When writing his comments to lines 86-90 ("Aunt
Maud"), Charles Kinbote informs that she was "Samuel Shade's
sister. At her death, Hazel (born 1934) was not exactly a "babe" as implied in
line 90."
The reader has only access to the (not always
reliable) Kinbote's informations.Apparently the idea that Hazel is the
implied babe stems from him.
John Shade was killed in July l959, during his writing
of "Pale Fire," when he reminisces about his daughter's swing in the garden (the
poet lets us know that the tree where it hung has grown significantly since
then)* - and refers to the aforementioned "babe."** Kinbote's
note informs us that Aunt Maud died when Hazel was 16, so it must have taken
place in 1950.
Hazel, herself, died in March 1957, when she was 23***. All these invented
dates must form a pattern that eludes my understanding (as it often (too
often) happens.
........................................................................................................................
*
"I
had a favorite young shagbark there/..../ It
is now stout and rough; it has done well."
(49-54)
"White butterflies turn lavender as they/Pass through its shade
where gently seems to sway/The
phantom of my little daughter’s swing." (55-57)
The same tree that's mentioned
in Shade's first canto, reappears in the end (lines 990-991), closely
associated with shades, phantoms, shadows
"Where are you?
In the garden. I can see/ Part of
your shadow near the shagbark tree."
I associate these phantom
shades not to supernatural ghosts, but to Shade's (and
VN's?) experiences of loss being relived in the process of remembering
the past.
**
:I wonder if it is relevant that, in close proximity to the
crying baby, Shade chose to apply the verb "impregnate" (meaning "to saturate"
or "to imbue", not "fertilize" or "to make pregnant"...) while he
describes a poltergeist's pranks related to Maud's identity?
***
"...in October 1958, a year and a half after Hazel's death, he has
his own near-death experience during a sudden collapse after giving a public
lecture. Returning from this blackout, he feels sure he has slipped into death
and back, and has seen there, "dreadfully distinct / Against the dark, a tall
white fountain."(C)
1999 Brian Boyd All rights reserved. ISBN: 0-691-00959-7. Cf. Nabokov's Pale
Fire www.nytimes.com/books/first/b/boyd-pale.html -