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----- Forwarded message from a-nakata@courante.plala.or.jp -----
Date: Sat, 20 Nov 2004 07:45:17 +0900
From: Akiko Nakata <a-nakata@courante.plala.or.jp>
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88.03: bird-defiled benches: One of them helped HP kissing Armande. "'I hate
that beastly old bench,' . . . and he embraced her" (Ch. 15).
88.06: toward a waterfall: Supposedly the Tara cataract mentioned in Ch. 4.
"A local miracle of nature, the Tara cataract, was painted on the
watercloset door in the passage, as well as reproduced in a huge photograph
on the wall of the vestibule." HP and his father were going to see it after
shopping, but they could not because HP's father suddenly died. Neither in
Ch. 23, we are given a chance to see it. Note that in Ch. 4 we are shown
just a few reproductions of the fall. Humorously, they are put on the places
related with water--on the "watercloset" door and the "vestibule" wall. Here
we could find the themes of "messages by water" and "appearance (or
artificiality or reproduction) vs reality."
88.07-08: the inspector's pipe studded with Bohemian gems: "Bohemian gems"
means "Bohemian crystal" or just "imitation doublets"? I feel something
hidden behind the Bohemian gems or just Bohemia as well as "his furuncular
nose" but I cannot figure them out.
88.16: a great Carte du Tendre: "Map of Tender Love," sentimental allegory
of the seventeenth century (Notes to *Ada* by Darkbloom). The "Carte du
Tendre" is in Madeleine de Scudery's romance *Clelie* (10 vols; 1654-1660)
(Notes to *Ada* by Brian Boyd, LoA). If you are interested, see
http://www.ac-rouen.fr/pedagogie/equipes/lettres/tendre/tendre.html . There
you could see "La Mer Dangereuse" or "Lac D'Indiffrence." Boyd also notes
"Pun on *tendre* as noun ("tenderness") and verb ("to stretch") to LoA.
HP's struggle to court Armande from now on, in reality, is just following
the atheletes as far as the cable car; on the other level of the novel, that
is an adventure to save Princess Armande from the Dragon, which is suitable
for a Carte du Tendre. We can see another example in "Lance." The
protagonist is a scientist who is exploring the space and at the same time
Lanslot of the Lake. His old parents imagine Lance's exploration as a
medieval-like adventure such as "crossing through a notch between two stars"
and "attempting a traverse on a cliff face so sheer, and with such delicate
holds." As the narrator says, "I not only debar a too definite planet from
any role in my story--from the role every dot and full stop should play in
my story (which I see as a kind of celestial chart)," viewing the text of a
work as a kind of chart or picture is one of VN's favorite methods. Some
descriptions about proofreading galleys in TT could be considered a
variation.
88.16-17: Chart of Torture: "with their cruel ice axes and coils of rope and
other instrumetns of torture" (89.20-21). We have seen several instruments
of torture appering in HP's erotic nightmare (Ch. 16).
89.09: rhododendrons: HP made them a sign to try to kiss Armande, but
failed. "He would try as soon as they reached the rhododendron belt . . . "
(Ch. 15).
89.12-13: His memory, in the meantime, kept following its private path.
Again he was panting in her merciless wake. . . . Hugh, . . . had neither
the legs nor the lungs to keep up with them even in memory: One of the
translucent scenes. Here HP's past climbing is layered on the one in the
present.
89.16-17: "Cool Wars," "Ah Rates": French, couloirs and aretes (Boyd's notes
to LoA).
89.26: *more*: Russian, sea (Ibid).
89.34-35: at the joint of the third toe, resulting in a red eye burning
there through every threadbare thought: somehow reminds me of *Lolita*. Cf.
". . . I used to review the concluded day by checking my own image as it
prowled rather than passed before the mind's red eye" (Ch. 8).
89.35: a red eye burning there through every threadbare thought: is a nice
Nabokovian transferred epithet with a translucent image.
90.02: a rock-strewn field and a barn: As Jansy wrote in her recent note, "a
rock-strewn field" reminds us of "the story of this stone, of that heath"
(Ch. 1) and the unforgettable "burning barn" in *Ada*.
90.03-05: the stream where he had once washed his feet and the broken bridge
which suddenly spanned the gap of time in his mind were nowhere to be seen:
A trompe-l'oeil-like sentence which, typically to this chapter, parallels
the brightly remembered past and the blant, useless reality of the present.
90.08: a large white butterfly: A Parnassian, probably *Parnassius
mnemosyne* (Boyd's notes to LoA); A Panassian, probably *Parnassius apollo*
( Boyd's and Robert Michael Pyle's notes to *Nabokov's Butterflies*). I like
the name "mnemosyne" better, but the one on
http://www.leps.it/indexjs.htm?SpeciesPages/ParnasMnemo.htm is not
"maculated with faded crimson" while *apollo* has such maculation
http://www.leps.it/indexjs.htm?SpeciesPages/ParnasApollo.htm .
90.13: a mood of unusual kindliness made him surmount the impulse to crush
it under a blind boot: as if VN's tenderness to butterflies were surging in
HP.
90.21, 22: Lammerspitz, Rimperstein: La mer (we have just seen the
"immemorial *more*") + spitz? We will be seeing a spitz in Ch. 26. Any ideas
for Rimperstein?
90.34: a succession of rapid feminine hands had once conveyed: A filmic
image with the time backward.
91.01-02: all this digested by now: as we will be shown a digesting process
inside HP in the last chapter.
91.03: He felt a first kiss on his bald spot: A message by water. It seems
from Armande, unusually kind, but we do not know what she means. Just
suggesting HP the futility of his journey to the past?
91.07-08: It was either raining or pretending to rain or not raining at all,
yet still appearing to rain in a sense: I quote two paras from my article:
David Rampton explains the joke quoting "Can I say 'bububu' and mean 'if it
doesn't rain I shall go for a walk'?" from *Philosophical Investigations*
(1953; trans. G.E.M. Anscombe, 1963, 18e, *PI*) to treat the problem of the
author whose creation depends for its meaning on how others understand it
(David Rampton, *A Critical Study of the Novels*, 172-73). Brian Boyd makes
a note to the complicated sentence concerning "raining" before the joke
quoting a passage which includes "either raining or not raining" each from
*TLP* and *PI* in his annotations to *TT* (LoA, n. 814-15): "For example, I
know nothing about the weather when I know that is either raining or not
raining" (*TLP*, 4.461); "One is inclined to say: 'Either it is raining, or
it isn't - how I know, how the information has reached me, is another
matter.' But then let us put the question like this: What do I call
'information that it is raining'? [. . .]" (*PL*, para 356). It is
stimulating that the philosopher often uses "raining" for the problem of
information, especially because Hugh seems to fail to receive the message
from the ghosts in the shape of rain in the same paragraph as well as in
another one preceding it (W. W. Rowe, *Nabokov's Spectral Dimension*, 14).
I would like to cite Wittgenstein's last sentences, which could suggest
another example of similarity between Nabokov and Wittgenstein in treating
rain in the matter of recognition. Two days before his death, Wittgenstein
wrote his last note: "Someone who, dreaming, says 'I am dreaming', even if
he speaks audibly in doing so, is no more right than if he said in his dream
'it is raining', while it was in fact raining. Even if his dream were
actually connected with the noise of the rain" (*On Certainty* 1969; trans.
Denis Paul and G. E. M. Anscombe, para 676). Wittgenstein of course wrote it
long after *The Gift*, and there is no record that he had read Nabokov at
all. We know that this is nothing but a coincidence; however, it still
allures us to read it as if it paraphrased the last paradoxical words by
Alexander Chernyshevsky, who, on his deathbed, is deceived by the sound of
dropping water from the flower pots on the upstairs balcony under the
cloudless sky. "'Of course there is nothing afterwards.' He sighed, listened
to the trickling and drumming outside the window and repeated with extreme
distinctness: 'There is nothing. It is as clear as the fact that it is
raining'" (*The Gift*, 312).
You might have read my article (and sick of it), but if not and you would
like to read a little more about Wittgenstein and TT, see
http://www10.plala.or.jp/transparentt/shiryou3.html .
91.08-12: only certain old Northern dialects can either express verbally or
not express, but *versionize*, as it were, through the ghost of a sound
produced by a drizzle in a haze of grateful rose shrubs: The theme of
commnunicating with ghosts is concentratedly expressed in this sentence.
But--what are the old Northern dialects supposed to be? I have no idea but
the Swiss-German in which Armande was talking with the inspector. "A haze of
grateful rose shrubs" sounds like an allusion to *Lolita,* the surname of
the heroine and the theme of rose.
91.12: "Raining in Wittenberg, but not in Wittgenstein": Needless to say,
Wittenberg is the place where Hamlet studied philosophy. We could hear a
slight echo of the father-son theme from Hamlet. "Wittgenstein" finally
appears in full and the reader notices the philosopher has been hinted at by
"Witt" and "the dream of Lutwidgean" (Ch. 12).
Akiko Nakata
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