Double Darkness through Glass, Mirror, Lake:
Art as a Window to the Hereafter
by Jansy Berndt de Souza Mello

My intention in this note is to connect one of the versicles in the New Testament to a line by Charles Kinbote in his Foreword to Pale Fire. Kinbote´s reference to "in a glass, darkly," when connected to Shade´s vision through the dark glass of his study in the opening lines of his poem, offers the reader a particular perspective from which to look at Nabokov´s art.

There is another reference to the Bible which is equally meaningful when compared with John Shade´s lines about "the seraph with his six flamingo wings,/And Flemish hells with porcupines and things," in addition to the poet´s references to a hereafter and to "alpha and omega."

If we consider that "flamingo" and "Flemish" are words that point to the red colour of "flames" ("Flemish" in Dutch is Vlaams, in French flamand, and in German Flämisch), it is interesting to note VN´s iteration when he placed together these two "fires" that refer both the heavenly wings of angels and to Hieronymus Bosch´s representations of hell, in contrast to the poem´s title, "Pale Fire." In the chapter entitled "Flora, Fauna and Faery" in her book Find What the Sailor Has Hidden (Wesleyan UP, 1988), Priscilla Meyer quotes a poem by Wallace that speaks of a "pâle flambeau." She observes that "Napoleon III´s pitiless death casts a reversed shadow in Nabokov´s Pale Fire, translated back from French into English, and referring to death as the paler fire rather than life, which in Nabokov´s work is seen as the prelude to a brilliant afterlife" (173; 245n). (Cf. also B. Boyd Nabokov´s Pale Fire, 110, 120.)

In his foreword to Pale Fire Kinbote argues that the missing last sentence of "Pale Fire" is a repetition of the poem's first line. He then disclaims the opinions of other reviewers, particularly Professor Hurley's words: "None can say how long John Shade had planned his poem to be, but it is not impossible that what he left represents only a small fraction of the composition he saw in a glass, darkly." This is a reference to the biblical line: "For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known." (1Cor. 13:12) and to the poem's true creator, the author whose face is mirrored by Kinbote´s or Shade´s own. When Boyd analyses a reference to "Pontius" in Ada or Ardor (cf. ADAonline 3.08; Darkbloom 3.01-08n), he compares two versions of the Bible in connection to Poncius Pilate and he uses them to comment on "Nabokov's scorn for translations that betray the text in the interest of 'the conventions attributed to the consumer' (EO I,vii)." Nabokov was certainly aware that in the classical English King James version the words were "through a glass" and not "in a glass" and that the sound of "through" might linger in his reader´s field of associations (in the Revised Standard Version we find: "For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall understand fully, even as I have been fully understood.") Nabokov blends both translations and thereby creates two clashing interpretations: Kinbote´s sentence may either mean that an image is reflected in the surface of a mirror or that it is imperfectly seen through a dark glass.

Like the legendary town in Russian folklore that can sometimes be seen glowing in the depths of Lake Kitzeh (described in Nabokov´s Ada or Ardor, note p. 5, 591) Kinbote discerns the unity of Shade´s poem: "when you once take the plunge and compel yourself to open your eyes in the limpid depths under its confused surface. It contains not one gappy line, not one doubtful reading" (PF, 14). And yet, what he tries to piece together is a vision of his lost kingdom in Zembla. John Shade´s poem, however, offers us a different perspective of how this biblical reference can be interpreted.

The first lines of "Pale Fire" describe a bird that smashes against the reflected sky in a window pane (a virtual image). The lines that follow describe a room whose objects are reflected in a dark glass (another virtual image), before being projected onto the snowy landscape that, in turn, is glimpsed through the glass (a real image plus a virtual addition, arisen from a different world). Kinbote chooses to describe the relationship between man and the creator as in a mirror, thereby emphasizing the narcissistic dimension of his outlook. John Shade´s opening lines, on the contrary, harmonize both views (in a glass and through a glass, darkly ), thus opening unexpected horizons for the relationship between reader and book, art and reality.

Editorial challenges in Vladimir Nabokov´s works are not confined to the relationship between a novel and its commentaries. They encompass prefaces, forewords, and annotations. In his introduction to Pale Fire (Everyman´s Library, 67, 1992) Richard Rorty advises the first-time reader to "postpone the Introduction until he or she has finished the Index," a contradiction in terms. In the Collins Collector´s Choice edition of Lolita (1979), John Ray Jr.'s foreword was omitted, while the Penguin Books edition of The Annotated Lolita (1991) also boasts a preface, an introduction and a foreword. Departing from the words with which Falter encourages Sineusov ("Skip the foreword, and you´ve got it!"), Andrew Field reasons that this advice "has great meaning for a reader of Pale Fire and is a major point in pursuing the argument that there is a connection between the poem and commentary, at least in terms of authorial intent." (VN, the Life and Art of Vladimir Nabokov, Crown Publishers, 1986, 332; 348). Field believes that it was Nabokov´s intention to create a correspondence between the glass that separates Shade and Kinbote and a lake (ozero, in Russian), "neatly set between the other two O-ish obeli (Omega and Zero), which signify the two possibilities after death, nothing and everything" (345). He bases his reasoning on the verses that describe Shade´s metaphors about the reflection of his room onto the garden to write about the glass separating Shade and Kinbote. By skipping the foreword to perceive a symmetry he establishes that "the twin metaphors text/commentary and image/reflection serve as a means by which the cliché of the writer as creator is put in upper-case print and, in its reflection, of course, also inverted. The Writer as Creator. The Creator as Writer. The metaphysics of Narcissus" (342).

Priscilla Meyer shifts the emphasis from the mirror relation between John Shade and Charles Kinbote to write about a window that lies between two worlds. She observes that "The alphabet, then, supplies the coordinates of space-time in the universe of Pale Fire, where Lake Omega, the point of intersection, is a window between two worlds" (FWSHH, 184). According to Meyer, "Alphina Goldsworth and Lake Omega of New Wye, Appalachia and Zembla, are alphabetical hints at Revelation I,8: "'I am the Alpha and the Omega' says the Lord God, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty" to conclude that "Nabokov cast his novels as distortions of ideal images, images that themselves are but pale fire when measured against the brilliance of the kingdom we have left in being born and will again enter when we reach the end of our poem." There is another hint at Saint John´s Revelation 4,6-8 : "And before the throne there was a sea of glass like unto crystal; and in the midst of the throne, and round about the throne, were four beasts full of eyes before and behind. And the first beast was like a lion, the second beast like a calf, and the third beast had a face as a man, and the fourth beast was like a flying eagle. And the four beasts had each of them six wings about him; and they were full of eyes within; and they rest not day and night, saying, Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, which was, and is, and is to come."

Although the reference to the words "I am the Alpha and the Omega" is not renewed, we still encounter the repetition of "which was, and is, and is to come" that links it to Rev.1,8-11. and brings in the "four beasts had each of them six wings." In John Shade's "Pale Fire," Canto 2, lines 221/226, we read:

So why join in the vulgar laughter? Why
Scorn a hereafter none can verify:
The turk´s delight, the future lyres, the talks
With Socrates and Proust in cypress walks,
The seraph with his six flamingo wings,
And Flemish hells with porcupines and things?

To speak in the tongue of angels and of men to make prophecies link the vision of the hereafter then seen "through a glass, darkly" (1Cor, 13:12 ) and St. John's Revelations. The problem of translating a vision is described by Shade (Canto Two, lines 232-3):

How ludicrous these efforts to translate
Into one´s private tongue a public fate!

In Pushkin´s verses we read:

Parched with the spirit's thirst, I crossed
An endless desert sunk in gloom,
And where the tracks met and I stood lost.
A six-winged seraph came to me.

Fingers light as dream he laid upon
my lids; I opened wide
my eagle eyes, and gazed around (...).

Meyer observes that in Pale Fire Nabokov "suggests that nature is a system of decodable signs" (FWSHH, 145), a book written by the Creator. As I understand it, even as the creator of a fictional universe Nabokov does not establish a parallel between his book and nature. Even though art can be considered as a mirror of the world, Nabokov shows us that this only happens when we look at it through the eyes of Kinbote. But we can also see through the windows of Shade´s poem to glimpse what may still be discerned once we also learn to look at what lies beyond the mirror and into another world.

Andrew Field believes that "Above Shade and Kinbote and the Poem and its Commentary is Nabokov himself, the sun high above the moon that circles the earth. It is he who imposes his patterns on both Shade and Kinbote." (LAVN, 346). He intends to forward his idea that Shade's death should have been expected from the start "since the death provides the necessary conclusion and--a conscious device--circles back to the beginning of the poem." Nevertheless, when he indicates that we should "skip the foreword," as in Sineusov´s advice, in order to perceive the symmetry between text and commentary, he is occupying a place that is the author's. At the same time he is also taking away this novel´s "life" since Falter´s words were a response to Sineusov´s metaphor about life, "a confused foreword with the main text still to come." (LAVN, 342) And yet, when we think of Vladimir Nabokov´s 1964 words to a Playboy interviewer: "Let us skip sex," his humorous quip may also intend to convey his idea that there is a "main text still to come," and that it has no relation to his written works.

Special thanks are due to Carolyn Kunin who brought Pushkin´s poem to my attention.