Pursuing the idea of "mourning":
The poem Pale Fire deals with
"infinite foretime and/infinite aftertime" (Canto 1,lines 122 and 123).
It starts a few days before John Shade´s 61st BIRTHDAY. It ends
abruptly seventeen days later with his DEATH, on July 21.
(July 21... was it Ada´s birthday?)
There is a writer ( detective stories
and Sci-Fi), Lady P.D.James, who recurrently mentions verses that deal
with infinite fore/aftertime or beginings & ends.
Besides "A Certain Justice" her two other novels that mention
these lines are: "A taste of death" and "An unsuitable job for a
woman".
In the latter she added a quotation about cradles and death by Joseph
Hall (1574-1656): "Death borders upon our birth, and our
cradle stands in the grave."
P.D.James has twice attributed these
lines about beginings&ends to Shakespeare, but I could not locate
them there. I found them in
J. Webster´s ( 1580) "The White Devil" (She may know they are John
Webster´s, though, since in her novel "A Certain Justice" events take
place at Middle-Temple, where Webster might have studied law).
"I do not look
Who went before, nor who shall follow me;
No, at myself I will begin and end . . ." (Flamineo)
Interestingly enough, this same John
Webster is mentioned twice in "Pale Fire" - through T.S.Eliot, whose
presence is significant in John Shade´s poem .
B.Boyd linked Webster via T.S.Eliot, but
he didn´t mention the lines where there is a triple allusion mixing
Eliot, Webster and Goethe. Although the
question: "What is that noise? The wind under the door" is connected
by Kinbote to Goethe´s Erlkönig, a similar verse appears also not only
in Eliot himself - but it subsequently indicates Webster´s.
(Cf. Eliot´s note on line 74
when invites us to compare "Oh keep the Dog far hence, that´s friend to
men" to the dirge son by Cornelia in "The White Devil", act 5 scene 4
- where we also find the line "No, at myself I will begin and
end "... )
Following Webster´s lead I came to a certain puzzle which I formulated as: "who was
murdered and whose body was not recovered for a proper burial?" in
Pale Fire?
I thought it might be interesting to
mention this theme here because I´m not competent enough to pursue it
further and I have no direct access to J. Webster´s works. Perhaps
someone at the List might be interested to pursue these references.
Jansy