Shakespeare

I was really impressed by our guess lecture by Dr. Gretchen Minton. Though I am not a Shakespeare fanatic, as a literature major, I have read and discussed my share. Prior to this class, reading Pale Fire, and then this fabulous lecture, I had never heard of or read Timon of Athens. The apparent resemblances between Timon of Athens, Hamlet, and Pale Fire are quite clear after last class. I think Nabokov was referencing both Shakespeare plays in the novel. He is much too interested in doubles, doppelgangers, reflections and resemblances for it to just be a coincidence. Nabokov was extremely well read, and seemed to like submerging references to other literature within his works. In order to catch them all, you have to be an avid scholar of literature and to have read an enormous amount of it, obscure and famous, and do not leave out works Nabokov has professed to dislike, because those are also fair game, as we saw with James Joyce's Finnegan's Wake.

As we were discussing the Shakespeare passages, I realized the glow-worm/firefly relates to a butterflies. The butterfly begins as a caterpillar or worm-like creature and then 'dies' in that form to reemerge as a butterfly. Fireflies are a type of butterfly. Even when 'stealing' from other works, Nabokov still sticks to imagery he is familiar with and loves.