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)
According to Kinbote (Shade’s mad commentator who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla), a crested bird called in Zemblan sampel ("silktail") closely resembles a waxwing in shape and shade:
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)
The silktails are a group of birds (genus Lamprolia) endemic to Fiji. They look superficially like a diminutive bird-of-paradise but are actually closely related to the fantails. A Fijian silktail does not resemble a waxwing (a bird Bombycilla garrulus) at all. The German name of waxwing, Seidenschwanz literally translates to English as "silktail." In Die Vogelhochzeit ("The Bird Wedding"), a well-known German folk and children song, der Seidenschwanz is the bird that brought the bride (die Amsel, the black bird) her Hochzeitskranz (wedding crown):
Ein Vogel wollte Hochzeit machen
in dem grünen Walde.
(Refrain: Fiderallala, Fiderallala, Fiderallalalala)
Die Drossel war der Bräutigam,
die Amsel war die Braute.
Der Sperber, der Sperber,
der war der Hochzeitswerber.
Der Stare, der Stare,
der flocht der Braut die Haare.
Der Uhu, der Uhu,
der bracht der Braut die Hochzeitsschuh.
Der Kuckuck schreit, der Kuckuck schreit,
er bracht der Braut das Hochzeitskleid.
Der Seidenschwanz, der Seidenschwanz,
der bracht der Braut den Hochzeitskranz.
Die Lerche, die Lerche,
die führt die Braut zur Kerche.
Der Auerhahn, der Auerhahn,
der selbig war der Kapelan.
Der Sperling, der Sperling,
der bringt der Braut den Trauring.
Die Meise, die Meise,
die sang das Kyrie-eleise.
Der Wiedehopf, der Wiedehopf,
der bringt der Braut den Blumentopf.
Die Schnepfe, die Schnepfe,
setzt auf den Tisch die Näpfe.
Die Finken, die Finken,
die gaben der Braut zu trinken.
Die Puten, die Puten,
die machten breite Schnuten.
Die Gänse und die Anten,
die war’n die Musikanten.
Der Pfau mit seinem bunten Schwanz
macht mit der Braut den ersten Tanz.
Die Taube, die Taube,
die bracht der Braut die Haube.
Brautmutter war die Eule,
nahm Abschied mit Geheule.
Das Finkelein, das Finkelein,
das führt die Braut ins Kämmerlein.
Der Uhu, der Uhu,
der macht die Fensterläden zu.
Der lange Specht, der lange Specht,
der macht der Braut das Bett zurecht.
Die Fledermaus, die Fledermaus,
die zieht der Braut die Strümpfe aus.
Frau Kratzefuß, Frau Kratzefuß
gibt allen einen Abschiedskuß.
Der Hahn, der krähet: „Gute Nacht“,
nun wird die Kammer zugemacht.
Die Vogelhochzeit ist nun aus,
die Vögel fliegen all nach Haus.
Das Käuzchen bläst die Lichter aus
und alle ziehn vergnügt nach Haus.
The bird that sets the pots on the table, Die Schnepfe (the snipe) brings to mind die Doppelschnepfe (the great snipe), a bird (popular with the hunters) called in Russian dupel'. A crested bird called in Zemblan sampel seems to combine Samt (Germ., velvet) with Ampel (Germ., traffic lights) and dupel'. A creature that helps the bride to take off her stockings, die Fledermaus is the German name of the bat. Shade's murderer and Kinbote's Doppelgänger, 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)
Describing the last moments of Shade’s life, Kinbote mentions a bat writing a legible tale of torture in the bruised and branded sky:
Line 991: horseshoes
Neither Shade nor I had ever been able to ascertain whence precisely those ringing sounds came - which of the five families dwelling across the road on the lower slopes of our woody hill played horseshoe quoits every other evening; but the tantalizing tingles and jingles contributed a pleasant melancholy note to the rest of Dulwich Hill's evening sonorities - children calling to each other, children being called home, and the ecstatic barking of the boxer dog whom most of the neighbors disliked (he overturned garbage cans) greeting his master home.
Through the trees I distinguished John's white shirt and gray hair; he sat in his Nest (as he called it), the arborlike porch or veranda I have mentioned in my note to lines 47-48. I could not keep from advancing a little nearer - oh, discreetly, almost on tiptoe; but then I noticed he was resting, not writing, and I openly walked up to his porch or perch. His elbow was on the table, his fist supported his temple, his wrinkles were all awry, his eyes moist and misty; he looked like an old tipsy witch. He lifted his free hand in greeting without changing his attitude, which although not unfamiliar to me struck me this time as more forlorn than pensive.
"Well," I said, "has the muse been kind to you?"
"Very kind," he replied, slightly bowing his hand-propped head. "exceptionally kind and gentle. In fact, I have here [indicating a huge pregnant envelope near him on the oilcloth] practically the entire product. A few trifles to settle and [suddenly striking the table with his fist] I've swung it, by God."
The envelope, unfastened at one end, bulged with stacked cards.
"Where is the missus?" I asked (mouth dry).
"Help me, Charlie, to get out of here," he pleaded. "Foot gone to sleep. Sybil is at a dinner-meeting of her club."
"A suggestion," I said, quivering. "I have at my place half a gallon of Tokay. I'm ready to share my favorite wine with my favorite poet. We shall have for dinner a knackle of walnuts, a couple of large tomatoes, and a bunch of bananas. And if you agree to show me your 'finished product,' there will be another treat: I promise to divulge to you why I gave you, or rather who gave you, your theme."
"What theme?" said Shade absently, as he leaned on my arm and gradually recovered the use of his numb limb.
"Our blue inenubilable Zembla, and the red-caped Steinmann, and the motorboat in the sea cave, and - "
"Ah," said Shade, "I think I guessed your secret quite some time ago. But all the same I shall sample your wine with pleasure. Okay, I can manage by myself now."
Well did I know he could never resist a golden drop of this or that, especially since he was severely rationed at home. With an inward leap of exultation I relieved him of the large envelope that hampered his movements as he descended the steps of the porch, sideways, like a hesitating infant. We crossed the lawn, we crossed the road. Clink-clank, came the horseshoe music from Mystery Lodge. In the large envelope I carried I could feel the hard-cornered, rubberbanded batches of index cards. We are absurdly accustomed to the miracle of a few written signs being able to contain immortal imagery, involutions of thought, new worlds with live people, speaking, weeping, laughing. We take it for granted so simply that in a sense, by the very act of brutish routine acceptance, we undo the work of the ages, the history of the gradual elaboration of poetical description and construction, from the treeman to Browning, from the caveman to Keats. What if we awake one day, all of us, and find ourselves utterly unable to read? I wish you to gasp not only at what you read but at the miracle of its being readable (so I used to tell my students). Although I am capable, through long dabbling in blue magic, of imitating any prose in the world (but singularly enough not verse - I am a miserable rhymester), I do not consider myself a true artist, save in one matter: I can do what only a true artist can do - pounce upon the forgotten butterfly of revelation, wean myself abruptly from the habit of things, see the web of the world, and the warp and the weft of that web. Solemnly I weighed in my hand what I was carrying under my left armpit, and for a moment, I found myself enriched with an indescribable amazement as if informed that fireflies were making decodable signals on behalf of stranded spirits, or that a bat was writing a legible tale of torture in the bruised and branded sky.
I was holding all Zembla pressed to my heart. (note to Line 991)
Gradus is a member of the Shadows (a regicidal organization). Zerkalo teney ("The Mirror of Shadows," 1912) is a collection of poetry by Valeriy Bryusov (a Russian poet and novelist, 1873-1924). In his poem U groba dnya (“At the Coffin of the Day,” 1909) Bryusov mentions skorbnye teni (the mournful shadows) and traurnyi flyor (the funerary veil):
Скорбные тени, окутаны чёрным,
Вышли, влекут свой задумчивый хор,
Головы клонят в молчаньи покорном,
Стелят над травами траурный флёр.
Traurnyi flyor brings to mind Fleur de Fyler, Countess de Fyler’s daughter who tried to seduce young Charles Xavier after the death of his mother, Queen Blenda:
Our Prince was fond of Fleur as of a sister but with no soft shadow of incest or secondary homosexual complications. She had a small pale face with prominent cheekbones, luminous eyes, and curly dark hair. It was rumored that after going about with a porcelain cup and Cinderella's slipper for months, the society sculptor and poet Arnor had found in her what he sought and had used her breasts and feet for his Lilith Calling Back Adam; but I am certainly no expert in these tender matters. Otar, her lover, said that when you walked behind her, and she knew you were walking behind her, the swing and play of those slim haunches was something intensely artistic, something Arab girls were taught in special schools by special Parisian panders who were afterwards strangled. Her fragile ankles, he said, which she placed very close together in her dainty and wavy walk, were the "careful jewels" in Arnor's poem about a miragarl ("mirage girl"), for which "a dream king in the sandy wastes of time would give three hundred camels and three fountains."
On ságaren werém tremkín tri stána
Verbálala wod gév ut trí phantána
(I have marked the stress accents).
The Prince did not heed this rather kitschy prattle (all, probably, directed by her mother) and, let it be repeated, regarded her merely as a sibling, fragrant and fashionable, with a painted pout and a maussade, blurry, Gallic way of expressing the little she wished to express. Her unruffled rudeness toward the nervous and garrulous Countess amused him. He liked dancing with her - and only with her. He hardly squirmed at all when she stroked his hand or applied herself soundlessly with open lips to his cheek which the haggard after-the-ball dawn had already sooted. She did not seem to mind when he abandoned her for manlier pleasures; and she met him again in the dark of a car or in the half-glow of a cabaret with the subdued and ambiguous smile of a kissing cousin. (note to Line 80)
In Russian, "three hundred camels" would be trista verblyudov. Tri stana verbalala seems to hint at Tristan und Isolde (a 1865 music drama by Richard Wagner, a German composer, theater director, essayist and conductor, 1813-1883) and at "Fiderallala, Fiderallala, Fiderallalalala," the refrain in Die Vogelhochzeit ("The Bird Wedding"). At the beginning of Von den drei Verwandlungen ("The Three Metamorphoses"), Zarathustra' first discourse in Also sprach Zarathustra: Ein Buch für alle und keinen (Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for All and None), a philosophical novel by Friedrich Nietzsche (a German philosopher, 1844-1900) published in four parts between 1883 and 1885, Zarathustra mentions das Kamele (the camel):
Drei Verwandlungen nenne ich euch des Geistes: wie der Geist zum Kamele wird, und zum Löwen das Kamele, und zum Kinde zuletzt der Löwe.
"Three metamorphoses of the spirit do I designate to you: how the spirit becometh a camel, the camel a lion, and the lion at last a child."
Zarathustra's fifteenth discourse is entitled Von tausend und Einem Ziele ("The Thousand and One Goals"). Shade's poem is almost finished when 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”).