Matthew Roth: Just a trifle I ran across while reading about the last days of Swift in Craik's "The Life of Jonathan Swift" (1894):"Looking at himself in the glass, he was said to have exclaimed in pity, 'Poor old man!'." I wonder if this provides the origin of Shade's variant line, "Poor old man Swift, poor --, poor Baudelaire." In which case, was John Shade also looking in the glass when he wrote that line?

 

JM: Kinbote suggests his name to fill in the blank ( poor mad Kinbote). The poet, himself, was paring his fingernails. We know that he used a mirror while he shaved in the bath-tub ( or was it only VN?).

Your information about Swift's exclamation, and its link to the variant, is wonderful!

While I re-read the lines in question, and I don't know if any entomologist has already called attention to it (should it be an incongruent detail, I mean), I was struck by the reference to singing cicadas. I understand that, in the US, cicadas come out in July.

I'd always thought that the squat and frog-eyed emerald case (line 238) had been a cicada's  but the empty hulk was found in cold March, on the day Hazel died. This suggested to me  that this insect had recently emerged from it: is it possible?