In Canto One of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) mentions diamonds of frost:
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 Canto Two Shade describes a TV program that he and his wife Sybil saw on the eve of their daughter's tragic death and mentions Frost (the poet):
I was in time to overhear brief fame
And have a cup of tea with you: my name
Was mentioned twice, as usual just behind
(one oozy footstep) Frost.
"Sure you don't mind?
I'll catch the Exton plane, because you know
If I don't come by midnight with the dough -" (ll. 423-428)
In his Commentary Kinbote (Shade’s mad commentator who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla) writes:
The reference is, of course, to Robert Frost (b. 1874). The line displays one of those combinations of pun and metaphor at which our poet excels. In the temperature charts of poetry high is low, and low high, so that the degree at which perfect crystallization occurs is above that of tepid facility. This is what our modest poet says, in effect, respecting the atmosphere of his own fame.
Frost is the author of one of the greatest short poems in the English language, a poem that every American boy knows by heart, about the wintry woods, and the dreary dusk, and the little horsebells of gentle remonstration in the dull darkening air, and that prodigious and poignant end - two closing lines identical in every syllable, but one personal and physical, and the other metaphysical and universal. I dare not quote from memory lest I displace one small precious word.
With all his excellent gifts, John Shade could never make his snowflakes settle that way. (note to Line 426)
Kinbote has in mind, of course, Frost’s poem Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening:
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
Frost is the author of Fire and Ice:
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
In Chapter Two (XIII: 6) of Eugene Onegin Pushkin says that verse and prose, ice and flame are not as different as are Lenski and Onegin:
Но Ленский, не имев, конечно,
Охоты узы брака несть,
С Онегиным желал сердечно
Знакомство покороче свесть.
Они сошлись. Волна и камень,
Стихи и проза, лед и пламень
Не столь различны меж собой.
Сперва взаимной разнотой
Они друг другу были скучны;
Потом понравились; потом
Съезжались каждый день верхом
И скоро стали неразлучны.
Так люди (первый каюсь я)
От делать нечего друзья.
But Lenski, having no desire, of course,
to bear the bonds of marriage,
wished cordially to strike up with Onegin
a close acquaintanceship.
They got together; wave and stone,
verse and prose, ice and flame,
were not so different from one another.
At first, because of mutual
disparity, they found each other dull;
then liked each other; then
met riding every day on horseback,
and soon became inseparable.
Thus people — I'm the first to own it —
out of do-nothingness are friends.
In the next stanza Pushkin mentions dvunogikh tvarey milliony (the millions of two-legged creatures) who for us are orudie odno (only tools):
Но дружбы нет и той меж нами.
Все предрассудки истребя,
Мы почитаем всех нулями,
А единицами – себя.
Мы все глядим в Наполеоны;
Двуногих тварей миллионы
Для нас орудие одно;
Нам чувство дико и смешно.
Сноснее многих был Евгений;
Хоть он людей, конечно, знал
И вообще их презирал, —
Но (правил нет без исключений)
Иных он очень отличал
И вчуже чувство уважал.
But in our midst there’s even no such friendship:
Having destroyed all the prejudices,
We deem all people naughts
And ourselves units.
We all expect to be Napoleons;
the millions of two-legged creatures
for us are only tools;
feeling to us is weird and ludicrous.
More tolerant than many was Eugene,
though he, of course, knew men
and on the whole despised them;
but no rules are without exceptions:
some people he distinguished greatly
and, though estranged from it, respected feeling.
Odno (neut. of odin, "one") = Odon (pseudonym of Donald O’Donnell, a world-famous actor and Zemblan patriot who helps the king to escape from Zembla) = Nodo (Odon’s epileptic half-brother, a cardsharp and despicable traitor). At the end of his Commentary Kinbote says that he may join forces with Odon in a new motion picture, Escape from Zembla, and mentions a million photographers:
Many years ago - how many I would not care to say - I remember my Zemblan nurse telling me, a little man of six in the throes of adult insomnia: "Minnamin, Gut mag alkan, Pern dirstan" (my darling, God makes hungry, the Devil thirsty). Well, folks, I guess many in this fine hall are as hungry and thirsty as me, and I'd better stop, folks, right here.
Yes, better stop. My notes and self are petering out. Gentlemen, I have suffered very much, and more than any of you can imagine. I pray for the Lord's benediction to rest on my wretched countrymen. My work is finished. My poet is dead.
"And you, what will you be doing with yourself, poor King, poor Kinbote?" a gentle young voice may inquire.
God will help me, I trust, to rid myself of any desire to follow the example of two other characters in this work. I shall continue to exist. I may assume other disguises, other forms, but I shall try to exist. I may turn up yet, on another campus, as an old, happy, healthy, heterosexual Russian, a writer in exile, sans fame, sans future, sans audience, sans anything but his art. I may join forces with Odon in a new motion picture: Escape from Zembla (ball in the palace, bomb in the palace square). I may pander to the simple tastes of theatrical critics and cook up a stage play, an old-fashioned Melodrama with three principals: a lunatic who intends to kill an imaginary king, another lunatic who imagines himself to be that king, and a distinguished old poet who stumbles by chance into the line of fire, and perishes in the clash between the two figments. Oh, I may do many things! History permitting, I may sail back to my recovered kingdom, and with a great sob greet the gray coastline and the gleam of a roof in the rain. I may huddle and groan in a madhouse. But whatever happens, wherever the scene is laid, somebody, somewhere, will quietly set out - somebody has already set out, somebody still rather far away is buying a ticket, is boarding a bus, a ship, a plane, has landed, is walking toward a million photographers, and presently he will ring at my door - a bigger, more respectable, more competent Gradus. (note to Line 1000)
"Yes, better stop" brings to mind Frost's poem Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening. In his Foreword to Shade's poem (written after the Commentary and Index) Kinbote mentions his favorite photograph of Shade:
I have one favorite photograph of him. In this color snapshot taken by a onetime friend of mine, on a brilliant spring day, Shade is seen leaning on a sturdy cane that had belonged to his aunt Maud (see line 86). I am wearing a white windbreaker acquired in a local sports shop and a pair of lilac slacks hailing from Cannes. My left hand is half raised--not to pat Shade on the shoulder as seems to be the intention, but to remove my sunglasses which, however, it never reached in that life, the life of the picture; and the library book under my right arm is a treatise on certain Zemblan calisthenics in which I proposed to interest that young roomer of mine who snapped the picture. A week later he was to betray my trust by taking sordid advantage of my absence on a trip to Washington whence I returned to find that he had been entertaining a fiery-haired whore from Exton who had left her combings and reek in all three bathrooms. Naturally, we separated at once, and through a chink in the window curtains I saw bad Bob standing rather pathetically, with his crewcut, and shabby valise, and the skis I had given him, all forlorn on the roadside, waiting for a fellow student to drive him away forever. I can forgive everything save treason.
In his poem Reluctance Frost mentions a treason:
Out through the fields and the woods
And over the walls I have wended;
I have climbed the hills of view
And looked at the world, and descended;
I have come by the highway home,
And lo, it is ended.
The leaves are all dead on the ground,
Save those that the oak is keeping
To ravel them one by one
And let them go scraping and creeping
Out over the crusted snow,
When others are sleeping.
And the dead leaves lie huddled and still,
No longer blown hither and thither;
The last lone aster is gone;
The flowers of the witch hazel wither;
The heart is still aching to seek,
But the feet question ‘Whither?’
Ah, when to the heart of man
Was it ever less than a treason
To go with the drift of things,
To yield with a grace to reason,
And bow and accept the end
Of a love or a season?
The flowers of the witch hazel bring to mind Hazel Shade (the poet's daughter whose "real" name seems to be Nadezhda Botkin). In Chapter Six (XXI-XXII) of Pushkin's EO Lenski's last poem begins with the line Kuda, kuda vy udalilis' (Whither, ah! whither are ye fled):
Стихи на случай сохранились,
Я их имею; вот они:
«Куда, куда вы удалились,
Весны моей златые дни?
Что день грядущий мне готовит?
Его мой взор напрасно ловит,
В глубокой мгле таится он.
Нет нужды; прав судьбы закон.
Паду ли я, стрелой пронзенный,
Иль мимо пролетит она,
Всё благо: бдения и сна
Приходит час определенный;
Благословен и день забот,
Благословен и тьмы приход!
«Блеснет заутра луч денницы
И заиграет яркий день;
А я, быть может, я гробницы
Сойду в таинственную сень,
И память юного поэта
Поглотит медленная Лета,
Забудет мир меня; но ты
Придешь ли, дева красоты,
Слезу пролить над ранней урной
И думать: он меня любил,
Он мне единой посвятил
Рассвет печальный жизни бурной!..
Сердечный друг, желанный друг,
Приди, приди: я твой супруг!..»
The verses chanced to be preserved;
I have them; here they are:
"Whither, ah! whither are ye fled,
my springtime's golden days?
“What has the coming day in store for me?
In vain my gaze attempts to grasp it;
in deep gloom it lies hidden.
It matters not; fate's law is just.
Whether I fall, pierced by the dart, or whether
it flies by — all is right:
of waking and of sleep
comes the determined hour;
blest is the day of cares,
blest, too, is the advent of darkness!
“The ray of dawn will gleam tomorrow,
and brilliant day will scintillate;
whilst I, perhaps — I shall descend
into the tomb's mysterious shelter,
and the young poet's memory
slow Lethe will engulf;
the world will forget me; but thou,
wilt thou come, maid of beauty,
to shed a tear over the early urn
and think: he loved me,
to me alone he consecrated
the doleful daybreak of a stormy life!...
Friend of my heart, desired friend, come,
come: I'm thy spouse!”
At the end of his poem Shade says that he will wake at six tomorrow, on July the twenty-second, nineteen fifty-nine:
I'm reasonably sure that we survive
And that my darling somewhere is alive,
As I am reasonably sure that I
Shall wake at six tomorrow, on July
The twenty-second, nineteen fifty-nine,
And that the day will probably be fine;
So this alarm clock let me set myself,
Yawn, and put back Shade's "Poems" on their shelf. (ll. 977-984)
Shade’s poem is almost finished when the author is killed (on July the twenty-first) 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”).