I may assume other disguises

I woke up this morning with these two lines repeating in my head (clearly, I cannot escape Pale Fire even in my sleeping hours. I’m worried). Except that I was not thinking about them as two separate lines: they were replaying through my thoughts as one continuous line. I will pause here to say that I know little to nothing about poetry or verse form, and so, was separating the first and the second lines as I recited them to myself when clearly there is no punctuation to require my doing so.

Thanks goodness in a state of drowsy dreaming/awakening, I was enlightened.

So instead of reading:

I was the shadow of the waxwing slain

By the false azure in the windowpane

I may now read:

I was the shadow of the waxwing slain by the false azure in the windowpane

…

I was the shadow of the waxwing slain by the false azure in the windowpane

How could I not have recognized this before? I certainly realized that the waxwing was slain by the windowpane (by flying into it, if we are to read this literally), and perhaps attracted by what was seen illuminated in the window. But to highlight the section this way further affirms the connection to Narcissus and the novel’s obsession with sameness, with mirroring, and how desire for/attraction to that sameness ultimately leads to the waxwings death and Kinbote’s suicide.

The waxwing is characterized by its soft, silky plumage delicately accented with red: an exceptionally beautiful specimen. It is appropriate that such a bird (also hailing from northern forests) be slain by the false azure in the windowpane, as Narcissus was by his reflection in the azure of the water. 

(As a quick note, I stumbled upon a blog that said this of the first lines of Shade's poem and of waxwings:  "I may not have picked up on it when I first read Pale Fire as an undergraduate, but these lines now present me with an allegory: even after death, the artist lives on -- achieves a kind of immortality -- within the mirror of art. But this allegorical interpretation can't exhaust the vividness and sensual appeal of the waxwing's markings and the subtle gradations of its colors.")

Narcissus desired himself so greatly that nothing could intercede to alter his inevitable fate.

“Unknowingly he desires himself, and the one who praises is himself praised, and, while he courts, is courted, so that, equally, he inflames and burns.” (poetryintranslation.com)

Transfixed by the image, the false/elusive replication of himself, Narcissus begins to physically waste away, to metamorphose.

“As he sees all this reflected in the dissolving waves, he can bear it no longer, but as yellow wax melts in a light flame, as morning frost thaws in the sun, so he is weakened and melted by love, and worn away little by little by the hidden fire. He no longer retains his colour, the white mingled with red, no longer has life and strength, and that form so pleasing to look at, nor has he that body which Echo loved.” (poetryintranslation.com)

In the commentary to line 1000, Kinbote says: “I shall continue to exist. I may assume other disguises, other forms, but I shall try to exist” (300). Suggesting he may turn up on another campus as a happy, heterosexual male, or write a motion picture, or stage play, or travel back to Zembla, or cower in a madhouse (to summarize and skip important details, of course). “But whatever happens, wherever the scene is laid, somebody, somewhere, will quietly set out—somebody has already set out” (301). Whatever happens, Kinbote’s life will only rotate a degree, change a shade or a grade from what was laid out in the novel, because he encompasses everything. Sailing back to Zembla or huddling and groaning in a madhouse are both levels of Kinbote’s (and Pale Fire’s) reality(ies).

And when a “bigger, more respectable, more competent Gradus” arrives on the scene—which he is presently doing—Kinbote will merely fall into another dimension of the reality that he has created. We feel that the story continues, because it does. As the last line ties into the first, and the commentary is proceeded by the index, which dumps us back into the commentary, which has us flipping the pages of our book back and forth interminably…our reading of the novel is endless.

Kinbote is reflected on the page as the false azure is reflected in the windowpane, as narcissus is reflected in the water and ultimately in the daffodil, and the author of the poem Pale Fire is reflected as the shadow of the waxwing.