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----- Original Message -----
From: "pynchon-l-digest" <owner-pynchon-l-digest@waste.org>
To: <pynchon-l-digest@waste.org>
Sent: Monday, August 25, 2003 12:00 AM
Subject: pynchon-l-digest V2 #3503
>
> pynchon-l-digest Monday, August 25 2003 Volume 02 : Number
3503
>
>
>
> Re: NPPF: Notes C.1-4 - C.42
> NPPF Re: Notes C.47-48 (part three)
> NPPF: playlist addition
> NPPF Comm 2
> NPPF Comm2: Ginkgo
> NPPF Comm2: Primal
> NPPF Comm2: Often
> NPPF Comm2: The poet king
> Re: NPPF Comm2: Often
> Fw: NPPF Comm2: The poet king
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Date: 24 Aug 2003 08:21:20 -0400
> From: Paul Mackin <paul.mackin@verizon.net>
> Subject: Re: NPPF: Notes C.1-4 - C.42
>
> On Sun, 2003-08-24 at 01:40, jbor wrote:
> > on 24/8/03 1:14 PM, Paul Mackin wrote:
> >
> > > Why should K deliberately distort S's thought? Seems to me most
likely
> > > that K honestly interpreted the bird as surviving. Why lie about
> > > something that how nothing to do with the price of eggs in Zembla.
> >
> > I agree with this. I don't think that Kinbote is *deliberately*
distorting
> > Shade's thoughts or lying; I do think that, in his haste to find and
> > elaborate on references to Charles the Beloved and Zembla in the poem,
he
> > accidentally misses or misinterprets many of the literal references, and
> > some of the structural and thematic technicalities, which are evident.
>
> This is often the case but on the bird I think he might has gotten it
> right.
>
> >
> > Like the inclusion of the sentence about the "very loud amusement park
right
> > in front of my lodgings" on the first page of the Preface, by way of
> > Kinbote's unintentional misreading of the bird's fate in this first note
> > Nabokov foregrounds for the reader that something is askew, that there
are
> > rather large gaps between what Shade intended the poem to mean and what
> > Kinbote thinks or decides it means.
> >
> > That's the way I read it, anyway.
> >
>
> To my way of thinking the K's commentary serves several functions:
>
> To show K is on the verge of a mental breakdown. (a cry for help maybe)
>
> To tell two quite interesting additional stories (additional to S's
> story)
>
> And last but not least to serve the normal and essential purpose of an
> editor's commentary on a long narrative poem. It is there to helps us
> understand "Pale Fire," though admittedly in quite an unusual manner.
>
> Now on with the read.
>
> P.
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Sun, 24 Aug 2003 18:48:11 -0700
> From: "s~Z" <keithsz@concentric.net>
> Subject: NPPF Re: Notes C.47-48 (part three)
>
> "Dear Jesus, do something" is a plea for relief from CK's obsession with
> young males.
>
> ------------------------------
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Sun, 24 Aug 2003 22:54:03 -0400
> From: "Don Corathers" <gumbo@fuse.net>
> Subject: NPPF Comm 2
>
> I'll post the first set of notes on the second section of the Commentary
> tonight, and more as I can squeeze em in between the erratic but
persistent
> demands of the day job.
>
> Don
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Sun, 24 Aug 2003 23:00:39 -0400
> From: "Don Corathers" <gumbo@fuse.net>
> Subject: NPPF Comm2: Ginkgo
>
> Line 49: shagbark (p 93)
>
> Still maintaining, in these early notes, at least perfunctory attention to
> his editorial responsibility to the poet and his work, Kinbote correctly
> defines shagbark as a kind of hickory. He then deftly finds a way to fit
> Shade into his personal narrative by mentioning a poem that Queen Disa had
> sent him.
>
> Jacaranda: pinnate-leaved tropical tree. Perhaps Disa became acquainted
with
> these trees in the South of France, because it's unlikely she saw any
> growing in the Zemblan climate.
>
> Maidenhair: another name for ginkgo.
>
> Hebe's Cup. Hebe (pronounced HEE-be) was the Greek goddess of youth,
> daughter of Zeus and Hera, wife of Herakles, cupbearer to the gods.
>
> "The Sacred Tree." Title might be a reference to T.S. Eliot's 1920 book of
> essays on criticism, *The Sacred Wood*. Ginkgo biloba, native to China and
> Japan and believed to be the oldest surviving seed-bearing plant, is
> commonly planted around temples and other religious buildings. The
> twin-lobed leaf does in fact resemble a butterfly. In this instance the
> butterfly is "ill-spread" presumably because the leaf has begun to dry and
> curl. But why is it an "old-fashioned" butterfly?
>
> It might be taken as coincidence, or it might be a matter of interest to
the
> Shadeans among us, that Kinbote, apparently only concerned with showing us
> another example of Shade's poetic facility with trees, has chosen to quote
a
> work that includes an image that Shade uses frequently in "Pale Fire."
>
> Muscat: any of several cultivated grapes used in making wine-that would be
> muscatel-and raisins. (Merriam Webster 10th-don't have easy access to an
> OED). Kinbote characteristically ignores Shade's evocation of the color of
> the grape and instead sees in the word an image of pursuit.
>
> On the other hand, and it seems like there's always another hand in this
> novel, muscat is etymologically related to musk, which my MW10 traces to
the
> Sanskrit words for mouse (as Kinbote's note suggests) and for testicle (as
> it does not).
>
> Kinbote, incidentally, describes a stand of ginkgoes at the end of
> Shakespeare Avenue in New Wye. We've been told elsewhere that Shakespeare
> Avenue is lined with specimens of every tree mentioned in the canon. Since
> the ginkgo wasn't named by Europeans until 1711, and thus was apparently
> unknown to Westerners until that time, it seems unlikely that Shakespeare
> knew or wrote about the tree. (A concordance search turns up nada for
either
> ginkgo or maidenhair.) Goethe, however, did:
>
> Ginkgo Biloba
> (Translation unattributed)
>
> The leaf of this Eastern tree
> Which has been entrusted to my garden
> Offers a feast of secret significance,
> For the edification of the initiate.
>
> Is it one living thing
> That has become divided within itself?
> Are these two who have chosen each other,
> So that we know them as one?
>
> I think I have found the right answer
> To these questions;
> Do my songs not make you feel
> That I am both one and twain?
>
>
> In the original German:
>
> Dieses Baums Blatt, der von Osten
> Meinem Garten anvertraut,
> Gibt geheimen Sinn zu kosten,
> Wie's den Wissenden erbaut.
>
> Ist es ein lebendig Wesen,
> Das sich in sich selbst getrennt?
> Sind es zwei, die sich erlesen,
> Daъ man sie als eines kennt?
>
> Solche Fragen zu erwidern
> Fand ich wohl den rechten Sinn:
> FЭhlst Du nicht an meinen Liedern,
> Daъ ich eins und doppelt bin?
>
> D.C.
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Sun, 24 Aug 2003 23:04:00 -0400
> From: "Don Corathers" <gumbo@fuse.net>
> Subject: NPPF Comm2: Primal
>
> Line 57: The phantom of my little daughter's swing (p 94)
>
> Kinbote is remarkably oblivious to the emotional freight of this line.
>
> Primal Scene: That would be the child witnessing his parents in flagrante
> delicto. Clearly Shade shares Nabokov's contempt ("future patient of the
> future quack") for Freud.
>
> Wikipedia entry for Freud, without which I would not have known that the
> Great Man's middle name was Schlomo:
>
> http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigmund_Freud
>
> The seven variant lines Kinbote includes in the note might have actually
fit
> after line 60-replacing the "TV's huge paperclip" business with a
> continuation of the description of the interior of the house that begins
the
> stanza. The narrative flow would have also worked nicely, if a bit
> perversely, at the end of the variant, with the reference to the "Primal
> Scene" preceding "I was an infant when my parents died." (Although another
> line would have been required to complete the last couplet in the
variant.)
>
> One could surmise that Shade abandoned the variant because he decided the
> arch and flippant assault on psychoanalysis was too abrupt a mood change
> from the melancholy invocation of Hazel in line 57. Or more darkly, the
> Oedipus/Electra thing was just a little bit too close to the bone.
>
> The Keithians would want me to point out that if Shade himself had
observed
> the Primal Scene as a child, he would have been walking in on Maud. And
> somebody.
>
>
> Line 61: TV's huge paperclip (p 94)
>
> Kinbote argues, with no apparent basis other than his dislike for Sybil
and
> Hurley, that they have misdated a short poem in which Shade mourns his
> daughter's death. Actually it is quite plausible that Shade wrote "The
> Swing" in June as a sort of a study for a part of the larger poem.
> Certainly Sybil is in a better position than Kinbote to know when it was
> written.
>
> It's true, as Kinbote suggests, that the images in the short piece-the
> television antenna, the chirping bird, and the swing-were transplanted
more
> or less intact into "Pale Fire," two of them into the space that would
have
> been occupied by the variant that's included in the line 57 note. The one
> image in "The Swing" that also occurred in the variant-the doorknob-was
> abandoned. Does this mean something? Not as far as I can tell.
>
> There is something curious about this whole swing business, though. In
"Pale
> Fire" it's a "phantom of my little daughter's swing" that "gently seems to
> sway." That is, it's not there any more. In "The Swing," it's "the empty
> little swing that swings under the tree," a real object hanging from a
> branch. Hazel was 23 when she died. Doesn't it seem likely the swing would
> have been taken down long before then? Or the rope rotted through?
>
> D.C.
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Sun, 24 Aug 2003 23:55:39 -0400
> From: "Don Corathers" <gumbo@fuse.net>
> Subject: NPPF Comm2: Often
>
> Line 62: often (p 95)
>
> Kinbote converts an adverb to his own use, without so much as a
> fare-the-well to the poem from which he plucked it. In this three-plus
page
> note we learn a good deal more about K's paranoia and instability, and his
> imagined identity.
>
> In the first half of the note he reminds us "how given to regicide
Zemblans
> are." The citizens of Zembla have killed nineteen members of the royal
> family in a single century, an average of one assassination every five
years
> and three months. Although he is still trying to maintain the fiction of
> referring to the deposed king in the third person, he offers this
> information as a preface to a detailed discussion of how personally
fearful
> he is, "as if only now living consciously through those perilous nights in
> my country, where at any moment a company of jittery revolutionists might
> enter and hustle me off to a moonlit wall." Only in the last sentence of
> this long paragraph does he remember to refer to himself as "the
> chloroformed scholar," without explaining why Zemblan revolutionaries
would
> have any interest in Charles Kinbote.
>
> In the middle of that paragraph is the remarkable admission that at night,
> watching the Shade house, he wished John Shade would have another heart
> attack, which would give him an opportunity to play a heroic and
comforting
> role.
>
> We also learn more about Bob, the disappointingly heterosexual roommate
> during Kinbote's first months in New Wye.
>
> The note ends with two anecdotes that illuminate the dimensions of
Kinbote's
> paranoia and mental disarray. He may have some reason, believing himself
to
> be a deposed king, to be fearful of revolutionary assassins, but he is
also
> spooked by the Goldsworth cat wearing a "neck bow of white silk which it
> could certainly never have put on all by itself," and he misinterprets a
> note about his bad breath as a taunt about hallucinations.
>
> Boyd (in *Nabokov's Pale Fire: The Magic of Artistic Discovery*) shows
> persuasively that it was probably the mysterious Gerald Emerald who tied
the
> silk bow on the cat-as a practical joke-and slipped the note about
halitosis
> into Kinbote's pocket.
>
> Finally, we meet Balthasar, the gardener, Prince of Loam. Compare Marquis
de
> Sod.
>
> Rodnaya Zembla (p 97) = Red Zembla?
>
> Heliotropes (Heliotropium turgenevi) (p 98). MW10 says, with some
> definitions abridged for the convenience of the typist:
>
> heliotrope. n. [L. heliotropium, fr. Gk. heliotropion, helio [.] +
tropos
> turn; fr. its flowers turning toward the sun.] 1. any of a genus
> (Heliotropium) of herbs or shrubs of the borage family-compare garden
> heliotrope. 2. bloodstone. 3. A variable color averaging a moderate to
> reddish purple.
>
> garden heliotrope. A tall rhizomatous valerian widely cultivated for its
> fragrant tiny flowers and for its roots which yield the drug valerian.
>
> valerian. [2.] A drug consisting of the dried rootstock and roots of the
> garden heliotrope formerly used as a carminative and sedative.
>
> carminative. Expelling gas from the alimentary canal so as to relieve
colic
> or griping.
>
> Long way to go for a fart joke, I'm thinking. Oh, and:
>
> bloodstone. A green chalcedony sprinkled with red spots resembling
> blood-called also heliotrope.
>
> Shit:
>
> chalcedony. A translucent quartz that is commonly pale blue or gray with
> nearly waxlike luster.
>
> Somewhere in there is a Turgenev connection, but damned if I can find it.
I
> do recall reading in Boyd that Turgenev was a friend of a Russian writer
> named Botkin.
>
> In any case the heliotrope, with its flowers that turn toward the sun, its
> roots that will both relieve gas and calm you down, and its red and green
> color scheme, is powerfully connected to memories of home for Kinbote. A
> home that is, perhaps not incidentally, not a palace but a "house of
painted
> wood" with a garden bench.
>
> D.C.
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Mon, 25 Aug 2003 00:22:16 -0400
> From: "Don Corathers" <gumbo@fuse.net>
> Subject: NPPF Comm2: The poet king
>
> Line 70: The new TV (p 98)
>
> The eight-line variant Kinbote reports on here, with its Zemblan subject
> matter that is completely foreign to the rest of the poem, its
> moon-June-spoon rhymes, and its meter tripping over the natuural accents
of
> the words, was fabricated by C.K. If you're not convinced by the
clumsiness
> of the forgery, check the entry for variants in the index.
>
> D.C.
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Sun, 24 Aug 2003 22:13:03 -0700 (PDT)
> From: Mark Wright AIA <mwaia@yahoo.com>
> Subject: Re: NPPF Comm2: Often
>
> Howdy
>
> Let's stretch way out for a few low-hanging P or GR references:
> a. Heliotrope is, of course "hard to obtain".
> b. There's that ever popular red/green magenta/green
> lime-green-in-wit-your-rozay color scheme again.
> c. Drugs!
> d. "A long way to go for a fart joke, I'm thinking" sounds like a
> complaint one might make about P. For my money, the farther one has to
> go for a fart joke the more pleasant the room is likely to be, though I
> confess I'd happily walk a mile for a really first-rate flatulence
> jape. Humbert Humbert refers to the discomfort of a "trapped afflatus"
> somewhere in Lolita; the ShorterOED offers a single definition --- "the
> communication of supernatural knowledge; divine impulse; (esp. poetic)
> inspiration" from a latin root meaning the act of blowing or breathing
> on. Humbert doesn't know what the word really means, only what it
> sounds like. I presume Nabokov knew the correct definition and was
> having fun with a Phony Phart Joke. The stinker! The Delphic Sibyl
> must've had her nose right in the old Apollonian cobblepot.
>
> Is there more? Could it possibly matter? Heliotrope is, like
> pfeffernuss, an inherently silly word and always good for a smile.
>
> Mark
>
>
> > Heliotropes (Heliotropium turgenevi) (p 98). MW10 says, with some
> > definitions abridged for the convenience of the typist:
> >
> > heliotrope. n. [L. heliotropium, fr. Gk. heliotropion, helio [.] +
> > tropos
> > turn; fr. its flowers turning toward the sun.] 1. any of a genus
> > (Heliotropium) of herbs or shrubs of the borage family-compare garden
> > heliotrope. 2. bloodstone. 3. A variable color averaging a moderate
> > to
> > reddish purple.
> >
> > garden heliotrope. A tall rhizomatous valerian widely cultivated for
> > its
> > fragrant tiny flowers and for its roots which yield the drug
> > valerian.
> >
> > valerian. [2.] A drug consisting of the dried rootstock and roots of
> > the
> > garden heliotrope formerly used as a carminative and sedative.
> >
> > carminative. Expelling gas from the alimentary canal so as to relieve
> > colic
> > or griping.
> >
> > Long way to go for a fart joke, I'm thinking. Oh, and:
> >
> > bloodstone. A green chalcedony sprinkled with red spots resembling
> > blood-called also heliotrope.
> >(snip)
> > In any case the heliotrope, with its flowers that turn toward the
> > sun, its
> > roots that will both relieve gas and calm you down, and its red and
> > green
> > color scheme, is powerfully connected to memories of home for
> > Kinbote.
>
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software
> http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Mon, 25 Aug 2003 01:20:03 -0400
> From: "Don Corathers" <gumbo@fuse.net>
> Subject: Fw: NPPF Comm2: The poet king
>
> Resending. This seems to have got lost in the server somewhere.
>
> - ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Don Corathers" <gumbo@fuse.net>
> To: <pynchon-l@waste.org>
> Sent: Monday, August 25, 2003 12:22 AM
> Subject: NPPF Comm2: The poet king
>
>
> > Line 70: The new TV (p 98)
> >
> > The eight-line variant Kinbote reports on here, with its Zemblan subject
> > matter that is completely foreign to the rest of the poem, its
> > moon-June-spoon rhymes, and its meter tripping over the natuural accents
> of
> > the words, was fabricated by C.K. If you're not convinced by the
> clumsiness
> > of the forgery, check the entry for variants in the index.
> >
> > D.C.
> >
>
> ------------------------------
>
> End of pynchon-l-digest V2 #3503
> ********************************
>
> To unsubscribe, send a message to waste@waste.org
> with "unsubscribe pynchon-l-digest" in the message body.
From: "pynchon-l-digest" <owner-pynchon-l-digest@waste.org>
To: <pynchon-l-digest@waste.org>
Sent: Monday, August 25, 2003 12:00 AM
Subject: pynchon-l-digest V2 #3503
>
> pynchon-l-digest Monday, August 25 2003 Volume 02 : Number
3503
>
>
>
> Re: NPPF: Notes C.1-4 - C.42
> NPPF Re: Notes C.47-48 (part three)
> NPPF: playlist addition
> NPPF Comm 2
> NPPF Comm2: Ginkgo
> NPPF Comm2: Primal
> NPPF Comm2: Often
> NPPF Comm2: The poet king
> Re: NPPF Comm2: Often
> Fw: NPPF Comm2: The poet king
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Date: 24 Aug 2003 08:21:20 -0400
> From: Paul Mackin <paul.mackin@verizon.net>
> Subject: Re: NPPF: Notes C.1-4 - C.42
>
> On Sun, 2003-08-24 at 01:40, jbor wrote:
> > on 24/8/03 1:14 PM, Paul Mackin wrote:
> >
> > > Why should K deliberately distort S's thought? Seems to me most
likely
> > > that K honestly interpreted the bird as surviving. Why lie about
> > > something that how nothing to do with the price of eggs in Zembla.
> >
> > I agree with this. I don't think that Kinbote is *deliberately*
distorting
> > Shade's thoughts or lying; I do think that, in his haste to find and
> > elaborate on references to Charles the Beloved and Zembla in the poem,
he
> > accidentally misses or misinterprets many of the literal references, and
> > some of the structural and thematic technicalities, which are evident.
>
> This is often the case but on the bird I think he might has gotten it
> right.
>
> >
> > Like the inclusion of the sentence about the "very loud amusement park
right
> > in front of my lodgings" on the first page of the Preface, by way of
> > Kinbote's unintentional misreading of the bird's fate in this first note
> > Nabokov foregrounds for the reader that something is askew, that there
are
> > rather large gaps between what Shade intended the poem to mean and what
> > Kinbote thinks or decides it means.
> >
> > That's the way I read it, anyway.
> >
>
> To my way of thinking the K's commentary serves several functions:
>
> To show K is on the verge of a mental breakdown. (a cry for help maybe)
>
> To tell two quite interesting additional stories (additional to S's
> story)
>
> And last but not least to serve the normal and essential purpose of an
> editor's commentary on a long narrative poem. It is there to helps us
> understand "Pale Fire," though admittedly in quite an unusual manner.
>
> Now on with the read.
>
> P.
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Sun, 24 Aug 2003 18:48:11 -0700
> From: "s~Z" <keithsz@concentric.net>
> Subject: NPPF Re: Notes C.47-48 (part three)
>
> "Dear Jesus, do something" is a plea for relief from CK's obsession with
> young males.
>
> ------------------------------
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Sun, 24 Aug 2003 22:54:03 -0400
> From: "Don Corathers" <gumbo@fuse.net>
> Subject: NPPF Comm 2
>
> I'll post the first set of notes on the second section of the Commentary
> tonight, and more as I can squeeze em in between the erratic but
persistent
> demands of the day job.
>
> Don
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Sun, 24 Aug 2003 23:00:39 -0400
> From: "Don Corathers" <gumbo@fuse.net>
> Subject: NPPF Comm2: Ginkgo
>
> Line 49: shagbark (p 93)
>
> Still maintaining, in these early notes, at least perfunctory attention to
> his editorial responsibility to the poet and his work, Kinbote correctly
> defines shagbark as a kind of hickory. He then deftly finds a way to fit
> Shade into his personal narrative by mentioning a poem that Queen Disa had
> sent him.
>
> Jacaranda: pinnate-leaved tropical tree. Perhaps Disa became acquainted
with
> these trees in the South of France, because it's unlikely she saw any
> growing in the Zemblan climate.
>
> Maidenhair: another name for ginkgo.
>
> Hebe's Cup. Hebe (pronounced HEE-be) was the Greek goddess of youth,
> daughter of Zeus and Hera, wife of Herakles, cupbearer to the gods.
>
> "The Sacred Tree." Title might be a reference to T.S. Eliot's 1920 book of
> essays on criticism, *The Sacred Wood*. Ginkgo biloba, native to China and
> Japan and believed to be the oldest surviving seed-bearing plant, is
> commonly planted around temples and other religious buildings. The
> twin-lobed leaf does in fact resemble a butterfly. In this instance the
> butterfly is "ill-spread" presumably because the leaf has begun to dry and
> curl. But why is it an "old-fashioned" butterfly?
>
> It might be taken as coincidence, or it might be a matter of interest to
the
> Shadeans among us, that Kinbote, apparently only concerned with showing us
> another example of Shade's poetic facility with trees, has chosen to quote
a
> work that includes an image that Shade uses frequently in "Pale Fire."
>
> Muscat: any of several cultivated grapes used in making wine-that would be
> muscatel-and raisins. (Merriam Webster 10th-don't have easy access to an
> OED). Kinbote characteristically ignores Shade's evocation of the color of
> the grape and instead sees in the word an image of pursuit.
>
> On the other hand, and it seems like there's always another hand in this
> novel, muscat is etymologically related to musk, which my MW10 traces to
the
> Sanskrit words for mouse (as Kinbote's note suggests) and for testicle (as
> it does not).
>
> Kinbote, incidentally, describes a stand of ginkgoes at the end of
> Shakespeare Avenue in New Wye. We've been told elsewhere that Shakespeare
> Avenue is lined with specimens of every tree mentioned in the canon. Since
> the ginkgo wasn't named by Europeans until 1711, and thus was apparently
> unknown to Westerners until that time, it seems unlikely that Shakespeare
> knew or wrote about the tree. (A concordance search turns up nada for
either
> ginkgo or maidenhair.) Goethe, however, did:
>
> Ginkgo Biloba
> (Translation unattributed)
>
> The leaf of this Eastern tree
> Which has been entrusted to my garden
> Offers a feast of secret significance,
> For the edification of the initiate.
>
> Is it one living thing
> That has become divided within itself?
> Are these two who have chosen each other,
> So that we know them as one?
>
> I think I have found the right answer
> To these questions;
> Do my songs not make you feel
> That I am both one and twain?
>
>
> In the original German:
>
> Dieses Baums Blatt, der von Osten
> Meinem Garten anvertraut,
> Gibt geheimen Sinn zu kosten,
> Wie's den Wissenden erbaut.
>
> Ist es ein lebendig Wesen,
> Das sich in sich selbst getrennt?
> Sind es zwei, die sich erlesen,
> Daъ man sie als eines kennt?
>
> Solche Fragen zu erwidern
> Fand ich wohl den rechten Sinn:
> FЭhlst Du nicht an meinen Liedern,
> Daъ ich eins und doppelt bin?
>
> D.C.
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Sun, 24 Aug 2003 23:04:00 -0400
> From: "Don Corathers" <gumbo@fuse.net>
> Subject: NPPF Comm2: Primal
>
> Line 57: The phantom of my little daughter's swing (p 94)
>
> Kinbote is remarkably oblivious to the emotional freight of this line.
>
> Primal Scene: That would be the child witnessing his parents in flagrante
> delicto. Clearly Shade shares Nabokov's contempt ("future patient of the
> future quack") for Freud.
>
> Wikipedia entry for Freud, without which I would not have known that the
> Great Man's middle name was Schlomo:
>
> http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigmund_Freud
>
> The seven variant lines Kinbote includes in the note might have actually
fit
> after line 60-replacing the "TV's huge paperclip" business with a
> continuation of the description of the interior of the house that begins
the
> stanza. The narrative flow would have also worked nicely, if a bit
> perversely, at the end of the variant, with the reference to the "Primal
> Scene" preceding "I was an infant when my parents died." (Although another
> line would have been required to complete the last couplet in the
variant.)
>
> One could surmise that Shade abandoned the variant because he decided the
> arch and flippant assault on psychoanalysis was too abrupt a mood change
> from the melancholy invocation of Hazel in line 57. Or more darkly, the
> Oedipus/Electra thing was just a little bit too close to the bone.
>
> The Keithians would want me to point out that if Shade himself had
observed
> the Primal Scene as a child, he would have been walking in on Maud. And
> somebody.
>
>
> Line 61: TV's huge paperclip (p 94)
>
> Kinbote argues, with no apparent basis other than his dislike for Sybil
and
> Hurley, that they have misdated a short poem in which Shade mourns his
> daughter's death. Actually it is quite plausible that Shade wrote "The
> Swing" in June as a sort of a study for a part of the larger poem.
> Certainly Sybil is in a better position than Kinbote to know when it was
> written.
>
> It's true, as Kinbote suggests, that the images in the short piece-the
> television antenna, the chirping bird, and the swing-were transplanted
more
> or less intact into "Pale Fire," two of them into the space that would
have
> been occupied by the variant that's included in the line 57 note. The one
> image in "The Swing" that also occurred in the variant-the doorknob-was
> abandoned. Does this mean something? Not as far as I can tell.
>
> There is something curious about this whole swing business, though. In
"Pale
> Fire" it's a "phantom of my little daughter's swing" that "gently seems to
> sway." That is, it's not there any more. In "The Swing," it's "the empty
> little swing that swings under the tree," a real object hanging from a
> branch. Hazel was 23 when she died. Doesn't it seem likely the swing would
> have been taken down long before then? Or the rope rotted through?
>
> D.C.
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Sun, 24 Aug 2003 23:55:39 -0400
> From: "Don Corathers" <gumbo@fuse.net>
> Subject: NPPF Comm2: Often
>
> Line 62: often (p 95)
>
> Kinbote converts an adverb to his own use, without so much as a
> fare-the-well to the poem from which he plucked it. In this three-plus
page
> note we learn a good deal more about K's paranoia and instability, and his
> imagined identity.
>
> In the first half of the note he reminds us "how given to regicide
Zemblans
> are." The citizens of Zembla have killed nineteen members of the royal
> family in a single century, an average of one assassination every five
years
> and three months. Although he is still trying to maintain the fiction of
> referring to the deposed king in the third person, he offers this
> information as a preface to a detailed discussion of how personally
fearful
> he is, "as if only now living consciously through those perilous nights in
> my country, where at any moment a company of jittery revolutionists might
> enter and hustle me off to a moonlit wall." Only in the last sentence of
> this long paragraph does he remember to refer to himself as "the
> chloroformed scholar," without explaining why Zemblan revolutionaries
would
> have any interest in Charles Kinbote.
>
> In the middle of that paragraph is the remarkable admission that at night,
> watching the Shade house, he wished John Shade would have another heart
> attack, which would give him an opportunity to play a heroic and
comforting
> role.
>
> We also learn more about Bob, the disappointingly heterosexual roommate
> during Kinbote's first months in New Wye.
>
> The note ends with two anecdotes that illuminate the dimensions of
Kinbote's
> paranoia and mental disarray. He may have some reason, believing himself
to
> be a deposed king, to be fearful of revolutionary assassins, but he is
also
> spooked by the Goldsworth cat wearing a "neck bow of white silk which it
> could certainly never have put on all by itself," and he misinterprets a
> note about his bad breath as a taunt about hallucinations.
>
> Boyd (in *Nabokov's Pale Fire: The Magic of Artistic Discovery*) shows
> persuasively that it was probably the mysterious Gerald Emerald who tied
the
> silk bow on the cat-as a practical joke-and slipped the note about
halitosis
> into Kinbote's pocket.
>
> Finally, we meet Balthasar, the gardener, Prince of Loam. Compare Marquis
de
> Sod.
>
> Rodnaya Zembla (p 97) = Red Zembla?
>
> Heliotropes (Heliotropium turgenevi) (p 98). MW10 says, with some
> definitions abridged for the convenience of the typist:
>
> heliotrope. n. [L. heliotropium, fr. Gk. heliotropion, helio [.] +
tropos
> turn; fr. its flowers turning toward the sun.] 1. any of a genus
> (Heliotropium) of herbs or shrubs of the borage family-compare garden
> heliotrope. 2. bloodstone. 3. A variable color averaging a moderate to
> reddish purple.
>
> garden heliotrope. A tall rhizomatous valerian widely cultivated for its
> fragrant tiny flowers and for its roots which yield the drug valerian.
>
> valerian. [2.] A drug consisting of the dried rootstock and roots of the
> garden heliotrope formerly used as a carminative and sedative.
>
> carminative. Expelling gas from the alimentary canal so as to relieve
colic
> or griping.
>
> Long way to go for a fart joke, I'm thinking. Oh, and:
>
> bloodstone. A green chalcedony sprinkled with red spots resembling
> blood-called also heliotrope.
>
> Shit:
>
> chalcedony. A translucent quartz that is commonly pale blue or gray with
> nearly waxlike luster.
>
> Somewhere in there is a Turgenev connection, but damned if I can find it.
I
> do recall reading in Boyd that Turgenev was a friend of a Russian writer
> named Botkin.
>
> In any case the heliotrope, with its flowers that turn toward the sun, its
> roots that will both relieve gas and calm you down, and its red and green
> color scheme, is powerfully connected to memories of home for Kinbote. A
> home that is, perhaps not incidentally, not a palace but a "house of
painted
> wood" with a garden bench.
>
> D.C.
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Mon, 25 Aug 2003 00:22:16 -0400
> From: "Don Corathers" <gumbo@fuse.net>
> Subject: NPPF Comm2: The poet king
>
> Line 70: The new TV (p 98)
>
> The eight-line variant Kinbote reports on here, with its Zemblan subject
> matter that is completely foreign to the rest of the poem, its
> moon-June-spoon rhymes, and its meter tripping over the natuural accents
of
> the words, was fabricated by C.K. If you're not convinced by the
clumsiness
> of the forgery, check the entry for variants in the index.
>
> D.C.
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Sun, 24 Aug 2003 22:13:03 -0700 (PDT)
> From: Mark Wright AIA <mwaia@yahoo.com>
> Subject: Re: NPPF Comm2: Often
>
> Howdy
>
> Let's stretch way out for a few low-hanging P or GR references:
> a. Heliotrope is, of course "hard to obtain".
> b. There's that ever popular red/green magenta/green
> lime-green-in-wit-your-rozay color scheme again.
> c. Drugs!
> d. "A long way to go for a fart joke, I'm thinking" sounds like a
> complaint one might make about P. For my money, the farther one has to
> go for a fart joke the more pleasant the room is likely to be, though I
> confess I'd happily walk a mile for a really first-rate flatulence
> jape. Humbert Humbert refers to the discomfort of a "trapped afflatus"
> somewhere in Lolita; the ShorterOED offers a single definition --- "the
> communication of supernatural knowledge; divine impulse; (esp. poetic)
> inspiration" from a latin root meaning the act of blowing or breathing
> on. Humbert doesn't know what the word really means, only what it
> sounds like. I presume Nabokov knew the correct definition and was
> having fun with a Phony Phart Joke. The stinker! The Delphic Sibyl
> must've had her nose right in the old Apollonian cobblepot.
>
> Is there more? Could it possibly matter? Heliotrope is, like
> pfeffernuss, an inherently silly word and always good for a smile.
>
> Mark
>
>
> > Heliotropes (Heliotropium turgenevi) (p 98). MW10 says, with some
> > definitions abridged for the convenience of the typist:
> >
> > heliotrope. n. [L. heliotropium, fr. Gk. heliotropion, helio [.] +
> > tropos
> > turn; fr. its flowers turning toward the sun.] 1. any of a genus
> > (Heliotropium) of herbs or shrubs of the borage family-compare garden
> > heliotrope. 2. bloodstone. 3. A variable color averaging a moderate
> > to
> > reddish purple.
> >
> > garden heliotrope. A tall rhizomatous valerian widely cultivated for
> > its
> > fragrant tiny flowers and for its roots which yield the drug
> > valerian.
> >
> > valerian. [2.] A drug consisting of the dried rootstock and roots of
> > the
> > garden heliotrope formerly used as a carminative and sedative.
> >
> > carminative. Expelling gas from the alimentary canal so as to relieve
> > colic
> > or griping.
> >
> > Long way to go for a fart joke, I'm thinking. Oh, and:
> >
> > bloodstone. A green chalcedony sprinkled with red spots resembling
> > blood-called also heliotrope.
> >(snip)
> > In any case the heliotrope, with its flowers that turn toward the
> > sun, its
> > roots that will both relieve gas and calm you down, and its red and
> > green
> > color scheme, is powerfully connected to memories of home for
> > Kinbote.
>
> __________________________________
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>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Mon, 25 Aug 2003 01:20:03 -0400
> From: "Don Corathers" <gumbo@fuse.net>
> Subject: Fw: NPPF Comm2: The poet king
>
> Resending. This seems to have got lost in the server somewhere.
>
> - ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Don Corathers" <gumbo@fuse.net>
> To: <pynchon-l@waste.org>
> Sent: Monday, August 25, 2003 12:22 AM
> Subject: NPPF Comm2: The poet king
>
>
> > Line 70: The new TV (p 98)
> >
> > The eight-line variant Kinbote reports on here, with its Zemblan subject
> > matter that is completely foreign to the rest of the poem, its
> > moon-June-spoon rhymes, and its meter tripping over the natuural accents
> of
> > the words, was fabricated by C.K. If you're not convinced by the
> clumsiness
> > of the forgery, check the entry for variants in the index.
> >
> > D.C.
> >
>
> ------------------------------
>
> End of pynchon-l-digest V2 #3503
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