Describing the disguised king's arrival in America, Kinbote (in VN's novel Pale Fire, 1962, Shade’s mad commentator who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla) mentions a field of hay-feverish, rank-flowering weeds, near Baltimore whose oriole is not an oriole:
John Shade's heart attack (Oct. 17, 1958) practically coincided with the disguised king's arrival in America where he descended by parachute from a chartered plane piloted by Colonel Montacute, in a field of hay-feverish, rank-flowering weeds, near Baltimore whose oriole is not an oriole. It had all been perfectly timed, and he was still wrestling with the unfamiliar French contraption when the Rolls-Royce from Sylvia O'Donnell's manor turned toward his green silks from a road and approached along the mowntrop, its fat wheels bouncing disapprovingly and its black shining body slowly gliding along. (note to Line 691)
The Baltimore oriole (Icterus galbula) is a small icterid blackbird common in eastern North America as a migratory breeding bird. It received its name from the resemblance of the male's colors to those on the coat-of-arms of Lord Baltimore (Cecil Calvert, 2nd Baron Baltimore, 1605-75, an English politician, peer and lawyer who was the first proprietor of Maryland). The Baltimore Bird is a poem by Alexander Wilson (a Scottish-American poet, ornithologist, naturalist, and illustrator, 1766-1813):
High on yon poplar, clad in glossiest green,
The orange, black-capped Baltimore is seen;
The broad-extended boughs still please him best,
Beneath their bending skirts he hangs his nest;
There his sweet mate, secure from every harm,
Broods o’er her spotted store, and wraps them warm,—
Lists to the noon-tide hum of busy bees,
Her partner’s mellow song, the brook, the breeze;
These day by day the lonely hours deceive,
From dewy morn to slow-descending eve.
Two weeks elapsed, behold a helpless crew
Claim all her care, and her affection too;
On wings of love the assiduous nurses fly,—
Flowers, leaves, and boughs, abundant food supply;
Glad chants their guardian, as abroad he goes,
And waving breezes rock them to repose.
Identified by George Ord as the "Father of American Ornithology," Alexander Wilson is regarded as the greatest American ornithologist before Audubon. He was apprenticed as a weaver and also worked as a pedlar. He was self-taught with an interest in poetry including the works of Robert Burns. He published his own journal and poems in 1790. Following arrests for protests against industrial conditions he emigrated from Scotland to the United States with his nephew in 1794. In 1804 he became an American citizen. The botanist, William Bartram, encouraged his interest in birds. He travelled widely making drawings and detailed studies backed by his reading of the scientific literature. The results were published as 'American Ornithology' in eight volumes from 1808. One of the early subscribers was President Thomas Jefferson. His achievements were recognised by election to the Society of Artists of the United States and the American Philosophical Society. A ninth volume was published after his death in August 1813. The Wilson Ornithological Society is named in his honour and there is a statue to him in Abbey Close, Paisley.
In Canto One of his poem Shade speaks of his childhood and says that his parents were ornithologists:
I was an infant when my parents died.
They both were ornithologists. I've tried
So often to evoke them that today
I have a thousand parents. Sadly they
Dissolve in their own virtues and recede,
But certain words, chance words I hear or read,
Such as "bad heart" always to him refer,
And "cancer of the pancreas" to her. (ll. 71-78)
Alexander Wilson was born on 6 July 1766, the son to Alexander Wilson and Mary McNab (!!). July 5 is the birthday of the poet Shade, his commentator Kinbote and his murderer Gradus (while Shade was born in 1898, Kinbote and Gradus were born in 1915).
The Russian name of a common oriole, ivolga obyknovennaya (Oriolus oriolus), comes from iva (willow). According to Kinbote, the Zemblan word for weeping willow is if:
L'if, lifeless tree! Your great Maybe, Rabelais:
The grand potato.
I.P.H., a lay
Institute (I) of Preparation (P)
For the Hereafter (H), or If, as we
Called it--big if!--engaged me for one term
To speak on death ("to lecture on the Worm,"
Wrote President McAber).
You and I,
And she, then a mere tot, moved from New Wye
To Yewshade, in another, higher state. (ll. 501-509)
Line 501: L'if
The yew in French. It is curious that the Zemblan word for the weeping willow is also "if" (the yew is tas).
Line 502: The grand potato
An execrable pun, deliberately placed in this epigraphic position to stress lack of respect for Death. I remember from my schoolroom days Rabelais' soi-disant "last words" among other bright bits in some French manual: Je m'en vais chercher le grand peut-être.
Telling Laertes about Ophelia's death, Queen Gertrude (Hamlet's mother in Shakespeare's Hamlet) mentions a willow growing aslant a brook:
There is a willow grows aslant a brook,
That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream;
There with fantastic garlands did she come
Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples
That liberal shepherds give a grosser name,
But our cold maids do dead men's fingers call them:
There, on the pendent boughs her coronet weeds
Clambering to hang, an envious sliver broke;
When down her weedy trophies and herself
Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide;
And, mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up:
Which time she chanted snatches of old tunes;
As one incapable of her own distress,
Or like a creature native and indued
Unto that element: but long it could not be
Till that her garments, heavy with their drink,
Pull'd the poor wretch from her melodious lay
To muddy death. (4.7)
This fragment was translated into Russian by VN:
Есть ива у ручья; к той бледной иве,
склонившейся над ясною водой,
она пришла с гирляндами ромашек,
крапивы, лютиков, лиловой змейки,
зовущейся у вольных пастухов
иначе и грубее, а у наших
холодных дев - перстами мертвых. Там
она взбиралась, вешая на ветви
свои венки, завистливый сучок
сломался, и она с цветами вместе
упала в плачущий ручей. Одежды
раскинулись широко и сначала
ее несли на влаге, как русалку.
Она обрывки старых песен пела,
как бы не чуя гибели - в привычной
родной среде. Так длиться не могло.
Тяжелый груз напившихся покровов
несчастную увлек от сладких звуков
на илистое дно, где смерть.
Re "big if:" an American writer, poet and literary critic, E. A. Poe (1809-49) died on October 7, 1849, in Baltimore. In E. A. Poe's story A Predicament (1838) Psyche Zenobia (the narrator and main character) mentions If, a distressing monosyllable:
Leaning upon the arm of the gallant Pompey, and attended at a respectable distance by Diana, I proceeded down one of the populous and very pleasant streets of the now deserted Edina. On a sudden, there presented itself to view a church - a Gothic cathedral - vast, venerable, and with a tall steeple, which towered into the sky. What madness now possessed me? Why did I rush upon my fate? I was seized with an uncontrollable desire to ascend the giddy pinnacle, and then survey the immense extent of the city. The door of the cathedral stood invitingly open. My destiny prevailed. I entered the ominous archway. Where then was my guardian angel?- if indeed such angels there be. If! Distressing monosyllable! what world of mystery, and meaning, and doubt, and uncertainty is there involved in thy two letters! I entered the ominous archway! I entered; and, without injury to my orange-colored auriculas, I passed beneath the portal, and emerged within the vestibule. Thus it is said the immense river Alfred passed, unscathed, and unwetted, beneath the sea.