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Re: THOUGHTS: Stillicide in PF, another source?
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Dear Matt,
If memory serves VN cites Meyers in "The Vane Sisters." I
discuss this somewhere but not sure where. Maybe it will come to me.
Best, Don (Johnson)
-----------------------------
Quoting NABOKV-L <NABOKV-L@HOLYCROSS.EDU>:
> In line 35 of "PF" Shade uses the word stillicide. Kinbote points us to a
> definition similar to that in Webster's 2nd (cavesdrop, eavesdrop) and to a
> poem by Hardy, which turns out to be "Friends Beyond." But doesn't this
> all seem a bit too easy? I would like to propose, for your entertainment,
> that VN, via Kinbote, is leading us astray. Rather than pointing to Hardy--
> or ONLY to Hardy--VN may also be sending us to another writer and to
> another concept. Follow:
>
> 1. In Chambers's Encyclopaedia (1873) the following is included in the
> entry for Servitude: (borrowed from Roman Law by Scottish Law)"the urban
> rights are stillicide, light, oneris ferendi, etc. Stillicide is the right
> to have the rain from one's roof to drop on another's land or house." As I
> understand it, this right had to be obtained from the landowner onto whose
> the land the drops would fall.
>
> 2. From Robert Louis Stevenson's "Apology for Idlers": "For my own part, I
> have attended a good many lectures in my time. I still remember that the
> spinning of a top is a case of Kinetic Stability. I still remember that
> Emphyteusis is not a disease, nor Stillicide a crime." Emphyteusis is a
> legal term referring to the right of one to lease land to another;
> therefore, it is likely that RLS is here referring to Stillicide in the
> legal/landowner sense, as well.
>
> Conclusions: The legal sense of Stillicide is important because it provides
> a metaphor for what happens in the novel. Kinbote is, via his commentary,
> catching the drops from the roof of his neighbor, Shade. Or else he is
> trying to spill his drops onto Shade's property. In either case, one man's
> property is spilling onto another's. The origin in Roman law is important
> because it tells us where the icicles are: on Judge Goldsworth's house.
> Remember, in C.47-48 Kinbote tells us that Hugh Warren Goldsworth was
> an "authority on Roman Law." Shade's vision moves from the "indoor scene"
> to "hickory leaves," and finally to the "svelte stilettos." He is clearly
> looking out the window of his house to the shagbark hickory and then to his
> neighbor Goldsworth's house. We should also note that the movement of
> Stillicide from Roman to Scottish law is akin to the movement of kin-bote
> (the legal concept, if not the term itself) which also was adopted by the
> Scots from the Romans.
>
> The RLS quote is important because it establishes that the legal sense of
> Stillicide may have been known to Nabokov, and it could establish one more
> tie between the author of Jekyll and Hyde and PF. On that score, I just
> recently became aware that RLS was a correspondent and colleauge of F. W.
> H. Myers, the author of _Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily
> Death_ (1903, 1907). VN mentions Myers in "The Vane Sisters" and in his
> unpublished notes that are in the Berg Collection. Given these mentions,
> and given the prominence of Myers's book in the world of psychical
> research, it seems very likely that VN read it. And if he did, he would
> have read, in the appendix to Chapter II, a letter to Myers from RLS, in
> which RLS tells of a kind of painful delirium he experienced, in which his
> primary personality argued with another consciousness, which he called "the
> other fellow": "I thought the pain was, or was connected with, a wisp or
> coil of some sort; I knew not of what it consisted, nor yet where it was,
> and cared not; only I thought, if the two ends were brought together, the
> pain would cease. [MR: A lemniscate???] Now all the time, with another part
> of my mind, which I venture to think was myself, I was fully alive to the
> absurdity of this idea, knew it to be a mark of impaired insanity [MR:
> amentia], and was engaged with my other self in a perpetual conflict."
>
> If you are interested, the rest of the letter, along with Myers book, can
> be found (and downloaded!) here:
> http://books.google.com/books?
> vid=0b5kBynB4WibtoSjyClI&id=FNyTaFSZFv4C&printsec=toc&dq=survival+death+myer
> s#PPA356,M1
>
> Hope this wasn't too much at once.
>
> Matt Roth
>
> Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html
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>
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>
Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html
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If memory serves VN cites Meyers in "The Vane Sisters." I
discuss this somewhere but not sure where. Maybe it will come to me.
Best, Don (Johnson)
-----------------------------
Quoting NABOKV-L <NABOKV-L@HOLYCROSS.EDU>:
> In line 35 of "PF" Shade uses the word stillicide. Kinbote points us to a
> definition similar to that in Webster's 2nd (cavesdrop, eavesdrop) and to a
> poem by Hardy, which turns out to be "Friends Beyond." But doesn't this
> all seem a bit too easy? I would like to propose, for your entertainment,
> that VN, via Kinbote, is leading us astray. Rather than pointing to Hardy--
> or ONLY to Hardy--VN may also be sending us to another writer and to
> another concept. Follow:
>
> 1. In Chambers's Encyclopaedia (1873) the following is included in the
> entry for Servitude: (borrowed from Roman Law by Scottish Law)"the urban
> rights are stillicide, light, oneris ferendi, etc. Stillicide is the right
> to have the rain from one's roof to drop on another's land or house." As I
> understand it, this right had to be obtained from the landowner onto whose
> the land the drops would fall.
>
> 2. From Robert Louis Stevenson's "Apology for Idlers": "For my own part, I
> have attended a good many lectures in my time. I still remember that the
> spinning of a top is a case of Kinetic Stability. I still remember that
> Emphyteusis is not a disease, nor Stillicide a crime." Emphyteusis is a
> legal term referring to the right of one to lease land to another;
> therefore, it is likely that RLS is here referring to Stillicide in the
> legal/landowner sense, as well.
>
> Conclusions: The legal sense of Stillicide is important because it provides
> a metaphor for what happens in the novel. Kinbote is, via his commentary,
> catching the drops from the roof of his neighbor, Shade. Or else he is
> trying to spill his drops onto Shade's property. In either case, one man's
> property is spilling onto another's. The origin in Roman law is important
> because it tells us where the icicles are: on Judge Goldsworth's house.
> Remember, in C.47-48 Kinbote tells us that Hugh Warren Goldsworth was
> an "authority on Roman Law." Shade's vision moves from the "indoor scene"
> to "hickory leaves," and finally to the "svelte stilettos." He is clearly
> looking out the window of his house to the shagbark hickory and then to his
> neighbor Goldsworth's house. We should also note that the movement of
> Stillicide from Roman to Scottish law is akin to the movement of kin-bote
> (the legal concept, if not the term itself) which also was adopted by the
> Scots from the Romans.
>
> The RLS quote is important because it establishes that the legal sense of
> Stillicide may have been known to Nabokov, and it could establish one more
> tie between the author of Jekyll and Hyde and PF. On that score, I just
> recently became aware that RLS was a correspondent and colleauge of F. W.
> H. Myers, the author of _Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily
> Death_ (1903, 1907). VN mentions Myers in "The Vane Sisters" and in his
> unpublished notes that are in the Berg Collection. Given these mentions,
> and given the prominence of Myers's book in the world of psychical
> research, it seems very likely that VN read it. And if he did, he would
> have read, in the appendix to Chapter II, a letter to Myers from RLS, in
> which RLS tells of a kind of painful delirium he experienced, in which his
> primary personality argued with another consciousness, which he called "the
> other fellow": "I thought the pain was, or was connected with, a wisp or
> coil of some sort; I knew not of what it consisted, nor yet where it was,
> and cared not; only I thought, if the two ends were brought together, the
> pain would cease. [MR: A lemniscate???] Now all the time, with another part
> of my mind, which I venture to think was myself, I was fully alive to the
> absurdity of this idea, knew it to be a mark of impaired insanity [MR:
> amentia], and was engaged with my other self in a perpetual conflict."
>
> If you are interested, the rest of the letter, along with Myers book, can
> be found (and downloaded!) here:
> http://books.google.com/books?
> vid=0b5kBynB4WibtoSjyClI&id=FNyTaFSZFv4C&printsec=toc&dq=survival+death+myer
> s#PPA356,M1
>
> Hope this wasn't too much at once.
>
> Matt Roth
>
> Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html
> Search archive with Google:
> http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
>
> Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
> Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
> View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
>
Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm