JM: In relation to
Bunny-Volodya letters ( VN once signed himself "Volodia" instead of "Volodya") I
noticed that, apparently, Shade corrected Nabokov!
In his letter 279
(written in August 14,1956) Nabokov wrote that he "moved on to higher
altitudes in Wyoming and Montana."
[Cf. Lines 506-510 in Pale
Fire: "You and I,/ And she, then a mere tot, moved from New Wye/ To
Yewshade, in another, higher state/ (After all, "altitude" means
"height" and, besides, the word "state" is nicely
ambiguous).]
...........................................................................
A curiosity: Wilson presented Nabokov with an
extensive list of quotes about "Et in Arcadia Ego."
He wrote: (but his
wording is none too clear): "In the picture, the “ego does not refer to
Death, as I understood you to say it originally had, but to the dead man in the
tomb. The live shepherds are reading the inscription. Says Death: Even in
Arcadia am I."
He added "I seem distinctly to remember that the
phrase originally ended with a vixit - though I sometimes imagine such
things. But it must have ended with something." I located Wilson's
"something" in a text that contains: "Et in Arcadia ego has come to be
synonymous with such paraphrases as 'Et tu in Arcadia vixisti.'
...
The novels which offer more indications about "Arcady" are exactly
those that span the more productive exchanges in the VN-EW correspondence (Bend
Sinister, Pnin, Lolita, Pale Fire). Following a note by Simon Karlinsky we
learn that Turgenev mentioned them in his poem "Correspondence," inspired by
Konstantin Batyushkov’s “Inscription on the Grave of a Shepherdess” (1810). And
there are more surprises to follow qua VN and - Dr. Johnson, when we
reach a putative source for Nabokov's interpretation, favoring a
King's (George III) instead of Johnson's!