Both my copies of Pale Fire ( The Library of
America, Everyman's Library) present the same characteristic choices for the
spelling of "cancelled/canceled" "cancellation/cancelation" .
In his foreword Kinbote writes of Shade´s
"misshapen body, gray mop of abundant hair..." ( LA ed, page 453) and
concludes that: "He was his own cancellation".
Shade, in Canto Four, line 850 chose the
American spellling (as distinguished in my Oxford Concise English
Dictionary):
" A pen stops in mid-air, then swoops to bar
A
canceled sunset or restore a star".
Perhaps Kinbote wrote a commentary on
the "canceled sunset" ( I could not find it now and my recollections,
as usual, are rather dim) but there are no
particular notes on line 850 concerning this "cancelation" ( he deals with
Lines 841-872 in one short sentence) .
If Kinbote insisted on doubling the
"ll" then I would be more secure to inquire if these two different spellings for
the same word were either editorial slips ( if they are
not indifferently used in one way or another in the same novel?)
or were they intended by VN.
Would this
"authorial" suggestion serve to indicate that Kinbote and Shade
probably were, indeed, two distinct writers?
Jansy