Reading about "vanishing point" in
S.E.Sweeney's essay [ as an aspect of VN's alphabetic imagery and
recursive narrative structure in "The V-Shaped Paradigm: Nabokov and Pynchon,”
Cycnos 12.2 (1995): 173-80] I enjoyed her various examples concerning
VN's employ of "V- related" images ( the ordered flight of
cranes, the tail of a swift), sibilant acute sounds, printed words and
names (Sevastian). A character may be referred to by a plain
"V." (TRLSK) or as "Victor" (Pnin, Spring in Fialta), "Van Veen" (the first
and last letters in both double as VN).
While I visited Oxford in July 2007 ( for the
Transitional Nabokov encounter), after I indicated that I needed "a
table for two" in a small pub, I was almost thrown out of the
establishment. My gesture was similar to Churchill's V-sign, but my
crossed fingers were displayed along with the "V" in what was interpreted
as an offensive signal. I remember Nabokov once described this
"offensive" sign drawn on a poster that was lying behind one of
his very innocent characters. I tried to find it, in vain. And yet, during
my search I came across a code-signal employed by the Karlists, in
Pale Fire, one which bungling Gradus got wrong because his
fingers shaped a V-sign...Perhaps VN's various
convergences into velvety "V" do not always mean a "positive
indication"...
Pale Fire Karlist's correct
code: "The fingers of his [Oswin
Bretwit] left hand involuntarily started to twitch as if he
were pulling a kikapoo puppet over it [...]A Karlist agent, revealing himself to
a superior, was expected to make a sign corresponding to the X
(for Xavier) in the one-hand alphabet of deaf mutes: the hand held in horizontal
position with the index curved rather flaccidly and the rest of the fingers
bunched (many have criticized it for looking too droopy; it has now been
replaced by a more virile combination)"
Gradus mistake:
"Sheepishly
contemplating his five stubby strangers, Gradus went through the motions of an
incompetent and half-paralyzed shadowgrapher and finally made an
uncertain V-for-Victory sign. Bretwit’s smile began to
fade."