NPPF - Preliminary - Title

[Paul Mackin]

On Mon, 2003-07-07 at 09:47, Jasper Fidget wrote:
> 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.


To tie things into Pynchon at the earlier opportunity, Kinbote
criticizes Slade for using another writer's words for the title of his
(Slade's) collection of essays The Untamed Seahorse

P.