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Fw: Father's Butterflies page 209(Penguin): Pale Fire and Ada
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In the poem "Pale Fire" we find hints about Shakespeare's ( and Will's) influence about Shade's choice of a title for his poem and an image of the moon as "an arrant thief".
But I found another source that might help us add another meaning where the idea of "thief" comes close to another: "a seducer" (& perhaps, "a mime").
In "Nabokov's Butterflies" chapter "Father's Butterflies" ( Allen Lane, The Penguin Press,2000): we find, on page 209:
"at the smallest lapse in the watchfulness of the powers guarding nature's mysteries, the thief's light of Father's lamp would snatch out of the dewy chaos of the steppe grasses some little fishlike, perhaps siminocturnal larva"
Here the thief's light is not the moon's .... A little further we have the "seducer" on page 211:
"...darted like lightning from place to place... so that the only chance of catching it ( light fails to lure it) was to take advantage of the split second...
In "Ada", we find russet-haired and skinned Lucette, with the color constantly associated with her ( and her watchful jealous green eyes) in the inverted "isabella" insect:
212: a point under some Castilian pines before the first isabella ( sitting on a stump, green with russet eyespots)..."
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But I found another source that might help us add another meaning where the idea of "thief" comes close to another: "a seducer" (& perhaps, "a mime").
In "Nabokov's Butterflies" chapter "Father's Butterflies" ( Allen Lane, The Penguin Press,2000): we find, on page 209:
"at the smallest lapse in the watchfulness of the powers guarding nature's mysteries, the thief's light of Father's lamp would snatch out of the dewy chaos of the steppe grasses some little fishlike, perhaps siminocturnal larva"
Here the thief's light is not the moon's .... A little further we have the "seducer" on page 211:
"...darted like lightning from place to place... so that the only chance of catching it ( light fails to lure it) was to take advantage of the split second...
In "Ada", we find russet-haired and skinned Lucette, with the color constantly associated with her ( and her watchful jealous green eyes) in the inverted "isabella" insect:
212: a point under some Castilian pines before the first isabella ( sitting on a stump, green with russet eyespots)..."
Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm