NPPF - Canto 4 Summary

[The Great Quail]

Canto Four

Kinbote's Foreword:

As discussed by Kinbote in his Foreword, Canto Four is "short," consisting
of 166 lines and covering thirteen cards, "of which the last four used on
the day of his death give a Corrected Draft instead of a Fair Copy." Again
according to Kinbote, it was begun on July 19, and is "extremely rough in
appearance, teeming with devastating erasures and cataclysmic insertions."
Despite this, Kinbote claims that is is "beautifully accurate" under it's
"confused surface."

Of controversial interest is the ending of the poem itself. Although Kinbote
claims that the poem was completed -- sans one possible line, line 1000,
which would repeat line 1 -- he quotes a few Shadeans who publicly wondered
whether or not Shade had truly completed the work. If Kinbote is to be
trusted, however, he heard from Shade himself that the work was near
completion. 

Summary
Lines 835-999: 

Lines 835-839 open the canto with Shade boasting that he will spy on beauty
and do what no one has yet done. This establishes a sort of mock-heroic
tone, for Shade is about to discuss himself.

>From here, Shade spends some time musing on the two different ways that "the
poet" composes. The first, method A, is spontaneous thought -- the brain
running on as the body goes through motions of the day. He finds this to be
"agony." Method B is more meticulous, and involves physically writing the
poem, which gives the poet more time to think through the verses. He also
remarks that some times the correct word only reveals itself suddenly after
a long period of fruitless labor.

Line 873 is of particular interest because it hints at a possibly
supernatural event. Disclosing that midsummer mornings are his most creative
time, Shade describes an anecdote where he felt dislocated one morning: one
half of him remaining in bed, and one half walking out to the lawn wearing
one shoe. When "both" Shades realized they were dreaming, he awoke in bed --
but that morning, he discovered a brown shoe on the lawn!

Line 887 offers an insight on Shade's hygiene to a future biographer. It
seems that Shade likes shaving in the bathtub, but he often makes a mess out
of shaving his "dewlap," frequently cutting himself until he bleeds. Shade
"distrusts" men in commercials who shave cleanly with one "gliding stroke."

This leads to an extended metaphor wherein Shade reckons the feeling of
poetic inspiration to the feeling of being cleanly shaved, particularly as
seen in TV commercials, where the hair stands on end to be mowed up by an
"icy blaze." 

Line 923 starts of a list of "evil" -- in other words, things Shade does not
like: jazz, abstract art, bullfighting, Freud, Marx, frauds, sharks, and
etc. 

Line 932 gets back to shaving -- Shades describes shaving as a series of
vehicles traveling over his face, switching to an agricultural metaphor with
the notable line, "and now I plough Old Zembla's fields where my gray
stubble grows." Line 939 offers a possible point for all this shaving with a
self-directed note in italics: "Man's life as commentary to abstruse
Unfinished poem." 

The next few verses discuss his daily life with Sybil and his "versipel"
muse. He then reflects on the titles of his previous works, finally
beseeching Will (Shakespeare) for a title: "Pale Fire." (line 962.) Shade
enters a pastoral mode as he discusses the close of day, the drifting away
of poetic inspiration, coming to the revelation that he only understands
existence through his art. He then states that he is "reasonably sure that
we survive/And that my darling somewhere is alive."

Ironically, Shade then remarks that he is also "reasonably sure" that he
will awake the next day, which will "probably be fine." (He will, of course,
be murdered that very evening.) He looks out his twilight window and
reflects on his marriage with Sybil, who is out of sight, probably in the
garden. A dark Vanessa flutters by as he watches "some neighbor's gardener"
trundle an empty barrow up the lane.

The poem ends on line 999 with this vision of Kinbote's gardener; but
Kinbote insists that for the sake of symmetry, Shade would make line 1000:
"I was the shadow of the waxwing slain."

--Q