Владимир Набоков - Pale Fire

Objectively enduring in the dark,

Strong as a bone, substantial as a tooth,

And almost vulgar in its robust truth!

The article was by Jim Coates. To Jim

Forthwith I wrote. Got her address from him.

Drove west three hundred miles to talk to her.

770Arrived. Was met by an impassioned purr.

Saw that blue hair, those freckled hands, that rapt

Orchideous air - and knew that I was trapped.

"Who'd miss the opportunity to meet

A poet so distinguished?" It was sweet

Of me to come! I desperately tried

To ask my questions. They were brushed aside:

"Perhaps some other time." The journalist

Still had her scribblings. I should not insist.

She plied me with fruit cake, turning it all

780Into an idiotic social call.

"I can't believe," she said, "that it is you!

I loved your poem in the Blue Review.

That one about Mon Blon. I have a niece

Who's climbed the Matterhorn. The other piece

I could not understand. I mean the sense.

Because, of course, the sound - But I'm so dense!"

She was. I might have persevered. I might

Have made her tell me more about the white

Fountain we both had seen "beyond the veil"

790But if (I thought) I mentioned that detail

She'd pounce upon it, as upon a fond

Affinity, a sacramental bond,

Uniting mystically her and me,

And in a jiffy our two souls would be

Brother and sister trembling on the brink

Of tender incest. "Well," I said, "I think

It's getting late..."

I also called on Coates.

He was afraid he had mislaid her notes.

He took his article from a steel file:

800"It's accurate. I have not changed her style.

There's one misprint - not that it matters much:

Mountain, not fountain. The majestic touch."

Life Everlasting - based on a misprint!

I mused as I drove homeward: take the hint,

And stop investigating my abyss?

But all at once it dawned on me that this

Was the real point, the contrapuntal theme;

Just this: not text, but texture; not the dream

But a topsy-turvical coincidence,

810Not flimsy nonsense, but a web of sense.

Yes! It sufficed that I in life could find

Some kind of link-and-bobolink, some kind

Of correlated pattern in the game,

Plexed artistry, and something of the same

Pleasure in it as they who played it found.

It did not matter who they were. No sound,

No furtive light came from their involute

Abode, but there they were, aloof and mute,

Playing a game of worlds, promoting pawns

820To ivory unicorns and ebon fauns;

Kindling a long life here, extinguishing

A short one there; killing a Balkan king;

Causing a chunk of ice formed on a high

Flying airplane to plummet from the sky

And strike a farmer dead; hiding my keys,

Glasses or pipe. Coordinating these

Events and objects with remote events

And vanished objects. Making ornaments

Of accidents and possibilities.

830Stormcoated, I strode in: Sybil, it is

My firm conviction - "Darling, shut the door.

Had a nice trip?" Splendid - but what is more

I have returned convinced that I can grope

My way to some - to some - "Yes, dear?" Faint hope.

Canto Four

Now I shall spy on beauty as none has

Spied on it yet. Now I shall cry out as

None has cried out. Now I shall try what none

Has tried. Now I shall do what none has done.

And speaking of this wonderful machine:

840I'm puzzled by the difference between

Two methods of composing: A, the kind

Which goes on solely in the poet's mind,

A testing of performing words, while he

Is soaping a third time one leg, and B,

The other kind, much more decorous, when

He's in his study writing with a pen.

In method B the hand supports the thought,

The abstract battle is concretely fought.

The pen stops in mid-air, then swoops to bar

850A canceled sunset or restore a star,

And thus it physically guides the phrase

Toward faint daylight through the inky maze.

But method A is agony! The brain

Is soon enclosed in a steel cap of pain.

A muse in overalls directs the drill

Which grinds and which no effort of the will

Can interrupt, while the automaton

Is taking off what he has just put on

Or walking briskly to the corner store

860To buy the paper he has read before.

Why is it so? Is it, perhaps, because

In penless work there is no pen-poised pause

And one must use three hands at the same time,

Having to choose the necessary rhyme,

Hold the completed line before one's eyes,

And keep in mind all the preceding tries?

Or is the process deeper with no desk

To prop the false and hoist the poetesque?

For there are those mysterious moments when

870Too weary to delete, I drop my pen;

I ambulate - and by some mute command

The right word flutes and perches on my hand.

My best time is the morning; my preferred

Season, midsummer. I once overheard

Myself awakening while half of me

Still slept in bed. I tore my spirit free,

And caught up with myself - upon the lawn

Where clover leaves cupped the topaz of dawn,

And where Shade stood in nightshirt and one shoe.

880And then I realized that this half too

Was fast asleep; both laughed and I awoke

Safe in my bed as day its eggshell broke,

And robins walked and stopped, and on the damp

Gemmed turf a brown shoe lay! My secret stamp,

The Shade impress, the mystery inborn.

Mirages, miracles, midsummer morn.

Since my biographer may be too staid

Or know too little to affirm that Shade

Shaved in his bath, here goes: "He'd fixed a sort

890Of hinge-and-screw affair, a steel support

Running across the tub to hold in place

The shaving mirror right before his face

And with his toe renewing tap-warmth, he'd

Sit like a king there, and like Marat bleed."

The more I weigh, the less secure my skin;

In places it's ridiculously thin;

Thus near the mouth: the space between its wick

And my grimace, invites the wicked nick.

Or this dewlap: some day I must set free

900The Newport Frill inveterate in me.

My Adam's apple is a prickly pear:

Now I shall speak of evil and despair

As none has spoken. Five, six, seven, eight,

Nine strokes are not enough. Ten. I palpate

Through strawberry-and-cream the gory mess

And find unchanged that patch of prickliness.

I have my doubts about the one-armed bloke

Who in commercials with one gliding stroke

Clears a smooth path of flesh from ear to chin,

910Then wipes his face and fondly tries his skin.

I'm in the class of fussy bimanists.

As a discreet ephebe in tights assists

A female in an acrobatic dance,

My left hand helps, and holds, and shifts its stance.

Now I shall speak... Better than any soap

Is the sensation for which poets hope

When inspiration and its icy blaze,

The sudden image, the immediate phrase

Over the skin a triple ripple send

920Making the little hairs all stand on end

As in the enlarged animated scheme

Of whiskers mowed when held up by Our Cream.

Now I shall speak of evil as none has

Spoken before. I loathe such things as jazz;

The white-hosed moron torturing a black

Bull, rayed with red; abstractist bric-a-brac;

Primitivist folk-masks; progressive schools;

Music in supermarkets; swimming pools;

Brutes, bores, class-conscious Philistines, Freud, Marx,

930Fake thinkers, puffed-up poets, frauds and sharks.

And while the safety blade with scrape and screak