Pale Fire - Vladimir Nabokov [111]
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 Erlkönig, 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 with her Russian lover during traditional New Year’s festivities, 681.
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