In Canto Two of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN's novel Pale Fire, 1962) describes the night of his daughter's tragic death when his wife said "Midnight:"
"Midnight," you said. What's midnight to the young?
And suddenly a festive blaze was flung
Across five cedar trunks, snowpatches showed,
And a patrol car on our bumpy road
Came to a crunching stop. Retake, retake!
People have thought she tried to cross the lake
At Lochan Neck where zesty skaters crossed
From Exe to Wye on days of special frost.
Others supposed she might have lost her way
By turning left from Bridgeroad; and some say
She took her poor young life. I know. You know.
It was a night of thaw, a night of blow,
With great excitement in the air. Black spring
Stood just around the corner, shivering
In the wet starlight and on the wet ground.
The lake lay in the mist, its ice half drowned.
A blurry shape stepped off the reedy bank
Into a crackling, gulping swamp, and sank. (ll. 483-500)
The poet's daughter, Hazel Shade drowned in Lake Omega. In A Song to David (1763) Christopher Smart (an English poet, 1722-71) mentions Omega (the last letter of the Greek alphabet):
OMEGA! GREATEST and the BEST,
Stands sacred to the day of rest,
For gratitude and thought;
Which bless'd the world upon his pole,
And gave the universe his goal,
And clos'd th'infernal draught. (XXXVII)
Christopher Smart was infamous as the pseudonymous midwife "Mrs. Mary Midnight" and for widespread accounts of his father-in-law, John Newbery, locking him away in a mental asylum (St. Luke's Asylum in London) for many years over Smart's supposed religious "mania". Even after Smart's eventual release, a negative reputation continued to pursue him as he was known for incurring more debt than he could repay; this ultimately led to his confinement in debtors' prison until his death. Smart was a major contributor to two popular magazines, The Midwife and The Student. To hide his identity for practical and humorous reasons, he adopted the persona of a midwife, also known as a "Mrs. Midwife" in slang, and called this persona "Mrs. Mary Midnight". A midwife is a health professional who cares for mothers and newborns around childbirth. In Pushkin's poem Rifma ("The Rhyme," 1830) the midwife who takes the birth of Rhyme is Mnemosyne (in Greek mythology, the goddess of memory and the mother of the Muses) herself:
Эхо, бессонная нимфа, скиталась по брегу Пенея.
Феб, увидев её, страстию к ней воспылал.
Нимфа плод понесла восторгов влюблённого бога;
Меж говорливых наяд, мучась, она родила
Милую дочь. Её прияла сама Мнемозина.
Резвая дева росла в хоре богинь-аонид,
Матери чуткой подобна, послушна памяти строгой,
Музам мила; на земле Рифмой зовётся она.
Rhyme in Pushkin's poem is the daughter of Phoebus (Apollo as the sun god) and Echo, a sleepless nymph. In Canto Four of his poem Shade mentions his sensual love for the consonne d’appui, Echo’s fey child, and a feeling of fantastically planned, richly rhymed life:
Gently the day has passed in a sustained
Low hum of harmony. The brain is drained
And a brown ament, and the noun I meant
To use but did not, dry on the cement.
Maybe my sensual love for the consonne
D'appui, Echo's fey child, is based upon
A feeling of fantastically planned,
Richly rhymed life. I feel I understand
Existence, or at least a minute part
Of my existence, only through my art,
In terms of combinational delight;
And if my private universe scans right,
So does the verse of galaxies divine
Which I suspect is an iambic line.
I'm reasonably sure that we survive
And that my darling somewhere is alive,
As I am reasonably sure that I
Shall wake at six tomorrow, on July
The twenty-second, nineteen fifty-nine,
And that the day will probably be fine;
So this alarm clock let me set myself,
Yawn, and put back Shade's "Poems" on their shelf. (ll. 963-984)
On the same evening Shade is killed by Gradus. The name of the poet's murderer, Jakob Gradus makes one think of Jacob's Ladder (in Jacob's dream, a ladder set up on the Earth; the top of it reaches to heaven with angels ascending and descending on it). In his poem Jubilate Agno Christopher Smart mentions Jacob's Ladder:
For Jacob's Ladder are the steps of the Earth graduated hence to Paradice and thence to the throne of God. (Fragment B, Part III)
The name of the capital of Kinbote's Zembla, Onhava seems to hint at heaven. Gradus is Russian for "degree" (according to Kinbote, Jakob Gradus called himself variously Jack Degree or Jacques de Grey, or James de Gray, and also appears in police records as Ravus, Ravenstone, and d'Argus). In Jubilate Agno Christopher Smart mentions his DEGREE:
Let Manaen rejoice with Donax. My DEGREE is good even here, in the Lord I have a better. (Fragment B, Part II)
In Jubilate Agno Christopher Smart mentions ECHO:
For ECHO is the soul of the voice exerting itself in hollow places.
For ECHO cannot act but when she can parry the adversary.
For ECHO is greatest in Churches and where she can assist in prayer.
For a good voice hath its Echo with it and it is attainable by much supplication. (Fragment B, Part II)