The equivocation that associates a
"stiletto cloak and dagger style" to "regicide/stillicide"
shines out more clearly in French. As it happens with a
redundant "bright" (étincelant)*, demanding our attention.
CK reminds us of Hardy's
verse before he adds a few lines, as if he were quoting
him. However, Hardy wrote:"They’ve a way of whispering to
me — /...Of a ripple under archways, /or a lone cave’s
stillicide." Therefore, Kinbote's bright iteration (associated to frost and
to eavesdrop) must be an accident in style, a deliberate mockery
or warning signal.
I clicked
on a search for "Robert Frost
Eavesdrop" and got interesting results on "dewdrops from the
eaves" and on eavesdropping (that may not be new to the
Nab-List?).
(a) "Robert Frost Farm manager Bill Gleed says
he's had it confirmed by Frost's family -- the great poet, born in San
Francisco, absorbed the rhythms of New England speech by eavesdropping on the
kitchen telephone in the era of the party line." (Proust's
snooping wasn't at all technological, he must have
applied dorophones!) Cf.www.theunionleader.com;
(b) Frost (as it is said of Blake, Yeats, Goethe,
Novalis, Hugo, Rimbaud, Baudelaire...) used gnostic models in his
poems. "This supposed nature poet represents his harsh landscapes as
a full version of the Gnostic kenoma, the cosmological emptiness into
which we have been thrown by the mocking Demiurge. This is the world of
"Mountain Interval" (1916), "the Demiurge's Laugh" in a Boy's Will
(1913) ..." Cf. "Harold Bloom, Jesse Zuba - 2003 - Juvenile
Nonfiction";
(c) "Frost wrote the concluding and
conclusive Emersonian irony for all his work in the allegorical "A Cabin in the
Clearing," the set-piece of In the Clearing (1962), published for his
eighty-eighth birthday, less than a year before his death. Mist and Smoke,
guardian wraiths and counterparts, eavesdrop on the unrest of a human couple,
murmuring in their sleep. These guardians haunt us because we are their
kindred spirits, for we do not know where we are..." We are "too sudden to be
credible," and so the accurate image for us is 'an inner haze,'...."
(Harold Bloom,2003)
Now, the specific reference which might
be related to "Pale Fire" :
"Let us pretend the dewdrops from the
eaves
Are you and I eavesdropping on their unrest--
A mist and smoke
eavesdropping on a haze--" **
As we can see Frost, like Shade (and Hardy), mentions "whisperings"
and "murmurs," set to disturb a couple with far
away "Alderking" intimations, but bearing no
dangerous "stilettos" through their "stillicide" tactics. If, like
Nabokov, Shade has anything to do with a "Gnostic literature" he must
belong to an optimistic lineage...
..........................................................................................................................................................................................
* "les sveltes stylets d'une stalactite de glace",
p.62. (
the svelte/Stilettos of a frozen stillicide)
"...le bric à brac y crée/ Une nature morte bien dans son genre: le presse
papiers...", p.64. (Its trivia create/A still life in her
style: the paperweight...)
CK: "Mon dictionnaire définit stillicide comme "une succession de
gouttes tombant des gouttières, chandelles de glace, stalactite". Je me rappelle
l'avoir recontré pour la première fois dans un poème de Thomas Hardy. Le gel
étincelant a éternisé l'étincelante chandelle de glace. Nous devrions également
remarquer l'allusion en style de cape et d' epée que si reflète dans les
"sveltes stylets" et l'ombre de régicide dans stillicide."
(p.107)
(My dictionary defines it as
"a succession of drops falling from the eaves, eavesdrop, cavesdrop." I remember
having encountered it for the first time in a poem by Thomas Hardy. The bright
frost has eternalized the bright eavesdrop. We should also note the
cloak-and-dagger hint-glint in the "svelte stilettos" and the shadow of regicide
in the rhyme.)
**- Last verses from "A Cabin in the
Clearing" by R.Frost
MIST
Listen, they murmur talking in the
dark
On what should be their daylong theme continued
Putting the lamp out
has not put their thought out.
Let us pretend the dewdrops from the
eaves
Are you and I eavesdropping on their unrest--
A mist and smoke
eavesdropping on a haze--
And see if we can tell the bass from the
soprano.
Than smoke and mist who better could appraise
The kindred
spirit of an inner haze.