NPPF - Preliminary - Title

[Jasper Fidget]

As the text suggests (repeatedly), the title _Pale Fire_ may come from
Shakespeare's _Timon of Athens_  4:3, line 423:

The sun's a thief, and with his great attraction   
Robs the vast sea; the moon's an arrant thief,   
And her pale fire she snatches from the sun;   
The sea's a thief, whose liquid surge resolves  
The moon into salt tears; the earth's a thief,   
That feeds and breeds by a composture stolen   
>From general excrement, each thing's a thief;   
The laws, your curb and whip, in their rough power  
Have uncheck'd theft. Love not yourselves; away!

Shade pulls the title from within the poem on line 962: "Help me, Will!
_Pale Fire_", at the end of a verse enumerating his published works and
implying that he has dispensed with the (perhaps peculiar) habit of certain
authors (for instance Faulkner) of adopting their titles from phrases in
other author's works (usually Shakespeare).  Note that Shade has quoted from
a passage denouncing thievery (making this a doubly odd or at least ironic
choice...).  Furthermore, Nabokov loudly criticized Scott Moncrieff's
translation of Proust's _A la Recherche du Temps Perdu_, not least because
of the translator's unaccountable adoption of phrases from Shakespeare for
use as titles, making Nabokov's choice for his novel certainly a peculiar
one.

Interestingly, recent evidence suggests that portions of _Timon of Athens_,
mainly most of Act III, were *not* written by Shakespeare but rather by
Christopher Middleton.  The phrase "pale fire" remains attributed to
Shakespeare, however.

Like Gradus, the title of the poem/work emerges from the commentary
gradually.  See page 80 where Kinbote quotes this passage from Shakespeare
as a reverse translation from Zemblan, transposing the genders and swapping
"pale fire" for "silvery light".  See also page 285 where Kinbote is unable
to find the origin to the title of the poem since his Zemblan edition of
_Timon of Athens_ "certainly contains nothing that could be regarded as an
equivalent of 'pale fire'".  See also page 81 where Kinbote comes
tantalizingly close to uttering the title with "pale and diaphanous final
phase".  See page 15 in the Foreword where Kinbote uses the title
descriptively: "the pale fire of the incinerator".

The title may also be found in Yeats' "A Poet to His Beloved" (as I believe
someone has pointed out):

I BRING you with reverent hands   
The books of my numberless dreams;   
White woman that passion has worn   
As the tide wears the dove-gray sands,   
And with heart more old than the horn
That is brimmed from the pale fire of time:   
White woman with numberless dreams   
I bring you my passionate rhyme.

Arguably, the theme of this poem has something in common with Shade's.


akaJasperFidget