In Canto One of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) speaks of his childhood and mentions that rare phenomenon the iridule:
My God died young. Theolatry I found
Degrading, and its premises, unsound.
No free man needs a God; but was I free?
How fully I felt nature glued to me
And how my childish palate loved the taste
Half-fish, half-honey, of that golden paste!
My picture book was at an early age
The painted parchment papering our cage:
Mauve rings around the moon; blood-orange sun
Twinned Iris; and that rare phenomenon
The iridule - when, beautiful and strange,
In a bright sky above a mountain range
One opal cloudlet in an oval form
Reflects the rainbow of a thunderstorm
Which in a distant valley has been staged -
For we are most artistically caged. (ll. 99-114)
In his note to Line 109 (iridule) Kinbote (Shade’s mad commentator who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla) writes:
An iridescent cloudlet, Zemblan muderperlwelk. The term "iridule" is, I believe, Shade's own invention. Above it, in the Fair Copy (card 9, July 4) he has written in pencil "peacock-herl." The peacock-herl is the body of a certain sort of artificial fly also called "alder." So the owner of this motor court, an ardent fisherman, tells me. (See also the "strange nacreous gleams" in line 634.)
Muderperlwelk hints at Perlmutterwolke, German for “iridescent cloud.” On the other hand, welkin means the sky or heaven, vault of the sky. At the end of his letter of March 1882 to W. E. Henley (an English poet, writer, critic and editor, 1849-1903) R. L. Stevenson mentions a voice that made the welkin crack:
I am enjoying SOLOMON CRABB extremely; Solomon's capital adventure with the two highwaymen and Squire Trecothick and Parson Vance; it is as good, I think, as anything in Joseph Andrews. I have just come to the part where the highwayman with the black patch over his eye has tricked poor Solomon into his place, and the squire and the parson are hearing the evidence. Parson Vance is splendid. How good, too, is old Mrs. Crabb and the coastguardsman in the third chapter, or her delightful quarrel with the sexton of Seaham; Lord Conybeare is surely a little overdone; but I don't know either; he's such damned fine sport. Do you like Sally Barnes? I'm in love with her. Constable Muddon is as good as Dogberry and Verges put together; when he takes Solomon to the cage, and the highwayman gives him Solomon's own guinea for his pains, and kisses Mrs. Muddon, and just then up drives Lord Conybeare, and instead of helping Solomon, calls him all the rascals in Christendom - O Henry Fielding, Henry Fielding! Yet perhaps the scenes at Seaham are the best. But I'm bewildered among all these excellences.
Stay, cried a voice that made the welkin crack -
This here's a dream, return and study BLACK!
- Ever yours, R. L. S.
William Black (1841-98) was a Scottish novelist who scored an early success with A Daughter of Heth and The Strange Adventures of a Phaeton. R. L. Stevenson's birthday (which he gave to a friend's little daughter), November 13, is also William Black's birthday. Shade's birthday, July 5, is also Kinbote's and Gradus' birthday (while Shade was born in 1898, Kinbote and Gradus were born in 1915).
At the beginning of his autobiography Speak, Memory (1951) VN mentions the cradle that rocks above an abyss and compares our exitence to a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness:
The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness. (Chapter One, 1)
At the end of Canto Three of his poem Shade wonders if he should stop investigating his abyss:
Life Everlasting - based on a misprint!
I mused as I drove homeward: take the hint,
And stop investigating my abyss?
But all at once it dawned on me that this
Was the real point, the contrapuntal theme;
Just this: not text, but texture; not the dream
But a topsy-turvical coincidence,
Not flimsy nonsense, but a web of sense.
Yes! It sufficed that I in life could find
Some kind of link-and-bobolink, some kind
Of correlated pattern in the game,
Plexed artistry, and something of the same
Pleasure in it as they who played it found. (ll. 803-815)
At the end of his poem (and life) Shade says that he understands existence only through his art:
Maybe my sensual love for the consonne
D'appui, Echo's fey child, is based upon
A feeling of fantastically planned,
Richly rhymed life.
I feel I understand
Existence, or at least a minute part
Of my existence, only through my art,
In terms of combinational delight;
And if my private universe scans right,
So does the verse of galaxies divine
Which I suspect is an iambic line.
I'm reasonably sure that we survive
And that my darling somewhere is alive,
As I am reasonably sure that I
Shall wake at six tomorrow, on July
The twenty-second, nineteen fifty-nine,
And that they day will probably be fine;
So this alarm clock let me set myself,
Yawn, and put back Shade's "Poems" on their shelf. (ll. 967-984)
Solomon Crabb is an unfinished novel by Henry Fielding. Shade's murderer, Jakob Gradus is a cross between bat and crab:
The grotesque figure of Gradus, a cross between bat and crab, was not much odder than many other Shadows, such as, for example, Nodo, Odon's epileptic half-brother who cheated at cards, or a mad Mandevil who had lost a leg in trying to make anti-matter. (note to Line 171)
In his poem The Moon R. L. Stevenson mentions the bat that lies in bed at noon:
The moon has a face like the clock in the hall;
She shines on thieves on the garden wall,
On streets and fields and harbour quays,
And birdies asleep in the forks of the trees.
The squalling cat and the squeaking mouse,
The howling dog by the door of the house,
The bat that lies in bed at noon,
All love to be out by the light of the moon.
But all of the things that belong to the day
Cuddle to sleep to be out of her way;
And flowers and children close their eyes
Till up in the morning the sun shall arise.
Odon's epileptic half-brother Nodo (son of Leopold O'Donnell and of a Zemblan boy impersonator) brings to mind R. L. Stevenson's poem The Land of Nod:
From breakfast on through all the day
At home among my friends I stay,
But every night I go abroad
Afar into the land of Nod.
All by myself I have to go,
With none to tell me what to do —
All alone beside the streams
And up the mountain-sides of dreams.
The strangest things are there for me,
Both things to eat and things to see,
And many frightening sights abroad
Till morning in the land of Nod.
Try as I like to find the way,
I never can get back by day,
Nor can remember plain and clear
The curious music that I hear.
The Land of Nod is a place mentioned in the Book of Genesis of the Hebrew Bible, located "on the east of Eden," where Cain was exiled by God after Cain had murdered his brother Abel. A character in R. L. Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886), Mr. Utterson inclines to Cain's heresy:
Mr. Utterson the lawyer was a man of a rugged countenance that was never lighted by a smile; cold, scanty and embarrassed in discourse; backward in sentiment; lean, long, dusty, dreary and yet somehow lovable. At friendly meetings, and when the wine was to his taste, something eminently human beaconed from his eye; something indeed which never found its way into his talk, but which spoke not only in these silent symbols of the after-dinner face, but more often and loudly in the acts of his life. He was austere with himself; drank gin when he was alone, to mortify a taste for vintages; and though he enjoyed the theatre, had not crossed the doors of one for twenty years. But he had an approved tolerance for others; sometimes wondering, almost with envy, at the high pressure of spirits involved in their misdeeds; and in any extremity inclined to help rather than to reprove. “I incline to Cain’s heresy,” he used to say quaintly: “I let my brother go to the devil in his own way.” In this character, it was frequently his fortune to be the last reputable acquaintance and the last good influence in the lives of downgoing men. And to such as these, so long as they came about his chambers, he never marked a shade of change in his demeanour. (Chapter I "Story of the Door")
According to Kinbote, in a theological dispute with him Shade mentioned Cain and Abel:
SHADE: All the seven deadly sins are peccadilloes but without three of them, Pride, Lust, and Sloth, poetry might never have been born.
KINBOTE: Is it fair to base objections upon obsolete terminology?
SHADE: All religions are based upon obsolete terminology.
KINBOTE: What we term Original Sin can never grow obsolete.
SHADE: I know nothing about that. In fact when I was small I thought it meant Cain killing Abel. Personally, I am with the old snuff-takers: L'homme est né bon. (note to Line 549)
In Canto Three of his poem Shade describes IPH (a lay Institute of Preparation for the Hereafter) where he lectured and dealt with childhood memories of strange nacreous gleams beyond the adults' range:
I tore apart the fantasies of Poe,
And dealt with childhood memories of strange
Nacreous gleams beyond the adults' range.
Among our auditors were a young priest
And an old Communist. Iph could at least
Compete with churches and the party line. (ll. 632-637)
“Strange nacreous gleams beyond the adults' range” seem to hint at “the visionary gleam” mentioned by William Wordsworth in his Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood (1804):
Whither is fled the visionary gleam?
Where is it now, the glory and the dream?
In a letter of July 1882 to W. E. Henley R. L. Stevenson mentions Wordsworth, fishing and religion:
Pirbright Smith is well. Old Mr. Pegfurth Bannatyne is here staying at a country inn. His whole baggage is a pair of socks and a book in a fishing-basket; and he borrows even a rod from the landlord. He walked here over the hills from Sanquhar, 'singin', he says, 'like a mavis.' I naturally asked him about Hazlitt. 'He wouldnae take his drink,' he said, 'a queer, queer fellow.' But did not seem further communicative. He says he has become 'releegious,' but still swears like a trooper. I asked him if he had no headquarters. 'No likely,' said he. He says he is writing his memoirs, which will be interesting. He once met Borrow; they boxed; 'and Geordie,' says the old man chuckling, 'gave me the damnedest hiding.' Of Wordsworth he remarked, 'He wasnae sound in the faith, sir, and a milk-blooded, blue-spectacled bitch forbye. But his po'mes are grand - there's no denying that.' I asked him what his book was. 'I havenae mind,' said he - that was his only book! On turning it out, I found it was one of my own, and on showing it to him, he remembered it at once. 'O aye,' he said, 'I mind now. It's pretty bad; ye'll have to do better than that, chieldy,' and chuckled, chuckled. He is a strange old figure, to be sure. He cannot endure Pirbright Smith - 'a mere aesthatic,' he said. 'Pooh!' 'Fishin' and releegion - these are my aysthatics,' he wound up.
I thought this would interest you, so scribbled it down. I still hope to get more out of him about Hazlitt, though he utterly pooh-poohed the idea of writing H.’s life. “Ma life now,” he said, “there’s been queer things in it.” He is seventy-nine! but may well last to a hundred!
In the heat of conversation Stevenson was accustomed to invent any number of fictitious personages, generally Scottish, and to give them names and to set them playing their imaginary parts in life, reputable or otherwise. Many of these inventions, including Mr. Pirbright Smith and Mr. Pegfurth Bannatyne, were a kind of incarnations of himself, or of special aspects of himself; they assumed for him and his friends a kind of substantial existence; and constantly in talk, and occasionally in writing, he would keep up the play of reporting their sayings and doings quite gravely.
Borrow (Geordie) whom Mr. Pegfurth Bannatyne once met and with whom he boxed seems to be Byron.