At the end of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN's poem Pale Fire, 1962) says that the day (the last day of Shade's life) has passed in a sustained low hum of harmony:
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. (ll. 963-976)
In her sonnet Limitations (1893) Henrietta Cordelia Ray (a black American poet, 1852-1916) mentions rythmic harmony:
The subtlest strain a great musician weaves,
Cannot attain in rhythmic harmony
To music in his soul. May it not be
Celestial lyres send hints to him? He grieves
That half the sweetness of the song, he leaves
Unheard in the transition. Thus do we
Yearn to translate the wondrous majesty
Of some rare mood, when the rapt soul receives
A vision exquisite. Yet who can match
The sunset’s iridescent hues? Who sing
The skylark’s ecstasy so seraph-fine?
We struggle vainly, still we fain would catch
Such rifts amid life’s shadows, for they bring
Glimpses ineffable of things divine.
"Glimpses ineffable of things divine" (the sonnet's last line) brings to mind "the verse of galaxies divine" mentioned by Shade. Shade murderer, Gradus is a member of the Shadows (a regicidal organization). In the penultimate line of her sonnet Limitations Henrietta Cordelia Ray mentions life's shadows. "Echo's fey child" (as Shade calls the consonne d'appui) makes one think of Henrietta Cordelia Ray's poem Echo's Complaint:
O rare Narcissus! sunny-haired!
O mild-eyed youth of godlike mien!
O thou that sittest by fair streams,
And in their trembling, silv'ry sheen
Thy lovely countenance dost view,
Turn but once more thy magic gaze
On one who utters sad complaint,
One who will love thee many days.
'Mid sylvan haunts I dwelt of yore,
Where morning mists shone wondrously,
And fountains flung their diadems
Of liquid rainbows. Unto me
Each day was gladness; grottoes cool
With trickling rills and murm'rous leaves,
Lured me to seek their spacious shades;
But not for these my spirit grieves.
When Dawn in rose-decked chariot strewed
Pale gold down Twilight's violet aisles,
I first beheld thee: ah! how fair!
I trembled 'neath thy radiant smiles.
Thou pensive, glidedst through the groves,
While I, unthought of, with the breeze
In lightness vying--followed near,
Did not some spell thy spirit seize?
I sighed: naught save the wanton wind
Returned my plaint. Thou, peerless youth,
Back tossed thy amber tresses; glad
Thou sangst, for me thou hadst no ruth
Day threw gold arrows o'er the plain,
And glist'ning grew each vine-clad height;
Stars robed in silver tissues, paced
To solemn music, welcoming Night,--
Ere my sad soul could utter low
To thee its grief. Rememb'rest thou
That evening? All the lawns were bright
With lum'nous splendor; o'er the brow
Of you fair mount, the stately moon
Looked call-eyed on the sleeping world;
In the dim glades rare asters lay
On grassy banks, all dew-impearled.
On high Olympus mighty gods
Held carnival with matchless song.
Yea, earth was jubilant, yet I,
Apart from all the festive throng,
Told to thine ear my soul's complaint.
Thou didst not heed my spirit's moan;
Then pity now, O peerless one!
Oh! leave me not unloved and lone.
Gaze not within the sunlit stream
So ling'ringly, there but to see
What in my soul is mirrored: may
Not eyes of love thy mirror be?
Come, rare Narcissus! deign to smile
On Echo, nymph in sore distress,
Who ever, shadow-like, will go
With thee, till thou shalt love confess.
'Tis said I'm fair and love for thee
Will make me fairer, ay, as fair
As glorious Aphrodite, come
And let me kiss thy sunny hair,
Thy marble brow; ay, let me kiss
Thy dewy lips, thy peerless eyes.
One clasp from thee, one long love-clasp
Will change to joy-notes all my sighs.
Thus wailed sad Echo: but to all
Her lamentation naught replied
Unmoved Narcissus; and the nymph,
Sweet Echo, thus in love sore tried,
Was seen no more; but on the breeze
Her voice was heard, her voice alone
Was left, -- an answ'ring cadence there
Love thrilling still its ling'ring tone.
Echo and Narcissus is a myth from Ovid's Metamorphoses. In his foreword to Shade's poem Kinbote (Shade’s mad commentator who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla) mentions a boy, who, according to Dr. Oscar Nattochdag (good old Netochka), had complained to his advisor (cf. Echo's Complaint):
Alas, my peace of mind was soon to be shattered. The thick venom of envy began squirting at me as soon as academic suburbia realized that John Shade valued my society above that of all other people. Your snicker, my dear Mrs. C., did not escape our notice as I was helping the tired old poet to find his galoshes after that dreary get-together party at your house. One day I happened to enter the English Literature office in quest of a magazine with the picture of the Royal Palace in Onhava, which I wanted my friend to see, when I overheard a young instructor in a green velvet jacket, whom I shall mercifully call Gerald Emerald, carelessly saying in answer to something the secretary had asked: "I guess Mr. Shade has already left with the Great Beaver." Of course I am quite tall, and my brown beard is of a rather rich tint and texture; the silly cognomen evidently applied to me, but was not worth noticing, and after calmly taking the magazine from a pamphlet-cluttered table, I contented myself on my way out with pulling Gerald Emerald's bow-tie loose with a deft jerk of my fingers as I passed by him. There was also the morning when Dr. Nattochdag, head of the department to which I was attached, begged me in a formal voice to be seated, then closed the door, and having regained, with a downcast frown, his swivel chair, urged me "to be more careful." In what sense, careful? A boy had complained to his adviser. Complained of what, good Lord? That I had criticized a literature course he attended ("a ridiculous survey of ridiculous works, conducted by a ridiculous mediocrity"). Laughing in sheer relief, I embraced my good Netochka, telling him I would never be naughty again. I take this opportunity to salute him. He always behaved with such exquisite courtesy toward me that I sometimes wondered if he did not suspect what Shade suspected, and what only three people (two trustees and the president of the college) definitely knew.
Netochka Nezvanov (1849) is the unfinished novel by Dostoevski, the author of Dvoynik ("The Double," 1846). Shade’s poem is almost finished when the author is killed by Gradus. Kinbote believes that, to be completed, Shade’s poem needs but one line (Line 1000, identical to Line 1: “I was the shadow of the waxwing slain”). But it seems that, like some sonnets, Shade's poem also needs a coda (Line 1001: “By its own double in the windowpane”).
According to Kinbote, he writes his commentary, index and foreword (in that order) to Shade's poem in a log cabin in Cedarn, Utana. But it seems that Botkin (Shade's, Kinbote's and Gradus' "real" name) actually writes them in a madhouse near Quebec - in the same sanatorium where Humbert Humbert, the narrator and main character in VN's novel Lolita (1955), writes his poem "Wanted." Quebec (1910) is a poem by Henrietta Cordelia Ray.