Boötes

1.

I SWUNG A BAT

“I never bounced a ball or swung a bat” (P130).

With this apostrophized line, Kinbote reveals poet’s false start:

All children playing in a castle find

in some old closet full of toys, behind

The animals and masks, a sliding door

[four words heavily crossed out] a secret corridor (C130).

If we follow Kinbot’s instruction, as I think we should, and if we cross out four words in the highlighted verse – like this: “I never bounced a ball or swung a bat” – we will tumble into the secret corridor instantly. For, what exactly was crossed out is: “I swung a bat”.

The celestial Plowman is holding a bat in his hand.

2.

I WAS THE IMAGE WITH A BAR

Keeping in mind that acrostics in some cases are used to exemplify an author, let’s look how the four parts of the novel begin (Foreword, Poem, Commentary, and Index). If in place of the initials we take the first two words, we will get the following: Pale Fire (F): I was (P) the image (C) A. Baron (I). With a little poetic liberty, which Nabokov expects from us doubtlessly, we’ll uncover an absolutely astonishing formula:

Pale Fire = I was the image (figure) with a bar (bat).

3.

A LONE CAVE’S STILLICIDE

“I remember having encountered it for the first time in a poem by Thomas Hardy”, says Kinbote by explaining “stillicide” in lines 34-35 (“Stilettos of a frozen stillicide”). Stilettos appear in the ninth verse of Hardy’s poem Friends Beyond: “Of a ripple under archways, or a lone cave’s stillicide”, where Kinbote encountered it for the first time. The caves play the extensive role in the web of sense along with bats what we presumably figured out so far. But, much more essential here is the significant motif of the ploughman repeated in the form of a chorus in the first and last verse of the poem Friends Beyond – which is “Farmer Ledlow late at plough”(1). Let’s have a look.

The first verses:

William Dewy, Tranter Reuben, Farmer Ledlow late at plough,

Robert’s kin, and John’s, and Ned’s,

And the Squire, and Lady Susan, lie in Mellstock churchyard now!

The last verses:

William Dewy, Tranter Reuben, Farmer Ledlow late at plough,

Robert’s kin, and John’s, and Ned’s,

And the Squire, and Lady Susan, murmur mildly to me now

So much about ghosts from Beyond.

Ljiljana Ćuk, PhD.

1) Thomas Hardy [1898]. Wessex Poems and Other Verses, 1919: 155, New York: Macmillan and Co. Available on: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3167/3167-h/3167-h.htm#page155