Pale Fire (Vintage International)

I do not consider myself a true artist, save in one matter: I can do what only a true artist can do—pounce upon the forgotten butterfly of revelation, wean myself abruptly from the habit of things, see the web of the world, and the warp and the weft of that web. Solemnly I weighed in my hand what I was carrying under my left armpit, and for a momen

120 A thousand years ago five minutes were Equal to forty ounces of fine sand. Outstare the stars. Infinite foretime and Infinite aftertime: above your head They close like giant wings, and you are dead.

Thus with cautious steps, among deceived enemies, I circulated, plated with poetry, armored with rhymes, stout with another man’s song, stiff with cardboard, bullet-proof at long last.

And so I pare my nails, and muse, and hear Your steps upstairs, and all is right, my dear.

After the last guest had gone (on a bicycle), and the ashtrays had been emptied, all the windows were dark for a couple of hours; but then, at about 3 A.M., I saw from my upstairs bathroom that the poet had gone back to his desk in the lilac light of his den, and this nocturnal session brought the canto to line 230 (card 18).

A wrench, a rift—that’s all one can foresee. Maybe one finds le grand néant; maybe Again one spirals from the tuber’s eye.

when I hear a critic speaking of an author’s sincerity I know that either the critic or the author is a fool.”

Help me, Will. Pale Fire. Paraphrased, this evidently means: Let me look in Shakespeare for something I might use for a title. And the find is “pale fire.” But in which of the Bard’s works did our poet cull it? My readers must make their own research. All I have with me is a tiny vest pocket edition of Timon of Athens—in Zemblan! It certainly conta

From the second story of my house the Shades’ living-room window remained clearly visible so long as the branches of the deciduous trees between us were still bare, and almost every evening I could see the poet’s slippered foot gently rocking. One inferred from it that he was sitting with a book in a low chair but one never managed to glimpse more