CK's comments to lines 39-40 ( drafts by a variant
reading):
"....and home would haste my thieves,/The sun
with stolen ice, the moon with leaves"
The original lines in Shade's poem read: "
...was close my eyes to reproduce the leaves,/Or indoor scene, or trophies
of the eaves" ( this makes more sense, in place of the variant offered
by CK, because the trophies of the eaves refer to "stillicide" on
previous line 35)
In CK's commentary I see an indirect
reference to the Luna Moth in a "leaf
sarcophagus"
D.B.Johnson posted a
message about a few weeks ago. I also mentioned one of the myths about
Apollo's "Sibyl" who reads men's fortune from leaves and is condemned to
hang, for ever shrinking and shriveling, inside a bottle, "like a geni"
.
Kinbote
retranslated Shakespeare "into English prose from a Zemblan
poetical version of Timon" as:
" the sun is a thief, she lures the sea
and robs it. The moon is a thief; he steals his silvery light from the sun. The
sea is a thief: it dissolves the moon."
Kinbote curiously maintained the genders for Moon
and Sun as they appear in German ( and in Zemblan?) a masculine Der Mond ( he
steals...), a feminine Die Sonne ( she lures). The sea became "it"
(Das!)
In this note he refers to future note on lines 962
( Help me, Will. Pale Fire) where he observes that he only had with him a
tiny vest pocket edition of Timon of Athens in Zemblan ( Shakspere,
as translated by Conmal). CK calls our attention to the fact that his
volume contained nothing equivalent of "pale fire".
He is also a severe critic about Shade's choice of
the title "Pale Fire" ( note to line 671-672) mentioning "a phrase lifted
from a more or less clebrated poetical work of the past...degrading in regard to
the talent that substitutes..."
We could find many more similtar criticisms about
Shade, in his eyes an excedingly "Appalachian poet" who is
too fond of "childish worldgames".
( Kinbote appears to be a participants in our
Nabokv-List when he debates the value of Shade's "Poetics")
I have the impression that Nabokov, thru Kinbote's
retranslation, played with the cyclical "thievery" attributing "limmericks" to
Shakespeare...
Worldgames, nonsense rhyme, "comptines"
("parlenda") rely on "inty ninty tibbety fig" but also on stories in
which "a wall hides the sun that melts the snow that puts out the
fire that burns down the wall, etc" . I heard several variations in
different languages, including a famous sonnet by Machado de Assis called
"Vicious Circle" about the envy that a glow-worm feels of the moon, that is
envious of the sun, that envies the lowly glow-worm's peace. Cf.also: "A
poética da tradução: do sentido à significancia", Mario Laranjeira,
1993, Criação e Crítica 12 (Edusp/Fapesp)
An additional observation:
Kinbote describes Shade ( comment to line 991
on "horseshoes" ) as "an old tipsy witch". He also saw Judge Goldsworth's photograph representing
a "Medusa-locked hag" ( page 82/3, note to
lines 47-48).
We know that at other times Shade acknowledged his
zemblance to Judge Goldsworth, to Samuel Johnson and to a char ( apud
Kinbote) but I think that the "witch" and "hag" are a product
of Kinbote's confabulation...(or as a
"Verdichtung"?).