In his commentary to Shade’s poem, Kinbote (in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962, Shade’s mad commentator who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla) quotes Arnor’s poem about a miragarl (mirage girl), for whose "careful jewels" a dream king in the sandy wastes of time would give tri stana verbalala (three hundred camels) ut tri phantana (and three fountains):
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, theatre director, essayist and conductor, 1813-1883) and at "Fiderallala, Fiderallala, Fiderallalalala," the refrain (a line repeated after each couplet) in Die Vogelhochzeit ("The Bird Wedding"), a well-known German folk and children song:
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 nen 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 brought the bride (die Amsel, the black bird) her wedding crown (Hochzeitskranz), der Seidenschwanz is the German name of the waxwing (Bombycilla garrulus). In Line 1 and then again in Line 131 of his poem, John Shade (whose parents were ornithologists) calls himself "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.
A thread of subtle pain,
Tugged at by playful death, released again,
But always present, ran through me. One day,
When I'd just turned eleven, as I lay
Prone on the floor and watched a clockwork toy -
A tin wheelbarrow pushed by a tin boy -
Bypass chair legs and stray beneath the bed,
There was a sudden sunburst in my head (ll. 131-146)
At the end of his poem Shade mentions some neighbor's gardener (according to Kinbote, it was his black gardener) who goes by trundling an empty barrow up the lane:
But it's not bedtime yet. The sun attains
Old Dr. Sutton's last two windowpanes.
The man must be - what? Eighty? Eighty-two?
Was twice my age the year I married you.
Where are you? In the garden. I can see
Part of your shadow near the shagbark tree.
Somewhere horseshoes are being tossed. Click, Clunk.
(Leaning against its lamppost like a drunk.)
A dark Vanessa with crimson band
Wheels in the low sun, settles on the sand
And shows its ink-blue wingtips flecked with white.
And through the flowing shade and ebbing light
A man, unheedful of the butterfly -
Some neighbor's gardener, I guess - goes by
Trundling an empty barrow up the lane. (ll. 985-999)
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”). Die Sonette an Orpheus ("The Sonnets to Orpheus," 1922) is a cycle of 55 sonnets by Rainer Maria Rilke (an Austrian poet, 1875-1926). Rilke wrote the cycle in a period of three weeks experiencing what he described a "savage creative storm." According to Kinbote, it took Shade twenty days (less than three weeks) to write Pale Fire:
Pale Fire, a poem in heroic couplets, of nine hundred ninety-nine lines, divided into four cantos, was composed by John Francis Shade (born July 5, 1898, died July 21, 1959) during the last twenty days of his life, at his residence in New Wye, Appalachia, U.S.A. The manuscript, mostly a Fair Copy, from which the present text has been faithfully printed, consists of eighty medium-sized index cards, on each of which Shade reserved the pink upper line for headings (canto number, date) and used the fourteen light-blue lines for writing out with a fine nib in a minute, tidy, remarkably clear hand, the text of his poem, skipping a line to indicate double space, and always using a fresh card to begin a new canto. (Foreword)
In his note to Line 270 (My dark Vanessa) of Shade's poem, Kinbote mentions an Orphic divinity:
It is so like the heart of a scholar in search of a fond name to pile a butterfly genus upon an Orphic divinity on top of the inevitable allusion to Vanhomrigh, Esther! In this connection a couple of lines from one of Swift's poems (which in these backwoods I cannot locate) have stuck in my memory:
When, lo! Vanessa in her bloom
Advanced like Atalanta's star
As to the Vanessa butterfly, it will reappear in lines 993-995 (to which see note). Shade used to say that its Old English name was The Red Admirable, later degraded to The Red Admiral. It is one of the few butterflies I happen to be familiar with. Zemblans call it harvalda (the heraldic one) possibly because a recognizable figure of it is borne in the escutcheon of the Dukes of Payn. In the autumn of certain years it used to occur rather commonly in the Palace Gardens and visit the Michaelmas daisies in company with a day-flying moth. I have seen The Red Admirable feasting on oozy plums and, once, on a dead rabbit. It is a most frolicsome fly. An almost tame specimen of it was the last natural object John Shade pointed out to me as he walked to his doom (see, see now, my note to lines 993-995).
I notice a whiff of Swift in some of my notes. I too am a desponder in my nature, an uneasy, peevish, and suspicious man, although I have my moments of volatility and fou rire.
In The Theosophical Glossary, Helena Blavatsky (a Russian and American mystic, the co-founder of the Theosophical Society, born Helena von Hahn, 1831-1891; in German, Hahn means rooster or cock, Auerhahn is the western capercaillie) says that the name Orpheus (of a legendary musician and prophet) means the "tawny one:"
Orpheus (Gr.). Lit., the “tawny one”. Mythology makes him the son of Æager and the muse Calliope. Esoteric tradition identifies him with Arjuna, the son of Indra and the disciple of Krishna. He went round the world teaching the nations wisdom and sciences, and establishing mysteries. The very story of his losing his Eurydice and finding her in the underworld or Hades, is another point of resemblance with the story of Arjuna, who goes to Pâtâla (Hades or hell, but in reality the Antipodes or America) and finds there and marries Ulupi, the daughter of the Nâga king. This is as suggestive as the fact that he was considered dark in complexion even by the Greeks, who were never very fair-skinned themselves.
Orphic Mysteries or Orphica (Gr.). These followed, but differed greatly from, the mysteries of Bacchus. The system of Orpheus is one of the purest morality and of severe asceticism. The theology taught by him is again purely Indian. With him the divine Essence is inseparable from whatever is in the infinite universe, all forms being concealed from all eternity in It. At determined periods these forms are manifested from the divine Essence or manifest themselves. Thus through this law of emanation (or evolution) all things participate in this Essence, and are parts and members instinct with divine nature, which is omnipresent. All things having proceeded from, must necessarily return into it; and therefore, innumerable transmigrations or reincarnations and purifications are needed before this final consummation can take place. This is pure Vedânta philosophy. Again, the Orphic Brotherhood ate no animal food and wore white linen garments, and had many ceremonies like those of the Brahmans.
Phanes (Gr.). One of the Orphic triad—Phanes, Chaos and Chronos. It was also the trinity of the Western people in the pre-Christian period.
Describing the king's escape from Zembla, Kinbote mentions a bare-kneed mountain lad whom the king expected to see emerge from the loft like a tawny angel:
The gnarled farmer and his plump wife who, like personages in an old tedious tale offered the drenched fugitive a welcome shelter, mistook him for an eccentric camper who had got detached from his group. He was allowed to dry himself in a warm kitchen where he was given a fairy-tale meal of bread and cheese, and a bowl of mountain mead. His feelings (gratitude, exhaustion, pleasant warmth, drowsiness and so on) were too obvious to need description. A fire of larch roots crackled in the stove, and all the shadows of his lost kingdom gathered to play around his rocking chair as he dozed off between that blaze and the tremulous light of a little earthenware cresset, a beaked affair rather like a Roman lamp, hanging above a shelf where poor beady baubles and bits of nacre became microscopic soldiers swarming in desperate battle. He woke up with a crimp in the neck at the first full cowbell of dawn, found his host outside, in a damp corner consigned to the humble needs of nature, and bade the good grunter (mountain farmer) show him the shortest way to the pass. "I'll rouse lazy Garh," said the farmer.
A rude staircase led up to a loft. The farmer placed his gnarled hand on the gnarled balustrade and directed toward the upper darkness a guttural call: "Garh! Garh!" Although given to both sexes, the name is, strictly speaking, a masculine one, and the King expected to see emerge from the loft a bare-kneed mountain lad like a tawny angel. Instead there appeared a disheveled young hussy wearing only a man's shirt that came down to her pink shins and an oversized pair of brogues. A moment later, as in a transformation act, she reappeared, her yellow hair still hanging lank and loose, but the dirty shirt replaced by a dirty pullover, and her legs sheathed in corduroy pants. She was told to conduct the stranger to a spot from which he could easily reach the pass. A sleepy and sullen expression blurred whatever appeal her snub-nosed round face might have had for the local shepherds; but she complied readily enough with her father's wish. His wife was crooning an ancient song as she busied herself with pot and pan.
Before leaving, the King asked his host, whose name was Griff, to accept an old gold piece he chanced to have in his pocket, the only money he possessed. Griff vigorously refused and, still remonstrating, started the laborious business of unlocking and unbolting two or three heavy doors. The King glanced at the old woman, received a wink of approval, and put the muted ducat on the mantelpiece, next to a violet seashell against which was propped a color print representing an elegant guardsman with his bare-shouldered wife - Karl the Beloved, as he was twenty odd years before, and his young queen, an angry young virgin with coal-black hair and ice-blue eyes.
The stars had just faded. He followed the girl and a happy sheepdog up the overgrown trail that glistened with the ruby dew in the theatrical light of an alpine dawn. The very air seemed tinted and glazed. A sepulchral chill emanated from the sheer cliff along which the trail ascended; but on the opposite precipitous side, here and there between the tops of fir trees growing below, gossamer gleams of sunlight were beginning to weave patterns of warmth. At the next turning this warmth enveloped the fugitive, and a black butterfly came dancing down a pebbly rake. The path narrowed still more and gradually deteriorated amidst a jumble of boulders. The girl pointed to the slopes beyond it. He nodded. "Now go home," he said. "I shall rest here and then continue alone."
He sank down on the grass near a patch of matted elfinwood and inhaled the bright air. The panting dog lay down at his feet. Garh smiled for the first time. Zemblan mountain girls are as a rule mere mechanisms of haphazard lust, and Garh was no exception. As soon as she had settled beside him, she bent over and pulled over and off her tousled head the thick gray sweater, revealing her naked back and blancmange breasts, and flooded her embarrassed companion with ail the acridity of ungroomed womanhood. She was about to proceed with her stripping but he stopped her with a gesture and got up. He thanked her for all her kindness. He patted the innocent dog; and without turning once, with a springy step, the King started to walk up the turfy incline. (note to Line 149)
The second of Rilke's ten Duino Elegies begins: "Jeder Engel ist schrecklich (Every angel is terrible)." The surname Blavatski brings to mind Blawick, a pleasant seaside resort on the Western Coast of Zembla:
Three hours later he trod level ground. Two old women working in an orchard unbent in slow motion and stared after him. He had passed the pine groves of Boscobel and was approaching the quay of Blawick; when a black police car turned out on a transverse road and pulled up next to him: "The joke has gone too far," said the driver. "One hundred clowns are packed in Onhava jail, and the ex-King should be among them. Our local prison is much too small for more kings. The next masquerader will be shot at sight. What's your real name, Charlie?" "I'm British. I'm a tourist," said the King. "Well, anyway, take off that red fufa. And the cap. Give them here." He tossed the things in the back of the car and drove off. (note to Line 149)
Blawick, Blue Cove, a pleasant seaside resort on the Western Coast of Zembla, casino, golf course, sea food, boats for hire, 149.
Rippleson Caves, sea caves in Blawick, named after a famous glass maker who embodied the dapple-and-ringle play and other circular reflections on blue-green sea water in his extraordinary stained glass windows for the Palace, 130, 149. (Index)
According to Rilke, all countries border on each other, and only Russia borders on God.