Gary Lipon:" [...]I'd like to point out is the similar role played by the Devil in Skazka and that of the English Linguist in my interpretation of the poem Pale Fire. The similarity that I perceive is the granting of a deeply held wish by a supernatural agent  which comes with a twist that the protagonist, and the reader, don't expect [...]Shade's misdirection results in the reader not paying proper attention to the actual meaning of what the English Linguist has spoken; namely that he nourishes, or provides for, the poor cicadas[...]interpreted to mean that the English Linguist is granting Shade's wish for immortality. In the poem the cicada, an in-providential singer, is presumably left to starve. The English Linguist, however, provides for such wayward artists."

 

JM:  S.B.Sweeney just shared with the List the startling news about "Shadeian Afterlife," after learning about a poetry reading by Charles Pratt, "a poet in the tradition of Robert Frost and John Shade." 

What a providential confirmation of this English Linguist's supernatural powers!  However, the Devil in Skazka is not as malignant as W.W. Jacob's in "The Monkey's Paw", or as G.Lipon's  seems to be.*

 

John Shade was sure that "Dead is the mandible, alive the song" for, at least, some of the expatriate cicadas and those whose song didn't falter under pressure -  should clogged ants be in anyway connected to the Formica marxi var.lenini ( “I hold in contempt not a person…but that ugly and stupid little nostrum which turns Russian simpletons into Communist ninnies, which makes ants out of people, a new species called Formica marxi var.lenini. " (VN in a 1927 essay, quoted by A.Field, VN His Life in Art, p.182).

 

 

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* "No, don't go yet," said Frau Monde..."I am offering you something. I am offering you a harem. And if you are still skeptical of my power— See that old gentleman in tortoiseshell glasses crossing the street? Let's have him hit by a tram." Erwin, blinking, turned streetward....At the same instant, a tram flashed, screeched, and rolled past...The old gentle -man, his glasses and handkerchief gone, was sitting on the asphalt, someone helped him up....//   "I said 'hit by a tram,' not 'run over,' which I might also have said," remarked Frau Monde coolly, as she worked a thick cigarette into an enameled holder. "In any case, this is an example."