João A. Rea wrote: Let's also rememer that English "varlet" (a variant spelling of
"valet) arising by the vagaries of r-less and r-ful dialects in contact),
has
a "deprecatory meaning" not unlike that of "knave". Joa~o (my computer
won't let my tilda dance over above the 'o')
Jackie Mello : Why did he change "depreciatory" into
"deprecatory"? Anyway, both indicate a Royal dismissal of servants and
pages.
Returning to Pale Fire, JM
on Jack Grey, or Vinogradus plus a Red
Admiral:
Don's message made me think about the different meanings
the "Red Admiral" butterfly could acquire in the novel:
1. an inefficient warning signal to protect one of the
characters;
2. the soul of a resentful woman transformed by death into an
inspiring symbol;
3. a caricature or a bungled representation ( like the one of the butterfly
in a famous triptych, probably Bosch's);
4.Swift's Vanessa;
etc.
In the note to line 408 (A Male hand), once
more close to Gradus, we spot the Red Vanessa ( "heraldic butterfly volant en arrière")
"He retrieved
his car and drove up to a higher level on the hillside. From the same road bay,
on a misty and luminous September day, with the diagonal of the first
silver filament crossing the space between two balusters, the
King had surveyed the twinkling ripples of Lake Geneva and had
noted their antiphonal response, the flashing of tinfoil scares in the hillside
vineyards. Gradus as he stood there, and moodily
looked down at the red tiles of Lavender’s villa snuggling among its protective
trees...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.
Here
we find joined by Charles Kinbote's hand ( although he uses sometimes
the expression "one") a very present John Shade writing Pale Fire,
Gradus, the Red Admiral and himself, the King Charles II, the Beloved. We
have responding echoes, two kinds of "bend" ( "gules" indicates a red diagonal),
vineyards and vinograd, tinfoil scares and clink
tinkle that echoes again in feigned remoteness the tinkle of the
horseshoe game heard in the distance when these four ( Gradus, Kinbote, Shade
and Butterfly ) meet
again.
Why could
this "volant en arrière" mean? The sinister bend or a flight in reverse[ cf.
"Spacetime itself is decay; Gradus is flying west; he has reached
gray-blue...]?