On Oct 6, 2015, at 6:06 AM, Jansy Mello wrote:

C.Kunin:The Disa in the story provided by Dieter Zimmer is the same as the legendary Disa that I found, but it was Dis as another name for Hades* that I was actually looking for but did not find. Hades is an anagram for Shade - or vice versa (see versipel) I suppose. [*Dieter Zimmer: 'Pluto's other names are Hades and Dis.' ]

Jansy Mello: Shade/Hades is an anagram, but was it intended by VN, in the sense that the name Shade would’ve been chosen because of this wordplay instead of its other shades of darkness?

You mention Disa as a figure of the underworld and, although you didn’t mention it this time, you once brought up your theories about how Disa relates to Sybil Shade. How would you connect both names, Shade/Hades and Disa, or their allusions?

I don't think I ever had much to say about Disa - I found Sylvia Odon was it? closer to Sybil. Sybil is certainly in "payne" but she doesn't do much moaning that I can recall (though Hazel does I think). The trinity of Shade, Kinbote, Gradus is reflected in the threesome of Sybil, Sylvia and Disa.

But it isn't necessary to go even that far aField (Forgive me). If Shade is related anagrammatically to Hades, Sybil is in her own name directly related to the underworld. If memory serves correctly, the sybils of ancient Greece would perch in Delphi over clefts in the earth from whence fumes arose and it was these fumes (literally 'smokes') from the underworld that would intoxicate and inspire them. When it comes to the Greeks, the underworld is rarely far away. BTW, Sybil Vane is an important character in Oscar Wilde's Picture of Dorian Gray. Her counterpart in Zembla is Iris Acht.

I checked the archives and of the dozen or so posts that contain both "Disa" and "Carolyn," most were really Disa-greements (and one each Disa-ster and Disa-ppointment*). But I did find one post "Why did Pale Fire's Disa laugh?" which I wrote, but can no longer remember to what it refers. Most of the post is taken up with the crown jewels.

I do know why Abraham's wife laughed (her son was named after that laugh "from the Hebrew name יִצְחָק (Yitzchaq) which meant laughter or "he laughs") but will have to look back at Pale Fire to see when and why Disa laughed. So I will do some reading and get back to you. Maybe some else remembers?

P.S. It is of course purely coincidental that Mrs Shade's given name is the same as that of the famous Sybil, the protagonist of "a 1973 [thus written eleven years after the publication of Pale Fire] book by Flora Rheta Schreiber [and subsequent tv film] about the treatment of Sybil Dorsett (a pseudonym for Shirley Ardell Mason) for dissociative identity disorder(then referred to as multiple personality disorder) by her psychoanalyst, Cornelia B. Wilbur" (from the Wikipedia). But it is interesting. Some may recall that I thought VN made some references in PF to a similar book and film called The Three Faces of Eve (1957). Quite unrelated is a novel of the same name by Benjamin Disraeli.