one. " General history» Orosia;
2. "Ecclesiastical history of the people of the Angles" Bede;
3. "Dialogues" by Gregory the Great;
4. "Duties of a Pastor" by Gregory the Great;
5. "Consolation Philosophy" Boethius;
6. "Monologues" of Blessed Augustine.
While translating these works, Alfred adapted them to his own purposes, expanding and supplementing the original texts. In some cases he reported new information, in others he gave his own comments. In this sense, Alfred is similar to Kinbote: both are regal author-editors, tendentiously modifying the texts they work with. Kinbote presents Shade's poem as a mirror of his imaginary Zembla, Alfred selects texts for translation and edits them in such a way as to inspire the people with the Christian belief in the immortality of the soul. Boethius, for example, was not a Christian, but in Alfred's arrangement, his work takes on a distinctly Christian focus. The following examination of Alfred's translations (minus the texts of Gregory the Great, which are practical guides for priests), confirms this analogy.
"General History" Orosius
Little is known about Orosius: he was a Spaniard, lived at the end of the 4th - beginning of the 5th century. On behalf of St. Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, Orosius began to compose a work on the history of the world, designed to confirm Christian ideas, which are set forth in Augustine's treatise "On the City of God." He began work on his historical account around 410 and completed it in 416. King Alfred brought the work of Orosius closer to the present, supplementing it with a description of Europe in the 9th century, as well as an account of the travels of Ottar and Wulfstan across the White and to the Baltic Seas. The source of Shade's anecdote about Ottar is Orosius' General History.
Of all the texts translated by Alfred, the General History has undergone the most significant changes. Alfred not only added a description of the events that took place after the sack of Rome in 410, but also significantly expanded the section on European geography: based on information received from travelers, he created the earliest known geographical description of Europe, which tells about the lands inhabited by the Germanic tribes. He learned much of this information from the wealthy Norwegian Ottar, who came to Alfred in 890 to tell the king about his discoveries. Alfred's presentation of Ottar's report is replete with details that vividly convey the spirit of their conversation. According to Alfred, Ottar had 600 deer, 20 cattle, 20 sheep and 20 pigs, and he plowed the land on horseback. For Ottar, accuracy is very important - he refuses to confirm information about which he does not know, "how true [they are] ... because he himself did not see it." Ottar told Alfred that he lived "north of all the Normans". Out of sheer curiosity, he set off on a journey to the northeast, outside of Norway, to find out if the lands to the north exist and whether they are inhabited. Ottar rounded the North Cape and reached the White Sea, thus opening a passage to Russia through the St. Nicholas Bay and the Dvina, a great event in the navigation of that time, the significance of which was noted in geographical works for several centuries. He headed to the east of the White Sea, to the region called Smamiland in the sagas. In an old Icelandic reference book, they are described thus: "Smaojeda, ortum versus a Biarmia ad Mare Glaciale contra Nova Zembla". It turns out that Ottar was the first traveler known to us to reach Nova Zembla, an island off the northern sea border of Russia, now known as Novaya Zemlya. It is this form of the name of New Earth that Kinbote uses in an argument that flared up in the teachers' club at Wordsmith College when he claims that he is not Karl Xavier of Zemblansky: "You are confusing me with some refugee from New Earth (sarcastically emphasizing "New")" , note to line 894).
The General History translated by Alfred and Ottar's story recorded by him are echoed several times in Pale Fire. Kinbote, speaking of Ottar, calls him the king's "confidant" who comes "to tell a subtly different version of some old Scandinavian myth" (161, note on line 238). In ancient Scandinavia, skalds served as court historians and poets; one of the most famous was, as you know, Ottar the Black, the court poet of King Olaf of Norway. Ottar is a Scandinavian version of the Anglo-Saxon name Ohthere. Ottar's "Ransom of the Head", which tells about the battles of Olaf the Saint in England, confirms the accuracy of the events set forth in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. The figure of Olaf the Saint is thematically significant for Pale Fire, for it indicates the connection between English and Russian history. Olaf, like Alfred, fought the Danes in England as a young man. Like Alfred, he achieved the political unification of his country and diligently engaged in the Christianization of its people. Olaf's biography also reveals the theme of exile, supplemented by a Danish motif: as a result of the war with Denmark, an uprising occurred in Norway, which forced Olaf to flee to Russia in 1028. After spending two years there, he tried to regain the royal throne, but died in battle. Connecting the Norwegian traveler Ottar with the Norwegian court poet Ottar Cherny, Nabokov emphasizes both the correlation between literature and history, as well as the connection between England and Scandinavia at the earliest stages of their history, and also creates a “royal” reflection of his exile from Russia in the person of Olav the exile, found a home in Russia.
Thus, the fragment about Alfred and Ottar contains in miniature a number of the central themes of Pale Fire. The list of national literatures of the northern countries is supplemented by England, and the origins of English literature are associated with the idea of translators as "posthorses of civilization".
Kinbote loves to talk about translations: he admires his uncle Conmal's Zemblan translation of Shakespeare, and smashes Sybil Shade's French versions of English poetry to smithereens. Nabokov also speaks at great length on such topics in a commentary on his own translation of Eugene Onegin, lamenting possible distortions and recording the many fruits of cultural interchange nurtured in this translation. Nabokov's definition of paraphrastic translation - especially with regard to "omissions and additions caused by the requirements of the form [and] language specificity inherent in the" consumer "of the translation" ( Comm., 27) is quite applicable to Alfred's translations, simplified for the most unassuming readers. If Kinbote is very careless in his literary translations - he does not refer to dictionaries, original editions or libraries - Alfred practices conscious adaptation of the originals, checking them with new first-hand information.
Nabokov's interest in the role of language and literature in the development of culture is evident in the linguistic geography of Kinbotov's notes to the words "in two languages":
English and Zemblan, English and Russian, English and Latvian, English and Estonian, English and Lithuanian, English and Russian, English and Ukrainian, English and Polish, English and Czech, English and Russian, English and Hungarian, English and Romanian, English and Albanian, English and Bulgarian, English and Serbo-Croatian, English and Russian, American and European (223, note on line 615).
English and Russian - two coordinates artistic world Nabokov - they divide the above list into language groups, just as the “dot” runs through the text of the telegram with a dotted line. Inside the list, movement is made from north to south of Eastern Europe (the only representative of the Romance languages is Romanian), and it is framed by English and Zembla at the beginning and American and European at the end, and within both the initial and final parts of the frame there is a movement from west to East. Kinbote's languages are English and Zemblan, Nabokov's languages are American and European, not so much linguistically as geographically. In Pale Fire, Nabokov maps the northern world in his own way, following the examples of Orosius, Ottar and Alfred.
The "history" of Orosius (in its version modernized by King Alfred) was for his time and culture what the "Kongs-skugg-sjo" was for Scandinavia - a kind of speculum regale, a "royal mirror", which reflected geographical, historical and cultural knowledge of that era. Incorporating material from both ancient encyclopedias, Scandinavian and English, into Pale Fire, Nabokov reveals in history (and traces up to the present) a certain pattern that preserves the language and knowledge of the English-speaking world.
When working with ancient manuscripts, the researcher inevitably faces the problem of their authenticity. As is clear from the commentary to The Tale of Igor's Campaign, Nabokov considered the individual talent of the author embodied in its style as the determining criterion for the authenticity of a document. Alfred's choice of books for translation, as well as his own poetic work, bears the clear imprint of his genius. In addition, considered as historical and natural scientific works, they can be correlated with the data of nature itself - with the principles of maritime navigation, flora and fauna samples. The historical facts given in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, along with other documents of the time, confirm the fundamental ideas set forth in Alfred's texts. The "Royal Mirror" and the "History" of Orosius coincide in descriptions of the location of Iceland, Greenland and the flora of these places.
"Ecclesiastical History of the Anglian People" by Bede
Bede the Venerable (672/673 - 735) was born in England and spent his entire life in a monastery. He wrote on scientific, historical and theological topics, accumulating in his writings the Western European scholarship of that time. "Ecclesiastical history of the people of the Angles" - his most famous work, which marked the beginning of English historiography.
Bede begins his story by describing the various peoples who inhabit Britain. He reports that he gathered much information from oral sources and subjected them to careful critical reflection. His "History ..." tells about the conversion of various groups of the population to Christianity, often accompanied by miracles. The histories of kings abound in biographical detail. So, about Edbald, the son of Edilbert, we learn that by his godlessness and connection with his father's wife, he caused a lot of harm to the Church, for which heaven often sent obscurations, or wodheartness (book II, ch. 5). Nabokov links this story to Kinbote's homosexuality and madness by means of the Anglo-Saxon wod, meaning madness, frenzy: Kinbote says of Goldsworth's house, where he temporarily dwells, that it is "a half-timbered house of the type that in my country is called wodnaggen ..." (78, note to lines 47-48).
In chapters 12-15 of the second book of his work, Bede tells of King Edwin, who, having been persecuted by his predecessor, King Edilfrid, spent many years in exile, until Redwald, king of the East Angles, agreed to take him under his protection. Edilfrid sent messengers to Redwald several times, demanding Edwin's death, and finally forced Redwald to agree. One of Edwin's friends, who found out about this, offered to organize an escape for the exiled king, but he, tired of wandering, resigned himself to the inevitability of an imminent death. He spent the night alone and without sleep, when a spirit comes to him, predicting that if Edwin obeys him, he will become king. Then the same friend appears and informs Edwin that he is now safe. Redwald attacked Edilfrid, and both died in battle, but Edwin soon really ascended the throne and subsequently played an important role in the Christianization of England.
One episode of Edwin's story tells how the king gathers advisers to decide whether he should convert to Christianity. Someone close to Edwin tells a parable:
“This is how I, O king, compare the earthly life of a person with that time that is unknown to us. Imagine that in winter you sit and feast with your attendants and advisers; in the middle of the hall, a fire burns in the hearth, warming you, and outside the winter wind and blizzard rage. And then a sparrow flies through the hall, flying in one door and flying out the other. In that brief moment that he is inside, the winter cold has no power over him; but he immediately disappears from our eyes, carried away from cold to cold. Such is human life, and we do not know what will be and what was before” (Book II, ch. 13).
Recall that the maiden name of John Shade's wife comes from the word "swallow" and that Shade's father was a passionate ornithologist, after whom the waxwing (Bombycilla Shadei) is named (95, note on line 71). John Shade's poem begins with the words: "I was the shadow of a waxwing killed / A false azure of a windowpane" (29), and Kinbote suggests that the first line should have been repeated in the final, thousandth line of the poem. Kinbote's version is at least as symmetrical as the parable told by the adviser to King Edwin. As Jean-Christophe Castelli has shown, Nabokov resorts to the metaphor of a house, an enclosed space, to embody the concept of mortal existence, in which windows are interpreted as bridges from outside and outside. Echoes of the famous parable of Bede are found in many works of world literature - speaking of Nabokov, it is appropriate to note the echo of the image from this parable in Eugene Onegin, where Pushkin likens the dead Lensky to an empty house with closed shutters (6: XXXII). In a similar passage from Other Shores, Nabokov uses a rather Tolstoyan metaphor: “The cradle is rocking over the abyss. Silencing the whisper of inspired superstitions, common sense tells us that life is only a crack of faint light between two perfectly black eternities” (145).
"History ..." Bede is replete with stories about how various kings and priests died, about the joy that they experienced on the eve of meeting with Christ. The theme of otherworldliness, embodied in Nabokov's work in the title "Ultima Thule", is also connected with the "promise of the Kingdom of Heaven and the hope of the resurrection and eternal life" mentioned by Bede (book III, ch. 21) - we will talk about this in more detail in chapter 9.
The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius
...the one who kills is always lower level than his victim.
Charles Kinbote
(pale fire, 222, note. to lines 597–608)
... more unfortunate are those who do injustice than those who suffer from it.
Boethius. Consolation by Philosophy (book IV, ch. 4)
Manlius Severinus Boethius (c. 475–525) – prominent Roman noted for his liberal views and scientific knowledge. Boethius was happily married and had two sons, each of whom became a consul. He was rich and enjoyed the patronage of Theodoric, King of the Ostrogoths. But, being at the peak of this well-being, he provoked a quarrel with Theodoric, speaking in defense of a certain Albinus, who was suspected of treason. As a result, Boethius himself was accused of trying to free Rome from the power of the barbarians, imprisoned and executed a few months later.
Shocked by the sudden turn of his own fate, Boethius wrote The Consolation of Philosophy, a treatise built in the form of a dialogue with Philosophy, which visits the author in prison. Philosophy shows him the vanity of earthly glory, power and wealth - precious stones and gold, which, unlike spiritual joys, are not the true property of their owner.
On a flowering tree you should not look, / Of course, gold. [Why?!] / It’s not even worth picking rare stones from the vine ... (book III, ch. 8).
Both vineyards and gems play an important role in Pale Fire. Gradus derives its name from the Russian "grapes". Further associating this name with Leningrad and Petrograd, Nabokov builds bridges from his native St. Petersburg to Viking culture on the one hand, and to the Bolshevik revolution on the other. The Vikings discovered the area in the north of Canada and gave it a name consonant with the name of the grapes growing there. In Kinbote's text, vineyards serve as a motif connecting Zembla, France, and the United States; Nabokov appeals to historical Vinland to link Russia, Scandinavia, England, France and America.
Forced to flee Zembla for America, Kinbote was unable to take the gems from the Zembla crown with him. The search for these jewels in Pale Fire reflects a similar event in the life of Nabokov himself, which is recounted in Memory, Speak: the porter Ustin led expropriating revolutionaries to a hiding place in the Nabokov mansion in St. Petersburg. Kinbote, in the preface to Shade's poem, states that his own "past is intertwined in it with the fate of the ingenuous author" (13). "Nationalized" jewels are found in Shade's poetic lines, and, as it turns out, they actually grow on trees: "an empty emerald case" (37, line 238) and "dark jade leaves" (30, line 50). But the Zemblan crown jewels disappear in the vicious circle of the Kinbote Pointer. Not the Zemblan regalia, but Shade's poem is Kinbote's true solace in exile. Kinbote resorts to comparisons with precious stones, when describing the "ruby-amethyst windows" of the cathedral at Onhava, where he prayed on the eve of his wedding (165, note on line 275), and the "bright gems of the windows" (152, note on line 181) in Shade's house, an observation behind which alleviates his nightly fears. He admires the "richly colored" duck - "emerald, amethyst, carnelian" (175, note on line 319) - and recalls the "ruby dew in the theatrical illumination of the Alpine dawn", which he saw in the Zemblan mountains (135, note on line 149 ). By using comparisons with precious stones in this way, he combines nature, imagination and his devout religiosity with the hope that the poet living next door will create a lyrical apotheosis of his sadness. But Shade in his poem does not recreate Kinbot's Zembla - his work tells about the pain experienced by the poet who lost his daughter, and not about the sadness of Kinbote, who lost his imaginary kingdom. Pale Fire is Shade's attempt to compensate for the loss through art. However, from an artistic point of view, his poem is a defeat, for the most part it is prose, forcibly turned into poetry, clumsy heroic couplets: “But certain words, chance words I hear or read, / Such as“ bad heart ”always refer to him, / And “cancer of the pancreas” to her” (“But other words accidentally heard or read - / Such as “sick heart” - always refer / To him, and “pancreatic cancer” - to her ”(31, lines 76–78)). In Pale Fire, there is only one gardener who manages to grow gems in the vineyards of the royal poem, and that is Nabokov himself.
In the treatise of Boethius, Philosophy speaks of “false images of bliss” (book III, ch. 3; in the translation of King Alfred - “likeness and shadows true bliss"), that "in the transient earthly good lies some kind of imperfect happiness" (book III, ch. 10; in Alfred's translation: " earthly life very similar to shadow(shadow), and in this shadow no one can achieve true happiness"), for it disappears with death. In "Pale Fire" the name Zembla (Zembla) is made by Kinbote from the word "remind", "to be like" (to re semble) (250, note on line 894), and the text of the novel is saturated with various shadows. The organization that sends the killer Gradus to King Charles the Beloved, as already mentioned, is called "Shadows", the poem plays on all sorts of shades of the meaning of this word. When John Shade has a seizure during a lecture, he says, “But, Doctor, I was the afterlife! He smiled: “Not quite, just a penumbra” ”(56, lines 726-727). Pale Fire is an exceptionally complex and ambiguous novel, yet it could well be defined as a novel about death and the otherworld. Shade undertakes "a survey of the abyss of death" (53, lines 646-647) and states: "...not without reason I am convinced that there is life after death" (65, line 977). The views of Kinbote can be traced back to Bede or Boethius:
When the soul idolizes the One who showed her the way through mortal life, when she discerns His sign at every turn of the path, painted on a boulder or a notch on a spruce trunk, when every page in the book of your personal destiny is marked with His watermark, how can you doubt that He will also protect you in eternity? (211, note on line 493)
However, this touching expression of Kinbote's faith, supported by the precious imagery of his and Shade's writing, ends with an obscene monologue in which Kinbote summarizes his homosexual sins and thoughts of suicide.
Boethius' treatise Philosophy says:
If a mortal wants to become mighty, / Let him humble his indomitable spirit / And do not bend his neck, submitting / To all desires, loosening the reins. / But at least your wrath will be afraid / India will, and will obey / Fula, far away to you, perhaps / The authorities are not able to eliminate worries / Gloomy, and who, tell me, will help / Avoid you misfortunes in life! (book III, ch. 5).
Fula, or Thule, the ancients called the northernmost geographical point, to which it was necessary to sail seven days by sea from Britain (for them, as for Boethius, this, apparently, was Iceland). Nabokov, in his translation of a passage from Hamlet, calls this place “an undiscovered country / from whose borders not a single traveler / returned ...” (III, 1, 79-80) We find the same meaning in his story “Ultima Thule” (1939).
Boethius asks Philosophy why God allows unrighteous rulers to power, what is worthy of hatred and what can be considered just retribution. Philosophy answers: “Cruelty cannot be justified by reason, / And does strength deserve praise? /<…>/ Why awaken these unrest in the soul? / With his daring hand, angry Rock disturb? / If you are looking for death, - wait! Calling is useless. / She will come herself, she will not delay the winged horses ”(book IV, ch. 4). Nabokov personifies this daily approaching death in Jacob Gradus and vents his hatred for him in laughter. Philosophy convinces Boethius that one should hate sin, but not the sinner, and Nabokov's literary exorcism in relation to the murderer, ahead of the pace of natural death, is the realization of this advice.
Philosophy says: “The ruler of the world holds the reins / Strongly in his hands, - the builder of the Universe, / The King, the ruler, the source, the beginning, / The wise judge, always fair ...” (book IV, ch. 6). Kinbote asks Shade, "Who is the Judge of life and the Maker of death?" (214, note on line 549). In Pale Fire, Judge Goldsworth judges criminals; one of those whom he put in prison, in turn, judges him and tries to kill him. Nabokov does not repeat this mistake by condemning the murderer of his father: God alone is allowed to judge the creatures he created, while Nabokov reserves only the right to ridicule evil.
Describing the omnipotence of God, Philosophy compares him with Homer: in his poems, the ancient Greek narrator sang of the sun (Phoebe), “but can Phoebus penetrate the bowels / of the Earth, or the depths of the sea with light / of his powerless rays to penetrate? / Not so with the organizer of the universe, /<…>/ He is the only one who sees everything, / You could call the true Sun. In this sense, the art of mortals is but a pale fire.
Boethius prays:
I call to You, ascend to the sacred abode / Let me see with my mind, bliss, Demiurge!<в переводе Альфреда: «…узреть величественныйsource all the best "> / Remove all the burden of the earth's bulk! / Darkness and clouds / Oppressive, Builder, disperse, appear in the shine! / Peace of the pious! / And the path! Everyone sees you! / In You the beginning and end of everything, You are the crown of life! (emphasis mine. - P. M.).
Nabokov, speaking of otherworldliness, resorts to the same images of fog (clouds) and a source/fountain. In moments of heightened clarity of consciousness, “Other Shores” says, “a mortal is given a rare opportunity to look beyond his own limits ... And although you can hardly distinguish in the darkness, you still blissfully believe that you are looking where you need to” (170). In Pale Fire, John Shade, on the verge of death, sees a fountain. Later, he reads about a certain Mrs. Z., who had a similar experience, and goes to her to find out from this disinterested traveler who visited Tula the exact topography of the other world and make sure that the fountain he saw really exists in another world. As we will see later, Nabokov in his work connects both the fountain (fountain) of Shade and the mountain (mountain) of Mrs. Z with otherworldliness.
The meaning of the consolation that Philosophy brings to Boethius lies in the discovery of true values \u200b\u200bthat lie in the realm of the phenomena of the spirit, in life after death and in faith in God. These thoughts support the spirit of Boethius in exile and imprisonment, help to survive the overthrow from the heights of well-being at the behest of the barbarian king. It can be said that Alfred, having experienced similar vicissitudes of fate, identified himself with Boethius. Nabokov, who also has to deal with despair caused by similar events in his life, creates poems and poems dedicated to the loss of Russia. Many of his works speak of the dangers of a solipsistic, painful plunge into despair. The novel "Pnin" varies the theme of the nostalgia of the exile in the spirit of mild comedy; Kinbote, on the other hand, is a tragic image of madness caused by a passionate longing for a lost kingdom, albeit an imaginary one.
"Monologues" of Blessed Augustine
Again and again: "Tomorrow, tomorrow!"
Blessed Augustine. Confession (book 8)
In The Pale Fire, Blessed Augustine, Bishop of Hippo (354-430), is mentioned twice directly, and there is another reference to him in Kinbote's commentary:
Once... in my... youth... I had a chance to see a person at the moment of contact with God. I wandered into the so-called Rose Square behind the Ducal Chapel in my native Onhava during a break in hymn rehearsals. While I was wallowing there ... distant melodious voices reached me, merging with muffled boyish fun .... The sound of quick footsteps made me look up sullenly from the fine mosaics of the site—realistic rose petals carved from matte and large, almost palpable spikes of green marble. A black shadow stepped into these roses and thorns: a tall, pale young pastor, long-nosed and dark-haired ... came out of the sacristy and stopped in the middle of the courtyard. Guilty disgust crooked him thin lips. <…>His clenched fists seemed to grip the invisible bars of the prison bars. But there is no limit to the extent of grace that a person is able to perceive. Suddenly his face took on an expression of delight and reverence. I had never seen such fiery bliss, but I caught something equally magnificent, the same spiritual power, the same divine insight now, in another land, reflected in the crudely molded and ugly face of old John Shade. How glad I was that my vigils throughout the spring had prepared me to watch him during the hours of his magical summer labors! (84-85, note on lines 47-48).
Alfred the Great- King of England, younger son of King Ethelwulf and Osburgh; genus. in 849 in Berkshire. His grandfather Egbert, king of Wessex, at the beginning of the 9th century. united all the petty Anglo-Saxon kingdoms into one state - England. Already a 5-year-old boy, A. was sent to Rome to be anointed by Pope Leo IV. A few years later he undertook a second trip to Rome with his pious and generous father. On the way back, they both spent quite a long time at the court of Charles the Bald, where young A. got acquainted with a higher civilization. Only after the death of his elder brother Ethelred A. in 871 was proclaimed king. Even earlier, he had to repel the invasion of the Danes. Having reached the throne, he strained every effort to save the independence of the country. At first he fought without success, as the Danes arrived in England in increasing numbers, and the Anglo-Saxons either submitted to someone else's yoke, or left their homeland. He himself even had to hide from the enemy for some time in a shepherd's hut in the county of Somerset. Here, in a desert, swampy area, he founded a castle and, when the people began to revolt against the Danes, he called his adherents here.
Tradition greatly embellished the military adventures of A. Having defeated the Danes in May 878 and subjugated them to himself, he allowed them, however, to retain their settlements in England so that they recognized him as their king and converted to Christianity. In the next 6 peaceful years, he built fortresses, ordered the rebuilding of destroyed cities and monasteries, and patronized agriculture, at the same time exercising the people in the art of war. The new Danish invasion (893), after a stubborn struggle, ended happily. He also successfully repulsed the repeated attacks of the Normans led by Hastings. With the help of legislation and concern for public education, he tried to raise the level of national development and was distinguished by strict justice in relation to both the British and the Danes. AT later time, however, they began to attribute to him such charitable institutions that he had either just begun, or had already existed among the Anglo-Saxons, and A. were only renewed, approved and more developed. In order to improve administration, he divided the provinces into smaller divisions (Shires), at the head of which he placed earls (thans, earls); the counties were in turn subdivided into tens, or tythings. The judicial organization he introduced for the whole country became the basis for the later trial by jury. A. ordered to collect the ancient laws of Kent, Wessex and Mercia and combined them, with the addition of new laws, into one code, which became the basis of Common law. In addition, he separated the office of judge from the leadership of the army. He tried his best to promote agriculture and trade. As an ardent lover and advocate of scientific education, A. ordered to translate many works from the Latin language, which he himself learned only at 36, into Anglo-Saxon. Some works, such as, for example, Boethius "De consolatione philosophiae" and the history of Orosius, he translated himself, adding to the latter notes on travels in the German and Baltic Seas and a description of the Slavic lands, he himself equipped 2 expeditions - the Normans of Oter, who visited the White Sea , and Wulfstan, who penetrated from Schleswig into the Gulf of Finland. In order to promote such enterprises, and mainly to protect against the Normans, he strengthened his fleet, so that he can be considered the founder of the English fleet. A. † October 26 or 28, 901. The most important source for his biography is "Vita Alfredi", written by his friend Asser of Wales, later Bishop of Sherburne, distinguished by its simplicity of presentation (ed. Wiese, Oxf., 1772), and in "Monumenta historiae Britannicae" (vol. 1, Lond., 1848). A.'s writings in New English. translated from a distance by Giles in collaboration with Bosworth et al. under the title " The whole works of king A. (2 volumes, Lond., 1858). Wed Pauli, "König A. und seine Stelle in der Geschichte Englands" (Berl., 1851); Weiss, "Geschichte A. des Grossen" (Schaffg., 1852).
And ended his reign as the "king of the Anglo-Saxons", the supreme ruler of England.
The main source of biographical information about A. V. are the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and the "Biography of King Alfred", written by Asser; the code of laws compiled by A. V. (see the article Anglo-Saxon Pravda), the will, the text of the agreement with the Viking leader Guthrum and other documents have also been preserved. AV was the youngest son of King Æthelwulf and the grandson of King Egbert, whose reign was marked by the rise of Wessex and the beginning of the Viking invasions of England. By the time A. W. came to power after the death of his brother Æthelred, the two large Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of Northumbria and East Anglia were already in Viking hands, and Mercia was on the verge of falling. In 871 Wessex, which by that time had included Essex, Sussex and Kent, withstood nine great battles with the Vikings, which resulted in the conclusion of a peace agreement. However, the onslaught on Wessex, which soon remained the only free Anglo-Saxon kingdom, did not stop. In early 878, A. V. was forced to flee after a sudden attack by the Vikings on the royal estate of Chippingham. For several months, the kingdom was, in fact, under the rule of the Vikings, and the king was hiding with his retinue in the swamps of Somerset and preparing a retaliatory strike. In early summer, A.V. inflicted a decisive defeat on the Vikings at Eddington, after which a peace treaty was concluded between him and the Viking leader Guthrum, according to which England was divided into two parts. The border between them ran along the rivers Thames and Lee, in a straight line from the source of the Lee to Bedford, then along the river. The Ouse and the ancient Roman road that connected London and Chester. Thus the Domain of Danish Law (Denlo) was born. Guthrum was baptized, and A.V. was his godfather. In 886, A. V. took possession of London, after which, according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, "all the Angles who were not under the rule of the Danes submitted to him." He was the first of the English kings to use the title "King of the Angles and Saxons", "King of the Anglo-Saxons" (see Anglo-Saxons). In the same years, A. V. took a number of measures to strengthen the British defense. He expanded the system of coastal fortresses - burgs and placed garrisons in them; the details of this system are reflected in the document "Land holdings of the burghs" during the reign of A. W.'s son, Edward the Elder. He transformed the system of convocation of the English militia in such a way that the king had a permanent army at his disposal. It is believed that in his state activities, A. V. was inspired by the ideas of the Carolingian Renaissance. At the court of A.V., two Frankish scribes worked - Grimbald of Saint-Bertin and John the Old Sax; among his close associates were enlightened English clerics - Bp. Plegmund and Werfert, Welsh monk Asser. During the reign of A.V., a code of laws was created, which opened with a translation of the Decalogue of Moses, an annals; translations into Old English were made of "The Duties of the Shepherd" and "Dialogues" by Gregory the Great, "Ecclesiastical History of the Angles" by Bede the Venerable, "History against the Gentiles" by Orosius, "Consolations of Philosophy" by Boethius, "Monologues" by Bl. Augustine, the first 50 psalms; a martyrology was compiled in Old English. Translations of Orosius, Boethius and Augustine are, in fact, free transcriptions of Latin works and can be considered as completely independent works. The code of laws and the translation of the "Duties of the Shepherd" in the manuscripts that have come down to us are preceded by the Preface, written on behalf of the king. Tradition attributes to A. V. the authorship of all these translations, except for the "Dialogues" of Gregory the Great, but modern researchers tend to be skeptical about this. According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, A. V. died on October 26. Currently, 899 is considered the most recognized date (there are also options for 900 and 901). The origin of the legendary tradition associated with the name of A. V. should be attributed to the XII century, it reaches its peak in the XIII-XIV centuries. In the legends, A. V. becomes the embodiment of state and worldly wisdom; the foundation of Oxford University is associated with his name, as well as many other fantastic and instructive stories. A new stage in the development of the "Alfred legend" is associated with the appearance in 1678 of the book "Alfred the Great" (ed. 1703) by John Spelman. Spelman was the first of the English to use the nickname “great” in relation to A.V., and also attributed to A.V. the creation of a jury in England. His work laid the foundation for the myth of A.V. as the defender of English freedom, the creator of the English state. The crowning achievement in the development of the "Alfred cult" was the magnificent celebration of the millennium since his death in 1901. In the XVIII-XIX centuries. AV became the hero of many poems, prose and drama. His name was also known in Russia. N.V. Gogol dedicated his early play Alfred the Great to the English king.
Wessex is one of the kingdoms of the Anglo-Saxon union, which later became the basis for modern Britain. Alfred the Great ruled the kingdom in the 9th century and saw it flourish to a great extent.
early years
The future ruler was the youngest son of King Ethelwulf. Thanks to good court training, the boy knew several languages and mastered philosophy well. At the request of his father, still a child, Alfred went to Rome, so that the Pope would bless him as the future king.
Sickly and weak, the boy had a truly indomitable spirit, therefore he tried to keep up with his older brothers in military sciences and in his youth he already fought in the forefront, and by the age of twenty he already enjoyed well-deserved respect among the soldiers.
Strategy and war
Alfred ascended the throne after the death of his elder brother and immediately spoke out against the elders, after which the trust in him among the people fell significantly.
After the Wessex army was defeated during the war with the Danes, the king was forced to pay quite a substantial tribute and conclude a shaky truce with the invaders. A five-year lull made it possible to build its own fleet in the kingdom - he managed to repel the Vikings and extend his dominance in the English Channel even during the reign of Alfred's son, Edward the Elder.
Having collected a fairly serious army, Alfred, nevertheless, preferred to pay off the Vikings, while he later inflicted a significant defeat on the Danes and took an oath to stop the attacks. However, after the dissolution of the regular troops of Wessex to their homes, the Danes attacked the defenseless kingdom and forced the ruler to flee and live in a poor fisherman's hut.
Having accumulated strength, the Anglo-Saxons managed to fight back and make peace with the Vikings, which allowed the kingdom to become powerful enough. The last years the king devoted to planning and organizing a Christian alliance against the Vikings.
Reforms of Alfred the Great
One of Alfred's most unusual innovations was military reform. The king divided the territory of Wessex into districts, where each city and farm was supposed to provide the army with several soldiers fully prepared for service annually. Some of those drafted into the army served in the regular troops, and some in the garrisons. The king was the first in history to abandon the people's militia, instead creating a military class. The farmers were also obliged to keep bridges and defensive fortifications in order.
Alfred put the royal court above the rest, which made it possible to introduce a new set of laws that would be the same for the entire kingdom. Violation of the law was considered, first of all, as an insult to the king, therefore it was punished severely.
To revive the economy of Wessex, destroyed by wars, the king ordered the repair of roads, handed out devastated plots of land, and encouraged trade with other countries in every possible way. Dozens of schools and monasteries were built at the expense of the royal treasury. In addition, education became a prerequisite for serving at court - illiterate ministers and officials were forced to urgently engage in literacy.
Alfred the Great also encouraged the development of literature and science in every possible way, he himself translated some theological works. It was on his orders that the legendary Anglo-Saxon Chronicle was started at the end of the 9th century.