John Mella: "re the literal-minded posting which makes Aunt Maud equivalent with the "wench" at the end of Canto One. pudenda and all. That linkage is offensive, not at all in the spirit of the poem (and the book) and, finally, simply unfounded...Once this type of literal equivalency begins, there's no stopping. Bring your own hobby-horses. Ride to perdition."
 
Jansy Mello:  Although I cannot but agree with RSGwynn and J.Mella concerning poetry, metaphor versus literal-minds, there is a point in C.Kunin's observation: why spare Shade from the kind of investigation ( already outlined by VN himself, through Kinbote) Nabokov's other works stimulate commentators to dwell on?
 
The problem with Twigg's linkage is not that "it is offensive, not at all in the spirit of the poem", but that it is "simply unfounded" ( as it seems, I did entertain his hypothesis before I felt I was able to reject it)
 
Should I remind you that Shade mentions Flemish hells, Brueghel's paintings, the Apocalypse...that he includes references to Rabelais and Swift? There is ugliness, deformity, excess, perversion, cruelty. ( including Shade's after-life mountain-fountain Kitsch.) Shade is definitely not a very nice guy ( his description of his sick daughter in not charitable at all, mainly selfishly cruel).

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