According to 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), it took Shade twenty days 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.
The short (166 lines) Canto One, with all those amusing birds and parhelia, occupies thirteen cards. Canto Two, your favorite, and that shocking tour de force, Canto Three, are identical in length (334 lines) and cover twenty-seven cards each. Canto Four reverts to One in length and occupies again thirteen cards, of which the last four used on the day of his death give a Corrected Draft instead of a Fair Copy.
A methodical man, John Shade usually copied out his daily quota of completed lines at midnight but even if he recopied them again later, as I suspect he sometimes did, he marked his card or cards not with the date of his final adjustments, but with that of his Corrected Draft or first Fair Copy. I mean, he preserved the date of actual creation rather than that of second or third thoughts. There is a very loud amusement park right in front of my present lodgings.
We possess in result a complete calendar of his work. Canto One was begun in the small hours of July 2 and completed on July 4. He started the next canto on his birthday and finished it on July 11. Another week was devoted to Canto Three. Canto Four was begun on July 19, and as already noted, the last third of its text (lines 949-999) is supplied by a Corrected Draft. This is extremely rough in appearance, teeming with devastating erasures and cataclysmic insertions, and does not follow the lines of the card as rigidly as the Fair Copy does. Actually, it turns out to be beautifully accurate when you once make the plunge and compel yourself to open your eyes in the limpid depths under its confused surface. It contains not one gappy line, not one doubtful reading. This fact would be sufficient to show that the imputations made (on July 24, 1959) in a newspaper interview with one of our professed Shadeans - who affirmed without having seen the manuscript of the poem that it "consists of disjointed drafts none of which yields a definite text" - is a malicious invention on the part of those who would wish not so much to deplore the state in which a great poet's work was interrupted by death as to asperse the competence, and perhaps honesty, of its present editor and commentator.
Another pronouncement publicly made by Prof. Hurley and his clique refers to a structural matter. I quote from the same interview: "None can say how long John Shade planned his poem to be, but it is not improbable that what he left represents only a small fraction of the composition he saw in a glass, darkly." Nonsense again! Aside from the veritable clarion of internal evidence ringing throughout Canto Four, there exists Sybil Shade's affirmation (in a document dated July 25, 1959) that her husband "never intended to go beyond four parts." For him the third canto was the penultimate one, and thus I myself have heard him speak of it, in the course of a sunset ramble, when, as if thinking aloud, he reviewed the day's work and gesticulated in pardonable self-approbation while his discreet companion kept trying in vain to adapt the swing of a long-limbed gait to the disheveled old poet's jerky shuffle. Nay, I shall even assert (as our shadows still walk without us) that there remained to be written only one line of the poem (namely verse 1000) which would have been identical to line 1 and would have completed the symmetry of the structure, with its two identical central parts, solid and ample, forming together with the shorter flanks twin wings of five hundred verses each, and damn that music. Knowing Shade's combinational turn of mind and subtle sense of harmonic balance, I cannot imagine that he intended to deform the faces of his crystal by meddling with its predictable growth. And if all this were not enough - and it is, it is enough - I have had the dramatic occasion of hearing my poor friend's own voice proclaim on the evening of July 21 the end, or almost the end, of his labors. (See my note to line 991.) (Foreword)
Shade’s poem is almost finished when the author is killed by Gradus. In Pushkin's little tragedy Mozart and Salieri (1830) Mozart says that his Requiem (Mozart's last work that took about three weeks to compose) is nearly done:
Сальери
Что ты сегодня пасмурен?
Моцарт
Я? Нет!
Сальери
Ты верно, Моцарт, чем-нибудь расстроен?
Обед хороший, славное вино,
А ты молчишь и хмуришься.
Моцарт
Признаться,
Мой Requiem меня тревожит.
Сальери
А!
Ты сочиняешь Requiem? Давно ли?
Моцарт
Давно, недели три. Но странный случай…
Не сказывал тебе я?
Сальери
Нет.
Моцарт
Так слушай.
Недели три тому, пришел я поздно
Домой. Сказали мне, что заходил
За мною кто-то. Отчего — не знаю,
Всю ночь я думал: кто бы это был?
И что ему во мне? Назавтра тот же
Зашел и не застал опять меня.
На третий день играл я на полу
С моим мальчишкой. Кликнули меня;
Я вышел. Человек, одетый в черном,
Учтиво поклонившись, заказал
Мне Requiem и скрылся. Сел я тотчас
И стал писать — и с той поры за мною
Не приходил мой черный человек;
А я и рад: мне было б жаль расстаться
С моей работой, хоть совсем готов
Уж Requiem. Но между тем я…
Сальери
Что?
Моцарт
Мне совестно признаться в этом…
Сальери
В чем же?
Моцарт
Мне день и ночь покоя не дает
Мой черный человек. За мною всюду
Как тень он гонится. Вот и теперь
Мне кажется, он с нами сам-третей
Сидит.
Сальери
И, полно! что за страх ребячий?
Рассей пустую думу. Бомарше
Говаривал мне: «Слушай, брат Сальери,
Как мысли черные к тебе придут,
Откупори шампанского бутылку
Иль перечти „Женитьбу Фигаро“».
Моцарт
Да! Бомарше ведь был тебе приятель;
Ты для него «Тарара» сочинил,
Вещь славную. Там есть один мотив…
Я все твержу его, когда я счастлив…
Ла ла ла ла… Ах, правда ли, Сальери,
Что Бомарше кого-то отравил?
Сальери
Не думаю: он слишком был смешон
Для ремесла такого.
Моцарт
Он же гений,
Как ты да я. А гений и злодейство —
Две вещи несовместные. Не правда ль?
Сальери
Ты думаешь?
(Бросает яд в стакан Моцарта.)
Ну, пей же.
Salieri
You seem a little down today?
Mozart
Me? No!
Salieri
You surely are upset with something, Mozart?
Good dinner, glorious wine, but you keep quiet
And sit there looking gloomy.
Mozart
I should own,
My Requiem's unsettling me.
Salieri
Your Requiem!--
You've been composing one? Since long ago?
Mozart
Long: some three weeks. A curious incident...
I haven't told you, have I?
Salieri
No.
Mozart
Then listen:
About three week ago, I came back home
Quite late at night. They told me that some person
Had called on me. And then, I don't know why,
The whole night through I thought: who could it be?
What does he need of me? Tomorrow also
The same man came and didn't find me in.
The third day, I was playing with my boy
Upon the floor. They hailed me; I came out
Into the hall. A man, all clad in black,
Bowed courteously in front of me, commissioned
A Requiem and vanished. I at once
Sat down and started writing it -- and since,
My man in black has not come by again.
Which makes me glad, because I would be sorry
To part with my endeavor, though the Requiem
Is nearly done. But meanwhile I am...
Salieri
What?
Mozart
I'm quite ashamed to own to this...
Salieri
What is it?
Mozart
By day and night my man in black would not
Leave me in peace. Wherever I might go,
He tails me like a shadow. Even now
It seems to me he's sitting here with us,
A third...
Salieri
Enough! what is this childish terror?
Dispel the empty fancies. Beaumarchais
Used to instruct me: "Listen, old Salieri,
Whenever black thoughts come into your head,
Uncork yourself another Champagne bottle
Or reread 'Le mariage de Figaro.'"
Mozart
Yes! I remember, you were boon companions
With Beaumarchais; you wrote "Tarare" for him --
A glorious thing. It has one melody...
I keep on singing it when I feel happy...
La la la la... Ah, is it right, Salieri,
That Beaumarchais could really poison someone?
Salieri
I doubt he did: too laughable a fellow
For such a serious craft.
Mozart
He was a genius,
Like you and me. While genius and evildoing
Are incompatibles. Is that not right?
Salieri
You think so?
(Throws the poison into Mozart's glass.)
Well, now drink.
(Scene II. Tr. G. Gurarie)
In Pushkin's little tragedy Mozart uses the phrase nikto b (none would):
Моцарт
Когда бы все так чувствовали силу
Гармонии! но нет; тогда б не мог
И мир существовать; никто б не стал
Заботиться о нуждах низкой жизни;
Все предались бы вольному искусству.
Mozart
If all could feel like you the power
of harmony! But no: the world
could not go on then. None would
bother with the needs of lowly life;
all would surrender to free art.
( Scene II)
Nikto b is Botkin (Shade's, Kinbote's and Gradus' "real" name) in reverse. Mozart (1838) is a biographical essay by Vasiliy Botkin (1812-69), a friend of Turgenev and Tolstoy. At the end of his almost finished poem Shade mentions a Vanessa butterfly:
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. 993-999)
To a Butterfly is a poem by William Wordsworth:
I've watched you now a full half-hour;
Self-poised upon that yellow flower
And, little Butterfly! indeed
I know not if you sleep or feed.
How motionless!--not frozen seas
More motionless! and then
What joy awaits you, when the breeze
Hath found you out among the trees,
And calls you forth again!
This plot of orchard-ground is ours;
My trees they are, my Sister's flowers;
Here rest your wings when they are weary;
Here lodge as in a sanctuary!
Come often to us, fear no wrong;
Sit near us on the bough!
We'll talk of sunshine and of song,
And summer days, when we were young;
Sweet childish days, that were as long
As twenty days are now.
Pushkin's Sonet (“A Sonnet,” 1830) has the epigraph from Wordsworth:
Scorn not the sonnet, critic.
Wordsworth.
Суровый Дант не презирал сонета;
В нём жар любви Петрарка изливал;
Игру его любил творец Макбета;
Им скорбну мысль Камоэнс облекал.
И в наши дни пленяет он поэта:
Вордсворт его орудием избрал,
Когда вдали от суетного света
Природы он рисует идеал.
Под сенью гор Тавриды отдаленной
Певец Литвы в размер его стесненный
Свои мечты мгновенно заключал.
У нас ещё его не знали девы,
Как для него уж Дельвиг забывал
Гекзаметра священные напевы.
Scorn not the sonnet, critic.
Wordsworth.
Stern Dante did not despise the sonnet;
Into it Petrarch poured out the ardor of love;
Its play the creator of Macbeth loved;
With it Camoes clothed his sorrowful thought.
Even in our days it captivates the poet:
Wordsworth chose it as an instrument,
When far from the vain world
He depicts nature's ideal.
Under the shadow of the mountains of distant Tavrida
The singer of Lithuania in its constrained measure
His dreams he in an instant enclosed.
Here the maidens did not yet know it,
When for it even Delvig forgot
The sacred melodies of the hexameter.
(tr. Ober)
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”).