In Canto One of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) mentions the svelte stilettos of a frozen stillicide:
All colors made me happy: even gray.
My eyes were such that literally they
Took photographs. Whenever I'd permit,
Or, with a silent shiver, order it,
Whatever in my field of vision dwelt -
An indoor scene, hickory leaves, the svelte
Stilettos of a frozen stillicide -
Was printed on my eyelids' nether side
Where it would tarry for an hour or two,
And while this lasted all I had to do
Was close my eyes to reproduce the leaves,
Or indoor scene, or trophies of the eaves. (ll. 29-40)
In his commentary Kinbote (Shade’s mad commentator who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla) writes:
Lines 34-35: Stilettos of a frozen stillicide
How persistently our poet evokes images of winter in the beginning of a poem which he started composing on a balmy summer night! The mechanism of the associations is easy to make out (glass leading to crystal and crystal to ice) but the prompter behind it retains his incognito. One is too modest to suppose that the fact that the poet and his future commentator first met on a winter day somehow impinges here on the actual season. In the lovely line heading this comment the reader should note the last word. My dictionary defines it as "a succession of drops falling from the eaves, eavesdrop, cavesdrop." I remember having encountered it for the first time in a poem by Thomas Hardy. The bright frost has eternalized the bright eavesdrop. We should also note the cloak-and-dagger hint-glint in the "svelte stilettos" and the shadow of regicide in the rhyme.
In his essay On Vanity (Les Essais, Book III, chapter 9) Michel de Montaigne (a French philosopher, 1533-1592) quotes Lucretius (the author of De rerum natura), Stillicidi casus lapidem cavat (The ever-falling drop hollows out a stone):
I am no philosopher; evils oppress me according to their weight, and they weigh as much according to the form as the matter, and very often more. If I have therein more perspicacity than the vulgar, I have also more patience; in short, they weigh with me, if they do not hurt me. Life is a tender thing, and easily molested. Since my age has made me grow more pensive and morose, nemo enim resistit sibi, cum caeperit impelli [for no man resists himself when he has begun to be driven forward], for the most trivial cause imaginable, I irritate that humor, which afterward nourishes and exasperates itself of its own motion; attracting and heaping up matter upon matter whereon to feed.
Stillicidi casus lapidem cavat.
The ever-falling drop hollows out a stone.
These continual tricklings consume and ulcerate me. Ordinary inconveniences are never light; they are continual and inseparable, especially when they spring from the members of a family, continual and inseparable.
When I consider my affairs at distance and in gross, I find, because perhaps my memory is none of the best, that they have gone on hitherto improving beyond my reason or expectation; my revenue seems greater than it is; its prosperity betrays me: but when I pry more narrowly into the business, and see how all things go,
Tum vero in curas animum diducimus omnes,
Indeed we lead the mind into all sorts of cares.
I have a thousand things to desire and to fear. To give them quite over, is very easy for me to do: but to look after them without trouble, is very hard. ’Tis a miserable thing to be in a place where everything you see employs and concerns you; and I fancy that I more cheerfully enjoy the pleasures of another man’s house, and with greater and a purer relish, than those of my own. Diogenes answered according to my humor him who asked him what sort of wine he liked the best: “That of another,” said he.
In Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories, the Diogenes Club is a gentlemen's club (the queerest club in London), first appearing in The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter (1893). In Canto One of his poem Shade mentions Sherlock Holmes:
Retake the falling snow: each drifting flake
Shapeless and slow, unsteady and opaque,
A dull dark white against the day's pale white
And abstract larches in the neutral light.
And then the gradual and dual blue
As night unites the viewer and the view,
And in the morning, diamonds of frost
Express amazement: Whose spurred feet have crossed
From left to right the blank page of the road?
Reading from left to right in winter's code:
A dot, an arrow pointing back; repeat:
Dot, arrow pointing back... A pheasant's feet
Torquated beauty, sublimated grouse,
Finding your China right behind my house.
Was he in Sherlock Holmes, the fellow whose
Tracks pointed back when he reversed his shoes? (ll. 13-28)
In his commentary Kinbote writes:
A hawk-nosed, lanky, rather likable private detective, the main character in various stories by Conan Doyle. I have no means to ascertain at the present time which of these is referred to here but suspect that our poet simply made up this Case of the Reversed Footprints. (note to Line 27)
A few minutes before Shade's death, Kinbote invites the poet to a glass of Tokay (Kinbote's favorite wine) at his place:
"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." (note to Line 991)
Lob des Tokayers ("In Praise of Tokay Wine," 1815) is a song by Franz Schubert (an Austrian composer, 1797-1828). In the same year (1815) Schubert set to music Goethe's ballad Der Erlkönig (1782). The opening lines of Goethe's poem, Wer reitet so spät durch Nacht und Wind? / Es ist der Vater mit seinem Kind (Who rides, so late, through night and wind? / It is the father with his child), 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)