Four links with Vanessa atalanta with Shade, Sybil, Gradus and
Swift:
1.Kinbote's likens it to Shade: "his limited knowledge of lepidoptera and the sable gloom
of his nature marked like a dark Vanessa with gay flashes,
270 ).
2 .CK also associated the Red Admiral and
contrapunctal Gradus:" a heraldic butterfly volant en arrière, sable, a bend gules,
traversed the stone parapet, and John Shade took a fresh card." and later on, to the tie he
wore.
3. Shade's references have Sybil as his Red
Admiral: Come and be
worshiped, come and be caressed,/ 270 My dark Vanessa, crimson-barred,
my blest/ My
Admirable butterfly!
.
4.
Kinbote also comments on Swift's own "inevitable
allusion to Vanhomrigh, Esther!". In Swift's poem ( as
remembered by CK): When,
lo! Vanessa in her bloom/
Advanced
like Atalanta’s star... ( Poor Swift...)
Another observation on fusion and confusion:
(VN's authorial
intervention?)
Mosaic faced Odon was almost a dwarf, like RLS's Hyde or short,
like Shade. I think Alexey or Victor Fet explained something
about our tall CK being nicknamed "dwarf" (Karlik).