Subject
thoughts: 4000 times
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Date
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I wonder if anybody has ever noticed a slight inconsistency in Kinbote's account of his spying on the Shades.in his note to line 181:
"On another trip to the bathroom one hour and a half later, at sunrise, I found the light transferred to the bedroom, and smiled indulgently, for, according to my deductions, only two nights had passed since the three-thousand-nine-hundred-ninety-ninth time - but no matter."
He alludes to "At least / four thousand times your pillow has been creased / by our two heads (l 275/6)" of course, but at the time of his spying, he couldn't know since he hadn't read the poem and therefore, he can't have smiled indulgently; he can only do so in retrospect, when writing his commentary.
Could the inconsistecy be deliberate, here as well as about Kinbote's birthdate? Did VN want to discreetly blur the time landmarks so as to maintain ambiguity as to the identity of the characters? Or are they simply mistakes?
(Apologies if the subject has already been discussed on the forum; I searched the archives but didn't find anything)
Laurence Hochard
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"On another trip to the bathroom one hour and a half later, at sunrise, I found the light transferred to the bedroom, and smiled indulgently, for, according to my deductions, only two nights had passed since the three-thousand-nine-hundred-ninety-ninth time - but no matter."
He alludes to "At least / four thousand times your pillow has been creased / by our two heads (l 275/6)" of course, but at the time of his spying, he couldn't know since he hadn't read the poem and therefore, he can't have smiled indulgently; he can only do so in retrospect, when writing his commentary.
Could the inconsistecy be deliberate, here as well as about Kinbote's birthdate? Did VN want to discreetly blur the time landmarks so as to maintain ambiguity as to the identity of the characters? Or are they simply mistakes?
(Apologies if the subject has already been discussed on the forum; I searched the archives but didn't find anything)
Laurence Hochard
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
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
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/