Pale Fire, Canto 2, lines 220/232
So why join in the vulgar laughter?
Why
Scorn a hereafter none can verify:
The turkīs delight, the future lyres, the
talks
With Socrates and Proust in cypress
walks,
The seraph with his six flamingo
wings,
And Flemish hells with
porcupines and things?
It isnīt that we dream too wild a dream:
The
trouble is we do not make it seem
Sufficiently unlikely; for the most
We can think up is a domestic ghost.
How ludicrous these efforts to
translate
Into oneīs private tongue a public
fate!
......
( John Shade, not Saint John, seems to be aware of
a prophetic vision which he can only translate using domestic ghosts...
Revelations speaks of the prophetic tongue and St.Paulīs Epistle "in
a glass, darkly" also mentions tongues and the question of
"Translation"...)
I wish I could find a big reproduction
of Boschīs " Last Judgement Triptych" ( and its "Flemish Hell" ) to
observe how the seraphs were pictured in it. The flamingo winged ones, as
I observed, are more clear in "The Majestic Look" of illustrated New Testament
on Christ in his throne.
You worked with Bosch and the paintings mentioned
in ADA in your book you mentioned once. How may I order a
copy?
Best wishes,
Jansy