Yiğit Yavuz: I also
personally asked these terms to the Nabokov biographer Andrea Pitzer and to Rene
Alladaye, the writer of the latest Pale Fire book. Mr. Alladaye also states that
volant en arrière means "flying backwards". But curiously, the term also has the
meaning which was already given in the very same sentence: a heraldic insect.
Would it be correct to say, then, that Nabokov only makes a repetition here: a
heraldic butterfly is a winged insect; in other words, a volant en
arrière...
Didier Machu: In heraldics, all insects
(as well as reptiles or amphibians) are found depicted in a top-down perspective
which is called the "tergiant" (or "tergant") posture, showing the back (Lat.
tergum)—with one exception: when the insect is winged, the posture is known as
"volant en arrière" (since its front is then visible).
Jansy Mello: By
contrasting CK's note: "From far below mounted the clink and tinkle of
distant masonry work, and a sudden train passed between gardens, and a heraldic
butterfly volant en arrière, sable, a
bend gules, traversed the stone parapet, and John Shade took a fresh
card." (CK to line 408) to John
Shade's lines
991-993 of his poem: "Somewhere horseshoes are being tossed.
Click. Clunk.[ ] A dark Vanessa
with a crimson band..." a new train of associations came to my
mind.
In my eyes,
Kinbote's description suggests a static image with its heraldic insistence
(not only the use of "volant en arrière" but also the other words used
in heraldic descriptions: "sable" and "bend gules." in
contrast to John Shade's vivid description of a fluttering and
restless butterfly. The noises in the two
examples are different (the clink and tinkle of workers over stone
echoing the unheard sounds of glittering tinfoil scares in the past*,
and the playful Click.Clunk of tossed metal) but they invite a
comparison between these two moments, and a question - why would Kinbote
insist with the description of a somewhat frozen landscape related to the
"harvalda"** ?
Matt Roth's
posting about "diagonal crossings-changes of state" might shed a light
here, too. The entire paragraph about the "static" butterfly begins with a
sort of aerial view and ends with John Shade's picking up a fresh card. Would we
find a new clue if we examined the chronology, amply offered along CK's
notes, in order to learn about the moment Shade picked this
exact fresh card? Would this link be related to Gradus or
to King Charles's previous view of this scenery with its deathly
intimations?)
"He retrieved his car and drove up to a higher level
on the hillside. From the same road bay, on a misty and luminous September day,
with the diagonal of the first silver filament crossing the space between two
balusters, the King had surveyed the twinkling ripples of Lake Geneva and
had noted their antiphonal response, the flashing of tinfoil scares in the
hillside vineyards. Gradus as he stood there, and moodily looked down
[ ] One assumes he wondered if he should not hang around for a bit
to make sure he had not been bamboozled. From far below mounted the clink and
tinkle of distant masonry work, and a sudden train passed between gardens, and a
heraldic butterfly volant en arrière,
sable, a bend gules, traversed the stone parapet, and John Shade took a fresh
card."
.
.....................................................................................................
* - Only now did I realize that Nabokov is
working over synesthesia, mingling shimmering light with sounds (the
response to the luminous atmosphere with a silver filament by the flash of
tinfoil scares is made in an "antiphonal" way (although the word may
also be used in a metaphorical sense unrelated to sounds)
** "As to the Vanessa butterfly, it will reappear
in lines 993-995 (to which see note). Shade used to say that its Old English
name was The Red Admirable, later degraded to The Red Admiral. It is one of the
few butterflies I happen to be familiar with. Zemblans call it harvalda (the heraldic one) possibly
because a recognizable figure of it is borne in the escutcheon of the Dukes of
Payn." CK to line 270
The heraldic
insect is related to the Dukes of Payn (and to the King's wife, Disa), whereas
the waxwing appears in the armorial bearings of the Zemblan King,Charles the
Beloved. Cf. "Incidentally, it is curious to note that a crested bird called in
Zemblan sampel ("silktail"), closely
resembling a waxwing in shape and shade, is the model of one of the three
heraldic creatures (the other two being respectively a reindeer proper and a
merman azure, crined or) in the armorial bearings of the Zemblan King, Charles
the Beloved (born 1915), whose glorious misfortunes I discussed so often with my
friend" CK to line
1-4.