At the beginning (and then again in Lines 131-132) of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) compares himself to the shadow of the waxwing:
I was the shadow of the waxwing slain
By the false azure in the windowpane;
I was the smudge of ashen fluff - and I
Lived on, flew on, in the reflected sky. (ll. 1-4)
I was the shadow of the waxwing slain
By feigned remoteness in the windowpane.
I had a brain, five senses (one unique);
But otherwise I was a cloutish freak.
In sleeping dreams I played with other chaps
But really envied nothing - save perhaps
The miracle of a lemniscate left
Upon wet sand by nonchalantly deft
Bicycle tires. (ll. 131-139)
In his commentary to Shade's poem, Kinbote (Shade’s mad commentator who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla) writes:
The image in these opening lines evidently refers to a bird knocking itself out, in full flight, against the outer surface of a glass pane in which a mirrored sky, with its slightly darker tint and slightly slower cloud, presents the illusion of continued space. We can visualize John Shade in his early boyhood, a physically unattractive but otherwise beautifully developed lad, experiencing his first eschatological shock, as with incredulous fingers he picks up from the turf that compact ovoid body and gazes at the wax-red streaks ornamenting those gray-brown wings and at the graceful tail feathers tipped with yellow as bright as fresh paint. When in the last year of Shade's life I had the fortune of being his neighbor in the idyllic hills of New Wye (see Foreword), I often saw those particular birds most convivially feeding on the chalk-blue berries of junipers growing at the corner of his house. (See also lines 181-182.)
My knowledge of garden Aves had been limited to those of northern Europe but a young New Wye gardener, in whom I was interested (see note to line 998), helped me to identify the profiles of quite a number of tropical-looking little strangers and their comical calls; and, naturally, every tree top plotted its dotted line toward the ornithological work on my desk to which I would gallop from the lawn in nomenclatorial agitation. How hard I found to fit the name "robin" to the suburban impostor, the gross fowl, with its untidy dull-red livery and the revolting gusto it showed when consuming long, sad, passive worms!
Incidentally, it is curious to note that a crested bird called in Zemblan sampel ("silktail"), closely resembling a waxwing in shape and shade, is the model of one of the three heraldic creatures (the other two being respectively a reindeer proper and a merman azure, crined or) in the armorial bearings of the Zemblan King, Charles the Beloved (born 1915), whose glorious misfortunes I discussed so often with my friend.
The poem was begun at the dead center of the year, a few minutes after midnight July 1, while I played chess with a young Iranian enrolled in our summer school; and I do not doubt that our poet would have understood his annotator's temptation to synchronize a certain fateful fact, the departure from Zembla of the would-be regicide Gradus, with that date. Actually, Gradus left Onhava on the Copenhagen plane on July 5. (note to Lines 1-4)
Garden Aves (Lat., birds) mentioned by Kinbote bring to mind Ave Maria! Ellens dritter Gesang (1825), a song by Franz Schubert (an Austrian composer, 1797-1828). It is part of a setting of seven songs from Walter Scott's 1810 popular narrative poem The Lady of the Lake, in which the character Ellen Douglas sings a prayer addressed to the Virgin Mary:
Ave Maria! Jungfrau mild,
Erhöre einer Jungfrau Flehen,
Aus diesem Felsen starr und wild
Soll mein Gebet zu dir hinwehen.
Wir schlafen sicher bis zum Morgen,
Ob Menschen noch so grausam sind.
O Jungfrau, sieh der Jungfrau Sorgen,
O Mutter, hör ein bittend Kind!
Ave Maria!
Ave Maria! Unbefleckt!
Wenn wir auf diesen Fels hinsinken
Zum Schlaf, und uns dein Schutz bedeckt,
Wird weich der harte Fels uns dünken.
Du lächelst, Rosendüfte wehen
In dieser dumpfen Felsenkluft.
O Mutter, höre Kindes Flehen,
O Jungfrau, eine Jungfrau ruft!
Ave Maria!
Ave Maria! Reine Magd!
Der Erde und der Luft Dämonen,
Von deines Auges Huld verjagt,
Sie können hier nicht bei uns wohnen.
Wir woll'n uns still dem Schicksal beugen,
Da uns dein heil'ger Trost anweht;
Der Jungfrau wolle hold dich neigen,
Dem Kind, das für den Vater fleht.
Ave Maria!
(Storck's translation used by Schubert)
Ave Maria! maiden mild!
Listen to a maiden's prayer!
Thou canst hear though from the wild;
Thou canst save amid despair.
Safe may we sleep beneath thy care,
Though banish'd, outcast and reviled –
Maiden! hear a maiden's prayer;
Mother, hear a suppliant child!
Ave Maria!
Ave Maria! undefiled!
The flinty couch we now must share
Shall seem with down of eider piled,
If thy protection hover there.
The murky cavern's heavy air
Shall breathe of balm if thou hast smiled;
Then, Maiden! hear a maiden's prayer,
Mother, list a suppliant child!
Ave Maria!
Ave Maria! stainless styled.
Foul demons of the earth and air,
From this their wonted haunt exiled,
Shall flee before thy presence fair.
We bow us to our lot of care,
Beneath thy guidance reconciled;
Hear for a maid a maiden's prayer,
And for a father hear a child!
Ave Maria!
In 1827 Franz Schubert set Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel's 1801 poem Die Vögel ("The Birds") to music :
Wie lieblich und fröhlich,
Zu schweben, zu singen,
In glänzender Höhe
Zur Erde zu blicken!
Die Menschen sind töricht,
Sie können nicht fliegen.
Sie jammern in Nöten,
Wir flattern gen Himmel.
Der Jäger will töten,
Dem Früchte wir pickten;
Wir müssen ihn höhnen,
Und Beute gewinnen.
How lovely and enjoyable it is
To hover about, to sing
In the glowing heights,
To look down on the earth!
Humans are foolish,
They cannot fly,
They complain when they are in difficulty,
We flutter into the sky.
The hunter wants to kill us
For pecking at his fruit;
We have to mock him
And catch our prey.
and Wilhelm Schlegel's 1801 poem Der Schmetterling ("The Butterfly"):
Wie soll ich nicht tanzen,
Es macht keine Mühe,
Und reizende Farben
Schimmern hier im Grünen.
Immer schöner glänzen
Meine bunten Flügel,
Immer süßer hauchen
Alle kleinen Blüten.
Ich nasche die Blüten,
Ihr könnt sie nicht hüten.
Wie groß ist die Freude,
Sei’s spät oder frühe,
Leichtsinnig zu schweben
Über Tal und Hügel.
Wenn der Abend säuselt,
Seht ihr Wolken glühen;
Wenn die Lüfte golden,
Scheint die Wiese grüner.
Ich nasche die Blüten,
Ihr könnt sie nicht hüten.
Why should I not dance?
It does not cause any trouble
And there are attractive colours
Shimmering here in the greenery.
The more beautiful the glow
Of my bright wings,
The sweeter the breath
Of all the little blossoms.
I nibble at those blossoms;
You cannot protect them.
How great the joy is,
Be it late or early,
Hovering carefree
Over the valley and hill.
When the evening rustles
You see clouds glowing;
When the golden breezes
Make the meadows appear greener.
I nibble at those blossoms;
You cannot protect them.
Franz Schubert's famous Lied (song) "Erlkönig" (1815) sets Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's 1782 ballad to music. The opening lines of Goethe’s poem, “Wer reitet so spät durch Nacht und Wind? / Es ist der Vater mit seinem Kind,” are a leitmotif in Canto Three of Shade’s poem:
"What is that funny creaking - do you hear?"
"It is the shutter on the stairs, my dear."
"If you're not sleeping, let's turn on the light.
I hate that wind! Let's play some chess." "All right."
"I'm sure it's not the shutter. There - again."
"It is a tendril fingering the pane."
"What glided down the roof and made that thud?"
"It is old winter tumbling in the mud."
"And now what shall I do? My knight is pinned."
Who rides so late in the night and the wind?
It is the writer's grief. It is the wild
March wind. It is the father with his child. (ll. 653-664)
In his commentary Kinbote writes:
Line 662: Who rides so late in the night and the wind
This line, and indeed the whole passage (line 653-664), allude to the well-known poem by Goethe about the erlkönig, hoary enchanter of the elf-haunted alderwood, who falls in love with the delicate little boy of a belated traveler. One cannot sufficiently admire the ingenious way in which Shade manages to transfer something of the broken rhythm of the ballad (a trisyllabic meter at heart) into his iambic verse:
662 Who rídes so láte in the níght and the wínd
663 ...........................................
664.... Ít is the fáther with his chíld
Goethe's two lines opening the poem come out most exactly and beautifully, with the bonus of an unexpected rhyme (also in French: vent - enfant), in my own language:
Ret wóren ok spoz on nátt ut vétt?
Éto est vótchez ut míd ik détt.
Another fabulous ruler, the last king of Zembla, kept repeating these haunting lines to himself both in Zemblan and German, as a chance accompaniment of drumming fatigue and anxiety, while he climbed through the bracken belt of the dark mountains he had to traverse in his bid for freedom.
In his poem "Ginkgo Biloba" (1815) from "The West-Eastern Divan" (1819) Goethe mentions his garden:
Dieses Baumes Blatt, der von Osten
Meinem Garten anvertraut,
Gibt geheimen Sinn zu kosten,
Wie's den Wissenden erbaut.
Ist es ein lebendig Wesen,
Das sich in sich selbst getrennt?
Sind es zwei, die sich erlesen,
Daß man sie als eines kennt?
Solche Fragen zu erwidern
Fand ich wohl den rechten Sinn.
Fühlst du nicht an meinen Liedern,
Daß ich eins und doppelt bin?
This leaf from a tree in the East,
Has been given to my garden.
It reveals a certain secret,
Which pleases me and thoughtful people.
Does it represent One living creature
Which has divided itself?
Or are these Two, which have decided,
That they should be as One?
To reply to such a Question,
I found the right answer:
Do you notice in my songs and verses
That I am One and Two?
In his commentary Kinbote quotes a quatrain from Shade's poem "The Sacred Tree:"
Line 49: shagbark
A hickory. Our poet shared with the English masters the noble knack of transplanting trees into verse with their sap and shade. Many years ago Disa, our King's Queen, whose favorite trees were the jacaranda and the maidenhair, copied out in her album a quatrain from John Shade's collection of short poems Hebe's Cup, which I cannot refrain from quoting here (from a letter I received on April 6, 1959, from southern France):
THE SACRED TREE
The ginkgo leaf, in golden hue, when shed,
A muscat grape,
Is an old-fashioned butterfly, ill-spread,
In shape.
When the new Episcopal church in New Wye (see note to line 549) was built, the bulldozers spared an arc of those sacred trees planted by a landscaper of genius (Repburg) at the end of the so-called Shakespeare Avenue, on the campus. I do not know if it is relevant or not but there is a cat-and-mouse game in the second line, and "tree" in Zemblan is grados.
Rara avis (1886) is a humorous story by Chekhov, a writer whom, according to Kinbote, Shade listed among Russian humorists:
Speaking of the Head of the bloated Russian Department, Prof. Pnin, a regular martinet in regard to his underlings (happily, Prof. Botkin, who taught in another department, was not subordinated to that grotesque "perfectionist"): "How odd that Russian intellectuals should lack all sense of humor when they have such marvelous humorists as Gogol, Dostoevski, Chekhov, Zoshchenko, and those joint authors of genius Ilf and Petrov." (note to Line 172)
Chekhov's story Rara avis was first published in the humor magazine Oskolki ("Shards", No. 29), on 19 July 1886. Shade’s poem is almost finished when, on the evening of 21 July 1959, the author is killed by Gradus. Kinbote believes that, to be completed, Shade’s poem needs but one line (Line 1000, identical to Line 1: “I was the shadow of the waxwing slain”). But it seems that, like some sonnets, Shade's poem also needs a coda (Line 1001: “By its own double in the windowpane”). Dvoynik ("The Double") is a 1846 short novel by Dostoevski (a writer whom Shade listed among Russian humorists).