C. Kunin [to Tori Alexander] Are you referring to the
butterfly "outbreak" or the historical occurrence? If the latter, I have
supposed it was the assassination of Alexander II on March 13, 1881 and the
outbreaks of violence, especially pogroms against the Jews that make 1881 a
fateful year. The vicious attacks that followed the assassination certainly can
be seen as a bellwether of the later Russian
revolutions
Jansy Mello: In his book, "Pale Fire, The Magic of
Artistic Discovery," Brian Boyd (p.110) relates the atalanta
butterfly to "images of doom". For example, when he writes: "But as we
reread we can now see instead a message to Hazel to tell her father...he is not
to go across the lane to old Goldsworth's, as an atalanta butterfly
dances by, after he finished 'Pale Fire' ... We can decode the message
warning of Shade's death, of course, only after his death. Kinbote
observes that...he does not realize that it is the spirit of Shade's Aunt Maud
... always so fond of "images of doom"(P.89,36)..."
What I hadn't realized until now is that the butterfly's 1881
'signal of doom' designed on the underside of its admirable
wings, has already appeared in Kinbote's foreword - or, at least, we
may allow some space for an interpretation of this kind (I mean, his subtle
indication about the "underside of the weave" lying close to Shade's
assassination and the employ of "red ink"), while still on the alert
for his ambiguous assertion when he names himself as its
"only begetter".
Kinbote writes: "Immediately after my dear
friend’s death I prevailed on his distraught widow to forelay and defeat the
commercial passions and academic intrigues that were bound to come swirling
around her husband’s manuscript ...I defy any serious critic to find this
contract unfair. Nevertheless, it has been called (by Shade’s former lawyer) "a
fantastic farrago of evil," while another person (his former literary agent) has
wondered with a sneer if Mrs. Shade’s tremulous signature might not have been
penned "in some peculiar kind of red ink." Such hearts, such brains, would be
unable to comprehend that one’s attachment to a masterpiece may be utterly
overwhelming, especially when it is the underside of the weave that entrances
the beholder and only begetter, whose own past intercoils there with the fate of
the innocent author."