Pale Fire on Index Cards

Done!

Here's the photo album of all eighty note cards: Pale Fire.
Update: Google photos organizes the pictures out of order, so I manually sorted them onto this page

Some remarks about my edition of the poem:

Unnumbered. I feel like Nabokov would have numbered the cards 1 to 80, just to the right of the canto number... but because it wasn't explicitly stated in the description found in the Forward, I didn't number the cards.

Partially dated. I did not date every card, because the date of writing is not available for each card. So where a date was available, I put a date on the card and did not speculate about the dates between. I used Jerry Friedman's timeline on good faith, without checking his references. Notes relevant to the writing of the poem I've highlighted from an excerpt of Friedman's timeline.

A Pale Fire Timeline by Jerry Friedman July 2 At 12:05 AM Zemblan time, Gradus is chosen by a show of cards to assassinate Kinbote (n. 171). Shortly after midnight Eastern Daylight Time, Shade starts “Pale Fire” (FW: 13, n. 1–4). {Meanwhile Kinbote plays chess with an Iranian summer student (n. 1–4).} July 3 Sybil tells Kinbote that Shade has begun a poem but will not discuss it till he finishes it (n. 47–48). {Kinbote notes in his diary, “poem begun!” (n. 42).} That night Kinbote infers that the Shades are making love (n. 181). {Between here and July 21 One morning Kinbote sees Shade burning index cards that bore unneeded drafts (FW: 14).} July 4 Shade finishes Canto 1 (FW: 13) including Card 9 (n. 109) {and the card supposedly bearing the supposed variant about the secret corridor, which Kinbote later acknowledges is his (n. 130: 128)}. In the evening, Kinbote drives a young friend 200 miles to his home, where Kinbote attends two all-night parties (n. 181). {Oswin Bretwit suffers a pain in his groin that keeps him awake this night and the next two (n. 286).} July 5 Shade’s sixty-first birthday. He starts Canto 2 (FW: 13, l. 181, n. 181) and reaches line 208. Kinbote breakfasts at the second party and returns home. In the evening Shade gives his birthday party, which the uninvited Kinbote watches (n. 181). At noon Zemblan time, Gradus leaves Onhava for Copenhagen, synchronized with Shade’s waking up (n. 1–4, n.181). July 6 At 3 AM Shade returns to his desk and brings his poem up to line 230. At sunrise (4:30), Kinbote infers that the Shades are making love. In the morning, Kinbote delivers to Sybil his present for John and the third volume of A la recherche du temps perdu (n. 181). Later, Shade writes at least the next card (n. 231). In the evening, Shade and Kinbote go on a ramble, with Sybil accompanying them part of the way, and Shade refuses to discuss his progress on his poem (n. 238, n. 802). As Shade reaches line 230, Gradus and the Zemblan consul in Copenhagen buy clothes for Gradus to wear in later notes (shortly before noon Copenhagen time) (l. 181). July 7 Shade’s writings include lines 286–299 (n. 286, n. 287). Kinbote, on his way to Dr. Ahlert’s office for a 3:30 appointment, runs into the Shades and learns from them and Dr. Ahlert that they’re planning to rent the Hurleys’ ranch in Cedarn in August. Kinbote gets information from a travel agency (n. 287). Gradus flies to Paris, telephones Oswin Bretwit from the airport, and has a futile interview with him (n. 286). July 8 Oswin Bretwit dies during surgery (n. 286, I.). July 10 Shade’s writing includes lines 406–416 and another card (n. 403–404). Gradus drives from Geneva to Lex, where Odon is resting at Joe Lavender’s villa. Gradus is shown around by Gordon Krummholz, who mentions that the King had gone to the Côte d’Azur, but Lavender sends Gradus away by phone (n. 403–404). [KP: He stands at the road bay where the King had stood the previous September.] {Back in Geneva, Gradus has an incoherent phone conversation with Headquarters, who think he’s suggested breaking into the Villa Disa to look for letters with the ex-king’s address (n. 470).} Around this time [KP: July 10], Kinbote mails a booking for a cabin near the Shades’ (n. 287.) [KP] July 11 Shade finishes Canto 2 (FW: 13). Kinbote prowls around the Shades’ house, sees them crying, and accidentally bangs a garbage can but (believes he) isn’t discovered (n. 47–49). Gradus visits a Finnish bathhouse and sees his bare feet for the last time until July 21 (n. 949). [KP: July 12: Shade starts Canto 3. This seems very likely, but he could have taken a day off.] Mid July {Kinbote sees his plan of the Onhava Palace in a storage niche in the Shades’ house (n. 71). (This could be at his intrusion of July 15.)} July 14 {Shade’s writings include line 596 (n. 596).} Around this day (“a week before Shade’s death”) a clubwoman tells Kinbote in a grocery store that he is remarkably disagreeable and insane (FW: 25). [KP: Definitely July 14, and the woman is “Dr. Sutton’s daughter (the president of Sybil’s women’s club)”. His identification follows if New Wye has only one women’s club and she’s the president.] {Gradus, having fretted in his hotel in Geneva for four days, telegraphs Headquarters to say he’s moving to the Hotel Lazuli in Nice (n. 596).} July 15 {Kinbote waits in vain for Shade (I. s.v. Shade, reference given as 338 instead of the correct 334) to go on a promised walk.} Eventually he intrudes into the Shades’ house, but Shade begs off (n. 47–48, this being St. Swithin’s Day). Gradus lands in Nice in the early afternoon and sees but doesn’t recognize the Shadow Izumrudov as well as Andronnikov and Niagarin. He learns from the cab driver taking him to his hotel that Disa has gone to Italy for the rest of July (n. 697). [KP gives her departure date as “July 1 (approximately)”.] That night or early the next morning, Andronnikov and Niagarin break into the Villa Disa and find, among other things, Kinbote’s letter of April 2 with his work address (n. 741). July 16 [KP: Shade writes lines 698–746 (n. 741).] Izumrudov gives Gradus the information about Kinbote and orders him to America to continue his mission (n. 741). July 18 Gradus travels by train to Paris (n. 949). That night, or in the early morning of July 19, Shade writes card 65 (second part of line 797 to line 809) (n. 802). July 19 Kinbote prays in two churches. As he gets home, he hallucinates Shade calling to him. When he reaches Shade, he breaks down in tears, on which Shade agrees to go on a ramble with him at eight. By then Shade has finished Canto 3 and started Canto 4. He cuts the ramble short to return to writing (FW: 13–14, n. 802, n. 835–838). July 20 Shade begins writing with line 873 (n. 873). He cites Pope in a footnote on Zembla (n. 937), which Kinbote strangely doesn’t reproduce. {At the same time, at Orly airport, Gradus boards a jetliner for America (n. 873).} He arrives in New York {in a thunderstorm and after finding that the early flight is full and the train is inconvenient, makes a plane reservation (n. 949).} July 21 Shade starts with line 949 (n. 949). [KP: In the morning, Jack Grey escapes from the Institute for the Criminally Insane.] This seems likely, though he could have escaped earlier. {Gradus passes time in New York learning all kinds of interesting information from the New York Times, among other things. The “pro-Red revolt in Iraq” may have been “a confused uprising of Kurds, Communists, Moslem factions, and Army troops” on July 14 around Kirkuk; it was suppressed bloodily by July 20 (Dupuy and Dupuy 1977: 1282). Gradus checks in at the airport at 2 PM and arrives in New Wye after 5, not feeling so good. He reaches the Wordsmith campus, and after various good and bad directions and a glimpse of Kinbote in the library, he gets a ride from Gerald Emerald to within sight of Kinbote’s house (n. 949).} {Kinbote gets home from the library and finds that Shade is nearly finished with the poem. He induces Shade to come over for Tokay and walnuts (n. 991). A Red Admiral cavorts around them in the evening light (n. 993–995).} As they arrive at Kinbote’s house, Jack Grey or Jakob Gradus, who has been waiting, shoots at them. Several bullets miss, but one kills Shade. {The gardener subdues Grey with a spade, and Kinbote calls the police, who arrest Grey. Sybil arrives.} Probably that night, believing from the gardener’s testimony that Kinbote had tried to shield Shade, Sybil brings up the possibility of recompense and agrees to let Kinbote edit the poem. [KP places Sybil’s decision on July 22.] Kinbote puts the poem under the Goldsworth girls’ boots {and then moves them to his valise (FW: 16, n. 1000).}

Line shift. From Canto Two to the end of the poem, the verses are written on the proper line of each card, and the structure is accurate. But the first canto I've reproduced with a mistake with the structure of the lines starting from card one. Line 3: "Retake the falling snow..." should be written on the fourteenth line of card one, not at the first line of card two. This mistake does not carry over to subsequent cantos; only the lines in Canto One are out of place by one line.

Italics. I chose to write words in italics ... in italics. I know you're supposed to underline instead of using slanty font when it's handwritten and stuff, but I hate how that looks and disliked doing it from the time they taught us in fifth grade. Granted, it may be harder to discern whether the word is italicized or not, when hand-written, but I think you can figure it out without too much uncertainty.


Any last words, John Shade?

A popular theory is that the 999 lines of Pale Fire are incomplete and that the final line the author John Shade would have written is a refrain of the first line: "I was the shadow of the waxwing slain". Note that the unwritten line 1000 would fall exactly on the last line of the final card! Coincidence? I think not!

Writing out Pale Fire onto note cards payed off. See, there is structure within the poem according to the fourteen line organization of the cards! You can find it in each card, in some way shape or form.


Structure, Speak!


The final card of Canto Two starts with the definitive statement: 'She took her poor young life.'

The lines preceding gave a somewhat impartial assessment,

"People have thought she tried to cross the lake at Lochan Neck where zesty skaters crossed from Exe to Wye on days of special frost. Others supposed she might have lost her way by turning left from Bridgeroad; and some say she took her young life." 

Certainty in the adjoining line 'I know. You know.' is not spelled out for the reader. ('I' refers to the father, John Shade, and 'You' refers to his wife Sybil throughout the poem - not an anonymous reader as one might naively assume.)

Read straight through, one might get the impression that there is ambiguity about whether her death was accidental or a suicide. But no one should doubt that Nabokov intended us to realize young Shade committed suicide after seeing the clear separation by the note card. Now we, the readers, know.

Observations:

Some of the verses are written on two lines, but are counted as a single line in the poem:

line 797: "It's getting late ...." / I also called on Coates."

Slowly copying the poem word-for-word led me to notice some cutesy wordplay that Nabokov used.

898: note the word play between 'wick' and 'wicked'.

Thus near the mouth: the space between its wick
And my grimace, invites the wicked nick.

412: Channel 8 is spelled numerically, evoking the lemniscate motif.

By chance, the rubber band holding my handwritten copy of Pale Fire curled and formed a lemniscate. Is it such a reach to suggest Nabokov experienced the same thing and gained inspiration to write his infinity motif?

Outstare the stars. Infinite foretime and
Infinite aftertime: above your head
They close like giant wings, and you are dead.

Bloopers

In the novel, the author Shade kept a dozen note cards alongside the main body of the poem. These cards, according to his Kimbote, were drafts containing good lines that weren't used, but Shade couldn't bear to destroy.

We may never find out what these drafts contained. But when I was writing my copy of Pale fire, half a dozen cards had to be re-written because I made spelling mistakes. These bloopers I will share in place of those drafts. They're not particularly interesting.