MR wrote: I
believe that Gerard deVries has made this precise argument--that the
three main characters are represented by Earth, Sun, and Moon, and
together they become Nabokov. This occurs on the evening of Shade's
assassination, which deVries has shown was a full moon (but alas,
not an eclipse).
Jansy: The
importance of the "earthshine" (for me) is linked to one of the ways
VN might have indicated his "authorial" presence. In ADA he mentions the
earth ( Terra ) but, in Pale Fire, one almost forgets Earth's fundamental
presence and how the Earth is equally illuminated by the sun and its own
reflective rays. The "earthshine" does not arise as
the result of an eclipse, it can be watched every month. It creates an
"ashen glow" in the moon as if filling in the countours of its dark
sphere.
Here is more information about the earthshine ( from
Google sources):
A while after four weeks (29.5
days, more precisely) the illuminated half of the Moon again faces away from us,
and we come back to the beginning of the cycle: a new moon. Sometimes, when the
Moon is almost new, it is possible to dimly see its darkened disk. The light
from the Sun cannot reach this part of the Moon directly; but at this time the
Earth (as viewed from the Moon) is at its full and very bright, and what we see
is light reflected from the Earth, that then bounces back at us from the Moon.
It's a long trip for this light: from the Sun to the Earth, to the Moon,
and back to the Earth.
The Leonardo sentence ( applicable to Humbert Humbert
or to John Shade and the girl in the "leotard") is expressive, too ( the
old in the arms of the new...).
The book from
which I started my inquiries was written by two Brazilian astronomists: "O Tempo
que o Tempo Tem", Alexandre Cherman and Fernando Vieira, Zahar ed.2008.
A friend of mine, Dr.Alfredo Saad, added
information about the "earthshine", as it had been depicted in
1054, in New Mexico: actually an image of a supernova found close to an Anassazi pueblo. In
it we see the "fine crescent" in the moon and a star, the remains of which
are still traceable at Taurus and is now named M1 (crab nebulla).