In a message dated 4/26/2007 6:35:29 PM Central Daylight Time, MRoth@MESSIAH.EDU writes:


Dear list,
I have a few nagging questions re: Pale Fire that I no doubt share with others.  In no particular order:
 
1. In Canto Two, Shade describes his "little scissors" (183) as a "synthesis of sun and star."  I have never understood this image. I've looked at my own nail scissors in an attempt to see what Shade was seeing, alas to no avail. Help!
 

He is standing in front of a sunlit window as he pares his nails and may be describing the reflection of sunlight in the chrome/stainless steel of the nail scissors.   The problem is that "sun" and "star" aren't exactly the Nabokovian thesis-antithesis that leads to synthesis, since the sun is a star, etc.  There's also the sense of the round part of the scissors (sun) and the pointed blades (star).  Otherwise, I'm baffled too.  And he doesn't even mention fingernail "moons."



2. In the same scene, Shade snips off "thin strips" of "scarf-skin" from his fingers.  Though "scarf-skin" has traditionally referred to the entire outer layer of the skin, it here refers to the skin around the cuticle, I think.  That said, I have nowhere near enough skin around my cuticles to snip with a pair of scissors!  I have heard of pushing the skin up, as I guess they do during manicures, but is it really normal/possible to have enough excess skin there to trim off "strips" with scissors?
 


I have often cut off thickened layers of skin around the fingernails--not the nails themselves but the skin that grows thick at their corners.

3. I've never understood what "Old Pan would call from every painted hill" (326) refers to, or how it follows from the discussion of Hazel's appearance.
 


This simply seems to be a reference to Hazel's (likely) permanent viriginity (323) and the fact that she will never be summoned to the procreative rituals of this fertility god.  Cf. Cummings's "in just spring."

4. In the commentary (C.894), what is the "eerie note that had throbbed by" to which the German visitor replies, "Strange, strange"?
 


Not sure about this.  Maybe the German has figured out that Shade, in his circumspect way, is trying to conceal Kinbote's identity?  Anyway, he drops the subject at this point.

Thanks ahead of time to any and all.
 
Matt Roth

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