In Canto Four of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN's novel Pale Fire, 1962) calls his Muse "my versiple:"
Dressing in all the rooms, I rhyme and roam
Throughout the house with, in my fist, a comb
Or a shoehorn, which turns into the spoon
I eat my egg with. In the afternoon
You drive me to the library. We dine
At half past six. And that odd muse of mine,
My versipel, is with me everywhere,
In carrel and in car, and in my chair. (ll. 941-948)
A word coined by VN (versipellous means changeable; protean; having a form, nature or appearance that changes often), “versipel” brings to mind the versicles mentioned by J. L. Borges at the end of his essay Del culto de los libros (On the Cult of Books, 1951):
El mundo, segĂşn MallarmĂ©, existe para un libro; segĂşn Bloy, somos versĂculos o palabras o letras de un libro mágico, y ese libro incesante es la Ăşnica cosa que hay en el mundo: es, mejor dicho, el mundo.
The world, according to Mallarmé, exists for a book; according to Bloy, we are the versicles or words or letters of a magic book, and that incessant book is the only thing in the world: more exactly, it is the world.
A versicle (from Latin versiculus, 'short verse') is a short two- or four-line verse that is sung or recited in the liturgy alternating between the celebrant, hebdomadarian or cantor and the congregation. It is usually a psalm verse in two parts.
Borges's essay begins as follows:
En el octavo libro de la Odisea se lee que los dioses tejen desdichas para que a las futuras generaciones no les falte algo que cantar; la declaraciĂłn de MallarmĂ©: El mundo existe para llegar a un libro, parece repetir, unos treinta siglos despuĂ©s, el mismo concepto de una justificaciĂłn estĂ©tica de los males. Las dos teleologĂas, sin embargo, no coinciden Ăntegramente; la del griego corresponde a la Ă©poca de la palabra oral, y la del francĂ©s, a una Ă©poca de la palabra escrita. En una se habla de cantar y en otra de libros. Un libro, cualquier libro, es para nosotros un objeto sagrado; ya Cervantes, que tal vez no escuchaba todo lo que decĂa la gente, leĂa hasta «los papeles rotos de la calle». El fuego, en una de las comedias de Bernard Shaw, amenaza la biblioteca de AlejandrĂa; alguien exclama que arderá la memoria de la humanidad, y CĂ©sar le dice: DĂ©jala arder. Es una memoria de infamias. El CĂ©sar histĂłrico, en mi opiniĂłn, aprobarĂa o condenarĂa el dictamen que el autor le atribuye, pero no lo juzgarĂa, como nosotros, una broma sacrĂlega. La razĂłn es clara: para los antiguos la palabra escrita no era otra cosa que un sucedáneo de la palabra oral.
In Book VIII of the Odyssey, we read that the gods weave misfortunes so that future generations will have something to sing about; Mallarmé’s statement, “The world exists to end up in a book”, seems to repeat, some thirty centuries later, the same concept of an aesthetic justification for evils.
These two teleologies, however, do not entirely coincide; the former belongs to the era of the spoken word, and the latter to an era of the written word. One speaks of telling the story and the other of books.
A book, any book, is for us a sacred object: Cervantes, who probably did not listen to everything that everyone said, read even “the torn scraps of paper in the streets.” Fire, in one of Bernard Shaw’s comedies, threatens the library at Alexandria; someone exclaims that the memory of mankind will burn, and Caesar replies: “A shameful memory. Let it burn”. The historical Caesar, in my opinion, might have approved or condemned the command the author attributes to him, but he would not have considered it, as we do, a sacrilegious joke. The reason is clear: for the ancients the written word was nothing more than a substitute for the spoken word.
One is reminded of verba volant, scripta manent (spoken words fly away, written words remain), a Latin proverb quoted by Baron B in his letter to Oswin Bretwit (the former Zemblan consul whom Gradus, Shade's murderer, visits in Paris):
I, too, was wont to draw my poet's attention to the idyllic beauty of airplanes in the evening sky. Who could have guessed that on the very day (July 7) Shade penned this lambent line (the last one on his twenty-third card) Gradus, alias Degré, had flown from Copenhagen to Paris, thus completing the second lap of his sinister journey! Even in Arcady am I, says Death in the tombal scripture.
The activities of Gradus in Paris had been rather neatly planned by the Shadows. They were perfectly right in assuming that not only Odon but our former consul in Paris, the late Oswin Bretwit, would know where to find the King. They decided to have Gradus try Bretwit first. That gentleman had a flat in Meudon where he dwelt alone, seldom going anywhere except the National Library (where he read theosophic works and solved chess problems in old newspapers), and did not receive visitors. The Shadows' neat plan sprang from a piece of luck. Suspecting that Gradus lacked the mental equipment and mimic gifts necessary for the impersonation of an enthusiastic Royalist, they suggested he had better pose as a completely apolitical commissioner, a neutral little man interested only in getting a good price for various papers that private parties had asked him to take out of Zembla and deliver to their rightful owners. Chance, in one of its anti-Karlist moods, helped. One of the lesser Shadows whom we shall call Baron A. had a father-in-law called Baron B., a harmless old codger long retired from the civil service and quite incapable of understanding certain Renaissance aspects of the new regime. He had been, or thought he had been (retrospective distance magnifies things), a close friend of the late Minister of Foreign Affairs, Oswin Bretwit's father, and therefore was looking forward to the day when he would be able to transmit to "young" Oswin (who, he understood, was not exactly persona grata with the new regime) a bundle of precious family papers that the dusty baron had come across by chance in the files of a governmental office. All at once he was informed that now the day had come: the documents would be immediately forwarded to Paris. He was also allowed to prefix a brief note to them which read:
Here are some precious papers belonging to your family. I cannot do better than place them in the hands of the son of the great man who was my fellow student in Heidelberg and my teacher in the diplomatic service. Verba volant, scripta manent. (note to Line 286)
According to Kinbote (the author of a remarkable book on surnames), the name Bretwit means Chess Intelligence. Ajedrez ("Chess") is a poem by J. L. Borges included in his book El hacedor ("The Maker," 1960):
I
En su grave rincĂłn, los jugadores
rigen las lentas piezas. El tablero
los demora hasta el alba en su severo
ámbito en que se odian dos colores.
Adentro irradian mágicos rigores
las formas: torre homérica, ligero
caballo, armada reina, rey postrero,
oblicuo alfil y peones agresores.
Cuando los jugadores se hayan ido,
cuando el tiempo los haya consumido,
ciertamente no habrá cesado el rito.
En el Oriente se encendiĂł esta guerra
cuyo anfiteatro es hoy toda la tierra.
Como el otro, este juego es infinito.
II
Tenue rey, sesgo alfil, encarnizada
reina, torre directa y peĂłn ladino
sobre lo negro y blanco del camino
buscan y libran su batalla armada.
No saben que la mano señalada
del jugador gobierna su destino,
no saben que un rigor adamantino
sujeta su albedrĂo y su jornada.
También el jugador es prisionero
(la sentencia es de Omar) de otro tablero
de negras noches y blancos dĂas.
Dios mueve al jugador, y Ă©ste, la pieza.
¿Qué Dios detrás de Dios la trama empieza
de polvo y tiempo y sueño y agonĂas?
I
In their serious corner the players
rule their slow pieces. The board
delays them till dawn
in their strict ambit,
where two colors hate each other.
Within, magical severities infuse
the figures: homeric tower, light
horse, armed queen,
last king, oblique
bishop and assailant pawns.
When the players have gone,
when time has eaten them,
the rite has certainly not stopped.
This war was lit in the East,
whose amphitheater today is all the world.
And as the other, this game is infinite.
II
Weak king, biased bishop, embittered
queen, straight tower and wily pawn,
over the black
and white of the road
they seek and wage armed battle.
They do not know that the appointed hand
of the player governs their fate,
they do not know
that an adamantine rigor
subjects their will and their journey.
The player too is prisoner
(the sentence is Omar’s) of that other board,
the black nights and the white days.
God moves the player and the player moves the piece
What God behind God began the weaving
of dust and time and dream and the throes of death?