Very lepidopteric of him:
Under such a deluge of cleverness it is easy to miss that Nabokov also includes a few genuine reflections on the writer’s craft in the novel. In Canto Four of the poem Shade contrasts “two methods of composing”. The easier, more controlled way to write poetry is with a pen in hand, which, by cutting and revising, “physically guides the phrase … through the inky maze”. But one can also compose in the mind. The poet often does this unwittingly, during moments of distraction such as “soaping a third time one leg”. Shade calls this way of writing verse “agony”. It’s a three-handed mode, as he puts it, since the poet has to find a rhyme, remember the line he has just composed and compare it to previous attempts. Then again, like his editor, the poet also grows weary at times. He leaves his pen, walks around, “and by some mute command / The right word flutes and perches on my hand”. ©
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