On Oct 9, 2010, at 12:12 AM, Jansy Berndt de Souza Mello wrote:

You must read ND's commentary to limerick 20 carefully to enjoy the fun...

Limerick #20
There was a young man of Loch Leven
Who went for a walk about seven.
He fell into a pit
That was brimful of shit,
And now the poor buggar's in heaven.

Commentary:
"This faulty rime must have been concocted by an Englishman or American; no native of the country would think of making "Loch Leven" go together with "Heaven," save so far as natural scenery is concerned.

I enjoy very much Jansy's find. Partly because it comes as a result of a close reading of a critic who, although obviously widely read himself and artful in his prose, nonetheless comes to very different conclusions regarding Pale Fire. That he should wisely, unwittingly perhaps, point out a significant model for Kinbote's notes is amusingly ironic. I note especially how the quoted line suggests Kinbote's take on the prosody of the name Baudelaire:

Line 231: How ludicrous, etc.

A beautiful variant, with one curious gap, branches off at this point in the draft (dated July 6):

   Strange Other World where all our still-born dwell,
                        And pets, revived, and invalids, grown well,
                        And minds that died before arriving there:
                        Poor old man Swift, poor —-, poor Baudelaire

What might that dash stand for? Unless Shade gave prosodic value to the mute e in "Baudelaire," which I am quite he would never have done in English verse (cp. "Rabelais," line 501), the name required here must scan as a trochee.

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