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THOUGHTS: Black and red chess pieces in PF
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Dear List,
Kinbote compares Charles the Beloved's predicament to "what a composer
of chess problems might term a king-in-the corner waiter of the solus
rex type" Cf. Pale Fire, 118-9, following the indications made by Brian
Walters' article in Zembla "Synthetizing Artistic Delight", from where
I'm also copying the other sentence: "If the King is the only Black man
on the board, the problem is said to be of the 'Solus Rex' variety" Cf.
Russian Beauty 140.
What intrigued me was the reference to the King as a "Black man on the
board" because but I remember VN's chess-boards might carry, instead of
a black, a red king. Could the outfit Charles II wore during his escape
from Zembla in a very conspicuous red be related to such Red, and not
Black, chess pieces? Could this substitution ( black/red pieces )
indicate some particular chess-related clue?
Thank you, A. Stadlen, for the reply: "It's Aino Ackté (Achte), not
Aina. (Incidentally, Sibelius's wife was Aino née Järnefelt.) Aino in
the Kalevala drowns because she swims towards a rock coloured like the
rainbow. Iris is the goddess of the rainbow. So maybe there actually is
a connection between Aino Ackté and Iris Acht." and for the lines from
Rune 4 of the Kalevala. Iris, syrens, iridules, nackered shells and
water are recurrent themes in VN's works...
Jansy Mello
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Kinbote compares Charles the Beloved's predicament to "what a composer
of chess problems might term a king-in-the corner waiter of the solus
rex type" Cf. Pale Fire, 118-9, following the indications made by Brian
Walters' article in Zembla "Synthetizing Artistic Delight", from where
I'm also copying the other sentence: "If the King is the only Black man
on the board, the problem is said to be of the 'Solus Rex' variety" Cf.
Russian Beauty 140.
What intrigued me was the reference to the King as a "Black man on the
board" because but I remember VN's chess-boards might carry, instead of
a black, a red king. Could the outfit Charles II wore during his escape
from Zembla in a very conspicuous red be related to such Red, and not
Black, chess pieces? Could this substitution ( black/red pieces )
indicate some particular chess-related clue?
Thank you, A. Stadlen, for the reply: "It's Aino Ackté (Achte), not
Aina. (Incidentally, Sibelius's wife was Aino née Järnefelt.) Aino in
the Kalevala drowns because she swims towards a rock coloured like the
rainbow. Iris is the goddess of the rainbow. So maybe there actually is
a connection between Aino Ackté and Iris Acht." and for the lines from
Rune 4 of the Kalevala. Iris, syrens, iridules, nackered shells and
water are recurrent themes in VN's works...
Jansy Mello
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