he steals his silvery light from the sun

Today we will have the one and only, Dr. Gretchen Minton! Speaking to the class about Pale Fire and Timon of Athens. She is needless to say, an expert, or rather the expert, that I know of, on Shakespeare.

I have never read Timon of Athens, and due to limited time in my schedule I looked at the summary of the plot. Click HERE for the summary.
I found this passage while searching around fron Loving Dr. Johnson by Helen Deutsch. And it mentions this theme we talked about in class: theivery, theft, stealing: everybody is a theif. Check this out:

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 surge resolves / The moon into salt tears. -Shakespeare, Timon of Athens

"This motif of resemblence as both theft and transformation (staged by Nabokov/Shade's self-conscious borrowing of the passage in the poem with which the novel begins) is rendered deathly by the first lines of the poem "Pale Fire":

I was the shadow of the waxwing slain
By the false azure in the windowpane.

To repeat an image, to borrow its "pale fire," is notonly to
steal but to decieve, with potentially deathly consequences. But while art's
resemblences can kill, they can also transform death." (215).

So theivery is a large part of Pale Fire. There is a problem of origins. Do I sense Harold Bloom.....anxiety of influence? It is my understanding that Timon is upset about universal theivery. While reading Brian Boyd's book, Vladimir Nabokov: The American Years, Boyd reveals many interesting things that I may never have discovered on my own. Although I underlined most every direct mention of Timon of Athens, I hardly thought of it.

In the Zembla story in the closet where the secret door to the tunnel is there is, "a thiry-twomo edition of Timon of Athens translated into Zemblan by his uncle Conmal..."(125). Page 126 there is a "Timon Alley". Then when the Red King readies the closet for his escape, he finds nothing left in the closet, "save for the tiny volume of Timon Afinsken still lying in the corner,"(128). Then when the King has duped the guard and returned to the closet and removes the shelves to get to the tunnel. "an object fell with a miniature thud; he guessed what it was and took it with him as a tailsman" (132). This object could only be the tiny volume of Timon Afinsken.

Boyd also traces Timon of Athens on page 437 of his book linked above. If you think you've missed something while reading Nabokov's Pale Fire, chances are that you have, Brian Boyd does an excellent job catching you up on all that you missed.

I feel a bit overwhelmed, but it is better than feeling underwhelmed. There is so much, and it is nice to know that I am not alone. Happy re-reading, because that is the thing to do. See everyone in class in 20 minutes!!!