In Canto Three of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) describes a game of chess with his wife and mentions the writer's grief:
"What is that funny creaking - do you hear?"
"It is the shutter on the stairs, my dear."
"If you're not sleeping, let's turn on the light.
I hate that wind! Let's play some chess." "All right."
"I'm sure it's not the shutter. There - again."
"It is a tendril fingering the pane."
"What glided down the roof and made that thud?"
"It is old winter tumbling in the mud."
"And now what shall I do? My knight is pinned."
Who rides so late in the night and the wind?
It is the writer's grief. It is the wild
March wind. It is the father with his child. (ll. 653-664)
In her poem Questioning (1910) Henrietta Cordelia Ray says: "Shade gives to bloom its best relief, / Joy comes the sweeter after grief:"
Can life's best consciousness of joy
Quite charm the soul without alloy?
Or will its hidden depths be stirred
All unawares, by some chance word,
To deep regret or nameless pain,
With fev'rish yearning in its train?
Ay! as the shadows fleck the grass
When through his courts the Sun doth pass,
So in the measure Life must dole
To th' insatiate, asking soul,
Shade gives to bloom its best relief,
Joy comes the sweeter after grief.
Each struggle toward a clearer light,
Each noble impulse unto right
Makes struggle easy, effort grand;
Lo! when we seize with eager hand
The regal rose and meet the thorn,
We heed not though our flesh be torn.
For life's best joy may not all be
Intense delight though e'er so free
From hint of sorrow, but the calm
That soothes the spirit, like a psalm
Of benediction floating by
In strains serenest caught on high.
"A psalm of benediction floating by in strains serenest caught on high" at the end of the poem brings to mind "I pray for the Lord's benediction to rest on my wretched countrymen" - a sentence used by Kinbote (Shade’s mad commentator who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla) at the end of his commentary to Shade's poem:
Many years ago--how many I would not care to say--I remember my Zemblan nurse telling me, a little man of six in the throes of adult insomnia: "Minnamin, Gut mag alkan, Pern dirstan" (my darling, God makes hungry, the Devil thirsty). Well, folks, I guess many in this fine hall are as hungry and thirsty as me, and I'd better stop, folks, right here.
Yes, better stop. My notes and self are petering out. Gentlemen, I have suffered very much, and more than any of you can imagine. I pray for the Lord's benediction to rest on my wretched countrymen. My work is finished. My poet is dead.
"And you, what will you be doing with yourself, poor King, poor Kinbote?" a gentle young voice may inquire.
God will help me, I trust, to rid myself of any desire to follow the example of the other two characters in this work. I shall continue to exist. I may assume other disguises, other forms, but I shall try to exist. I may turn up yet, on another campus, as an old, happy, health heterosexual Russian, a writer in exile, sans fame, sans future, sans audience, sans anything but his art. I may join forces with Odon in a new motion picture: Escape from Zembla (ball in the palace, bomb in the palace square). I may pander to the simple tastes of theatrical critics and cook up a stage play, an old-fashioned melodrama with three principles: a lunatic who intends to kill an imaginary king, another lunatic who imagines himself to be that king, and a distinguished old poet who stumbles by chance into the line of fire, and perishes in the clash between the two figments. Oh, I may do many things! History permitting, I may sail back to my recovered kingdom, and with a great sob greet the gray coastline and the gleam of a roof in the rain. I may huddle and groan in a madhouse. But whatever happens, wherever the scene is laid, somebody, somewhere, will quietly set out--somebody has already set out, somebody still rather far away is buying a ticket, is boarding a bus, a ship, a plane, has landed, is walking toward a million photographers, and presently he will ring at my door--a bigger, more respectable, more competent Gradus. (note to Line 1000)
A back American poet, Henrietta Cordelia Ray (1852-1916) has the same surname as John Ray, Jr. - in VN's novel Lolita (1955), the author of the foreword to Humbert Humbert's manuscript (and Humbert Humbert's "real" name, as it appears). "One shade the more, one ray the less" is a line in Byron's poem She Walks in Beauty (1814) from Hebrew Melodies:
She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that’s best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes;
Thus mellowed to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.
One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impaired the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,
Or softly lightens o’er her face;
Where thoughts serenely sweet express,
How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.
And on that cheek, and o’er that brow,
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent!
In Canto Three of his poem Shade describes his heart attack and mentions Hurricane Lolita that swept from Florida to Maine:
It was a year of Tempests: Hurricane
Lolita swept from Florida to Maine.
Mars glowed. Shahs married. Gloomy Russians spied.
Lang made your portrait. And one night I died. (ll. 679-682)
At the beginning of Canto Four of his poem Shade says that now he will spy on beauty as none has spied on it yet:
Now I shall spy on beauty as none has
Spied on it yet. Now I shall cry out as
None has cried out. Now I shall try what none
Has tried. Now I shall do what none has done. (ll. 835-838)
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”). Shade's murderer, Gradus is Kinbote's double. Shade's birthday, July 5 is also Kinbote's and Gradus' birthday (while Shade was born in 1898, Kinbote and Gradus were born in 1915). In fact, the poet Shade, his commentator Kinbote and his murderer Gradus seem to represent three different aspects of one and the same person whose "real" name is Botkin. An American scholar of Russian descent, Professor Vsevolod Botkin went mad and became Shade, Kinbote and Gradus after the tragic death of his daughter Nadezhda (Hazel Shade's "real" name). Nadezhda means in Russian “hope.” There is a hope that, when Kinbote completes his work on Shade’s poem and commits suicide (on October 19, 1959, the anniversary of Pushkin's Lyceum), Botkin, like Count Vorontsov (a target of Pushkin's epigrams, "half-milord, half-merchant, etc."), will be full again.