Jansy Mello: a PS to the commentary on The Vane Sister's “ 'prophetic' emphasis on icicles, umber, shades, ghosts ( I'm clearly refering to "Pale Fire"). Already in the first paragraphs we read: " I had stopped to watch a family of brilliant icicles drip-dripping from the eaves of a frame house. So clear-cut were their pointed shadows on the white boards behind them that I was sure the shadows of the falling drops should be visible too. But they were not...I walked on in a state of raw awareness that seemed to transform the whole of my being into one big eyeball rolling in the world's socket."

A second PS: Checking through Brian Boyd's Nabokov's Pale Fire The Magic of Artistic Discovery, I came across two instances in which he connects The Vane Sisters to Pale Fire. The first one I found is on page 281 of the 2001 paperback edition. Brian Boyd writes: "The combination of a statement explicitly affirming the impenetrability of life's relation to death and coverly indicating someone's susrvival after death recalls the ending of "The Vane Sisters" (see pp.212-15) Shade does not know what Hazel recorder, but even if he had, of course, he could not have deciphered it until his own death belatedly clarifies the message." On page 285, we read: " As an additional pointer, Kinbote's 'eavesdrop' addition to the Webster's definition of stillicide calls up a seemingly irrelevant 'stalactite'; the narrator of "The Vane Sisters" refers to the icicles as 'transparent stalactites.' (Stories, 615).
In another note BB adds: "In Ada, too, where a pattern of letters connects dead Lucette with live Van and Ada. Van's 'It's one of the Vane sisters' in a dream proves a valuable pointer to another anagrammatic scrambling that seems indicative of Lucette's continuing influence. See Boyd, Nabokov's Ada, 227."

There are further quotes which I'll bring up in connection to the scrambled words in the Barn Episode. In a former message I copied those used in PF's original and the one from a French translation:

pada ata lane pad not ogo old wart alan ther tale feur far rant lant tal told

(CK, line 347 PF original)

"perperi perpira perpa alleral gelgal vortvirt pal feur farrant".

(CK, line 347 PF French R.Girard &Maurice E. Colindreau)

It's also worthwhile to compare what words C.Kinbote selected from them, both in English and in French. I checked the German translation, too, and Hazel's jottings are unaltered in connection to the original.

In French: "aller - gel - or - arrant " and in English and in German "war talant her arrant" (etc,usw)