Carolyn,
Among the illustrations between pages 226 and 227 of Boyd’s The American Years there is a photograph of Vera and VN seated on either side of the large plate-glass window whose reflected azure lured waxwings to the final flights VN would meditate upon while planning Pale Fire. This is the window in the Shade’s home which seems to have been largely based on the home of Lawriston and Ruth Sharpe at 880 Highland Road, which the Nabokovs rented. The ecstatic waxwing voyages always remind me of Botkinbote’s recollection of his father’s own last flight, with his confident wave captured in the next-to-last photograph of the series his son finds years later. I’m sure others have made this connection.
The caption for the photo of this home says “both the house and surrounding gardens supplied many other images for Pale Fire.” In a walking tour of Ithaca two summers ago, I saw at least two other Nabokov homes, including the 82 East Seneca Street house that inspired the Ramsdale residence of Charlotte and Lolita Haze, and the Nabokov’s first Ithaca rental at 957 East State Street. Both the Highland Road and East State Street homes share a characteristic American college-town neighborhood with furnished rooms and portions of private homes available for rent. Both are within an easy walk of each other and of the Cornell campus — in fact, Ithaca is a beautiful town for walks, though a winter of heavy snow might be a challenge. The Sharpe’s home with the plate-glass window is in the somewhat more affluent Cayuga Heights neighborhood which we did not visit.
Andrew
On 12/27/06 8:54 PM, "Carolyn Kunin" <chaiselongue@EARTHLINK.NET> wrote:
I still find it difficult to visualize exactly what Shade is describing in the opening lines of his Pale Fire. -- Charles
Dear Charles,
I've always pictured a glass roof with the little bird flying against the slope and the poet looking up. Doesn't make any sense of course now that I think about it, unless Shade actually lived in a glass house.
But to think seriously, the only way the poet could be in the shadow of the bird, the sun would either have to be "at 9 o'clock" or "at 3 o'clock" and the bird, window and poet on the sun side of the house in a fairly exact alignment. The house was old, so the window must have been of modest size, not one of those modern plate glass affairs. Possibly it could only happen on one day of the year (like Stonehenge) either mid-winter or mid-summer - - St John's eve is it? depending on how the house itself is aligned.
Interesting query. Of course the whole image could simply be a metaphor. If Sylvia and Sybil are birds, presumably their mate(s) would also be avian. Another indication perhaps that Shade is not shot, but lives on, flies on as the Kinbote-bird (anyone for Peter Pan)?
Carolyn
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