I cannot agree, though, that Zembla is not "miniature" or "tucked" in. Certainly it's florid and blatantly mad, but if we see it a version of Russia, it's certainly a miniature version--much smaller in land and population, and we see almost none of its literature, no admirable people except maybe Oswin Bretwit, and none of its history except for monarchs, none of whom are "great". (Likewise if we see Shade's poem as an epic, it's certainly a miniature epic.) As for "tucked", if we were reading a real poem and commentary, the Zembla material would be ridiculously overgrown, but as we're reading a strange novel, then the author has found a way to put his distant northern land into it as a strange but vital part.

I must agree with Jansy Mello that "sexually left-handed", a term that Alexey Sklyarenko found in The Eye, is homophobic as well as part of the mirror fun in Pale Fire.