p. 168
Kinbote notes that the frequency of the walks had dwindled "to two in the first three weeks of July" but that "they shall be resumed Elsewhere!" Elsewhere as Afterlife (he probably didn't mean Cedarn, Utana, since his reference to his "notes" implies he's already there when C.238 is written); I'm not sure it adds to the evidence for Kinbote and suicide (it's expressed pretty enthusiastically for that) but it may add to his reasons for ending his life -- in order to join Shade Elsewhere (which fits in neatly with the "empty emerald case" and all the transformation themes). Thus a slight return of the Romeo & Juliet / Tristan & Isolde motif.

p. 170
Othere was a Norse explorer whose account of his arctic voyages (which almost made it all the way Novaya Zemlya) King Alfred included in the introduction to his translation of Orosius' 5th century _The Universal History_.

Reference
Reference
Reference

See also Longfellow's "The Discoverer of the North Cape"

Reference

p. 171
"Irondell"

Hirondelle is French for swallow (another bird that is, from the family Hirundinidae). The name "swallow" comes from the Old Norse "svale," which sort of means "cheer up," and which a bird of this sort (according to Danish folklore) cried to Christ while on the cross. The swallow is the harbinger of summer, and (according to English folklore) said to be good luck if it flies into your home. Another common superstition held by farmers is that disturbing a swallow's nest will result in a poor harvest (Kinbote should have heeded that one).

The proximity to the King Alfred reference suggests another of the King's translations: in Bede's _Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation_, one of King Eadwine's counselors, in reference to the old religion, describes life as a swallow (or sparrow depending on translation) that flies into a house from a winter's storm through one door and then back out through another, living only for the "twinkling of an eye and a moment of time" and unaware of "what goes before or what comes after."

Reference
Reference

In that same work, the word Swallow turns up in reference to the river where the bishop Paulinus baptized the people of the Deira province.

p. 171
"Canadian stock"

The Canadian Zone of Appalachia (see p. 169).

p. 171-172
"she used to call me 'an elephantine tick; a king-sized botfly; a macaco worm; the monstrous parasite of a genius'."

King-sized botfly linking Kinbote to Botkin, as well as a tick and a parasite. The macaco worm is the parasitic larva of the South American botfly. The Index has under Botkin: "king-bot, maggot of extinct fly that once bred in mammoths and is thought to have hastened their phylogenetic end."

p. 172
"/Van/homrigh, /Es/ther"

Esther Vanhomrigh (1690-1723), who was infatuated with Swift, but who rejected her. She was said to have died of a broken heart. Swift called her Vanessa; and the quote on p. 172 is from Swift's "Cadenus and Vanessa" (1713), in which he describes his feelings for her (excerpted):

The goddess thus pronounced her doom,
When, lo, Vanessa in her bloom,
Advanced like Atalanta's star,
But rarely seen, and seen from far:
In a new world with caution stepped,
Watched all the company she kept,
Well knowing from the books she read
What dangerous paths young virgins tread;

Reference
Reference

See also "Vanessa Van Ness," the "fat, powdered" mother of Annabel Leigh in _Lolita_.

p. 172
"[A] recognizable figure of [The Red Admiral] is borne in the escutcheon of The Dukes of Payn"

Charles' wife Disa is the Duchess of Payn (see p. 173). Thus a link between Disa and Esther Vanhomrigh, casting Charles as Jonathan Swift (I can hear him rolling in his grave), reinforced on p. 173: "I notice a whiff of Swift in some of my notes."

p. 172
"Michaelmas Daisies"

/Aster novi-belgii/, introduced to Britain from North America in the early 1700's. "They continue blooming until autumn and provide late-flying butterflies such as peacocks and small tortoiseshells with a good source of nectar."

Sept. 29th is "St. Michaelmas Day." This saint was the "warrior saint of all angels."

Reference

p. 173
"/fou rire/"

Impish (or insane) laughter.

p. 173
"rough alderkings who burned for boys"

Add to the set of alder references (p. 116, etc). Alderking = Erlkönig; I suppose "burn[ing] for boys" is one way of reading Goethe's poem....

p. 173
"wanted him to do what an earlier and even more reluctant Charles had done: take a night off and lawfully engender an heir"

Charles II of England never managed to produce a "lawful" heir, causing a multitude of problems toward the end of the 17th century.

p. 173
"He saw nineteen-year-old Disa for the first time [...] at a masked ball"

Romeo and Juliet.

p. 173
"She had come in male dress, as a Tirolese boy"

Explaining why Charles was interested in the first place. The Zemblan gender swapping persists with "two guardsmen disguised as flowergirls" in the same paragraph.

See p. 183 where Kinbote intends to don "Tirolese garb" and emerge from "behind a boulder" in Cedarn Utana.

p. 173
"fackeltanz"

German: "torch dance"

Note the proximity of "fireworks" and "pale upturned faces"

p. 173-174
"He procrastinated for almost two years but [...] finally gave in [to marriage]."

I find it interesting that there is no mention of any courtship, much like in the biographies of kings where they are suddenly wed to some princess of another nation. But see p. 174 where Kinbote refers to Shade's "embarrassing intimacies."

p. 174
"smug alderkings"

Add *another* alder reference. In connection with the previous one, it seems the alderkings are Charles' buddies, with whom he "burns for boys" (perhaps the Zemblan equivalent of "chasing skirts"?).

p. 174
"I like my name: Shade, /Ombre/, almost "man" / In Spanish . . ."

Another _Lolita_ reference: Ombre = HH. Shade in Latin is "umbra", close to "Humbert", as is "hombre", Spanish for man.

"Ombre" is also a 17th century card game. p. 174
"airplanes in the evening sky"

See King Alfin p. 103

p. 174
"Oswin Bretwin"

"Bretwalda" means Lord of all the Britains, sort of the king of all the kings of the Isle. The title was first assigned to Egbert in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle as "the eighth king that was Bretwalda." Looking up the other seven in Bede, the seventh one is Oswy, who shared dominion of the nation with another king... Oswin. Their kingdoms were divided by the river Humber (yes), and Oswy, wanting all of the toys, assembled an army and eventually "foully slew" Oswin, becoming therefore Bretwalda.

Oswin is described by Bede as "of a goodly countenance, and tall of stature, pleasant in discourse, and courteous in behaviour; and bountiful to all, gentle and simple alike; so that he was beloved by all men for the royal dignity of his mind and appearance and actions, and men of the highest rank came from almost all provinces to serve him."

Compare to Kinbote's characterization of Bretwit as "courage [allied] with integrity, kindness, dignity, and what can be euphemistically called endearing naïveté" (p. 177).

Bede tells the story of a beautiful horse Oswin had given a Bishop Aidan "to use either in crossing rivers, or in performing a journey upon any urgent necessity," but the Bishop, who was used to walking, gave the horse to a beggar. "What did you mean, my lord Bishop" said Oswin later, "by giving the poor man that royal horse, which it was fitting that you should have for your own use? Had not we many other horses of less value, or things of other sorts, which would have been good enough to give to the poor, instead of giving that horse, which I had chosen and set apart for your own use?" To which the Bishop replied, "What do you say, O king? Is that son of a mare more dear to you than that son of God?" The King thought about that for a while, then "ungirt his sword, and gave it to a servant, and hastened to the Bishop and fell down at his feet, beseeching him to forgive him; 'For from this time forward,' said he, 'I will never speak any more of this, nor will I judge of what or how much of our money you shall give to the sons of God.'" The Bishop comforted the King, but then grew sad, saying to one of his priests, "I know [...] that the king will not live long; for I never before saw a humble king; whence I perceive that he will soon be snatched out of this life, because this nation is not worthy of such a ruler." It was not long after that Oswy killed Oswin, and "the bishop’s gloomy foreboding was fulfilled."

Reference
Reference

Bretwit is described on p. 177 as having "died under the knife."

p. 175
"incapable of understanding certain Renaissance aspects of the new regime"

That is, a homophobe?

p. 176
"/scripta/"

For exampel, handwritten Anglo-Saxon documents that remained after the invasions of the Viking hoards.

p. 177
"Vainly does one look in /Pale Fire/ (oh, pale, indeed!) for the warmth of my hand gripping yours, poor Shade!"

An unusually open expression of Kinbote's sense of Shade's betrayal of him. I wonder if the phrase "poor Shade" refers to the poet's death or to his failure to meet K's expectations.

p. 178
"'How interesting,' said Gradus noting it"

Gradus adopting the context of the text: he has no personality of his own. He later adopts the dialogue of a petty thug criminal, with lines like: "let me tell you frankly", "I want to offer you a little arrangement", and "be nice to us and we'll be nice to you"; as well as lots of similar hand gestures.

p. 179
"something similar to what physicians call the aura, a strange sensation both tense and vaporous, a hot-cold ineffable exasperation pervading the entire nervous system before a seizure"

A description that suggests Shade's epileptic seizures.

p. 180
"V-for-Victory"

Rather than the X-for-Xavier (as in Charles Xavier), Gradus gives Bretwit a V sign, V-for-Vseslav Botkin? V-for-Vladimir Nabokov?

p. 180
"Gradus mechanically fumbled"

Gradus as wind-up toy. Mechanical things in Pale Fire include Shade's clockwork toy (ln 143, p. 137), Shade's brain (ln 839-860), the motor-powered model plane (p. 93), Alfin's "flying apparatuses" (p. 103) -- all linked in some manner to death or confinement.

p. 182
"Utah or Montana"

That is, Utana.

p. 183
"my sudden emergence in Tirolese garb"

Paralleling Disa's costume when Charles first meets her (p. 173).

p. 183
"an endless sequence of green-shorted Kinbotes"

Paralleling the Fleur nymphs in the mirror on p. 111. A mirror of a mirror then.

p. 186
"milkweed and ironweed and teeming with butterflies"

Monarch Butterflies feed on milkweed; other butterflies on feed on ironweed. Ironweed of course suggests irondell.

p. 186
"Here Papa pisses"

"Here Papa pisses" is a reference to Browning's dramatic poem "Pippa Passes," (1843) which the poet conceived while walking through Dulwich wood.

Reference

William Sharp, in his _Life of Robert Browning_, writes, "In that same wood beyond Dulwich to which allusion has already been made, the germinal motive of 'Pippa Passes' flashed upon the poet. No wonder this resort was for long one of his sacred places, and that he lamented its disappearance as fervently as Ruskin bewailed the encroachment of the ocean of bricks and mortar upon the wooded privacies of Denmark Hill."

Reference

Boyd writes, "Just as obscure Pippa passes by characters whose lives she affects without her ever meaning to -- including a sculptor whose art she redirects -- so the outwardly unprepossessing Hentzner proves an inspiration to John Shade when the self-important Kinbote, the incognito king, cannot stir his fancy" (_Magic of Artistic Discovery_, p. 88).

Pippa Passes is also eponymous for a town in Kentucky, home of Alice Lloyd College, whose slogan is "Providing Leadership for Appalachia."

Reference

p. 187
"[Jane] tells me she suggested that the White twins (nice fraternity boys accepted by the Shades) would come [with Hazel to the barn] instead. But Hazel flat out refused this new arrangement"

The word "twins" alone should raise an eyebrow here. Part of the twins pattern involves a parallel between something seen and something else hidden. What if the twins *do* go to the barn. What if they bring a flashlight and decide to play a trick on poor Hazel...?

On p. 188, after some encoded communication between Hazel and the light, the light's "jumps would get more and more listless" [as the twin with the flashlight grew weary of the labor of the joke], and then "the roundlet went limp like a tired child and finally crawled into a chink" [as it became the other twin's turn with the flashlight] "out of which it suddenly flew with extravagant brio and started to spin around the walls in its eagerness to resume the game" [with the energy of the rested White twin].

Of course the reader must try to find the secret message in the light's communicative effort (even though this system of communication was assigned by Hazel onto the phenomenon, which may not have heard her recitation of the alphabet at all -- which recitation must have included the SPACE character btw). Which adds to the theme of the search for secret meanings in the empirical world through the use of created tools.

p. 188
"not ogo old wart [...] rant lant tal told"

The secret message from the light, typically interpreted to mean "not to go goldsworth" and "atalanta" (Vanessa Butterfly).

p. 189
"Not one hint did I find [...] containing a warning"

Kinbote's adamant refusal to see any warning in Hazel's notes should reinforce that there *is* a warning there.

p. 190
"lone crickets, lone streetlight"

As Hazel wanders home from her barn experience she is surrounded by non-parallels -- the twins are gone. p. 195
"Southey liked a roasted rat for supper - which is especially comic in view of the rats that devoured his Bishop."

See Robert Southey's poem "God's Judgment on a Wicked Bishop," wherein said Bishop burns a barn full of poor people in order to rid it "in these times forlorn / Of Rats that only consume the corn." Later an Army of Rats show up to great comic effect:

They have whetted their teeth against the stones,
And now they pick the Bishop's bones:
They gnaw'd the flesh from every limb,
For they were sent to do judgment on him!


Reference

p. 196
"a glorious young athlete"

From A.E. Houseman's "To An Athlete Dying Young" (1896)

And round that early-laurelled head
Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead,
And find unwithered on its curls
The garland briefer than a girl's.


Reference

p. 197
"Joseph S. Lavender (the name hails from the laundry, not the from the laund)"

Lavender -- "from Proto-Romance var. of Latin lavanda things to be washed, use as noun of neut. pl. of gerundive of lavare to wash" (OED).

p. 198
"a small crystal giraffe"

See p. 112 "Exposition of Glass Animals" partially destroyed by fire.

p. 198
"Libitina"

Kinbote is correct: she is the Roman goddess of corpses and the funeral, her name often synonymous for death. Burial equipment was kept in her temples, and whenever a death occurred, a piece of money (lucar Libitinae) would be deposited there for the undertakers (libitinarii).

Libitina came to be associated with Persephone and with Venus Lubentina (an Italian goddess of gardens). "Plutarch (Quaest. Rom. 23) mentions a 'small statue at Delphi of Aphrodite Epitymbia (A. of tombs = Venus.Libitina); to which the spirits of the dead were summoned; The inconsistency of selling funeral requisites in the temple of Libitina, seeing that she is identified with Venus, is explained by him as indicating that one and the same goddess presides over birth and death; or the association of such things with the goddess of love and pleasure 'is intended to show that death is not a calamity, but rather a consummation to be desired.'

Reference
Reference

Here Libitina has moved from her Roman origin to Lavender's Swiss villa, part of the theme of westward and northward progression.

p. 199
"Gordon"

Another example of Kinbote incorporating his "real" world -- see Assistant Prof. Misha Gordon of the Music Department (p. 216).

p. 199
"a leopard-spotted loincloth"

Gordon's protean shorts take their first incarnation. Later they become "black bathing trunks" (200), "white tennis shorts" (201), and a "Tarzan brief" (cast aside) (201).

p. 201
"the King surveyed the twinkling ripples of Lake Geneva, and had noted their antiphonal response"

Communication between land and sea by reflection. See p. 121 for "[Charles] was accused of using a fop's hand mirror and the sun's cooperative rays to flash signals from his lofty casement."

p. 202
"From far below mounted the clink and tinkle of distant masonry work, and a sudden train passed between gardens, and a heraldic butterfly /volant en arrière/, sable, a bend of gules, traversed the stone parapet, and John Shade took a fresh card."

The process of simultaneous movement and creation encapsulated in this sentence: Gradus moving closer as the poem moves forward -- in composition and commentary -- as masons build and trains appear and the Red Admirable follows.

volant en arrière = flying behind

p. 202
"A nymphet pirouetted"

Kinbote's variant alludes to _Lolita_.

p. 203
"The sot a hero, lunatic a king"

Kinbote is correct, it's from Pope's _Essay on Man_. His complaint that Pope didn't "accommodate the definite article" implies Kinbote's own sense of being *indefinite*.

Reference

p. 203
"two closing lines identical in every syllable, but one personal and physical, and the other metaphysical and universal"

Mirror lines transmuted into a spiral via interpretation.

p. 204
"John Shade could never make /his/ snowflakes settle that way"

K admitting that Frost is the better poet.

p. 204
"/Villa Paradiso/, or in Zemblan /Villa Paradisa/"

Another Zemblan gender switch.

p. 205
"the Zemblan Revolution broke out (May 1, 1958)"

May Day.

p. 205
"ineffectual attempt to return to Zembla"

The way *back* to Zembla proves impossible.

p. 208
"Harfar Baron of Shalksbore"

King Harald Harfager of Norway, called Fairhair, from Snorri's Heimskringla. He fought with Hake, son of Gandalf (!), who was one of the kings after the death of Halfdan the Black. Other kings included Hogne and Frode (heh), sons of Eystein (yup), king of Hedemark. The settlement of Iceland was a result of Harald's wars, so another reference to the expansion of civilization westward ho.

Reference

p. 213
"the /narstran/, a hellish hall where the souls of murderers were tortured under a constant drizzle of drake venom coming down from the foggy vault"

The word narstran comes from Old Norse "nar" for corpse (as in narwhal) and the Slavic "stran" for land, so Land of the Dead, probably a variation of "Nastrond" for "Corpse-Strand" (also Land of the Dead) as found in the Poetic Edda (Vol. 1, Voluspo):

38. A hall I saw, | far from the sun,
On Nastrond it stands, | and the doors face north,
Venom drops | through the smoke-vent down,
For around the walls | do serpents wind.

39. I saw there wading | through rivers wild
Treacherous men | and murderers too,
And workers of ill | with the wives of men;
There Nithhogg sucked | the blood of the slain,
And the wolf tore men; | would you know yet more?

Reference

The reference is also found in the Lokasenna section of the Poetic Edda:

"And after that Loki hid himself in Franang's waterfall in the guise of a salmon, and there the gods took him. He was bound with the bowels of his son Vali, but his son Narfi was changed to a wolf. Skathi took a poison-snake and fastened it up over Loki's face, and the poison dropped thereon. Sigyn, Loki's wife, sat there and held a shell under the poison, but when the shell was full she bore away the poison, and meanwhile the poison dropped on Loki. Then he struggled so hard that the whole earth shook therewith; and now that is called an earthquake."

Reference

p. 206
"the tall, sheared and bearded visitor with the bouquet of flowers-of-the-gods who had been watching her from afar advanced through the garlands of shade"

Paralleling the scene where K approaches Shade while writing the end of "Pale Fire."

p. 207
"Disa at thirty [...] bore a singular resemblance [...] to the idealized and stylized picture painted by the poet in those lines of /Pale Fire/"

Disa and Sybil mirrored -- in a subjective mirror.

PF has lots of references to Norse etymologies, so I wouldn't be surprised if VN had both in mind. For "Dis," there's also:

(Greek) The shining one; an older form of Zeus.

(Icelandic) Sister; in Norse myths an attendant spirit or constant companion. Possibly the astral double of a living entity for when one's dis is absent, it presages death.

(Latin) [contraction of dives rich] Name for Pluto, god of the underworld. The expression "rich" arises in the fact that the presiding deity of the underworld gathers in through the rolling ages whatever is, thus implying a constantly accumulating store of all things that once were, but now belong to the past. There is a distinct mystical similarity between the Greek and Latin Dis.

(Sanskrit) [from the verbal root dis to show, point out, direct] A direction or point of space, a cardinal point or quarter; the four cardinal points: prachi (east); dakshina (south); pratichi (west); and udichi (north). The noun disa likewise means direction, region, quarter, or point of space.

Reference

OED has "dis" as a colloquial abbreviation for "disconnected," meaning "Broken, not working; fig. weak in the head."

OED also sez of "dis-" the prefix:

"In words adopted from French and Latin with the sense 'apart, away, asunder, abroad'

In words adopted from French and Latin with privative force, as disadvantage, disagree, disease, disgrace, displease, dissuade, etc. Also as a freely productive prefix with privative force (occas. replacing earlier mis-, as in dislike) forming (a) verbs from verbs (with their derivative nouns, adjectives, etc.) with the sense 'reverse, undo', as disestablish, disown, etc.; (b) verbs from nouns with the senses 'strip of, free, rid of', as disfrock, dispeople, etc., 'deprive of the character, title, etc. of', as disbishop, dischurch, etc., 'expel from', as disbar, disbench, etc., 'undo, spoil', as discomplexion; (c) verbs from adjectives with the sense 'undo, reverse the quality denoted', as disable etc.; (d) nouns from nouns with the sense 'the absence or opposite of the state, quality, etc., in question', as in dishonour etc.; (e) adjectives from adjectives with negative force, as dishonest etc.

In words adopted from French and Latin with intensive force 'utterly' with words already implying reversal or removal, as disannul, disturb, etc., and occas. in words formed in English after these, as disembowel, disgruntled, etc."

And finally -- of the multitude of words with dis- prefixes -- this one stands out in the context: "disattention noun lack of attention, neglect."

p. 212
"houghmagandy"

Fornication. Charles demonstrating his unawareness that Disa too has bad memories (or that she too is a human being).

p. 215
"a BIC language", "crafty system (invented in the chief BIC country)"

Behind the Iron Curtain.

p. 215-16
"Headquarters thought it understood that letters from the King divulging his whereabouts could be obtained by breaking into Villa Disa and rifling the Queen's bureau"

This conclusion is reached through the inability of Gradus and Headquarters to communicate -- and yet it proves accurate. I doubt VN had any commentary in mind regarding KGB code systems (which were anything but an "obstacle race in the dark") but possibly on systems of communication intended to obscure rather than communicate (not unlike some 20th century fiction). That sometimes the interpretation proves valid is the result of chance rather than design -- or possibly just a product of the reader? -- for it may as easily prove false (as Gradus waits for his "consignment of canned salmon"). Gradus' conclusion from this interaction is to prefer mediation to direct communication.

p. 215
"bureau", "letter"

The scene (a pair of scenes actually) concerning the theft of Charles' letter from Disa's villa has some parallels in Poe's "The Purloined Letter," a story in which a letter is stolen from a Queen and a detective is hired to retrieve it. For a full summary of the story look here:

Reference

In Poe's story, the eponymous letter is from the Queen's lover, whom she wishes to keep secret from the King. Since she saw the Minister D-- steal the letter from her table, she enlists the aid of the police to tear apart the Minister's apartments. They are unable to locate it, so the police Prefect enlists the aid of M. Dupin to find the letter, who first has the Prefect search the apartments again. The police still can't find it, and a month later Dupin produces the letter on his own. He explains to the Narrator how he visited the Minister at his hotel and wore green spectacles to conceal his eyes so that he could socialize while covertly studying the room's interior, eventually finding the letter in plain sight amid a card-box of correspondence over the mantel-piece. Later, during a prearranged diversion in the street outside, Dupin replaces it with one of his own.

The parallels to _Pale Fire_ are mostly fragmentary: The Queen's table and Disa's "rosewood writing desk;" the police who tear apart the Minister's hotel in their vain search for the letter and the two Russian experts who tear apart the royal palace in Zembla in their vain search for the crown jewels (and eventually find Disa's letter at the villa); Dupin's green spectacles (a color associated with the greater Shadow Izumrudov who produces Disa's letter for Gradus); even Gradus' communication with headquarters: "G—— detailed to us his mode of searching the premises at the Hotel D——." Individually they don't impart much, but the Poe story itself might be useful in offering a strategy for understanding Pale Fire as a whole.

In explaining to the Narrator his reasoning in locating the letter, Dupin describes a puzzle game which uses a map: one player picks a name from the map, and the other tries to guess which name it is. "A novice in the game," Dupin explains, "generally seeks to embarrass his opponents by giving them the most minutely lettered names; but the adept selects such words as stretch, in large characters, from one end of the chart to the other." The reason is that they are "excessively obvious; and here," Dupin says, "the physical oversight is precisely analogous with the moral inapprehension by which the intellect suffers to pass unnoticed those considerations which are too obtrusively and too palpably self-evident." The transparency and simplicity of the case involving the purloined letter thwarts the police Prefect because he is accustomed to opacity and complexity. Dupin says, "a certain set of highly ingenious resources are, with the Prefect, a sort of Procrustean bed, to which he forcibly adapts his designs." In seeking to find what he expects, he ignores what is readily there.

Similarly (one might argue), understanding Pale Fire eludes the efforts of experts who seek to discover more between its covers than exists there, focusing on the most minute details while ignoring what is "too obtrusively and too palpably self-evident." Like Poe's police Prefect, like Andronnikov and Niagarin, like Charles Kinbote, they ultimately fail to find whatever it is they set out to discover. And sometimes they realize they've built their own private Zembla in the process.

Which is not to suggest PF is a simple read. Just as Dupin has the Prefect "re-research" the Minister's hotel before he can confidently settle on his plain-sight theory, the diligent reader must work through Pale Fire's many false leads and exterior and interior references before settling on the obvious. Sometimes one must pass through complexity in order to realize simplicity. Recall the glyphs at the end of Poe's "Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym" which seem to allude to great complexity but ultimately are nothing more than a hoax on the part of the author. Quite a few Poe stories have a secret joke at the end as a reward for diligent and attentive readers (and which often subvert the entire story).

What's the secret joke at the end of Pale Fire?

In "The Purloined Letter," Dupin concludes his explanation to the Narrator by anticipating Minister D--'s embarrassment when the letter in his possession turns out to be from Dupin and not the Queen's lover. "[It] did not seem altogether right to leave the interior [of the replacement letter] blank," he says. "That would have been insulting."

The Purloined Letter

p. 220
"falling, falling, falling is the supreme method"

As if distancing himself from the immediacy of it, Kinbote gives an encyclopedic list of suicide methods. Hamlet's "bare botkin [sic]" points to Kinbote himself, while "drown with clumsy Ophelia" may suggest Hazel. An expert parachutist, he contemplates departing from some nearby ledge: "not fall, not jump -- but roll out as you should for air comfort." But Kinbote's European politeness makes him reluctant to become somebody else's problem, so he fears landing on someone; he says that landing on the "roof of an old tenacious normal house" might be better, "where a cat may be trusted to flash out of the way" (as with Hodge in the epigraph). "The ideal drop is from an aircraft" (p. 221), he notes, just as Charles the Beloved arrived in America for the final phase of his exile (but this time sans chute).

The three fallings are interesting though, since we've been trained to associate thrice repetition with fairy tales in K's personal mythology, as with the three nights at the Haunted Barn (p. 190). Adding this to the reference to "Grimm" earlier on the same page might give some cause for suspicion.

Kinbote's residence in Cedarn and the three times repetition might reference Coleridge's "Kubla Khan" (1798):

[...]
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
[...]
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.


The idea of weaving a circle thrice comes from an old practice of emphasizing a prayer or sacred ritual (as with "three times the charm"), and here implies an attempt by others to restrain or alienate the crazed poet as he returns from his vision. Kinbote may feel similarly exiled in the presence of others who find him strange or even insane, not to mention the social response to his homosexuality.

There's also a fountain in that poem similar to Poe's cataract and Shade's "tall white fountain" (ln 707). Also analogous to PF is the abrupt intrusion of the author into the text: "A damsel with a dulcimer / In a vision once I saw." There is a loud amusement park right in front of my present lodgings.

Reference

p. 220
"room 1915 or 1959"

1915 is the year of Kinbote's birth.
1959 is the year of his probable death.


p. 221
"/shootka/ (little chute)"

Russian for "joke."