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Red Admiral ( Vanessa atalantis) and heraldry and a tie...
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Dear List,
In his comment to Shade's lines 406-416 Kinbote describes a red Admiral butterfly. "From far below mounted the clink and tinkle of distant masonry work, and a sudden train passed between gardens, and a heraldic butterfly "volant en arrière", sable, a bend gules, traversed the stone parapet, and John Shade took a fresh card."
In the Wikepedia we find that in heraldry, "a bend is a colored band that runs from the upper left (as seen by the viewer) corner of the shield to the lower right. A bend sinister is a bend which runs from the upper right (as seen by the viewer) corner of the shield to the lower left" - and it is a mark of bastardy.
The expression gules appears in Timon of Athens ( referring to red blood ). Following an internet dictionary:
Cf. E. Cobham Brewer 1810-1897. Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. 1898.
Gules [red]. An heraldic term. The most honourable heraldic colour, signifying valour, justice, and veneration. Hence it was given to kings and princes. The royal livery of England is gules or scarlet. In heraldry expressed by
perpendicular parallel lines. (Persian, ghul, rose; French, gueules, the mouth and throat, or the red colour thereof; Latin, gula, the throat.)
1. "With man's blood paint the ground, gules, gules." Shakespeare: Timon of Athens, iv. 3.
2. ( Shone the wintry moon... ) "And threw warm gules on Madeline's fair breast." Keats: Eve of St. Agnes.
Close to the word "bend gules" we also find "sable", another expression used in heraldics. It means the tincture black: "and belongs to the class of dark tinctures, called "colours". In engravings and line drawings, it is sometimes depicted as a region of crossed horizontal and vertical lines or else marked with sa. as an abbreviation."
I would like to connect this description with Gradus, his dark creased suit and red tie. I might not have noticed his tie if I had not read one of the descriptions of the Red Admiral, according to which, beside the orange-red diagonal line crossing its wings and opposite to the black tips speckled with white, we find a part that is "chocolate colored".
In Shade's poem, Canto Four, lines 991-999 we find:
"Somewhere horseshoes are being tossed. Click. Clunk.
(...) A dark Vanessa with a crimson band
Wheels in the low sun, settles on the sand
And shows its ink-blue wingtips flecked with white..."
Gradus, Shade and Kinbote were born on July 5.
John Shade had suffered a stroke and thought he was dead, but his Doctor said: "Not quite: just half a shade" (line 728).
Kinbote describes Gradus as "our half-man was also half mad" and Gradus might have become a ghostly "half-butterfly"...
For the "clink and tinkle of distant masonry" ( when Kinbote out of the blue mentions the butterfly in his commentary to lines 406-416) we reach the "clink and clunk of horseshoes. Also " The "sudden train that passes between the gardens" might have become a Moorish ( check Aunt Maud's dictionary!) gardener trundling a wheel-barrow through the flowing shade. Gradus wears a black creased suit. His tie ( note to line 949, page 277 EL):
..." an Easter gift from a dressy butcher,his brother -in-law in Onhava: imitation silk, color chocolate brown, barred with red".
Another slight game is also played when we consider that Shade was going to have a glass of Tokay. One of Gradus' alliterations turn him into "Sudarg" ( "en arrière"?), Sudarg of Bokay. A nice rhyme with Tokay?
In Kinbote's note to line 629: The fate of beasts, the madman's fate ( page 237 EL) he states:
" I have not known any lunatics; but I have heard of several amusing cases in New Wye ('Even in Arcady am I,' says Dementia, chained to her gray column) ".
Even if most interpreters understand the lines "Et in Arcadia Ego" to mean "Death also lurks in Paradise" it is "Dementia" in a gray column that makes her presence felt in New Wye. Or Gradus, who initially "did not have as much body, did not offend the senses as violently as now; was, in a word, further removed from our sunny, green, grass-fragrant Arcady" (page 279 EL) until he met Shade and Kinbote.
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In his comment to Shade's lines 406-416 Kinbote describes a red Admiral butterfly. "From far below mounted the clink and tinkle of distant masonry work, and a sudden train passed between gardens, and a heraldic butterfly "volant en arrière", sable, a bend gules, traversed the stone parapet, and John Shade took a fresh card."
In the Wikepedia we find that in heraldry, "a bend is a colored band that runs from the upper left (as seen by the viewer) corner of the shield to the lower right. A bend sinister is a bend which runs from the upper right (as seen by the viewer) corner of the shield to the lower left" - and it is a mark of bastardy.
The expression gules appears in Timon of Athens ( referring to red blood ). Following an internet dictionary:
Cf. E. Cobham Brewer 1810-1897. Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. 1898.
Gules [red]. An heraldic term. The most honourable heraldic colour, signifying valour, justice, and veneration. Hence it was given to kings and princes. The royal livery of England is gules or scarlet. In heraldry expressed by
perpendicular parallel lines. (Persian, ghul, rose; French, gueules, the mouth and throat, or the red colour thereof; Latin, gula, the throat.)
1. "With man's blood paint the ground, gules, gules." Shakespeare: Timon of Athens, iv. 3.
2. ( Shone the wintry moon... ) "And threw warm gules on Madeline's fair breast." Keats: Eve of St. Agnes.
Close to the word "bend gules" we also find "sable", another expression used in heraldics. It means the tincture black: "and belongs to the class of dark tinctures, called "colours". In engravings and line drawings, it is sometimes depicted as a region of crossed horizontal and vertical lines or else marked with sa. as an abbreviation."
I would like to connect this description with Gradus, his dark creased suit and red tie. I might not have noticed his tie if I had not read one of the descriptions of the Red Admiral, according to which, beside the orange-red diagonal line crossing its wings and opposite to the black tips speckled with white, we find a part that is "chocolate colored".
In Shade's poem, Canto Four, lines 991-999 we find:
"Somewhere horseshoes are being tossed. Click. Clunk.
(...) A dark Vanessa with a crimson band
Wheels in the low sun, settles on the sand
And shows its ink-blue wingtips flecked with white..."
Gradus, Shade and Kinbote were born on July 5.
John Shade had suffered a stroke and thought he was dead, but his Doctor said: "Not quite: just half a shade" (line 728).
Kinbote describes Gradus as "our half-man was also half mad" and Gradus might have become a ghostly "half-butterfly"...
For the "clink and tinkle of distant masonry" ( when Kinbote out of the blue mentions the butterfly in his commentary to lines 406-416) we reach the "clink and clunk of horseshoes. Also " The "sudden train that passes between the gardens" might have become a Moorish ( check Aunt Maud's dictionary!) gardener trundling a wheel-barrow through the flowing shade. Gradus wears a black creased suit. His tie ( note to line 949, page 277 EL):
..." an Easter gift from a dressy butcher,his brother -in-law in Onhava: imitation silk, color chocolate brown, barred with red".
Another slight game is also played when we consider that Shade was going to have a glass of Tokay. One of Gradus' alliterations turn him into "Sudarg" ( "en arrière"?), Sudarg of Bokay. A nice rhyme with Tokay?
In Kinbote's note to line 629: The fate of beasts, the madman's fate ( page 237 EL) he states:
" I have not known any lunatics; but I have heard of several amusing cases in New Wye ('Even in Arcady am I,' says Dementia, chained to her gray column) ".
Even if most interpreters understand the lines "Et in Arcadia Ego" to mean "Death also lurks in Paradise" it is "Dementia" in a gray column that makes her presence felt in New Wye. Or Gradus, who initially "did not have as much body, did not offend the senses as violently as now; was, in a word, further removed from our sunny, green, grass-fragrant Arcady" (page 279 EL) until he met Shade and Kinbote.
Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
