Jerry Friedman replies to Jansy Mello:
 
On Thu, Jun 18, 2009 at 12:14 PM, jansymello <jansy@aetern.us> wrote:
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.

This is called virga, but I have to be careful about saying that here in New Mexico (where virga is common), because the word is on the verge, Van, of an obscene Spanish word.

But you may have seen one of the many colorful phenomena caused by ice crystals high in the atmosphere rather than a rainbow.

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.

Mirages, including what's called the Fata Morgana, are something else again.
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?

Nabokov, apparently. Brian Boyd says that in the summer of 1951, in Telluride, Colorado, the Nabokovs saw a rainbow every evening and often saw what VN would call an iridule in /Pale Fire/ (VNAY, pp. 201-202). Unfortunately for us fans of atmospheric optical phenomena, Brian doesn't describe what the Nabokovs said, tell us whether Nabokov said at the time that the "iridule" was a reflection of the rainbow, or give his own thoughts or expert comments about any interpretation Nabokov may have made. His source may be a letter from Véra to Igor Trofimov.

As I've said here before, I don't think Shade's description can be correct, because I don't believe a cloud can reflect an image, especially of something distant and no brighter than its surroundings. Kinbote's comments add to the confusion. An iridescent cloud is one thing, a parhelion is another, and a mother-of-pearl cloud is yet another.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_iridescence
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parhelion
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother-of-pearl_cloud

I still suspect that Nabokov saw a parhelion and a rainbow at the same time and thought, or let Shade think, that the former was a reflection of the latter. In that case Kinbote, of all people, would be right.

I have no idea how the alder fits in. Something to do with alderflies, aquatic insects of the family Sialidae? But in pictures on the Web, they don't seem to be iridescent.

Jerry Friedman
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