Pale Fire or Silvery Light?

Excuse: Kubla Khan's post about Pale Fire.

Isn't this cover amazing? It is one of the most beautiful looking books ever.

Some extracts, just to clear some mysteries about the title of the novel. In case you don't know about the novel the wikipedia link is here. Yes that's where the title of the blog comes from.

***

Excerpted Poem by John Shade and the Commentary by Charles Kinbote.

And while this lasted all I had to do
Was close my eyes to reproduce the leaves,
Or indoor scene, or trophies of the eaves.

Lines 39-40: Was close my eyes, etc.

These lines are represented in the drafts by a variant reading:

39 .............and home would haste my thieves,
40 The sun with stolen ice, the moon with leaves

One cannot help recalling a passage in Timon of Athens (Act IV, Scene 3) where the misanthrope talks to the three marauders. Having no library in the desolate log cabin where I live like Timon in his cave, I am compelled for the purpose of quick citation to retranslate this passage into English prose from a Zemblan poetical version of Timon which, I hope, sufficiently approximates the text, or is at least faithful to its spirit*:

The sun is a thief: she lures the sea
and robs it. The moon is a thief:
he steals his silvery light from the sun.
The sea is a thief: it dissolves the moon.

For a prudent appraisal of Conmal’s translations of Shakespeare’s works, see note to line 962.

Dim Gulf was my first book (free verse);
Night Rote Came next;
then Hebe’s Cup, my final float
In that damp carnival, for now I term
Everything "Poems," and no longer squirm.
(But this transparent thingum does require
Some moondrop title. Help me, Will! Pale Fire.)

Line 962: Help me, Will. Pale Fire.

Paraphrased, this evidently means: Let me look in Shakespeare for something I might use for a title. And the find is "pale fire." But in which of the Bard’s works did our poet cull it? My readers must make their own research. All I have with me is a tiny vest pocket edition of Timon of Athens — in Zemblan! It certainly contains nothing that could be regarded as an equivalent of "pale fire" (if it had, my luck would have been a statistical monster).

*Original Shakespeare has the following:

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 surges resolves
The moon into salt tears;

Note how the Zemblan translator changes the gender of the Sun and the Moon. Such fun at the cost of a poor translator!