In Canto Two of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) calls the little scissors with which he pares his fingernails “a dazzling synthesis of sun and star:”
The little scissors I am holding are
A dazzling synthesis of sun and star.
I stand before the window and I pare
My fingernails and vaguely am aware
Of certain flinching likenesses: the thumb,
Our grocer's son; the index, lean and glum