So, I
wonder... Who or what is the "Fourth" in Pale Fire? Jansy
A river in Scotland?.. Hazel Shade, whose name has a
Scottish source, seems to have died there... half-in-jest, Carolyn
See" said he, "no one could find his way into
Grimpen Mire tonight". She laughed and clapped her hands, her eyes and teeth
gleamed with fierce merriment. "He may find his way in, but never out" she
cried.
- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (The Hound of The
Baskervilles)
You may be correct. The fourth would not be a
"tetrapartite" novel ( Foreword, Poem, Commentary, Index) nor the poem itself,
with its Four Cantos.
I had been thinking about the "hereafter".
Other developments about triptych and Van Veen's theories about
past-present-future seem to deny any vision of that!
( I'll send the quotes later)
Jansy