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.