Echo's Fey Child

Maybe my sensual love for the consonne

D’appui, Echo’s fey child is based upon

A feeling of fantastically planned,

Richly rhymed life.

                         I feel I understand

Existence, or at least a minute part

Of my existence, only through my art,

In terms of combinational delight;

And If my private universe scans right,

Which I suspect is an iambic line.

(Canto IV Line: 967-977)

            “Echo’s fey child” is a phrase that holds significance on multiple levels in the novel.  Adjacent to the tale of the relationship between Echo and Narcissus, there is also a myth that depicts Echo conceiving two children with the God Pan.  Echo’s fairy children Iambe and Iynx can be detected throughout the entire texture of the novel.    

            In Greek myth, the nymph Iambe is thought to have comforted the distraught Demeter as she searched for her lost daughter Persephone by performing a dance and telling jokes.  Iambe is the source of the word “iamb” by executing her choreography to time of the iambic meter.  Iamb is a metrical foot in poetry that was originally associated with satirical verse.  Iamb has now evolved into the iambic line that accentuates syllables that form a rhythm that is harmonious to a human heartbeat.  It was a commonly used verse in traditional poetic prose in English writing with artists such as Shakespeare immortalizing the structure of the iambic pentameter.  

            Echo’s other daughter Iynx was metamorphosed into a bird by Hera as punishment for tricking Zeus into falling in love with the nymph Lo.  Iynx was transformed into the Jynx torquilla, commonly called a Eurasian Wryneck that is in woodpecker family.  The bird obtained its name through its capability to rotate its head 180 degrees and its snake like mannerisms of hissing at its enemies.  The characteristics of the Eurasian Wryneck were associated to witchcraft which is a jinx’s current connotation and is also a symbol of restless love. 

            Iambe and Iynx, the two fey children of Echo have dual importance in the development of Pale Fire with each fairy playing a complex role. In Shade’s manifestation of the poem Pale Fire he is capable of channeling his cosmos and processing the universe through the means of iambic verse.  Iambe’s embodiment of satire is also significant in the composition of the novel.   The poem is a sentimental reflection by Shade of the death of his daughter that is further mirrored by the bizarre commentary of Charles Kinbote.  The purpose of this device is to illustrate the facets of death and the afterlife that counters the typical conception of it as an ominous being.  Rather, according to the Orphic Doctrine the transmigration of souls is not perceived as a termination of life but instead is a form of metempsychosis.    The descent to the underworld is painted with “a warm haze of pleasurable anticipation” (219) that allows growth and purification of the soul through reincarnation.  Iynx is also weaved within the fabric of the novel as a complement to the satirical Iambe.  Iynx is manipulated to deceive Pale Fire’s audience by Nabokov cleverly creating a game of worlds that is enveloped with mirrors, mimicry, echoes, and trompe l’oeils that stretch the limits of our concept of reality.  Restless love is a leitmotif that trails hand in hand with Iambe that incorporates a vast dimension of romances.  Nabokov illustrates love between a husband and wife, between a father and daughter, between two “friends”, between two lovers, and between a man and himself.  Through these relationships Echo’s fey children are capable of igniting love and light from the ashes of darkness and death.

            “Whenever I start thinking of my love for a person, I am in the habit of immediately drawing radii from my love-my heart, from the tender nucleus of a personal matter-to monstrously remote points of the universe.  Something impels me to measure the consciousness of my love against such unimaginable and incalculable things as the behavior of nebulae (whose very remoteness seems a form of insanity), thedreadful pitfalls of eternity, the unknowledgeable beyond the unknown, the helplessness, the cold, the sickening involutions and interpenetrations of space and time” (Speak Memory, 296)