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Sergei asked whether or not "pale fire" appears in the text Pope
translated. My Latin is a bit rusty but according to my reading there
is
nothing in the original that corresponds to "pale fire," which would be
something like "ignis pallidis" in Latin. So yes, I completely agree
that
Pope may have had Shakespeare in mind when he wrote that phrase. Shade
and
Nabokov have Shakespeare in mind, too. But that doesn't negate the
possibility that VN was making a double allusion, both to Shakespeare
and
to Pope. Moreover, Pope's use of the phrase seems somewhat different
than
Shakespeare's, since in Pope the "pale fire" is (as I read it) a
metaphor
for a person/shade, while in Shakespeare it represents more literally
reflected light. (When the two senses are combined, one might get a
person
that reflects the intelligence of another person?) And as we have seen
with
Starbottle, VN likes to use double allusions at times.
All that aside, I was more interested in the way Pope's quote might
pull
another reference to pederasty--specifically the taking of a
catamite--into
the novel. Given the prominence of ingles/catamites in the novel, it
makes
sense to me that VN would want to reference a classical example.
Indeed,
the tradition of ingledom in Zembla would seem a perfect match for
Thebes.
Matt Roth