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From: "pynchon-l-digest" <owner-pynchon-l-digest@waste.org>
To: <pynchon-l-digest@waste.org>
Sent: Wednesday, September 10, 2003 10:20 AM
Subject: pynchon-l-digest V2 #3543
>
> pynchon-l-digest Wednesday, September 10 2003 Volume 02 : Number
3543
>
>
>
> RE: NPPF Comm 3: C.90-121 notes (1)
> NPPF Comm3: Misc notes (3)
> NPPF Comm3: Secret Passage (1)
>
> NPPF Comm3: Misc notes (4)
> NPPF Comm3: The Crown Jewels
> NPPF Comm3: The Magic Key
> > ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Date: Wed, 10 Sep 2003 03:06:19 -0700
> From: Mary Krimmel <mary@krimmel.net>
> Subject: RE: NPPF Comm 3: C.90-121 notes (1)
>
> You [Jasper Fidget] wrote:
> "Ben Chapman played for the Red Sox (1937-1938), and hit a total of 13
home
> runs."
>
> Thank you for this tidbit.. I am charmed.
>
>
> You also wrote:
>
> >...the word "involuntarily" seemed an odd
> >preference over "accidentally" or "unintentionally" -- implying to me
> >coercion by some agency.
>
> Good point.
>
> Mary Krimmel
>
>
> >Don't know about the particular game mentioned however.
> >
> >Jasper
>
>
> Date: Wed, 10 Sep 2003 11:51:50 -0400
> From: "Jasper Fidget" <fakename@verizon.net>
> Subject: NPPF Comm3: Misc notes (3)
>
> pg 119
> "Somewhere in the mist of the city"
> Another motif in this passage is the commingling of "mist" and "midst":
> obscured vision with crowded space: "in the mist of the city " (p 119),
"in
> the mist of the bath house" (p. 123), "already bemisted" (131) -- part of
> the thematic merging of time and space that leads ultimately through the
> secret passage.
>
> p. 123-124
> "On that particular afternoon a copious shower lacquered the spring
foliage
> of the palace garden, and oh, how the Persian lilacs in riotous bloom
> tumbled and tossed behind the green-streaming amethyst-blotched
windopanes!"
>
> From "When Lilacs Last in the Door-yard Bloom'd" by Walt Whitman (1865):
>
> WHEN lilacs last in the door-yard bloom'd,
> And the great star early droop'd in the western sky in the night,
> I mourn'd-and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.
>
> O ever-returning spring! trinity sure to me you bring;
> Lilac blooming perennial, and drooping star in the west,
> And thought of him I love.
>
> http://www.bartleby.com/142/192.html
>
> p. 123
> "gilt key"
>
> Guilt key -> guilty? When exactly did the terms "in the closet" and "out
of
> the closet" come about?
>
> Perhaps the proximity of the gilt (as in gilded) key to Charles' cage was
> intended -- gilt as in coated with gold, gilded as in "rich and superior
in
> quality," a gilded cage, as where one might keep a bird. A gilded flicker
> is a bird found in the American Southwest, and also what a key might do
when
> a bedside light casts a spark upon it.
>
> p. 124
> "Mandevil Forest"
>
> see Baron Mandevil (147)
>
> Byron's "Manfred" (1817) is a Faustian dramatic poem obsessed with guilt
and
> remorse and the frustrations of the Romantic spirit. Man is "half dust,
> half deity, alike unfit to sink or soar."
>
> http://www.hn.psu.edu/faculty/jmanis/byron/manfred.pdf
>
> p. 125
> "Oleg arrived. He carried a tulip."
> Hahahahhahaa.... Sorry. The young Prince observes that Oleg's "soft
blond
> locks [...] had been cut since his last visit to the palace," and thinks,
> like an anticipating lover, "I knew he would be different." Something in
> this reminds me of M. Swann courting Odette, but I've put off trying to
find
> it.
>
> p. 126
> "Academy Boulevard, Coriolanus Lane and Timon Alley"
> One gets the sense that Kinbote has been pilfering names from Shakespeare,
> and Timon especially has importance. What are the odds that a work so
> obviously in the minds of Zemblans should have inspired John Shade's
title?
> See p. 92 for the descriptions of Wordsmith's grounds and place names.
>
> p. 126
> "glacis slope"
>
> "A gently sloping bank; spec. in Fortification, a natural or artificial
bank
> sloping down from the covered way of a fort so as to expose attackers to
the
> defenders' missiles etc. L17." (OED)
>
> also
>
> "fig. A zone or area, esp. a small country, acting as a protective barrier
> or buffer between two (potentially) enemy countries. M20." (OED)
>
> p. 128-129
> "[Odon] was a fox-browed, burly Irishman, with a pink head"
>
> What's an Irish actor doing involved in the Zemblan revolution? Might
> suggest Lord Byron, an English poet who involved himself in both Italian
and
> Greek revolutionary movements (1820, 1822), in the case of the latter
> spending lots of time with the Greek prince Mavrocordato, and lots of
money
> financing a navy for him.
>
> http://www.incompetech.com/authors/byron/
>
> In later passages Odon will come more to resemble Lord Wilmot (later Lord
> Rochester), Charles II traveling companion and trusted aid during his
escape
> from the English Commonwealth.
>
> p. 129
> "Bechstein"
>
> Makers of fine pianos since 1853 and still considered among the finest in
> the world. The maker of the original Bechstein was named -- of course --
> Carl.
>
> http://www.bechstein.com/english/Estart.html
>
> p. 129
> "/The Merman/"
> Gender switch and centaurism, typical of Zembla.
>
> p. 129
> "a couple of foreign experts", "two Soviet professionals" (131), ("Their
> names (probably fictitious) were Andronnikov and Niagarin" -- 244)
>
> Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are now searching for the crown jewels.
>
> Jasper Fidget
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Wed, 10 Sep 2003 11:52:21 -0400
> From: "Jasper Fidget" <fakename@verizon.net>
> Subject: NPPF Comm3: Secret Passage (1)
>
> p. 126-127
>
> Like the "natural shams" that fascinate Shade (ln 712-715), the secret
> passage follows the pattern of its surroundings: "in its angular and
cryptic
> course it adapted itself to the various structures which it followed"
(126).
> It is also described in terms of writing, "here availing itself of a
bulwark
> to fit in its side like a pencil in the pencil hold of a pocket diary,"
> drawing the reader back out of the narrative to an image of its internal
> author scribbling away; then joining other dark passageways in the
"cellars
> of a great mansion." Kinbote's style and vocabulary have taken on a Poe
> feel (as one wonders what bones have been bricked up in those dark
cellars),
> and he speculates that "certain arcane connections had [possibly] been
> established between the abandoned passage and the outer world [or] by the
> blind pokings of time itself." He says, "for here and there magic
apertures
> and penetrations, so narrow and deep as to drive one insane, could be
> deduced," recalling similar descriptions from Poe's _Narrative of Arthur
> Gordon Pym_ (1837) and the land where the rocks of chasms hint at arcane
> mysteries that can only be solved outside of the text (pointing ultimately
> back to their author) -- part of the journey into art where the artist
must
> arrange, devise, and determine his course before discovering the white
> cataract of creative imagination at the journey's end.
>
> At this point in Charles' life he is too interested in Oleg's "shapely
> buttocks encased in tight indigo cotton" for him to follow the secret
> passage all the way to its ultimate penetration into art, the mysteries of
> sex still fascinating him enough to ground him in this world, saying
> "[Oleg's] erect radiance [...] seemed to illume with leaps of light the
low
> ceiling and crowding walls" (126-127), and by the time the passage reaches
> its end at 1,888 yards and the green door, he is too frightened by what he
> hears beyond it to step through: the "two terrible voices" rehearsing in
the
> dressing room of Iris Acht. Curiously, what's "more eerie than anything
> that had come before" for Charles is the "man's murmuring some brief
phrase
> of casual approval ('Perfect, my dear,' or 'Couldn't be better');" in
other
> words it's not the art that frightens him so much as its critique and its
> commentator, Charles Kinbote's very own future occupation and the activity
> in which he is presently engaged.
>
> Jasper Fidget
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Wed, 10 Sep 2003 12:46:41 -0400
> From: "Jasper Fidget" <fakename@verizon.net>
> Subject: NPPF Comm3: Misc notes (4)
>
> p. 130
> "the huge oils of Eystein"
>
> There's the obvious pun on eye and painting, but also Eystein is the name
of
> several kings celebrated in Norse sagas.
>
> http://www.gersey.org/heathenry/lore/heimskringla/king_inge/
>
> Archbishop Eystein Erlendsson was an architect who commissioned and
designed
> the Nidaros Cathedral in Trondheim, Norway (inaugurated 1152/3), and a
> translator of the writings of St. Olaf (/Passio et Miracula beatu Olavi/),
> the manuscript for which was found at Fountains Abbey in Yorkshire,
England,
> where Eystein had spent several years in exile (1180-1183).
>
> http://www.nd.edu/~acasad/papers/THEO_673_5.pdf
>
> See also note to line 12.
>
> Links also to steinmann and buchstein.
>
> p. 130
> "trompe l'oeil"
>
> "Deception of the eye; (an) optical illusion; esp. a painting or object
> intended to give an illusion of reality" (OED).
>
> The joke here of course is that the illusion of the walnut kernel hides
> nothing more than a walnut kernel, so the real illusion is the assumption
> that it signifies something more, similar to Shade's mountain. There's an
> inverse duality between the hunt for the crown jewels and Shade's search
for
> something beyond life, the former digging inward and destroying, the
latter
> peering outward and creating.
>
> p. 131
> "an iron curtain had gone up"
>
> Implying the "iron curtain" of the Soviet Union, a phrase coined by
> Churchill on March 5, 1946, considered the inauguration of the Cold War.
>
> http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/churchill-iron.html
>
> p. 131
> "nenuphars"
>
> "A water lily; esp. (a) the common white water lily, Nymphaea alba; (b)
the
> yellow water lily, Nuphar luteum" (OED).
>
> p. 131
> "half past nine"
> 9:30 doubled becomes 18 - 80 (half mathematically, half visually -- using
> both halves of the brain here)
>
> p. 132 (and elsewhere)
> "Thuleans"
>
> Thule (pronounced too-lee): The Farthest Land; a geographical region
> believed to be six days' sail north of Britain, the most northern region
of
> the world. Also the northwestern peninsula of Greenland pointing towards
> Canada, and a town there. Site of a WWII United States Navy base.
>
> Photos of Thule: http://jackstephensimages.com/Merchant/index.html
> Map: http://jackstephensimages.com/Merchant/mappages/map2.html
>
> See VN's "Ultima Thule"
>
> http://www.libraries.psu.edu/iasweb/nabokov/wultima.htm
>
> p. 132
> "Mt. Kron"
> German for "crown." Also implies time, but maybe more significant is that
> Kronenberg Castle in Copenhagen was once known as Elsinore (the setting
for
> some famous soliloquies).
>
> http://www.dbtravel.co.uk/baltic.htm
>
> See Kronberg in the Index (p. 310).
>
> Jasper Fidget
> [probably one more after this]
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Wed, 10 Sep 2003 12:50:20 -0400
> From: "Jasper Fidget" <fakename@verizon.net>
> Subject: NPPF Comm3: The Crown Jewels
>
> p. 129
> "the crown jewels"
>
> Probably inspired by the story of the execution of Tsar Nicholas II and
> family. The legend goes that when the family was summoned to the basement
> in order to be shot by the Bolsheviks, the children had diamonds,
sapphires,
> and other jewels sewn into their clothing, effectively serving as bullet
> proof vests that may have saved some of their lives. Since then there has
> been great speculation regarding the ultimate whereabouts of the Romanov
> fortune, whether it had been taken by the Bolsheviks, smuggled out of the
> country, or hidden someplace in or around Ekaterinburg.
>
> http://www.lostsecrets.com/
> http://www.concentric.net/~Tsarskoe/
>
> In reply to Alfred Appel Jr's question concerning the secret whereabouts
of
> the crown jewels, VN said, "In the ruins, sir, of some old barracks near
> Kobaltana; but do not tell it to the Russians."
>
> Kobaltana, the only Zemblan place found in the Index but not in the text,
is
> listed as: "a once fashionable mountain resort near the ruins of some old
> barracks now a cold and desolate spot of difficult access and no
importance
> but still remembered in military families and forest castles, not in the
> text" (p. 310).
>
> Boyd notes that "Kobaltana" is pretty close in sound to "Cedarn Utana," a
> small resort near the Idoming border "again a ghost town" (C.609-614) in
> "these grim autumnal mountains" (C.71, 100), where Kinbote sits at his
> typewriter to annotate Shade's manuscript. (Boyd, _Magic_, 102). The
crown
> jewels then are the cards of John Shade's poem "Pale Fire."
>
> I would add to that evidence the scene where Kinbote's armors himself with
> the poem (p. 300), filling out his clothes in much the same way the
Romanov
> children were said to have done with literal jewels. There's also some
> allusion that the crown jewels are actually hidden in Kinbote's pants
> ("broken bits of a nutshell" p. 131, "crown, necklace, scepter" p. 244),
> thus a pun on the Romanov story (or just a symptom of my low-brow sense of
> humor).
>
> Jasper Fidget
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Wed, 10 Sep 2003 12:54:54 -0400
> From: "Jasper Fidget" <fakename@verizon.net>
> Subject: NPPF Comm3: The Magic Key
>
> p. 123 etc
>
> In a trompe l'oeil nutshell, Kinbote escapes into art.
>
> The key Charles finds in the "lumber room" opens three doors: thesis,
> antithesis, and synthesis. The first door is the door to the closet,
which
> holds old things, things from Kinbote's past, his memory. The closet is a
> kind of random mirror. It also holds "the tiny volume of /Timon
Afinsken/"
> which will remain with Kinbote for the rest of his life "as a talisman"
(p.
> 132), and the red clothes he'll require to affect his escape.
>
> The second door is through the back of the closet to the secret passage
> behind it, the passage that wraps around the stuff of the present, beneath
> and through it all, spiraling outward from that dim origin in Kinbote's
cage
> (see also the highway on pg. 97).
>
> The last door is at the other end of the 1,888 yard tunnel, and leads to
the
> theater dressing room, the green door entrance into art and eternity, the
> synthesis. The dressing room once belonged to Iris Acht (8, infinity
> upright). The number of yards from the closet to the green door is a
> concrete poem for a threshold or an origin followed by a series of
> infinities: 1888: signifying death. Iris Acht dies in 1888, as did Mathew
> Arnold (as noted on p. 294, "still clutching the inviolable shade," a
quote
> from "The Scholar Gypsy," which suggests the immortality of art), as did
> Nikolai Przhevalski, a Russian naturalist and explorer for whom a city in
> eastern Kyrgyzstan is named (mentioned in VN's novel _The Gift_ I
believe).
> My (old) notes also indicate that in 1888 V.P. Botkin's essay on the
British
> theater appeared in the third volume of his work on Shakespeare, but I've
> been unable to verify this.
>
> http://www.win.tue.nl/~engels/discovery/prz.html
>
> Jasper Fidget
>
> ------------------------------
>
> ------------------------------
>
> End of pynchon-l-digest V2 #3543
> ********************************
>
> To unsubscribe, send a message to waste@waste.org
> with "unsubscribe pynchon-l-digest" in the message body.
From: "pynchon-l-digest" <owner-pynchon-l-digest@waste.org>
To: <pynchon-l-digest@waste.org>
Sent: Wednesday, September 10, 2003 10:20 AM
Subject: pynchon-l-digest V2 #3543
>
> pynchon-l-digest Wednesday, September 10 2003 Volume 02 : Number
3543
>
>
>
> RE: NPPF Comm 3: C.90-121 notes (1)
> NPPF Comm3: Misc notes (3)
> NPPF Comm3: Secret Passage (1)
>
> NPPF Comm3: Misc notes (4)
> NPPF Comm3: The Crown Jewels
> NPPF Comm3: The Magic Key
> > ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Date: Wed, 10 Sep 2003 03:06:19 -0700
> From: Mary Krimmel <mary@krimmel.net>
> Subject: RE: NPPF Comm 3: C.90-121 notes (1)
>
> You [Jasper Fidget] wrote:
> "Ben Chapman played for the Red Sox (1937-1938), and hit a total of 13
home
> runs."
>
> Thank you for this tidbit.. I am charmed.
>
>
> You also wrote:
>
> >...the word "involuntarily" seemed an odd
> >preference over "accidentally" or "unintentionally" -- implying to me
> >coercion by some agency.
>
> Good point.
>
> Mary Krimmel
>
>
> >Don't know about the particular game mentioned however.
> >
> >Jasper
>
>
> Date: Wed, 10 Sep 2003 11:51:50 -0400
> From: "Jasper Fidget" <fakename@verizon.net>
> Subject: NPPF Comm3: Misc notes (3)
>
> pg 119
> "Somewhere in the mist of the city"
> Another motif in this passage is the commingling of "mist" and "midst":
> obscured vision with crowded space: "in the mist of the city " (p 119),
"in
> the mist of the bath house" (p. 123), "already bemisted" (131) -- part of
> the thematic merging of time and space that leads ultimately through the
> secret passage.
>
> p. 123-124
> "On that particular afternoon a copious shower lacquered the spring
foliage
> of the palace garden, and oh, how the Persian lilacs in riotous bloom
> tumbled and tossed behind the green-streaming amethyst-blotched
windopanes!"
>
> From "When Lilacs Last in the Door-yard Bloom'd" by Walt Whitman (1865):
>
> WHEN lilacs last in the door-yard bloom'd,
> And the great star early droop'd in the western sky in the night,
> I mourn'd-and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.
>
> O ever-returning spring! trinity sure to me you bring;
> Lilac blooming perennial, and drooping star in the west,
> And thought of him I love.
>
> http://www.bartleby.com/142/192.html
>
> p. 123
> "gilt key"
>
> Guilt key -> guilty? When exactly did the terms "in the closet" and "out
of
> the closet" come about?
>
> Perhaps the proximity of the gilt (as in gilded) key to Charles' cage was
> intended -- gilt as in coated with gold, gilded as in "rich and superior
in
> quality," a gilded cage, as where one might keep a bird. A gilded flicker
> is a bird found in the American Southwest, and also what a key might do
when
> a bedside light casts a spark upon it.
>
> p. 124
> "Mandevil Forest"
>
> see Baron Mandevil (147)
>
> Byron's "Manfred" (1817) is a Faustian dramatic poem obsessed with guilt
and
> remorse and the frustrations of the Romantic spirit. Man is "half dust,
> half deity, alike unfit to sink or soar."
>
> http://www.hn.psu.edu/faculty/jmanis/byron/manfred.pdf
>
> p. 125
> "Oleg arrived. He carried a tulip."
> Hahahahhahaa.... Sorry. The young Prince observes that Oleg's "soft
blond
> locks [...] had been cut since his last visit to the palace," and thinks,
> like an anticipating lover, "I knew he would be different." Something in
> this reminds me of M. Swann courting Odette, but I've put off trying to
find
> it.
>
> p. 126
> "Academy Boulevard, Coriolanus Lane and Timon Alley"
> One gets the sense that Kinbote has been pilfering names from Shakespeare,
> and Timon especially has importance. What are the odds that a work so
> obviously in the minds of Zemblans should have inspired John Shade's
title?
> See p. 92 for the descriptions of Wordsmith's grounds and place names.
>
> p. 126
> "glacis slope"
>
> "A gently sloping bank; spec. in Fortification, a natural or artificial
bank
> sloping down from the covered way of a fort so as to expose attackers to
the
> defenders' missiles etc. L17." (OED)
>
> also
>
> "fig. A zone or area, esp. a small country, acting as a protective barrier
> or buffer between two (potentially) enemy countries. M20." (OED)
>
> p. 128-129
> "[Odon] was a fox-browed, burly Irishman, with a pink head"
>
> What's an Irish actor doing involved in the Zemblan revolution? Might
> suggest Lord Byron, an English poet who involved himself in both Italian
and
> Greek revolutionary movements (1820, 1822), in the case of the latter
> spending lots of time with the Greek prince Mavrocordato, and lots of
money
> financing a navy for him.
>
> http://www.incompetech.com/authors/byron/
>
> In later passages Odon will come more to resemble Lord Wilmot (later Lord
> Rochester), Charles II traveling companion and trusted aid during his
escape
> from the English Commonwealth.
>
> p. 129
> "Bechstein"
>
> Makers of fine pianos since 1853 and still considered among the finest in
> the world. The maker of the original Bechstein was named -- of course --
> Carl.
>
> http://www.bechstein.com/english/Estart.html
>
> p. 129
> "/The Merman/"
> Gender switch and centaurism, typical of Zembla.
>
> p. 129
> "a couple of foreign experts", "two Soviet professionals" (131), ("Their
> names (probably fictitious) were Andronnikov and Niagarin" -- 244)
>
> Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are now searching for the crown jewels.
>
> Jasper Fidget
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Wed, 10 Sep 2003 11:52:21 -0400
> From: "Jasper Fidget" <fakename@verizon.net>
> Subject: NPPF Comm3: Secret Passage (1)
>
> p. 126-127
>
> Like the "natural shams" that fascinate Shade (ln 712-715), the secret
> passage follows the pattern of its surroundings: "in its angular and
cryptic
> course it adapted itself to the various structures which it followed"
(126).
> It is also described in terms of writing, "here availing itself of a
bulwark
> to fit in its side like a pencil in the pencil hold of a pocket diary,"
> drawing the reader back out of the narrative to an image of its internal
> author scribbling away; then joining other dark passageways in the
"cellars
> of a great mansion." Kinbote's style and vocabulary have taken on a Poe
> feel (as one wonders what bones have been bricked up in those dark
cellars),
> and he speculates that "certain arcane connections had [possibly] been
> established between the abandoned passage and the outer world [or] by the
> blind pokings of time itself." He says, "for here and there magic
apertures
> and penetrations, so narrow and deep as to drive one insane, could be
> deduced," recalling similar descriptions from Poe's _Narrative of Arthur
> Gordon Pym_ (1837) and the land where the rocks of chasms hint at arcane
> mysteries that can only be solved outside of the text (pointing ultimately
> back to their author) -- part of the journey into art where the artist
must
> arrange, devise, and determine his course before discovering the white
> cataract of creative imagination at the journey's end.
>
> At this point in Charles' life he is too interested in Oleg's "shapely
> buttocks encased in tight indigo cotton" for him to follow the secret
> passage all the way to its ultimate penetration into art, the mysteries of
> sex still fascinating him enough to ground him in this world, saying
> "[Oleg's] erect radiance [...] seemed to illume with leaps of light the
low
> ceiling and crowding walls" (126-127), and by the time the passage reaches
> its end at 1,888 yards and the green door, he is too frightened by what he
> hears beyond it to step through: the "two terrible voices" rehearsing in
the
> dressing room of Iris Acht. Curiously, what's "more eerie than anything
> that had come before" for Charles is the "man's murmuring some brief
phrase
> of casual approval ('Perfect, my dear,' or 'Couldn't be better');" in
other
> words it's not the art that frightens him so much as its critique and its
> commentator, Charles Kinbote's very own future occupation and the activity
> in which he is presently engaged.
>
> Jasper Fidget
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Wed, 10 Sep 2003 12:46:41 -0400
> From: "Jasper Fidget" <fakename@verizon.net>
> Subject: NPPF Comm3: Misc notes (4)
>
> p. 130
> "the huge oils of Eystein"
>
> There's the obvious pun on eye and painting, but also Eystein is the name
of
> several kings celebrated in Norse sagas.
>
> http://www.gersey.org/heathenry/lore/heimskringla/king_inge/
>
> Archbishop Eystein Erlendsson was an architect who commissioned and
designed
> the Nidaros Cathedral in Trondheim, Norway (inaugurated 1152/3), and a
> translator of the writings of St. Olaf (/Passio et Miracula beatu Olavi/),
> the manuscript for which was found at Fountains Abbey in Yorkshire,
England,
> where Eystein had spent several years in exile (1180-1183).
>
> http://www.nd.edu/~acasad/papers/THEO_673_5.pdf
>
> See also note to line 12.
>
> Links also to steinmann and buchstein.
>
> p. 130
> "trompe l'oeil"
>
> "Deception of the eye; (an) optical illusion; esp. a painting or object
> intended to give an illusion of reality" (OED).
>
> The joke here of course is that the illusion of the walnut kernel hides
> nothing more than a walnut kernel, so the real illusion is the assumption
> that it signifies something more, similar to Shade's mountain. There's an
> inverse duality between the hunt for the crown jewels and Shade's search
for
> something beyond life, the former digging inward and destroying, the
latter
> peering outward and creating.
>
> p. 131
> "an iron curtain had gone up"
>
> Implying the "iron curtain" of the Soviet Union, a phrase coined by
> Churchill on March 5, 1946, considered the inauguration of the Cold War.
>
> http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/churchill-iron.html
>
> p. 131
> "nenuphars"
>
> "A water lily; esp. (a) the common white water lily, Nymphaea alba; (b)
the
> yellow water lily, Nuphar luteum" (OED).
>
> p. 131
> "half past nine"
> 9:30 doubled becomes 18 - 80 (half mathematically, half visually -- using
> both halves of the brain here)
>
> p. 132 (and elsewhere)
> "Thuleans"
>
> Thule (pronounced too-lee): The Farthest Land; a geographical region
> believed to be six days' sail north of Britain, the most northern region
of
> the world. Also the northwestern peninsula of Greenland pointing towards
> Canada, and a town there. Site of a WWII United States Navy base.
>
> Photos of Thule: http://jackstephensimages.com/Merchant/index.html
> Map: http://jackstephensimages.com/Merchant/mappages/map2.html
>
> See VN's "Ultima Thule"
>
> http://www.libraries.psu.edu/iasweb/nabokov/wultima.htm
>
> p. 132
> "Mt. Kron"
> German for "crown." Also implies time, but maybe more significant is that
> Kronenberg Castle in Copenhagen was once known as Elsinore (the setting
for
> some famous soliloquies).
>
> http://www.dbtravel.co.uk/baltic.htm
>
> See Kronberg in the Index (p. 310).
>
> Jasper Fidget
> [probably one more after this]
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Wed, 10 Sep 2003 12:50:20 -0400
> From: "Jasper Fidget" <fakename@verizon.net>
> Subject: NPPF Comm3: The Crown Jewels
>
> p. 129
> "the crown jewels"
>
> Probably inspired by the story of the execution of Tsar Nicholas II and
> family. The legend goes that when the family was summoned to the basement
> in order to be shot by the Bolsheviks, the children had diamonds,
sapphires,
> and other jewels sewn into their clothing, effectively serving as bullet
> proof vests that may have saved some of their lives. Since then there has
> been great speculation regarding the ultimate whereabouts of the Romanov
> fortune, whether it had been taken by the Bolsheviks, smuggled out of the
> country, or hidden someplace in or around Ekaterinburg.
>
> http://www.lostsecrets.com/
> http://www.concentric.net/~Tsarskoe/
>
> In reply to Alfred Appel Jr's question concerning the secret whereabouts
of
> the crown jewels, VN said, "In the ruins, sir, of some old barracks near
> Kobaltana; but do not tell it to the Russians."
>
> Kobaltana, the only Zemblan place found in the Index but not in the text,
is
> listed as: "a once fashionable mountain resort near the ruins of some old
> barracks now a cold and desolate spot of difficult access and no
importance
> but still remembered in military families and forest castles, not in the
> text" (p. 310).
>
> Boyd notes that "Kobaltana" is pretty close in sound to "Cedarn Utana," a
> small resort near the Idoming border "again a ghost town" (C.609-614) in
> "these grim autumnal mountains" (C.71, 100), where Kinbote sits at his
> typewriter to annotate Shade's manuscript. (Boyd, _Magic_, 102). The
crown
> jewels then are the cards of John Shade's poem "Pale Fire."
>
> I would add to that evidence the scene where Kinbote's armors himself with
> the poem (p. 300), filling out his clothes in much the same way the
Romanov
> children were said to have done with literal jewels. There's also some
> allusion that the crown jewels are actually hidden in Kinbote's pants
> ("broken bits of a nutshell" p. 131, "crown, necklace, scepter" p. 244),
> thus a pun on the Romanov story (or just a symptom of my low-brow sense of
> humor).
>
> Jasper Fidget
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Wed, 10 Sep 2003 12:54:54 -0400
> From: "Jasper Fidget" <fakename@verizon.net>
> Subject: NPPF Comm3: The Magic Key
>
> p. 123 etc
>
> In a trompe l'oeil nutshell, Kinbote escapes into art.
>
> The key Charles finds in the "lumber room" opens three doors: thesis,
> antithesis, and synthesis. The first door is the door to the closet,
which
> holds old things, things from Kinbote's past, his memory. The closet is a
> kind of random mirror. It also holds "the tiny volume of /Timon
Afinsken/"
> which will remain with Kinbote for the rest of his life "as a talisman"
(p.
> 132), and the red clothes he'll require to affect his escape.
>
> The second door is through the back of the closet to the secret passage
> behind it, the passage that wraps around the stuff of the present, beneath
> and through it all, spiraling outward from that dim origin in Kinbote's
cage
> (see also the highway on pg. 97).
>
> The last door is at the other end of the 1,888 yard tunnel, and leads to
the
> theater dressing room, the green door entrance into art and eternity, the
> synthesis. The dressing room once belonged to Iris Acht (8, infinity
> upright). The number of yards from the closet to the green door is a
> concrete poem for a threshold or an origin followed by a series of
> infinities: 1888: signifying death. Iris Acht dies in 1888, as did Mathew
> Arnold (as noted on p. 294, "still clutching the inviolable shade," a
quote
> from "The Scholar Gypsy," which suggests the immortality of art), as did
> Nikolai Przhevalski, a Russian naturalist and explorer for whom a city in
> eastern Kyrgyzstan is named (mentioned in VN's novel _The Gift_ I
believe).
> My (old) notes also indicate that in 1888 V.P. Botkin's essay on the
British
> theater appeared in the third volume of his work on Shakespeare, but I've
> been unable to verify this.
>
> http://www.win.tue.nl/~engels/discovery/prz.html
>
> Jasper Fidget
>
> ------------------------------
>
> ------------------------------
>
> End of pynchon-l-digest V2 #3543
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