In the present dry season, in Brasilia, rain is only expected in
October. Nevertheless, inspite of the incipient draught and future
spotless blue skies, yesterday there were a few thinning strands of
clouds on which I discerned a small squarish patch of rainbow,
encased in the barest outline of a disrupted arc.
If rain there was, for the needed refraction of the light
creating an iridescence, it must be falling high up in the strata
and never reach the earth.
I wondered about Nabokov's "iridules" and looked it up in "Pale
Fire".
In his note, Kinbote compares it to "nacreous gleams" and the
Zemblan word he offers apparently means "a mother-of-pearl cloud." - so it
confirms the "nacreous" colored effect (I don't dare to extend this to fishing
baits and "alders"!).
Shade's neologism and definition suggest something more specific: an
opalescent oval-shaped cloudlet (a propicious mirror, so it seems),
which then reflects a distant rainbow and does not belong to the
rainbow proper.
The rainbow is a "virtual" object and the iridule is a mirage
(fatamorgana), a phenomenon that actualizes the rainbow in our eyes
and "cages" our imagination. Like Tchekov's "Black Monk"? Iridules,
according to Shade, are a rare phenomenon. I don't think I ever saw one, I
wonder if they exist except for Shade.
Has anyone ever found an iridule?
PALE FIRE: ..."that rare phenomenon/ The iridule — when, beautiful and
strange,/ In a
bright sky above a mountain range/ One opal cloudlet in an oval
form/ Reflects the rainbow of a thunderstorm/
Which in a distant valley has been staged..."
CK note to line 109: iridule: An iridescent cloudlet, Zemblan muderperlwelk. The term "iridule" is, I
believe, Shade’s own invention. [ ] The peacock-herl is the body of a
certain sort of artificial fly also called "alder." [...] (See also the "strange
nacreous gleams" in line 634*)
..........................................................................................................
*childhood
memories of strange/ Nacreous
gleams beyond the adults’ range.