Dear List,

While muttering "strange, strange", together with the German visitor of Pale Fire, I passed from Goethe's Erlkönig in Kinbote's incisive notes, to CK's very concrete comprehension of certain lines of Shade's poem ...onto A.Tennyson, Hans Christian Andersen - to land in an altogether different realm: plants and butterflies in Russia.

This associative path forced me to reconsider if the mentions, in "Pale Fire", to Goethe's "Erlkoenig" and the disputed translations of its title into "Elf King" or "Alder King" ( plus a pedophile's or a pederast's seduction ), didn't merely imply particular kinds of geography ( Russia, Alaska, tundra,bogs) vegetation ( elfin and alder wood) and ... butterflies?

1.

When commenting on line 920 about "little hairs stand on end", Kinbote ignored the aesthetic thrill in a poet, or "the highest achievement in English poetry" to dwell on barbering instruments emplyed by Housman and Tennyson "since both Alfreds certainly used an Ordinary Razor, and John Shade an ancient Gillette, the discrepancy may have been due to the use of different instruments."

The irony that indicated discrepancies which might arise from "different instruments" next led me away from Tennyson's own lines about the horns of Elfland ( in the familiar song: Blow, Bugle, blow * ) - where I'd been trying to find a link to "Strange, strange," said the German visitor, who by some quirk of alderwood ancestry had been alone to catch the eerie note that had throbbed by and was gone.

Kinbote's note to line 662 takes us to "the well-known poem by Goethe about the erlking, hoary enchanter of the elf-haunted alderwood, who falls in love with the delicate little boy of a belated traveler." .

We may find the word "erl" in "Semberland/Zembla", in decoys such as "the peacock-herl ... a certain sort of artificial fly also called "alder."...

( but then, isn't there an even more recurrent "elf" who hides in words such as "myself" or "self"? )

From CK"s note, then, I researched Hans Christian Andersen, "The Elfin Hill" (1845)[ classiclit.about.com/library/bl-etexts/hcanderson/bl-hcanderson-elfin.htm - 38k - ]

but settled, at last, on data about "elf and alder", so consistently brought in a close association.

To my surprise I discovered these words made sense together, "alder elfin woods" exist, so beside the disputed translation about "ErlKing" as "alder or elf", we have a concrete geographical reference. For example , through authors Korshunov & Gorbunov who have worked not only about Siberian woods, but also, Siberian butterflies!

Here, then, we come to "the most widespread tundra are dwarf shrub- lichen, short grass meadow, heather, and crowberry that cover about half of the area) and Siberian dwarf-pine and alder elfin woods" at: A geographic sketch, the text from Korshunov & Gorbunov (1995)-
The vegetation of North and Central Kuriles resembles that of Kamchatka by the presence of dwarf alder (Sorbus sambucifolia) or stone birch elfin woods, pisum.bionet.nsc.ru/kosterin/korgor/geogr.htm and, from there to Butterflies of the Asian part of Russia, Y.P. Korshunov and P.Y. Gorbunov (English translation by Oleg Kosterin)
Cf. Siberian Zoological Museum at the Institute of Systematics and Ecology of Animans, Novosibirsk; Oleg Kosterin, Ph. D.senior researcher at the Institute of Cytology & Genetics ; Siberian Division of Russian Academy of Sciences, Novosibirsk.[ contact Yuri Korshunov (or me) through my E-mail address: kosterin@bionet.nsc.ru , or Pavel Gorbunov through his address gorbunov@ipae.uran.ru through his address. }

Other references: Land Resources of Russia- On mountain slopes there are brushwoods of cedar and alder elfin wood, in low places there are meadows; in the north there is moss tundra at.www.iiasa.ac.at/Research/FOR/russia_cd/adm_des.htm - 365k

and REGULARLY OCCURRING BUTTERFLIES OF NOVA SCOTIA, among which there are various Elfins dwelling in coniferous woods, birch and alder...( Hoary Elfin, Lycaenidae, Incisalia, polia, Dry Open Rocky Areas, Heath, Barren, Bog ... coniferous woods, roadsides, Birch, Alder, Willows, Blueberries etc. ... www.gov.ns.ca/natr/wildlife/endngrd/buttable.htm - 38k -)

.......................................................

* Song Blow, Bugle Blow by A. Lord Tennyson:

The splendour falls on castle walls
      And snowy summits old in story:
    The long light shakes across the lakes,
      And the wild cataract leaps in glory.
Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,         5
Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.

    O hark, O hear! how thin and clear,
      And thinner, clearer, farther going!
    O sweet and far from cliff and scar
      The horns of Elfland faintly blowing! 10
Blow, let us hear the purple glens replying:
Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.

    O love, they die in yon rich sky,
      They faint on hill or field or river:
    Our echoes roll from soul to soul, 15
      And grow for ever and for ever.
Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,
And answer, echoes, answer, dying, dying, dying.

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