Pegasus in PF

This is a great find, Mary (see my detailed reply, "Pegasus & T. S. Eliot in PF," posted separately)! Nur schade (but what a shame) in Schiller's original brings to mind Shade:

Hell wieherte der Hippogryph
Und bäumte sich in prächtiger Parade;
Erstaunt blieb jeder stehn und rief:
"Das edle, königliche Tier! Nur schade,
Daß seinen schlanken Wuchs ein häßlich Flügelpaar
Entstellt! Den schönsten Postzug würd es zieren.
Die Rasse, sagen sie, sei rar,
Doch wer wird durch die Luft kutschieren?

Shrill neighed the hippogriff and clear,

And pranced, and reared, displaying his proud frame,

Till all exclaimed in wonder, who stood near,

“The noble, royal beast! But what a shame

His slender form by such a hateful pair

Of wings is spoiled! He’d set off a fine post-team well.”

“The race,” say others, “would be rare;

But who’d go posting through the air?”

In his Introduction to his English version of Eugene Onegin VN says: “Pushkin likened translators to horses changed at the post houses of civilizations. The greatest reward that I can think of is that students may use my work as a pony.”

In his EO Commentary (vol. II, p. 435) VN quotes a poem from Die Heimkehr (“The Homecoming,” 1823-24) by Heinrich Heine (who expresses much better than Pushkin does in Four: XXII of EO the idea of self-esteem):

Braver Mann! Er schafft mir zu essen!
Will es ihm nie und nimmer vergessen!
Schade, daβ ich ihn nicht küssen kann!
Denn ich bin selbst dieser brave Mann.

A fine man! He gets food for me!
I will never forget him that!
Pity that I cannot kiss him!
For I am myself this fine man.

It seems that, to be completed, Shade’s almost finished poem needs not only Line 1000 (identical to Line 1: “I was the shadow of the waxwing slain”), but also a coda (Line 1001: “By its own double in the windowpane”). Der Doppelgänger is a poem by Heinrich Heine:

Still ist die Nacht, es ruhen die Gassen,

In diesem Hause wohnte mein Schatz;

Sie hat schon längst die Stadt verlassen,

Doch steht noch das Haus auf demselben Platz.

Da steht auch ein Mensch und starrt in die Höhe,

Und ringt die Hände, vor Schmerzens Gewalt;

Mir graust es, wenn ich sein Antlitz sehe –

Der Mond zeigt mir meine eigne Gestalt.

Du Doppelgänger! du bleicher Geselle!

Was äffst du nach mein Liebesleid,

Das mich gequält auf dieser Stelle,

So manche Nacht, in alter Zeit?

The night is still, the streets are at rest;

in this house lived my sweetheart.

She has long since left the town,

but the house still stands on the selfsame spot.

A man stands there too, staring up,

and wringing his hands in anguish;

I shudder when I see his face –

the moon shows me my own form!

You wraith, pallid companion,

why do you ape the pain of my love

which tormented me on this very spot,

so many a night, in days long past?

(tr. R. Wigmore)

According to Heine (an émigré poet who lived in Paris), his French friends mispronounced his name Enri Enn which sounded almost like Rien (“Mr. Nobody”).

In the opening line of Pegasus im Joche Schiller mentions Haymarket:

Auf einen Pferdemarkt – vielleicht zu Haymarket,
Wo andre Dinge noch in Ware sich verwandeln,
Bracht einst ein hungriger Poet
Der Musen Roß, es zu verhandeln.

Haymarket is a street in London. According to Shade, England wants Pegasus to plough. In Canto Four of his poem Shade describes shaving and mentions slaves who make hay between his mouth and nose:

And while the safety blade with scrape and screak

Travels across the country of my cheek;

Cars on the highway pass, and up the steep

Incline big trucks around my jawbone creep,

And now a silent liner docks, and now

Sunglassers tour Beirut, and now I plough

Old Zembla's fields where my gay stubble grows,

And slaves make hay between my mouth and nose. (ll. 931-938)

Das Sklavenschiff ("The Slave Ship") is a poem by Heinrich Heine.

Seems like a nice find, and fairly plausible based on your description (I haven't read the poem yet — looking forward to it) and your confirmation of VN's having read Schiller. (Admittedly, you lose me in the PS.)

On the topic of Pegasus, are you familiar with its other reference in PF? I highly recommend looking into Kinbote's Picasso (the one he describes as 'earth boy leading raincloud horse') — especially looking at Picasso's own sources of inspiration for his painting. Some great reverberations throughout PF, including the lines you've singled out, since Picasso has made Pegasus into a flightless horse.

PS though I don't find compelling the suggestion that Botkin is the secret author of PF, it's fun nonetheless to point out a Freudian slip of the mask in Alexey's rendition of Canto Four.

A quick rebuttal to your suggestion that "VN mentions famous Picasso prints as an indication of low-brow taste":

"Nabokov, who had a copy of ['Chandelier, pot et casserole émaillée'] on his writing desk in Montreux, when asked what aspects of Picasso he admired, said: 'the graphic aspect, the masterly technique, and the quiet colors.'" (page 74 of Vladimir Nabokov and the Art of Painting by Donald Barton Johnson and Gerard de Vries)

By the way, in case you haven't tracked it down yet, the Mantegna I referred to is called Parnassus.

I agree, the poem is one of my favourites.

As for the "Old Zembla's fields" section, I read it in large part as a parody of Mowing by Robert Frost.

In Mowing the poet is inspired by his "long scythe whispering to the ground." Compare to Shade who composes while shaving, listening to "the safety blade with scrape and screak." Frost compares the mowing labor to his poetic labor, having "laid the swale in rows" like the lines of a poem, after which he has "left the hay to make," suggesting that the reader will participate in a shared act of meaning-making with the poet. Compare to Pale Fire: Shade would lampoon the possible interpretation of a libertarian communal meaning-making, insisting specifically that it's "slaves" who "make hay", very much like Conmal's "I am not slave! Let be my critic slave." See also Nabokov's own great joke (if you know both meanings of 'galley') in an interview in The Paris Review, 1967:

E.M. Forster speaks of his major characters sometimes taking over and dictating the course of his novels. Has this ever been a problem for you, or are you in complete command?

My knowledge of Mr. Forster’s works is limited to one novel which I dislike; and anyway it was not he who fathered that trite little whimsy about characters getting out of hand; it is as old as the quills, although of course one sympathizes with his people if they try to wriggle out of that trip to India or whereever he takes them. My characters are galley slaves.

The irony is that while Shade is lampooning the "hay making" approach to poetic interpretation, he accidentally glancingly names the Zemblan who will be left to make hay, not at all a slave to Shade's dictates — in fact, a king in his own right. The irony is compounded by the following lines (939-940), unaware of the coming "commentary" and unaware this would be the "unfinished poem" in question. (The quality of the irony is the same as when he says "I am reasonably sure that I // Shall wake at six tomorrow".) It's important to understand that lines 939-940 don't come out of nowhere — that Shade is thinking of meaning-making when he's talking about "making hay."

There's a lot more to be said about the shaving as part of a pattern of body waste products vs artistic creation. Quick example: "the pencil with which he kept picking his ear (inspecting now and then the lead, and even tasting it)." That's all for now.

Re: galley slaves joke: galley can refer to a ship (as in the 'trip' he refers to in E. M. Forster's A Passage to India), but galley can also refer to a printer's proof (as in his own books).

The comparison that Alain makes to Frost's Mowing seems fruitful. It impelled me to revisit the poem in any case. But, I think Frost there is challenging both Wordsworth's "wise passiveness" (Expostulation and Reply) as well as Keats's Ode on Indolence (It was no dream of the gift of idle hours/ Or easy gold at the hand of fay or elf) that Shade may take issue with? Housman's famous lines on the razor, "if a line of poetry strays into my memory, my skin bristles so that the razor ceases to act", ends with a quotation from one of Keats's letters, "speaking of Fanny Brawne ‘everything that reminds me of her goes through me like a spear.’ The seat of this sensation is the pit of the stomach." Another time, VN would extol the virtues of the stomach and chewing (and picking apart) literary bits properly. In general though, my take does not really place Shade contra Frost here. I mean not much to argue against "the fact is the sweetest dream that labor knows" or against "the earnest love that laid the swale in rows" (one step away from, you would note, Shakespeare's "silent love has writ").

But nice source for Pegasus! Although I suspect the comparison may be too common for a direct reference. To be honest, the whole business of plodding and ploughing immediately reminds me of VN's reply to Edmund Wilson ("Reply to my Critics") on one of the passages from Eugene Onegin:

"If, however, we resist the unfair temptation of imagining Mr. Wilson’s horse plodding through my trot and, instead, have it plod through Mr. Wilson’s snow, we obtain the inept picture of an unfortunate beast of burden laboriously working its way through that snow, whereas in reality Pushkin celebrates relief, not exertions. The peasant is not “rejoicing” or “feeling festive,” as paraphrasts have it (not knowing Pushkin’s use of torzhestvovat’ here and elsewhere), but “celebrating” (the coming of winter), since the snow under the sleigh facilitates the little nag’s progress and is especially welcome after a long snowless autumn of muddy ruts and reluctant cart wheels."

This I think, one of the issues, different readers are reminded of different things, rather than of resemblances of thoughts.

I didn't mean to cut short discussions on Frost or any other poet in regard to Pale Fire. On the contrary, I have often felt too little has been said on the merits of the poem itself, the inner harmonies, recurring imagery and so on. We would do well in compiling one's favourite lines from the poem itself, the ones that caught our attention most when reading or re-reading the poem. In any case, Alain's points was a good starting point to talk about other poems in relation to Pale Fire. And it would be wonderful to properly visit (like Mary did) other poets while mining for data behind Pale Fire.

Mary says: " Apparently (according again to Mathew Roth) Nabokov, in an earlier version of PF intended Shade to be experiencing a breakdown from homophobic fears."

I don't believe I ever claimed such a thing. Certainly nothing in the holograph manuscript points to that. At the risk of multiplying misattributions, I do seem to recall Carolyn Kunin arguing for something along these lines in the context of the published version.

Matt Roth

Thanks, Mary, for the correction and for quoting from my article, which interested parties can find in the NOJ archives.

Matt