Dear List,
Nabokov's opening lines in "Speak Memory" ["The
cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but
a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness."] suggest
a vague expectation about an expansion of existence (ie: it's merely
"common sense" that spoils our hopes).
Nevertheless, when a variant appears in Shade's
Pale Fire, this optimistic view is gone:
“Outstare the stars.
Infinite foretime and/ Infinite aftertime: above your head/ They close like
giant wings, and you are dead.
(John Shade, in
V.Nabokov´s Pale Fire,lines 122/124).
There are verses by John Webster that
resonate with Shade's conclusion:
“I do not look who went before, nor who shall
follow me; / No, at myself I will begin and end.”
( Flamineo, in John Webster´s The White Devil,
V,vi).
The Webster reference, in Pale Fire, the one that is
clearly established, comes through T.S.Eliot's "The Waste Land."* (in
which the original wolf is transformed into a dog).
Webster's inclusion of the wolf refers to ancient belief that holds that
when a wolf digs up a grave it means that its occupant has been
murdered (as happened with Marcello, mourned by Cornelia) **
But James Joyce comes in, too - in the sequence that offers
another transformation: from dog into fox (in "Ulysses")***.
btw: all three
are related to a grandmother.
............................................................................................................................................................................
*Brian Boyd praises the intrincacies of the connection made by VN
between two poems by Eliot. It is when he mentions the lines:
" 'O keep the Dog far hence, that's friend to men,/ 'Or with his
nails he'll dig it up again!," and Eliot's reference to "the Dirge in
Webster´s White Devil" [Cf. "Nabokov´s Pale Fire, the
magic of artistic discovery", Princeton University Press, 1999].
Boyd chose not to mention another line by Webster ( 'Is the wind
in that door still?'), which also merits a quote by Eliot for
"'What is that noise?'/ The wind under the door. / 'What is that noise
now? What is the wind doing?'/ Nothing again nothing."
Its echoes are to be found in Shade's lines 443-447: “Was that the phone?” You listened at the door. Nothing (...) There
was no sense/ In window-rubbing: only some white
fence... and 479-480: ”We
heard the wind. We heard it rush and throw/ Twigs at the windowpane. Phone
ringing? No.”
The window-rubbing/wind noises were probably provoked by C.Kinbote's
prowling around the Shade's. The wind deserves a special note by Kinbote,
writing about Shade's use of “The Erlking”. Kinbote mentions "the bonus of an unexpected rhyme" in French and
Zemblan in a parenthetic note to line 662: “(also
in French: vent-enfant),” but not its occurrence in the
original German.
For Zemblan: “vett/dett” we have
Goethe's “Wind/Kind”!
** In Webster's "The White Devil", act 5, scene 4. Cornelia
is preparing Marcello's body for burial and sings a song that her grandmother
used to sing and where she laments those who have died and remained unburied. It
invites robins and other animals to bury the body to keep off the wolves.
Here are her words:
Call for the robin redbreast, and the wren,
[Cornelia
doth this in several forms of distraction.]
Since o'er shady groves they
hover,
And with leaves and flowers do cover
The friendless bodies of
unburied men.
Call unto his funeral dole
The ant, the fieldmouse, and the
mole,
To rear him hillocks that shall keep him warm,
And (when gay tombs
are robb'd) sustain no harm;
But keep the wolf far thence, that 's
foe to men,
For with his nails he 'll dig them up again.
They
would not bury him 'cause he died in a quarrel;
But I have an answer for
them:
Let holy Church receive him duly,
Since he paid the church-tithes
truly.
His wealth is summ'd, and this is all his store,
This poor men get,
and great men get no more.
Now the wares are gone, we may shut up
shop.
Bless you all, good people.
(If you can still bear another connection, in RLSK there is a
reference to the nursery-rhyme "Cock-Robin" in which various animals
are called in to mourn for his death (mainly insects, a fish and an ox). One of
the names Sebastian had intended for one of his novels had been "Cock Robin Hits
Back", but he substituted it later following Clare's, not his publisher's,
advice.)
*** In his Lectures on Literature
(Bowers,page 297) Nabokov observes: “Notice, by the way, the
term poor dogsbody. The symbol of a forlorn dog will be attached to
Stephen through the book” and then a little further: “Stephen will not go to Padddy Dignam´s funeral. He answers
his riddle, “ – The fox burying his grandmother under a hollybush” (...) In the
next chapter Stephen, walking on the beach, sees a dog, and the dog idea and fox
idea merge as the dog foxily scrapes up the sand, and listens, for he has buried
something, his grandmother” (Bowers,page 299).
There are foxes in PF: "And our best yesterdays are now foul
piles/ Of crumpled names, phone
numbers and foxed files"
and Kinbote on line Line 71, referring to the "old fox in the book publishing
business" to whom his map must be sent: "The black trunk
stands on another brown or brownish even larger one, and there is I think a
stuffed fox or coyote next to them in their dark
corner."
....