E M Farrell sends the folowing:
Laurence Hochard wrote:
"Crystal to crystal" says Shade, twinning his watch glass and the snowflake and giving birth in the reader's mind to the image of the falling snowflake fusing with its reflection on the wrist glass, two becoming one; and finally they observe two lads similarly dressed in colourful winter clothes -retrospectively evoking Charles Xavier escape in a red winter outfit.
Aside from these arresting clonal images, the reader feels that this scene has a strange charge to it -I think every PF reader remembers it even after a first reading- : the stillness (they stand on the porch), the deliberate slowness (Kinbote pulls his gloves on, finger by finger) the suspended time (Shade is waiting for his wife who is apparently late) ... something strange is taking place: a parthénogenetic split giving birth to Kinbote and Shade.
I see the "two becoming one" in this scene a little differently. In the poem (line 185-195) Shade is paring his nails, associating his fingers with things that are important in his life and end up the themes of his poem. His thumb, the grocer's son, is his life in New Wye, the people and growing up. His forefinger, Starover Blue (Observatory's turquoise dome), is the college, his work and learning. The middle finger, a tall priest, is religion and current religious thought (he doesn't have a high opinion of it.) The ring finger, the old flirt, is his wife and the pinky, Hazel. His hand represents the poem.
The scene in the foreword has the commentator imagining Shade's reaction to his commentary. Finger by finger, it wraps around Shade's poem like a glove ("That was a thorough job"). Like "Crystal to crystal", John Shade's life meshes with the commentator's story.
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Susan Elizabeth Sweeney
Co-Editor, NABOKV-L