The scene of the old man dying alone in a motel while dark hands from the past offer gems always seemed to me to hint toward the possibility of Kinbote being a ghost. This supernatural existence would be one similarity CK shares with Hazel. But I always quailed at the thought of following through on this idea, which would require explaining all the dialogues and physical appearences that Kinbote makes. I think it could be done, though.
AndrewBrown
On 8/17/06 9:35 PM, "Nabokv-L" <nabokv-l@UTK.EDU> wrote:
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: shoe and finger nail parings
Date: Thu, 17 Aug 2006 21:58:59 -0300
From: jansymello <jansy@aetern.us> <mailto:jansy@aetern.us>
To: Nabokv-L <nabokv-l@utk.edu> <mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu>
Dear Peter Dale,
The merry-go-round - noisy carrousel - is also linked to death. It may change into the grumble of heavy trucks or tourist cars camping in Cedarn but we mustn't forget Shade's lines 609-614:
"Nor can one help the exile, the old man/ Dying in a motel, with the loud fan/ Revolving in the torrid prairie night/ And, from the outside, bit os colored light/ Reaching his bed like dark hands from the past/ Offering gems, and death is coming fast"...
You wrote: "the one shoe motif in Cindarella, which you associate with Shade's brown shoe, in folklore appears (the argument is made by Carlo Ginsburg in his Storia notturna 1989, esp.Pt3.2 pp.208ff) to refer to death."
I won't be able to get the text you indicated (Ginsburg's) but, if not exactly the shoe, Cinderella herself seems to refer to death when one follows various different authors. Take Freud, for example.
In his text "The theme of the three caskets" (1913), Standard Edition, vol.XII, Freud elaborates on certains aspects of King Lear and The Merchant of Venice to show how the youngest of three daughters, in folktales and myths, is associated with silence, hiding and death. Cinderella is the youngest of three, Apuleius' Psyché, Shakespeare's Cordelia. He also reffers to the three goddesses in the judgement of Paris episode in "La Belle Hélène" and ends up with the three Parcae ( the third one is Atropos).
Nabokov often mentioned three misterious ladies in "ADA" and even Leda was associated with "three swans" or "three eggs".
Myself, I didn't make the link bt. shoe and death, as you found it described in Ginsburg. I thought about slippers and shoes as some kind of "invariant", something that often makes subtle appearances in various Nabokovian novels ( Pnin, Pale Fire, Ada, Lolita and particularly in one short-story the title of which I cannot recall ). For me, up to now, the shoe was related to survival of a special kind.
Your question ( would it be the third one?), relegated to the post-scriptum, is very complex. Without even trying to scratch the surface of the issue you raised, but following my motion to pick up Freud, I'd suggest that any authorial control stops short when unconscious memories or desires make their presence felt, as ( so I profess) they usually do - at all times.
Jansy
Search the Nabokv-L archive at UCSB <http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html>
Contact the Editors <mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu>
All private editorial communications, without exception, are read by both co-editors.
Visit Zembla <http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm>
View Nabokv-L Policies <http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm>