JM: Perfect reminder. Castors
in PF, also in ADA, abound*. The mortal twin?!
In relation to the ghostly "pale
flambeau" I had been researching a different track, starting from an
information about "globular light", the "fire of St.Elm" ( associated
to Castor and Pollux) and will-o'-the wisp ( "igni fatuus" or
"foolish fire", found in swamps), to reach Hazel's experience in the
haunted barn: "10:25. A roundlet of pale light, the size of a small doily;
flitted across the dark walls, the boarded windows, and the floor; changed its
place; lingered here and there, dancing up and down; seemed to wait in teasing
play for evadable pounce. Gone.".
Next I got confused by a side-issue: sometime
after 1950 Hentzner had the barn destroyed and only a tuft of grass could be
examined by Shade and Kinbote, approximately nine years later.
When did Hazel spend the night with mama and
papa in the unburnt-barn?
Would Hazel's experience with "lights" (
preceded by HH's mother's death by lightning and followed by abolished
electricity in ADA and its veeny swamps) be among the meanings associated
to Pale Fire?
..........................................................
* ADA: a lowly manteau de castor (beaver,
nemetskiy bobr)... the bobrovaya shuba.
** Shakespeare's "The Tempest" ( also
described in HM's "Moby Dick"), following an internet
commentator: "There is a meteor known to sailors, and called by the several
names of the fire of Saint Helen, Saint Elm, Saint Herm, Saint Clare, Saint Peter,
and Saint Nicholas. "When- ever it
appeared as a single flame it was supposed by the ancients to be Helena, the sister of Castor and
Pollux, and in this state to bring
ill luck, from the calamities which this lady is known to
have caused in the Trojan war.
When it came double it was called Castor and Pollux, and accounted
a good omen. It has been
described as a little blaze of fire, sometimes appearing by night on the tops of soldiers' lances,
or at sea on masts and sail-yards, whirling and leaping in a moment from one
place to another. Some have said,
but erroneously, that it never appears but after a tempest. It is also supposed to lead
people to suicide by drowning.
Shakespeare seems to have consulted Stephen Batman's Golden Booke oj the
leaden Goddes, who, speaking of Castor and Pollux, says "they were figured like two lampes or
cresset lightes, one on the toppe
of a maste, the other on the stemme or foreshippe." He adds, that if the light first appears
in the stem or foreship and ascends upwards, it is good luck ; if
either lights begin at the top- mast, bowsprit, or foreship, and
descend towards the sea, it is a sign of tempest. In taking therefore the
latter position, Ariel had fulfilled the commands of Prospero to
raise a storm. Douce."