Alders, Alderflies, and Cicadas

Line 109: iridule

An iridescent cloudlet, Zemblan muderperlwelk. The term "iridule" is, I believe, Shade's own invention. Above it, in the Fair Copy (card 9, July 4) he has written in pencil "peacock-herl." The peacock-herl is the body of a certain sort of artificial fly also called "alder." So the owner of this motor court, an ardent fisherman, tells me. (See also the "strange nacreous gleams" in line 634.)

-p166

A Wikipedia search for alder brings up the alder tree which one would of course assume to be entirely unrelated to the alderfly or to Pale Fire in general. However, as Shelby's blog reminds us, everything is related to everything. Both the Alder and Hazel trees have catkins (a word remarkably similar to botkin, which is to say it is extremely similar to Kinbote). A catkin is "a slim, cylindrical flower cluster, with inconspicuous or no petals." It is often the case that the male plants (alders) form catkins while the female plants (hazels) form singular flowers. The singular flowers of the Hazel trees are usually unisexual, a condition which "in angiosperms this condition is also called diclinous, imperfect, or incomplete." Current theory on the flower arrangement of the Hazel tree suggests it is result of convergent evolution.

Being the non-science major that I am, I of course followed the wiki link to convergent evolution from which I have pulled the following quote found at the top of the page: "The wing is a classic example of convergent evolution in action." Convergent evolution is the process by which unrelated species acquire similar traits which their ancestors did not have.

Moving then, from alder trees to alderflies, the more literal translation of Kinbote's words, I found an image essentially like that of a cicada. The alderfly is the image on the left. On the right is a picture of a cicada.

Interestingly, the cicada and the alderfly are not at all related. They both belong to the class Insecta, and that is precisely where their relationship ends despite their extreme external similarity.

"Adult alderflies stay near to the water, in which they had lived in when they were younger."

"I was the shadow of the waxwing slain
By the false azure in the windowpane"     -Canto 1, lines 1-2

So you see, it really is all related after all.



*all quotes not taken from Pale Fire can be found in wikipedia

Pale Fire: class assignment

My best guess as to the origins of the title "Pale Fire", is that it is taken from Timon of Athens Act 4, scene 3: 

The sun's a thief, and with his great attraction
Robs the vast sea: the moon's an arrant thief,
And her pale fire she snatches from the sun:
The sea's a thief, whose liquid surge resolves
The moon into salt tears: the earth's a thief,
That feeds and breeds by a composture stolen
From general excrement: each thing's a thief:

This passage appears in Pale Fire as:

The sun is a thief: she lures the sea

and robs it. The moon is a thief:

he steals his silvery light from the sun.

The sea is a thief: it dissolves the moon.   

*emphasis added

As a side note: I find it interesting that Nabokov performed a gender reversal of the sun and the moon, returning to the original order of things. 

Who killed John Shade? The name shade suggests a blocking of the sun's light which is, if I am correct about the origins of the title, antithetical to the central character or idea. The only thing I believe Shade to have been truly protective of is his daughter Hazel. Perhaps then, Shade does indeed exist, and it is Kinbote who is the imaginary figure, built to shield Hazel from the full scrutiny of the readers. This theory of course suggests that Shade did not actually die and that the entire work of Pale Fire is his literary creation. The greatest flaw with this theory is its extreme simplicity which is entirely out of character for Nabokov. 

Receiving little explicit help from the commentary as to the location of the crown jewels, my best guess (which is really a wild conjecture) is that they are hidden in the butterflies strewn throughout the poem. On page 108, the commentary to line 80, Kinbote writes:

"Otar, her lover, said that when you walked behind her, and she knew you were walking behind her, the swing and play of those slim haunches was something intensely artistic, something Arab girls were taught in special schools by special Parisian panders who were afterwards strangled. Her fragile ankles, he said, which she placed very close together in her dainty and wavy walk, were the "careful jewels" in Arnor's poem about a miragarl ("mirage girl"), for which "a dream king in the sandy wastes of time would give three hundred camels and three fountains." *emphasis added

Not only does the description of Fleur remind me of a butterfly, but the passage itself also suggests that jewels need not necessarily be stones. Given Nabokov's love of butterflies and their constant appearances strewn throughout the novel, as Kinbote claims the jewels to be, I think it is not entirely improbable to suggest the butterflies are the jewels.