Dear List,
Should we, as readers, accept as interchangeable, the analogies in
which "Pale Fire":
(a) is something "pale and diaphanous" (CK) or "a transparent
thingum" (Shade) ie: a feeble light, irrespective of
its causation;
(b) implies directly the satellite whose light reflects
or robs the fire of the sun (CK &
J.Shade)*
(c) implies transparent crystals and verses (CK quotes
Shade);
(d) a poem whose structure is like a crystal's (CK)?
Just as scientists and mathematicians, in Kinbote's
world, cristalographers also deserve a reference related to
the structural precision and Pale Fire's "crystal faces and
predictable growth."
When CK quotes Shade's exclamation, after a snowflake settled upon his wrist-watch ( "Crystal to crystal."), he
notes that in this case the "mechanism of the associations is easy to
make out (glass leading to crystal and crystal to ice)" and, later, remembering Thomas Hardy, he understands the word "stillicide" as "a succession of
drops falling from the eaves, eavesdrop, cavesdrop. ...The bright frost has
eternalized the bright eavesdrop."
Frost (now, the
poet) and crystals come up again, in his comment
to line 426, on the poet's "oozy footsteps": "his line displays
one of those combinations of pun and metaphor at which our poet excels. In the
temperature charts of poetry high is low, and low high, so that the degree at
which perfect crystallization occurs is above that of tepid facility. This is
what our modest poet says, in effect, respecting the atmosphere of his own fame
[...] With all his
excellent gifts, John Shade could never make his snowflakes settle that
way."**
In a different
vein, Shade, invokes for his poem, "a moondrop title".
Does he mean, here, the enchanting transparency of a crystal or
the icy stillicide in liew of
moon-light? For "crystal" is derived from
the ancient Greek word κρύσταλλος (krustallos), cold drop / frozen drop
- applicable both to the mineral, itself, and to the process that
shapes the snow flakes.
.............................................................................................................................
* CK's images are
curiously mingled when he returns to the Shakespearean sun-moon
orbs of fire, heat and
light:
1. He suggests that
PF sheds a waning moon's diaphanous light, seeing himself as
the steady sun:
"Although I realize only too clearly, alas, that the result, in its
pale and diaphanous final phase, cannot be regarded as a direct echo of my
narrative..."
ie: CK sees PF as
an incomplete, but independent reality (we shouldn't forget that CK believes that Shade's "crystal land" indicates his
inenubilable imaginary Zembla), something that is in its "final
phase"
2.
CK's Zemblan story
not only glows like the sun, but it heats up Shade into a boiling
bubbling point:
"one can hardly doubt that the sunset
glow of the story acted as a catalytic agent upon the very process of the
sustained creative effervescence;"
3. CK's effect on Shade engenders a
resemblance in coloration:
"a symptomatic family resemblance in the coloration of both poem
and story."
4. CK this time is like the moon and
he borrows his light from Shade's:
"in many cases have caught myself borrowing a kind of opalescent
light from my poet’s fiery
orb"
**- CK is returning to the theme of Shade's purported
"crystal on crystal" (Foreword). In his comments about Frost's "prodigious and poignant end — two closing lines identical in every
syllable, but one personal and physical, and the other metaphysical and
universal." he emphasizes the fact that he will avoid a quote
because he might "displace one small precious
word." - and now he is either being ironical ( since the two lines are
identical), or he is then referring to J.L.Borges' story of Pierre
Ménard who wrote an exact copy of Don Quixote,
entrusting the reader to distinguish, like Kinbote, "the personal and
physical" from the "metaphysical and universal." - and, as I wonder - "the
rock crystal" from "the thermal process that shapes snow
flakes" or the "earthly" from certain "unearthly"
lights?