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Re: MR on Butterfly Tie, Stang, Badlook]
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MR's answers to questions lately raised:
1 "Mr. Vivian Badlook". (see SO 110)...I believe this solves the problem.
I think we could collect here at the List VN's various anagramatic "names", even the imperfect ones, such as Iris/Siri(n) in LATH or Baron Adam von Librikov, in ADA, for further exploration about the context in which they were used.
2. Why Kinbote would give Gradus a Vanessa tie... He knows that the admirable was part of Shade's death scene, so he wants Gradus to likewise
seem a harbinger of death.
Matt, if we depart from the hypothesis that "Pale Fire", a set of index-cards filled with verses appropriated by Kinbote, was construed into a fantastic tale by the latter (from foreword to index), then we cannot be at all sure that the Red admirable was part of Shade's death scene.
We have a poem that stopped on line 999. Its ending lines describe a scene by sunset cum butterfly, noises and gardener. No garden stroll, no friendly visit, no murder.
Nevertheless we can still accept that Kinbote wanted to transform the butterfly and Gradus into harbingers of death. And yet, in this case they cease to represent omens or to signal "real life" coincidences to become the sole product of a madman's ravings.
3. VN's use of the noun "stang."... The reference in PF clearly relates to what Webster's 2nd calls "a pole, rail, or beam." The word in VN's "German novel" doesn't come as a surprise to me, but in "Pale Fire" it has always stung me.
4. Alfred Hitchcock travelled by train from Munich through Austria towards Genoa in 1925. He had worked for Ufa in Berlin at the same time VN was living in Berlin. "The Pleasure Garden" is dated 1925. His first cameo appearance was in 1926, in the movie "The Lodger" ( rapidly gleaned from Taschen's Paul Duncan book on A.Hitch). Nothing that indicates any link bt. Old Enricht and "Psycho".
Another quick survey on Barbara Wyllie's "Nabokov at the Movies" offered no explanation on VN's and Hitch's stay in Berlin at the time KQK was written, although her references to VN and AH are very informative in relation to their later work.
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1 "Mr. Vivian Badlook". (see SO 110)...I believe this solves the problem.
I think we could collect here at the List VN's various anagramatic "names", even the imperfect ones, such as Iris/Siri(n) in LATH or Baron Adam von Librikov, in ADA, for further exploration about the context in which they were used.
2. Why Kinbote would give Gradus a Vanessa tie... He knows that the admirable was part of Shade's death scene, so he wants Gradus to likewise
seem a harbinger of death.
Matt, if we depart from the hypothesis that "Pale Fire", a set of index-cards filled with verses appropriated by Kinbote, was construed into a fantastic tale by the latter (from foreword to index), then we cannot be at all sure that the Red admirable was part of Shade's death scene.
We have a poem that stopped on line 999. Its ending lines describe a scene by sunset cum butterfly, noises and gardener. No garden stroll, no friendly visit, no murder.
Nevertheless we can still accept that Kinbote wanted to transform the butterfly and Gradus into harbingers of death. And yet, in this case they cease to represent omens or to signal "real life" coincidences to become the sole product of a madman's ravings.
3. VN's use of the noun "stang."... The reference in PF clearly relates to what Webster's 2nd calls "a pole, rail, or beam." The word in VN's "German novel" doesn't come as a surprise to me, but in "Pale Fire" it has always stung me.
4. Alfred Hitchcock travelled by train from Munich through Austria towards Genoa in 1925. He had worked for Ufa in Berlin at the same time VN was living in Berlin. "The Pleasure Garden" is dated 1925. His first cameo appearance was in 1926, in the movie "The Lodger" ( rapidly gleaned from Taschen's Paul Duncan book on A.Hitch). Nothing that indicates any link bt. Old Enricht and "Psycho".
Another quick survey on Barbara Wyllie's "Nabokov at the Movies" offered no explanation on VN's and Hitch's stay in Berlin at the time KQK was written, although her references to VN and AH are very informative in relation to their later work.
Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm