----- Original Message -----
From: Carolyn Kunin
To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum
Sent: Saturday, November 23, 2002 10:16 PM
Subject: Re: Andrew Brown on nun & chronology


A challenge to those who believe that the roommate is Hazel's:
Do you see any significance in the nun who turns up in Kinbote's commentary to line 894 ("the widely circulated stuff about the nun") or any relationship between this nun and the roommate who has become one?

Andrew Brown's response:

As for the nun disguise rumor mentioned in the commentary and the future nun in the poem, the time frame doesn't lend itself to their being the same person. If an actual King Charles had escaped from Zembla disguised as a nun, he could not have arrived at Wordsmith in the form of a "future nun" while Hazel attended school.

Dear Mr Brown,

I did not mean to suggest that Charles had become Hazel's roommate (bizarre idea and as you say, chronologically impossible since Hazel's death precedes the revolution in Zembla), rather that the nun who turns up in the commentary is Kinbote/Shade's memory of the roommate/nun. To me it was interesting that Shade associates the nun with a feeling of discomfiture.

How do you interpret the second appearance of the nun in the commentary is what I am asking.

Carolyn Kunin