Message One:
 
JM to CHW: ...I asked you why you only saw two parts ( Poem and Commentary) as comprising "Pale Fire", not the Index, not the Foreword.

CHW to JM:  ...Are you saying that the Index and/or Foreword are by someone other than either JS or CK? Does PF consist of halves, thirds or quarters?  Or none of these? State the alternative preferred.
 
JM to CHW: The third alternative, among two impossible hotspurs*. 
If Johnson, Virginia Woolf,  besides other non-English writers ( in the early sixties I read a Brazilian book, "Manicaporão", with a character named Quimboto, that also sported a pedantic annotator) used foot-notes as "an art form", why not  Nabokov?**
He must have intended Index, Commentary and even Foreword to be read as constitutive parts of "Pale Fire". If we accept that John Shade wrote the poem and the rest was added by Kinbote ( and not by VN, who simply wrote the entire novel), then these three Kinotean parts must belong to one of your halves.
 
*Quoted by CHW: From Dr.Johnson's "Notes to Shakespeare": Henry IV, Part I; 3.1.96
(On "moiety".)  Hotspur is here just such a divider as the Irishman who made three halves: Therefore, for the honour of Shakespeare, I will suppose, with the Oxford Editor, that he wrote portion. --- WARBURTON. I  will not suppose it. --- JOHNSON 
**...VN's elevation of the footnote into a literary art-form in its own right was foreshadowed by Johnson. I suppose.
 
 
Message Two:

(a) "Through the window of that index/ Climbs a rose/ And sometimes a gentle wind ex/ Ponto blows."  Foreword to SM, 1966;
(b) "Nobody will heed my index, I suppose,/ But through it a gentle wind ex/ Ponto blows" (cited in Boyd, VNAY 445).
(c) The lines CHW and JF quote are the poem attributed to John Shade in VN's 1965 draft foreword to SM. Brian Boyd makes much  of it in VNAY. Before going to press, VN apparently thought better of it and replaced those lines (MR)
(d) .."Nabokov clearly saw nothing wrong with mentioning something of cardinal importance to him in a poem that uses a strained rhyme associated with 'comic and curious verse'.  I'm suggesting that he intended no misjudgement or inartistry on Shade's part when he made Shade do the same thing." (JF)
(e) JM: I thought you had agreed that writing "verse" is not the same as writing "poetry" and, also, that a poet may use both without ceasing to be a poet ( in a non-Platonic world...).  What was "of cardinal importance", a compass rose? Or, as CHW implied: "astonishing because it attributes the Index ... www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/boydpf7.htm "
 
Message Three:Tidbits on Various Indexations and (why not) ... Indications:
 
(a)Shade’s poem is, indeed, that sudden flourish of magic: my gray-haired friend, my beloved old conjurer, put a pack of index cards into his hat — and shook out a poem.

(b) A still life in her style: the paperweight/ Of convex glass enclosing a lagoon, The verse book open at the Index (Moon,...   

(c) My fingernails...certain flinching likenesses: the thumb,/ Our grocer’s son; the index, lean and glum/

(d) this good ink, this rhyme,/ This index card, this slender rubber band /

(e) In the large envelope I carried I could feel the hard-cornered, rubberbanded batches of index cards. 

(f) his contempt for Prof. H. (not in Index),/ his participation in a Common Room discussion of his resemblance to the King, and his final rupture with E. (not in the Index), 894 he and S shaking with mirth over tidbits in a college textbook by Prof. C. (not in the Index), 929;

 


Message Four:

JF wrote to Don Johnson: I think the "weeping cedar" is a cultivar of the Cedar of Lebanon, maybe specifically /Cedrus libani/ "Pendula", so it's not quite "the Lebanon Cedar a.k.a. the Weeping Cedar".  I can't help wondering whether this is a reminiscence of the obvious and hidden cedars in /Pale Fire/. Unfortunately, I didn't find "shade" in the passage (though "shadow" is there). (JF)
JM to JF and DBJ:  In one of my sources I saw there are various kinds of Cedrus libani and one, the weeping cedar, is mentioned as belonging to the "Atlas" ("Atlantic") kind.
I also found a reference that "Biblical or Koranic names are frequently used outside the Near East for indigenous plants that never grew in the lands where these two books originated. The flora of eastern North America, for example, has many “cedars”, which are not related to the cedar of Lebanon (Cedrus libani) of the Bible. Perhaps because the cedar of Lebanon was such a well-recognized symbol from the Bible, the early Christian settlers in North America gave this name to many different trees (and even to many herbaceous plants),whether or not they were true cedars or even members of the same botanical family. For example, the widespread red cedar of eastern North America (Juniperus virginiana), like Cedrus libani, is an evergreen and has a pleasant, enduring fragrance, but its cone is fleshy and berry-like, unlike the large spindle-shaped cone of the cedar of Lebanon."
Of interest to "Ada, or Ardor", might be the link with Eden' s Tree of Knowledge in  "Religion: Theology, Rite and Myth." Samuel Noah Kramer (" Ezekiel mentions the cedars of Lebanon in the Garden of Eden, ..."  www.bibleorigins.net/EdensTreeofKnowledgeLife.html ; Roberts - Trees as Tribute in the Ancient Near East - Transoxiana .. "The Cedars of Lebanon", pp. 89-96; "Cypress and Juniper in Hebrew and Assyrian Texts", ... "The Paradise Myth", pp 2-7. George Brazilier, New
York, 1979. ...www.transoxiana.org/11/roberts-near_east_trees.html
To complete the data gathered now:
Giulia Visintin: Lebanon Cedar a.k.a. the Weeping Cedar in Strong Opinions, p. 55
SES: [EDNOTE.  Just to save everyone from finding the citation: In his comments for a 1965 television interview in SO, VN remarks that "A good
deal of Kinbote's commentary was written here in the Montreux Palace garden[. . . .]  I'm especially fond of its weeping cedar, the arboreal
counterpart of a very shaggy dog with hair hanging over its eyes"
(55). ]





 

Search the Nabokv-L archive at UCSB

Contact the Editors

All private editorial communications, without exception, are read by both co-editors.

Visit Zembla

View Nabokv-L Policies