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Re: CK's response to JF's response to CK
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In a message dated 12/10/2006 21:54:04 GMT Standard Time,
chaiselongue@EARTHLINK.NET writes:
I think there are other references to Wonderland in PF, though I can't come
up with anything just now. Chess, of course ...
No apologies, please - - the more the merrier?
Dear Carolyn,
You encourage me. There may be too many merry cooks in this broth already,
but I don’t need much encouragement, so here goes.
Carroll’s Wonderland and Looking-Glass are two of the greatest and most
memorable literary works in English of the 19th century, just as VN’s Lolita and
Pale Fire are two of the ditto in the 20th century.
Wonderland is an account of a child’s introduction to, or initiation into,
the hideous and nastily coercive world of adulthood; Looking-Glass is a
reflection on identity and reality. Wonderland is visceral; it is disturbing,
uneasy and unpleasant. Looking-Glass is cerebral; light, hyper-rational and
enjoyable.
These terms apply equally to Lolita and Pale Fire: the similarities are more
striking than the differences. All four books use the English language in an
exceptionally playful manner. Language is perceived as inherently misleading
and ambiguous; in a word, inadequate, as a means of penetrating the
mysteries of existence. Impenetrability, as Humpty Dumpty’s dismissal has it. I would
suggest that Pale Fire is ultimately impenetrable. Metamorphosis is also a
theme in all four books.
The structure of Wonderland, the enchanted, or more precisely distorted,
place, is that of a deck of cards. The story ends in disintegration: society
collapses like a house of cards, which reminds me, at least, of Lolita.
Looking-Glass, however, is structured on the game of chess. Bretwit might be
a variation of the game. One of the features of chess is that the white and
black (or in Carroll’s book, red, ie Zemblan) pieces begin by being set up as
mirror-images of each other. In chess it is possible for each side exactly
to replicate the initial three or four moves. Beyond a certain point, however,
interference takes place and the entanglement of the pieces swiftly develops
into infinite complexity, of an order exceeding the number of atoms in the
universe.
Alice, in passing through the looking-glass, is the waxwing that flies on.
Carroll once placed a little girl in front of a mirror, and told her to hold
an apple in her left hand. He then asked her in which hand her image was
holding the apple; and was delighted to be given the right answer.
Both the four-suited pack of cards and the chess-board are symmetrical
constructs. Human language, and thought itself, I suggest, would be impossible
without mankind’s propensity to classify, and arrange its sense-data in
symmetrical form. Light is not conceivable without darkness. Words are simply
classifications of perceptions. Chess would not be playable if all the pieces and
all the squares were the same colour.
Dualism is therefore a necessary prerequisite for human communication.
Monism, in my limited understanding, leads to a Nirvana-like state where
everything is nothing, or vice versa; light and dark merge; there is no communication,
and the ego melts into the infinite. The state is amusingly expressed in
Andrew Lang’s parody of Emerson’s Brahma: “I am the batsman and the bat” etc.
Can the dualistic propensity and the monistic longing be reconciled? I seem
to remember that someone on this thread mentioned the kaleidoscope. All four
books, LC’s and VN’s are kaleidoscopic, while at the same time retaining the
semblance of a linear narrative. The sequence of events, in a sense, are
chopped up and deposited in a kaleidoscope. This satisfies the reader’s desire
for pattern, while at the same time any slight disturbance of the cylinder
will alter that pattern, which is never to be repeated --- provided there are a
sufficient number of pieces. The miniimum number would either be 32 (chess
pieces), 52 (cards) or 64 (chess squares). A kaleidoscope is an extremely
pleasing toy.
Well, that’s enough of that. Now for something different. I think it is in
his Eugen Onegin that VN refers to a “translator” who is so abominable that
he can’t bring himself to mention the person by name. I have always wanted to
believe that this person must be none other than Ezra Pound, whose
productions, personality and politics would assuredly be abhorrent to Nabokov. Can
anyone offer any support for this assumption?
Charles Harrison Wallace
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