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Re: [Fwd: shoe and finger nail parings]
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The scene of the old man dying alone in a motel while dark hands from the
past offer gems always seemed to me to hint toward the possibility of
Kinbote being a ghost. This supernatural existence would be one similarity
CK shares with Hazel. But I always quailed at the thought of following
through on this idea, which would require explaining all the dialogues and
physical appearences that Kinbote makes. I think it could be done, though.
AndrewBrown
On 8/17/06 9:35 PM, "Nabokv-L" <nabokv-l@UTK.EDU> wrote:
>
>
> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject: shoe and finger nail parings
> Date: Thu, 17 Aug 2006 21:58:59 -0300
> From: jansymello <jansy@aetern.us> <mailto:jansy@aetern.us>
> To: Nabokv-L <nabokv-l@utk.edu> <mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu>
>
> Dear Peter Dale,
>
> The merry-go-round - noisy carrousel - is also linked to death. It may change
> into the grumble of heavy trucks or tourist cars camping in Cedarn but we
> mustn't forget Shade's lines 609-614:
> "Nor can one help the exile, the old man/ Dying in a motel, with the loud fan/
> Revolving in the torrid prairie night/ And, from the outside, bit os colored
> light/ Reaching his bed like dark hands from the past/ Offering gems, and
> death is coming fast"...
>
> You wrote: "the one shoe motif in Cindarella, which you associate with Shade's
> brown shoe, in folklore appears (the argument is made by Carlo Ginsburg in his
> Storia notturna 1989, esp.Pt3.2 pp.208ff) to refer to death."
> I won't be able to get the text you indicated (Ginsburg's) but, if not
> exactly the shoe, Cinderella herself seems to refer to death when one follows
> various different authors. Take Freud, for example.
>
> In his text "The theme of the three caskets" (1913), Standard Edition,
> vol.XII, Freud elaborates on certains aspects of King Lear and The Merchant of
> Venice to show how the youngest of three daughters, in folktales and myths, is
> associated with silence, hiding and death. Cinderella is the youngest of
> three, Apuleius' Psyché, Shakespeare's Cordelia. He also reffers to the three
> goddesses in the judgement of Paris episode in "La Belle Hélène" and ends up
> with the three Parcae ( the third one is Atropos).
> Nabokov often mentioned three misterious ladies in "ADA" and even Leda was
> associated with "three swans" or "three eggs".
>
> Myself, I didn't make the link bt. shoe and death, as you found it described
> in Ginsburg. I thought about slippers and shoes as some kind of "invariant",
> something that often makes subtle appearances in various Nabokovian novels (
> Pnin, Pale Fire, Ada, Lolita and particularly in one short-story the title of
> which I cannot recall ). For me, up to now, the shoe was related to survival
> of a special kind.
>
> Your question ( would it be the third one?), relegated to the post-scriptum,
> is very complex. Without even trying to scratch the surface of the issue you
> raised, but following my motion to pick up Freud, I'd suggest that any
> authorial control stops short when unconscious memories or desires make their
> presence felt, as ( so I profess) they usually do - at all times.
>
> Jansy
>
>
> Search the Nabokv-L archive at UCSB
> <http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html>
> Contact the Editors <mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu>
> All private editorial communications, without exception, are read by both
> co-editors.
> 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
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past offer gems always seemed to me to hint toward the possibility of
Kinbote being a ghost. This supernatural existence would be one similarity
CK shares with Hazel. But I always quailed at the thought of following
through on this idea, which would require explaining all the dialogues and
physical appearences that Kinbote makes. I think it could be done, though.
AndrewBrown
On 8/17/06 9:35 PM, "Nabokv-L" <nabokv-l@UTK.EDU> wrote:
>
>
> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject: shoe and finger nail parings
> Date: Thu, 17 Aug 2006 21:58:59 -0300
> From: jansymello <jansy@aetern.us> <mailto:jansy@aetern.us>
> To: Nabokv-L <nabokv-l@utk.edu> <mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu>
>
> Dear Peter Dale,
>
> The merry-go-round - noisy carrousel - is also linked to death. It may change
> into the grumble of heavy trucks or tourist cars camping in Cedarn but we
> mustn't forget Shade's lines 609-614:
> "Nor can one help the exile, the old man/ Dying in a motel, with the loud fan/
> Revolving in the torrid prairie night/ And, from the outside, bit os colored
> light/ Reaching his bed like dark hands from the past/ Offering gems, and
> death is coming fast"...
>
> You wrote: "the one shoe motif in Cindarella, which you associate with Shade's
> brown shoe, in folklore appears (the argument is made by Carlo Ginsburg in his
> Storia notturna 1989, esp.Pt3.2 pp.208ff) to refer to death."
> I won't be able to get the text you indicated (Ginsburg's) but, if not
> exactly the shoe, Cinderella herself seems to refer to death when one follows
> various different authors. Take Freud, for example.
>
> In his text "The theme of the three caskets" (1913), Standard Edition,
> vol.XII, Freud elaborates on certains aspects of King Lear and The Merchant of
> Venice to show how the youngest of three daughters, in folktales and myths, is
> associated with silence, hiding and death. Cinderella is the youngest of
> three, Apuleius' Psyché, Shakespeare's Cordelia. He also reffers to the three
> goddesses in the judgement of Paris episode in "La Belle Hélène" and ends up
> with the three Parcae ( the third one is Atropos).
> Nabokov often mentioned three misterious ladies in "ADA" and even Leda was
> associated with "three swans" or "three eggs".
>
> Myself, I didn't make the link bt. shoe and death, as you found it described
> in Ginsburg. I thought about slippers and shoes as some kind of "invariant",
> something that often makes subtle appearances in various Nabokovian novels (
> Pnin, Pale Fire, Ada, Lolita and particularly in one short-story the title of
> which I cannot recall ). For me, up to now, the shoe was related to survival
> of a special kind.
>
> Your question ( would it be the third one?), relegated to the post-scriptum,
> is very complex. Without even trying to scratch the surface of the issue you
> raised, but following my motion to pick up Freud, I'd suggest that any
> authorial control stops short when unconscious memories or desires make their
> presence felt, as ( so I profess) they usually do - at all times.
>
> Jansy
>
>
> Search the Nabokv-L archive at UCSB
> <http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html>
> Contact the Editors <mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu>
> All private editorial communications, without exception, are read by both
> co-editors.
> 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
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