I am rereading ‘The Gift’ with an eye on Pale Fire (and vice versa). Both, of course, unwind around creation by a third party (N. Chernyshevski, J. Shade). ‘The Gift’ spirals out from darker matter, Chernyshevski’s master’s dissertation, ‘The Aesthetic Relations of Art to Reality’, with his, his ‘reality’ domineering over art of others (perceived from store displays), - towards creative works and lives of Fyodor Godunov-Cherdyntsev and his father. ‘Pale Fire’ is built around effect Shade’s poem has – on Kinbote/Botkin, on Shade himself, and, yes, on reader. Again, the movement is seen: from Pale Fire, the poem to contrived efforts by Kinbote to rework his life to Zembla fantasy, and to help Shade make sense of his loss. Here, however, art brings light to darker quarters and novel’s timeline moves from Shade’s art outwards. The difference is that we start from light and track its flow – to darker corners, so to speak.
But comparison is more specific then that. Chernyshevski conceives his aesthetic view as anti-thesis to “all art” (!), which “in its purest form” is “a crimson sun sinking into an azure sea” (rhymes in Russian: “ÓĻĢĪĆÅ ŠÕŅŠÕŅĪĻÅ, ĻŠÕÓĖĮĄŻÅÅÓŃ × ĶĻŅÅ ĢĮŚÕŅĪĻÅ”). Note now prevalence of these colors in Pale Fire, the poem:
1:
I was the shadow of the waxwing slain
By the false azure in the windowpane.
269:
Come and be worshiped, come and be caressed,
My dark Vanessa, crimson-barred, my blest
993:
A dark Vanessa with a crimson band
Wheels in the low sun, settles on the sand
And shows its ink-blue wingtips flecked with white.
Aren’t these colors domineering in PF, in a way? It is as if crimson of Vanessa of the ending flows into azure of the beginning. We know from Commentary to lines 993-995 that Red Admirable was warning. Artistically that makes sense given that N. Chernyshevski started with mocking these very colors. These crimson bands and that azure …
Stretching comparison a bit to that sun and sea, Shade did not err when he chose ‘Timon of Athen’ for a title’s source. I have no proof of this, of course, but I like to think that blackness of Chernyshevski’s last name (‘cherny’, ru = black) casts spell of darkness on Shade, with VN’s blessing.
- George Shimanovich