I honestly hadn't considered the idea that the poem is still undergoing revision. Thanks for pointing that out.
The thoughtful reader is then presented with two interpretation: Shade was cut down, more or less, in the act of revision. Or, Shade stopped revising out of a flagging ability to revise and a premonition of impending doom. Pure logic wouldn't seem to favor one reading over the other, however I would argue that if there are sufficient other signs indicating mental instability then the reader ought to favor a reading that is consonant with these other signs.
Also one might argue that the second reading provides more significant content to the story line than does the simple notion that Shade was still editing his work when he expired, although, admittedly, this might be cited as evidence that the poem is incomplete, in its final line; which seems to be important to some readers but not, so far, for me.
Shade's madness in Canto 4 shouldn't seem that preposterous when one considers that VN used madness, coupled with death, to finish off Krug at the end of the novel Bend Sinister.
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Also on May 4, 2010, at 9:50 AM, Jerry Friedman wrote:
Shade begins the final canto with great resolve, promising great insight. The lines are though a grotesque overstatement of resolve. The grandiosity is itself symptomatic of mental illness. The belief that one possesses insights unavailable to others is both grandiose and pathological.
They're not unavailable to anyone else. The person I know of who had the most similar ideas was James Branch Cabell, who I've mentioned before, but doubtless there's a history of beliefs like Shade's, not that he seems to know it.
You have a point. Perhaps the sentence should be amended to read: The belief that one possesses insights about life [and the cosmos] unknown to others is both grandiose and pathological. (Looked up Cabell in Wikipedia. Interesting, but not enough to comment-upon.)
Perhaps the issue here isn't the beliefs, the doctrine of plexed artistry, I'm assuming, but the way in which they're upheld, and subsequently go unexplained or developed in Canto 4.
Grandiosely yours (as usual),
–GSL