Dear all!

 

I wonder if anyone noticed two wonderfully similar episodes in Laura and Pale Fire.

 

First, let me quote Nigel Dalling's experiment:

 

"The student who desires to die should learn first of all to project a mental image of himself upon his inner blackboard. This surface which at its virgin best has a dark-plum, rather than black, depth of opacity is none other than the underside of one's closed eyelids. <...> I toyed with the idea of drawing a fairly detailed, fairly recognizable portrait of myself on my private blackboard. <...> I am quite unable to tuck Nigel Dalling under my eyelid, let alone keeping him there in a fixed aspect of flesh for any length of time. I then tried various stylizations: a Dalling-like doll, a sketchy skeleton or would the letters of my name do? Its recurrent "i" coinciding with our favorite pronoun suggested an elegant solution: a simple vertical line across my field of inner vision, I , could be chalked in an instant, and what is more I could mark lightly by transverse marks the three divisions of my physical self: legs, torso, and head. <...> Several months have now gone since I began working - not every day and not for protracted periods - on the upright line emblemizing me. Soon, with the strong thumb of thought I could rub out its base, which corresponded to my joined feet."

 

When I read this, it reminded me instantly about... the striking image of Shade's dream from Canto 3!

 

The mysterious tall white fountain glimpsed by Shade is also similar in form to the letter I, the pronoun I.

 

In both cases the writer and the poet speak explicitly of death: Dalling is in the process of self-deletion, Shade witnesses what he thinks is an insight into the afterworld.

 

 

Best regards,

Andrey Vakhrulin