Pale Fire - Vladimir Nabokov [66]
Science tells us, by the way, that the Earth would not merely fall apart, but vanish like a ghost, if Electricity were suddenly removed from the world.
Lines 347-348: She twisted words
One of the examples her father gives is odd. I am quite sure it was I who one day, when we were discussing “mirror words,” observed (and I recall the poet’s expression of stupefaction) that “spider” in reverse is “redips,” and “T. S. Eliot,” “toilest.” But then it is also true that Hazel Shade resembled me in certain respects.
Lines 367-370: then—pen, again—explain
In speech John Shade, as a good American, rhymed “again” with “pen” and not with “explain.” The adjacent position of these rhymes is curious.
Line 376: poem
I believe I can guess (in my bookless mountain cave) what poem is meant; but without looking it up I would not wish to name its author. Anyway, I deplore my friend’s vicious thrusts at the most distinguished poets of his day.
Lines 376-377: was said in English Litt to be
This is replaced in the draft by the more significant—and more tuneful—variant:
the Head of our Department deemed
Although it may be taken to refer to the man (whoever he was) who occupied this post at the time Hazel Shade was a student, the reader cannot be blamed for applying it to Paul H., Jr., the fine administrator and inept scholar who since 1957 headed the English Department of Wordsmith College. We met now and then (see Foreword and note to line 894) but not often. The Head of the Department to which I belonged was Prof. Nattochdag—“Netochka” as we called the dear man. Certainly the migraines that have lately tormented me to such a degree that I once had to leave in the midst of a concert at which I happened to be sitting beside Paul H., Jr., should not have been a stranger’s business. They apparently were, very much so. He kept his eye on me, and immediately upon John Shade’s demise circulated a mimeographed letter that began:
Several members of the Department of English are painfully concerned over the fate of a manuscript poem, or parts of a manuscript poem, left by the late John Shade. The manuscript fell into the hands of a person who not only is unqualified for the job of editing it, belonging as he does to another department, but is known to have a deranged mind. One wonders whether some legal action, etc.
“Legal action,” of course, might be taken by somebody else too. But no matter; one’s just anger is mitigated by the satisfaction of foreknowing that the engagé gentleman will be less worried about the fate of my friend’s poem after reading the passage commented here. Southey liked a roasted rat for supper—which is especially comic in view of the rats that devoured his Bishop.
Line 384: book on Pope
The title of this work which can be found in any college library is Supremely Blest, a phrase borrowed from a Popian line, which I remember but cannot quote exactly. The book is concerned mainly with Pope’s technique but also contains pithy observations on “the stylized morals of his age.”
Lines 385-386: Jane Dean, Pete Dean
The transparent pseudonyms of two innocent people. I visited Jane Provost when passing through Chicago in August. I found her still unmarried. She showed me some amusing photos of her cousin Peter and his friends. She told me—and I have no reason to disbelieve her words—that Peter Provost (whom I desired very very much to meet, but he was, alas, selling automobiles in Detroit) might have exaggerated a wee bit, but certainly did not fib, when explaining that he had to keep a promise made to one of his dearest fraternity friends, a glorious young athlete whose “garland” will not, one hopes, be “briefer than a girl’s.” Such obligations are not to be treated lightly or disdainfully. Jane said she had tried to talk to the Shades after the tragedy, and later had written Sybil a long letter that was never acknowledged. I said, displaying a bit of the slang I had recently started to master: “You are telling me!”
Lines 403-404: it’s eight fifteen (And here time forked)
From here to line 474 two themes