-------- Original Message --------
To Matt Roth
I read your previous posts about your "incest" theory and I take
advantage of your welcoming objections to criticize it. At first blush,
your idea seemed fairly attractive to me, because I think too that
there is
something not absolutely all right about Hazel and her father. But when
put
back in context, I'm afraid your theory collapses: this idea of a Shade-
Hazel incestuous relationship destroys the very coherence of the novel
and
as far as I can see, doesn't add anything to its meaning.
On the contrary, it turns it into a chaos; if there is such a
relationship between Shade and his daughter, even if it doesn't amount
to
more than John Shade's secretly lusting after his daughter, what do we
make
of his love (spiritual, sensuous, tender) for his wife? Given Shade's
description of Hazel, is it likely, is it plausible that he might
desire
her?
On the other hand, if VN had meant this situation as a metaphor of
Shade's self- love and narcissism, even self-devouring as you suggest
at
some stage of your reasoning (based on the fact that Hazel resembles
John),
that would be very awkward and bizarre; it seems to me that VN finds
other
ways to point toward Shade's not being ONLY the responsible character
he
nonetheless is.
I believe this is what he does in the passage you studied (line 887
"Since
my biographer...." to line 938 "and slaves make hay between my mouth
and
nose")
These lines are about Shade's difficulties in getting rid of
his "gray stubble", about his hopeless struggle against "patch(es) of
prickliness". He also says that some sort of beard is "inveterate" in
him;
in other words, it is impossible for him to shave off all trace of a
beard.
Now, if we turn to Kinbote's comment to these lines (line 894:a
king), we notice that it is mainly about resemblances between a bearded
professor and a beardless king. Kinbote endeavours to deny any
resemblance
between himself and the King XC and John Shade helps him rout the
"visiting
German lecturer" by taking him along into a maze of resemblances
reflecting themselves as differences (p208 penguins classics:
"resemblances
are the shadows of differences...)
So, on the one hand we have an incognito king trying, not quite
successfully -the German lecturer is "tenacious"- to deny any
resemblance
with his former beardless self and on the other hand a poet sitting
like a
king in his bath trying, not quite successfully either, to get rid of
all
remnants of his own stubble
If we add Shade's pronouncement that "kings do not die, they only
disappear", if we add Kinbote resenting Shade for saying SO LITTLE
ABOUT
ZEMBLA, WHILE SHAVING HIS STUBBLE OFF (comment to line 937), and
finally if
we take into account the fact that Kinbote echoes the German lecturer's
reaction :"strange, strange..." as both "catch the eerie note that
ha(s)
throbbed and (is) gone" (p209 p214), we must conclude -at least I do-
that
some sort of parellel, some sort of identity between Shade and Kinbote
is
showing through, , however hard Shade tries to erase it.
Besides, in the first part of Canto four about the methods of
composing, Shade warns the reader that he is able to split, and that
such a
splitting results in "a secret stamp / The Shade impress (lines
884/5).Immediately after, he proceeds to show it to us and he works
the "mirages, miracles" he has announced.
Also, I think that if we read this passage as I propose, the lines
902/3 (Now I shall speak of evil and despair / As none has spoken) make
more sense, as well as the sudden change of tone, the sudden lightning
of
pathos in the middle of an otherwise rather playful tone: it is indeed
a
very painful process to scrape every morning the stubborn stubble that
keeps growing = the stubborn Kinbote that keeps showing through.
(this sudden change of tone is a device VN used very successfully in
Despair, signalling a hidden meaning beneath the surface... but I won't
go
into that now)
Of course I don't mean that Shade and Kinbote are one and the same
character on the plane of the novel; that would be absurd; but I think
that
my reading helps understand the two mysterious lines ending the shaving
passage: lines 939/940:
"Man's life as commentary to abstruse
Unfinished poem"
Kinbote's and Shade's lives are commentaries (footnotes, as Kinbote
puts
it) to something or someone else , something or someone that can't be
approached directly; "They are, these lives, but commentaries to the
main
subject" "and that is the nearest one ever can approach a human truth"
(RLSK).
A king trying to mask/ hide / destroy / sink his identity by
growing a beard, conversely, as if in a mirror a poet trying to
mask/...
his identity by shaving off his stubble... These attempts at destroying
one's identity may seem a very cruel process inflicted upon oneself but
VN
makes it clear that it is not.
First, Shade says that "kings do not die -they only disappear": it
is not a psychological suicide.
Secondly, this very disappearance is not a masochistic process of
contrition, self-punishment, mortification, resignation to the sad,
drab,
dreary so-called "principle of reality" but on the contrary a daring
and
glamorous feat. This is what is expressed by Shade when he retorts to
the
Pink who said that the King had "escaped disguised as a nun". Shade:"
Let
us respect facts...The truth is that the King walked out of the palace,
and
crossed the mountains, and left the country, not in the black garb of a
pale spinster, but dressed as an athlete in scarlet wool" (p209).
Laurence Hochard