Jorge Luiz Borges referred to Coleridge's paradisical flower in "Otras
Inquisiciones" (1952), in an article that deserves attention from
Nabokovian readers for various reasons, soon to be presented in another posting.
Today I simply want to link Coleridge's note about dream and "reality", to
two possible allusions to it by VN. The first one, in "Pale Fire,"
presents a possibly wide-awake Shade with a brown shoe lying in the lawn. The
second, contrary to any arcadian dream, adds another twist between oneirical
states and the dark lemon that was found in the grass.* I haven't checked
if this connection has been mentioned before in the VN-L.
................................................................................................................................................................
* Pale Fire:
lines 878 a 886"And caught up
with myself — upon the lawn
Where clover leaves cupped the topaz of dawn,
And
where Shade stood in nightshirt and one shoe.
And then I realized that this
half too
Was fast asleep; both laughed and I awoke
Safe in my bed as day
its eggshell broke,
And robins walked and stopped, and on the damp
Gemmed
turf a brown shoe lay! My secret stamp,
The Shade impress, the mystery
inborn.
Mirages, miracles, midsummer morn."
Nabokov's Short-Story "La
Veneziana": (excerpts)
"And Simpson...effortlessly entered the painting...He
was standing in a bare black room of some kind, by a window that opened on
evening, and at his very side stood a real, Venetian, Maureen—tall, gorgeous,
all aglow from within. He realized that the miracle had happened, and slowly
moved toward her. With a sidewise smile la Veneziana gently adjusted her fur
and, lowering her hand into her basket, handed him a small
lemon..."
"Simpson looked about the room in which he was
standing, but with- out any awareness of a floor beneath his feet. In the
distance, instead of a fourth wall, a far, familiar hall glimmered like
water...It was then that a sudden terror made him compress the cold little
lemon."
"McGore...looked where his hand was pointing and saw
something truly incredible. On the Luciani canvas, next to the Venetian girl, an
additional figure had appeared. It was an excellent, if hastily executed,
portrait of Simpson... [ ] ...he scraped and rubbed Simpson's dark
figure and white face from the varnish...In half an hour Simpson's portrait was
completely gone, and the slightly damp paints of which he had consisted remained
on McGore's rags.[ ]He looked at the rags with the paint sticking to them,
and abruptly...wadded them together and tossed them out the window by which he
had been working...—and...went out of the hall straight into the garden./There,
beneath the window, between the wall and the rhododendrons, the gardener stood
scratching the top of his head over a man in black lying facedown on the
lawn[ ] Simpson gave another laugh./"I'm awfully sorry.... It's so
silly.... I went out for a stroll last night and fell right asleep, here on the
grass...I had a monstrous dream...[ ] the gardener ...looked at the matted
lawn. Then he bent down and picked up a small dark lemon bearing the imprint of
five fingers. He stuck the lemon in his pocket
..."