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From: "pynchon-l-digest" <owner-pynchon-l-digest@waste.org>
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Sent: Monday, October 06, 2003 12:00 AM
Subject: pynchon-l-digest V2 #3588
>
> pynchon-l-digest Monday, October 6 2003 Volume 02 : Number
3588
>
>
>
> Re: NPPF commentary line 149, p. 143- continued
> NPPF commentary line 149 -- some notes
> A German book about the history of Mittelwerke/Mittelbau Dora
> Representing"Hottentots" in Early Modern England
> RE: NPPF commentary line 149, p. 143- continued
> re: Zhlubb
> RE: NPPF commentary line 149, p. 143- continued
> RE: NPPF commentary line 149, p. 143- continued
> RE: NPPF commentary line 149, p. 143- continued
> Re: NPPF commentary line 149, p. 143- continued
> NPPF Commentary to line 162: With ihs pure tongue, etc.
> Re: NPPF commentary line 149, p. 143- continued
> Re: NPPF commentary line 149, p. 143- continued
> NPPF: Commentary to Line 167, 169
> Re: NPPF commentary line 149, p. 143- continued
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Date: Sun, 5 Oct 2003 08:17:39 -0400 (EDT)
> From: Michael Joseph <mjoseph@rci.rutgers.edu>
> Subject: Re: NPPF commentary line 149, p. 143- continued
>
> Please keep me informed of its findings.
>
> On Fri, 3 Oct 2003, sZ wrote:
>
> > > >>>Anyone can be pyschoanalized, because psychological realities are
real
> > > whether one chooses to recognize them or not. <<<
> > >
> > > WOW! A discussion of this assertion could get us going for
> > > a while.
> > >
> > well, the night is young
> >
> > Ok then. Let's begin by using the method proposed by the assertion, on
the
> > assertion.
> > Do you see where the unconscious is (s)peaking through in the assertion
> > itself? If you
> > do, make note of it, hold it in your mind, and begin writing everything
that
> > flows through
> > your consciousness as you think about it. If you do not recognize it,
the
> > p-list psycho-
> > analytic subgroup will psychoanalyze you off-list.
> >
> > The metre is running.
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Sun, 5 Oct 2003 10:32:34 -0400
> From: "Jasper Fidget" <fakename@verizon.net>
> Subject: NPPF commentary line 149 -- some notes
>
> p. 138
> "Aros and Grindelwod"
>
> Both suggest towns in Switzerland: Arosa and Grindelwald (see Grindelwod
> again p. 105).
>
> p. 138
> "Bregberg" "Bregberg Pass" (139)
>
> Could this imply the German "Burgberg" or Mountain Fortress (e.g. Harzburg
> or Colditz (from which a number of POWs escaped via tunnels))?
>
> p. 138, 149
> "Gulf of Surprise"
>
> Charles II escaped England into exile on board the Surprise (later renamed
> the Royal Escape). Also points back to Dim Gulf (ln 957); see Poe's "To
One
> in Paradise":
>
> A voice from out the Future cries,
> "On! on!"-but o'er the Past
> (Dim gulf!) my spirit hovering lies
> Mute, motionless, aghast!
>
> If Dim Gulf is the past (Shade's first book), then Gulf of Surprise is the
> future, so another time parallel.
>
> p. 139
> "Thunder was rumbling in the terrible brown sky."
>
> This made me think of Washington Irving's "Rip Van Winkle" -- the dog, the
> farmhouse, the dosing off, the stranger sighted from a distance, and some
of
> the mountain descriptions add to it. Also "the ripple-warped reflection"
> (p. 143), and "the Rippleson Caves" (p. 145).
>
> p. 139
> "after pushing through the black wall of the forest"
>
> Reminiscent of the "heavy black drapery" (p. 133) at the entrance to the
> Royal Theater from the secret tunnel.
>
> p. 139
> "His mother was an American from New Wye in New England"
>
> Sylvia O'Donnell, see p. 247
>
> p. 140
> Griff
>
> Anglo-Indian abbreviation for Griffin (OED)
>
> p. 143
> "Great fallen crags diversified the wayside."
>
> See Wordsworth's "The Prelude": "Black drizzling crags that spake by the
> way-side" (Bk 6 ln 631).
>
> http://www.bartleby.com/145/ww292.html
>
> p.145
> "'War?' queried her consort. 'That must have been the explosion at the
> Glass Works in 1951 -- not war.'"
>
> Connects back to "Extremists from the famous Glass Factory where the
> revolution had flickered first" (p. 120) and "the 1950 Exposition of Glass
> Animals, when part of it was almost destroyed by fire" (p. 112).
>
> Three years after his ascension to the throne in 1685, James II (brother
of
> Charles II) was forced to repeat his brother's escape routine and flee to
> France after attempting to convert England to Roman Catholicism. (He was
> replaced in Whitehall by the Protestant William III of Orange and his wife
> Mary, James' daughter, in the "Glorious Revolution" of 1688.) James II,
his
> son James III, and his grandson Charles's long-term campaign to recapture
> the throne was supported by the so-called Jacobites, whose secret
societies
> were banned by the monarchy, and who would engrave the bowls and glasses
> they used to toast their "King over the sea" with Jacobite symbols. The
> most common symbol engraved on this "Jacobite glass" is a rose.
>
> http://www.cosmos-club.org/journals/1999/kaplan.html
>
> I'm at a loss to find an analog for the fire (unless it's London's Great
> Fire of 1666, which happened during the Restoration and is unconnected to
> any revolution), but this at least supplies a nexus for the glass, Charles
> II, and rose patterns.
>
> p. 146
> "all the art of plastic surgery had only resulted in a hideous tessellated
> texture with parts of pattern and parts of outline seeming to change, to
> fuse or to separate, like fluctuating cheeks and chins in a distortive
> mirror"
>
> The face seems a(nother) parody of _Pale Fire_ itself.
>
> p. 146
> "sat knitting", "on one side of her lay a pair of carpet slippers and on
the
> other a ball of red wool"
>
> Part of the engine of creation motif: the knitting woman the engine of the
> masquerade (see the opening stanzas of Canto 4).
>
> p. 147
> "I was looking for /shpiks/ [plainclothesmen]"
>
> Why is this definition bracketed instead of parenthetical like the rest of
> them in this section? Compare to bore, grunter, alfear, steinmann,
nippern,
> all defined in parentheses.
>
> p. 147
> "Let those Russians vanish"
>
> Awaiting the disappearance of the Russians, who will be replaced by
Soviets.
>
> p. 147
> "I trust the reader has enjoyed this note."
>
> See index under Kinbote: "his trusting the reader enjoyed the note."
> Anybody have any thoughts on this?
>
> Jasper Fidget
>
> ------------------------------
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Sun, 5 Oct 2003 12:57:43 -0400 (EDT)
> From: Michael Joseph <mjoseph@rci.rutgers.edu>
> Subject: RE: NPPF commentary line 149, p. 143- continued
>
> To continue and conclude my analysis of this part of the commentary, I'd
> like to touch back to my last, and sort of go on selectively from there.
> Much thanks to Jasper for keeping us on track and for counterpointing my
> riffs with his own notes.
>
> > The policeman's interrogation: "What's your real name Charlie," is
> > reminiscent of the soldier, Bernardo's interrogation "Who's there?" the
> > first line of Hamlet, which is of course another text that probes
> > questions of identity, and, like this the narrative at the bottom of p
144
> > (the nadir of the verso), deals directly with the apparition of a king.
> >
> Kinbote of course is the masquerading Botkin, recalling Hamlet's sol.
>
> For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
> Th' oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
> The pangs of despis'd love, the law's delay,
> The insolence of office, and the spurns
> That patient merit of th' unworthy takes,
> When he himself might his quietus make
> With a bare bodkin?
>
> Kinbote's suicide, attested by Nabokov and debated by scholars, would seem
> to evolve from these or like considerations, and Hamlet's synecdoche, his
> specific concern with time, mirrors Nabokov's.
>
> Hamlet is also called "The glass of fashion and the mould of form,/Th'
> observ'd of all observers-" a description that suggests Nabokov's
> investment in "mirrorplay and mirage shimmer," as well as Kinbote, through
> whom the novel is ultimately focalized. Kinbote's description of Charles,
> following the text >>cited above<< seems to parody Ophelia's description
> (above) of the young and sartorially splendid prince:
>
> "The King walked on; the top of his blue pajamas tucked into his skiing
> pants might easily pass for a fancy shirt. There was a pebble in his left
> shoe ... ." [sidebar: the pebble suggests remorse; is it Shade's?]
>
> That Charles's motley appearance arouses no suspicion or curiosity among
> the promenaders at Blawick testifies to Kinbote's own sociopathy. Despite
> his jewler-like descriptions of scenery, he cannot see people correctly,
> beginning with himself. He cannot see the foolish figure he cuts. We can
> invert Hamlet's description of Laertes, "his semblable is his mirror," and
> see Kinbote's own bizarre aspect within his mirror projections.
>
> Robert Silhol says of Hamlet in "Hamlet and his Other" in A Hyperlink
> Journal for Psychological Study of the Arts,"
>
> "Perhaps it's only normal, after all, that this insistence on resemblance
> should follow on a question about identity. After, "Who's there?", a
> possible echo of "Who am I?," which would be more precise only if it were
> conscious, the idea, the wish, to look in a mirror seems perfectly
> natural."
>
> (http://www.clas.ufl.edu/ipsa/journal/articles/psyart1999/silhol01.htm)
>
>
> Extrapolating from Silhol, one could suggest that, while Shade is
> tormented by mutability, and Kinbote by identity, both find solace in
> mirrors, by which both are betrayed. Kinbote's doublegangers oppress him,
> Charles's misogyny and oafishness make him ridiculous, disgusting, while
> Shade's mirrorplay engenders reflections, meanings, he never meant.
>
> For each, Odon-as-The-Newspaper-Reader's mosaic mutilation seems an apt
> metaphor: Both poem and identity are shattered into various incompatible
> parts. That he is clearly a comment on the theme of identity or reflection
> is suggested in the comment that "an explosion at the Glass Works" caused
> his apparent disfigurement: he is the result of catastrophic mirrorplay,
> apparently. His plight, his phantom-of-the-opera-like repulsiveness
> suggests a kind of warning against mirrors.
>
> The second (more reflective) description of Odon seems to comment upon
> _Pale Fire_ as Jasper Fidgets has observed already, as well as the
> phenomenology of reading _Pale Fire._ (The "observer of observers" is also
> the reader.)
>
> "... a hideous tessellated texture with parts of pattern and parts of
> outline seeming to change, to fuse or to separate, like fluctuating cheeks
> and chins in a distortive mirror." (146)
>
> We cannot once and for all fix "Pale Fire" as this "distortive mirror"
> however because, like other reflections, it is merely a semblance, a
> disguise. The newspaper reader is Odon (i.e., the text encompasses the
> reader, and presses him or her into its phantasmagoria.) As a mere
> reflector, the King's man, just as the King is Kinbote's man, Odon cannot
> stabilize the text, establish its identity, or reflect it in an essential
> way. He can merely participate in its mirrorplay on the level of texture,
> or participate in poststructuralist "freeplay." In other words, whether
> one perceives the tesselated pattern as a truer reflection of being than
> the clownishly garbed King, neither carries a greater ontological weight,
> because one cannot settle meaning in any ultimate sense on either
> reflection. All reflections are temporal.
>
>
> Michael
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Sun, 5 Oct 2003 21:26:22 -0400 (EDT)
> From: Michael Joseph <mjoseph@rci.rutgers.edu>
> Subject: RE: NPPF commentary line 149, p. 143- continued
>
> P.S. Just to make the connection between Nabokov and Pynchon, in the
> context of _Pale Fire's_ interrogation of identity, note in _V_ chapter
> five: "Abruptly Pig swung his head toward Rachel, opened his eyes and
> said, "What do you think of Sartre's thesis that we are all impersonating
> an identity?" Thanks.
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Sun, 5 Oct 2003 19:41:31 -0700
> From: bekah <bekah0176@sbcglobal.net>
> Subject: RE: NPPF commentary line 149, p. 143- continued
>
> At 9:26 PM -0400 10/5/03, Michael Joseph wrote:
> >P.S. Just to make the connection between Nabokov and Pynchon, in the
> >context of _Pale Fire's_
>
>
> Actually, I have a note in my book at line 149, page 144, where Mr.
> Kinbote describes "Mt. Glitterntin." To me it sounded like putting a
> name together in the manner of "Frenesi," which I pronounce "free 'n
> easy" but without too hard of a long "e" sound.
> So hear we have either "Glitterin' tin" or 'Glitter 'n tin."
>
> Bekah
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Sun, 5 Oct 2003 23:04:30 -0400 (EDT)
> From: Michael Joseph <mjoseph@rci.rutgers.edu>
> Subject: RE: NPPF commentary line 149, p. 143- continued
>
> Bekah, I appreciate your response, but I'm confused. How are you
> connecting your reading of Glittertin with my note about Kinbote's
> interrogation of identity and Pynchon's reference in V to Sartre's notion
> of the construction of identity?
>
> Michael
>
>
>
>
> On Sun, 5 Oct 2003, bekah wrote:
>
> > At 9:26 PM -0400 10/5/03, Michael Joseph wrote:
> > >P.S. Just to make the connection between Nabokov and Pynchon, in the
> > >context of _Pale Fire's_
> >
> >
> > Actually, I have a note in my book at line 149, page 144, where Mr.
> > Kinbote describes "Mt. Glitterntin." To me it sounded like putting a
> > name together in the manner of "Frenesi," which I pronounce "free 'n
> > easy" but without too hard of a long "e" sound.
> > So hear we have either "Glitterin' tin" or 'Glitter 'n tin."
> >
> > Bekah
> >
> >
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Sun, 5 Oct 2003 20:44:36 -0700
> From: "Keith McMullen" <keithsz@concentric.net>
> Subject: Re: NPPF commentary line 149, p. 143- continued
>
> >>>Bekah, I appreciate your response, but I'm confused. How are you
> connecting your reading of Glittertin with my note about Kinbote's
> interrogation of identity and Pynchon's reference in V to Sartre's notion
> of the construction of identity?<<<
>
> If you note the portion of your post she left at the beginning of her post
> you will see that she is making a Pynchon-Nabokov connection of her own,
not
> relating to the portion of your post that she snipped.
>
> On Sun, 5 Oct 2003, bekah wrote:
>
> > At 9:26 PM -0400 10/5/03, Michael Joseph wrote:
> > >P.S. Just to make the connection between Nabokov and Pynchon, in the
> > >context of _Pale Fire's_
> >
> >
> > Actually, I have a note in my book at line 149, page 144, where Mr.
> > Kinbote describes "Mt. Glitterntin." To me it sounded like putting a
> > name together in the manner of "Frenesi," which I pronounce "free 'n
> > easy" but without too hard of a long "e" sound.
> > So hear we have either "Glitterin' tin" or 'Glitter 'n tin."
> >
> > Bekah
> >
> >
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Mon, 6 Oct 2003 00:47:21 -0400 (EDT)
> From: Michael Joseph <mjoseph@rci.rutgers.edu>
> Subject: NPPF Commentary to line 162: With ihs pure tongue, etc.
>
> "With his pure tongue her abject thirst to quench."
>
> Made manifestly uneasy by Shade's conspicuously erotic sexual imagery,
> Kinbote diagnoses Shade's strange, stop-time trance as "a mild form of
> epilepsy" (147). This seems an incurious pronouncement (implying perhaps
> Nabokov's contempt for positivism), which, nevertheless, hints at the
> attack's mysterious nature. Epilepsy has been traditionally associated
> with the unknown, e.g. the early Greeks called it "Herakliea nosos," the
> illness of Hercules (Euripides "Madness of Hercules"), and the Romans
> "morbus demoniacus," and "morbus sacer." (And, of course, Shakespeare's
> Julius Caesar has an epileptic seizure in act 1, scene 2--perhaps another
> in the play's sequence of "signs.") Seemingly normalizing a "sign" of
> Shade's abnormalcy, or his election, "epilepsy" actually muffles analysis,
> a point underscored by the fact that le petit mal bears absolutely no
> resemblance to Shade's outward or inward experience.
>
> Kinbote's second cut at commentary is metaphoric. "[A] derailment of the
> nerves . . . on the same curve of the tracks, every day, for several weeks
> .. . . " (147). Given Shade's age, he has just turned 11--significantly,
> two ones, one doubled--as well as (a rather telling detail) the repetition
> of the apparently inconsequential derailment, we might construe these
> tracks as model train tracks, whose shape is a (lemniscate) figure
> eight--one of two conventional circles. Perhaps Kinbote has momentarily
> transformed Shade's toy into a set of model trains?
>
> In any case, having offered the metaphor of a train as an explanation of
> Shade's neurological incident, the metaphor takes on a life of its own.
> "Who can forget the good-natured faces . . . of . . . railway workers . .
> .. following with their eyes the windows of the great express cautiously
> gliding by?" (147) Thus, Kinbote lightly abandons the abstruse text in two
> steps: first by offering the vague image of a train derailing (if not a
> child's train, then a childish illustration), and next by falling into the
> imaginary world of the metaphor--much as the reader as newspaper reader
> falls into KInbote's imaginary world in the preceding note (by becoming
> Odon, a shape-shifter, an emanation of Charles/Kinbote/Botkin). Perhaps,
> the blatant intrusion of the metaphor into the text (a link between two
> worlds, therefore another implied lemniscate) recovers Odon's grisly
> "tesselated" mask, the blatant metaphor for _Pale Fire_ or perhaps the
> intrusion of the explicit (if obscure) sexuality of Shade's metaphor.
> Kinbote's description of "faces, glossy with sweat, of copper-chested
> railway works leaning upon their spades" is suggestive in this regard.
>
>
> Michael
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Mon, 6 Oct 2003 00:51:40 -0400 (EDT)
> From: Michael Joseph <mjoseph@rci.rutgers.edu>
> Subject: Re: NPPF commentary line 149, p. 143- continued
>
> On Sun, 5 Oct 2003, Keith McMullen wrote:
>
> > >>>Bekah, I appreciate your response, but I'm confused. How are you
> > connecting your reading of Glittertin with my note about Kinbote's
> > interrogation of identity and Pynchon's reference in V to Sartre's
notion
> > of the construction of identity?<<<
> >
> > If you note the portion of your post she left at the beginning of her
post
> > you will see that she is making a Pynchon-Nabokov connection of her own,
not
> > relating to the portion of your post that she snipped.
>
> Yes, thanks Keith. There was not a relation I noted, but I thought there
> may have been a relation I had not noted.
>
> Michael
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Sun, 5 Oct 2003 22:08:21 -0700
> From: bekah <bekah0176@sbcglobal.net>
> Subject: Re: NPPF commentary line 149, p. 143- continued
>
> At 8:44 PM -0700 10/5/03, Keith McMullen wrote:
> > >>>Bekah, I appreciate your response, but I'm confused. How are you
> >connecting your reading of Glittertin with my note about Kinbote's
> >interrogation of identity and Pynchon's reference in V to Sartre's notion
> >of the construction of identity?<<<
> >
> >If you note the portion of your post she left at the beginning of her
post
> >you will see that she is making a Pynchon-Nabokov connection of her own,
not
> >relating to the portion of your post that she snipped.
>
>
> That's exactly what I did. I was just making my own little
> observation on how I found a connection. I probably could have
> started a new thread so as to keep it less confused but both the name
> of the mountain, "Glitterntin," and Pynchon were in your post so
> that's where I snipped and added. :)
>
> Bekah
>
>
>
>
> >
> >On Sun, 5 Oct 2003, bekah wrote:
> >
> >> At 9:26 PM -0400 10/5/03, Michael Joseph wrote:
> >> >P.S. Just to make the connection between Nabokov and Pynchon, in the
> >> >context of _Pale Fire's_
> >>
> >>
> >> Actually, I have a note in my book at line 149, page 144, where Mr.
> >> Kinbote describes "Mt. Glitterntin." To me it sounded like putting a
> >> name together in the manner of "Frenesi," which I pronounce "free 'n
> >> easy" but without too hard of a long "e" sound.
> >> So hear we have either "Glitterin' tin" or 'Glitter 'n tin."
> >>
> >> Bekah
> >>
> >>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Mon, 6 Oct 2003 01:16:57 -0400 (EDT)
> From: Michael Joseph <mjoseph@rci.rutgers.edu>
> Subject: NPPF: Commentary to Line 167, 169
>
> Line 167
>
> Number games apart, Kinbote here makes his inattentiveness very blatant.
> His voice drops, he seems to mumble to himself.
>
> Number games not apart, the reference to line "181" at this juncture seems
> to recollect that Shade was 11 at the time of his "fall," 11 reappearing
> in the line citation separated by an upright infinity sign, or, as we have
> been referring to it, a lemniscate. The iconic splitting of Shade into two
> selves corresponds to the idea of a fall from childhood into adulthood,
> which is conventionally precipitated by a discovery that one is going to
> die (though, it has also been argued by John Morgenstern and others, by a
> mastery of language and hence a relinquishing of a "pure tongue"). This
> fall is complicated by Shade's abject hunger for an afterlife, or for a
> state of being one can argue signified by the infinity sign. Note that the
> disjunction of selves also corresponds to the division of text here into
> Canto One and Canto Two (= Shade One, Shade Two).
>
> Line 169 Survival after death
>
> Again Kinbote defers a response to a later note. The dispersal of
> commentary suggests the signature event of Canto One, Shade's
> "distribution through space and time." Nabokov seems to reinterpret
> Shade's seizure (ironically, his "distribution") as a metaphor for
> composition, or to translate Shade's sense of the "sublime" (a
> suggestively nineteenth century term referencing Burke, et al.) into a
> kind of technique of articulation.
>
>
>
> Michael
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Mon, 6 Oct 2003 01:23:56 -0400 (EDT)
> From: Michael Joseph <mjoseph@rci.rutgers.edu>
> Subject: Re: NPPF commentary line 149, p. 143- continued
>
> I see. I was actually more startled than confused. Glitterntin and its
> description are evocative of emasculation, whereas Frenesi--either frenzy
> or free-n-easy--is decidedly not.
>
>
> Michael
>
>
> > At 8:44 PM -0700 10/5/03, Keith McMullen wrote:
> > > >>>Bekah, I appreciate your response, but I'm confused. How are you
> > >connecting your reading of Glittertin with my note about Kinbote's
> > >interrogation of identity and Pynchon's reference in V to Sartre's
notion
> > >of the construction of identity?<<<
> > >
> > >If you note the portion of your post she left at the beginning of her
post
> > >you will see that she is making a Pynchon-Nabokov connection of her
own, not
> > >relating to the portion of your post that she snipped.
> >
> >
> > That's exactly what I did. I was just making my own little
> > observation on how I found a connection. I probably could have
> > started a new thread so as to keep it less confused but both the name
> > of the mountain, "Glitterntin," and Pynchon were in your post so
> > that's where I snipped and added. :)
> >
> > Bekah
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > >
> > >On Sun, 5 Oct 2003, bekah wrote:
> > >
> > >> At 9:26 PM -0400 10/5/03, Michael Joseph wrote:
> > >> >P.S. Just to make the connection between Nabokov and Pynchon, in
the
> > >> >context of _Pale Fire's_
> > >>
> > >>
> > >> Actually, I have a note in my book at line 149, page 144, where Mr.
> > >> Kinbote describes "Mt. Glitterntin." To me it sounded like putting a
> > >> name together in the manner of "Frenesi," which I pronounce "free 'n
> > >> easy" but without too hard of a long "e" sound.
> > >> So hear we have either "Glitterin' tin" or 'Glitter 'n tin."
> > >>
> > >> Bekah
> > >>
> > >>
> >
> >
>
> ------------------------------
>
> End of pynchon-l-digest V2 #3588
> ********************************
>
From: "pynchon-l-digest" <owner-pynchon-l-digest@waste.org>
To: <pynchon-l-digest@waste.org>
Sent: Monday, October 06, 2003 12:00 AM
Subject: pynchon-l-digest V2 #3588
>
> pynchon-l-digest Monday, October 6 2003 Volume 02 : Number
3588
>
>
>
> Re: NPPF commentary line 149, p. 143- continued
> NPPF commentary line 149 -- some notes
> A German book about the history of Mittelwerke/Mittelbau Dora
> Representing"Hottentots" in Early Modern England
> RE: NPPF commentary line 149, p. 143- continued
> re: Zhlubb
> RE: NPPF commentary line 149, p. 143- continued
> RE: NPPF commentary line 149, p. 143- continued
> RE: NPPF commentary line 149, p. 143- continued
> Re: NPPF commentary line 149, p. 143- continued
> NPPF Commentary to line 162: With ihs pure tongue, etc.
> Re: NPPF commentary line 149, p. 143- continued
> Re: NPPF commentary line 149, p. 143- continued
> NPPF: Commentary to Line 167, 169
> Re: NPPF commentary line 149, p. 143- continued
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Date: Sun, 5 Oct 2003 08:17:39 -0400 (EDT)
> From: Michael Joseph <mjoseph@rci.rutgers.edu>
> Subject: Re: NPPF commentary line 149, p. 143- continued
>
> Please keep me informed of its findings.
>
> On Fri, 3 Oct 2003, sZ wrote:
>
> > > >>>Anyone can be pyschoanalized, because psychological realities are
real
> > > whether one chooses to recognize them or not. <<<
> > >
> > > WOW! A discussion of this assertion could get us going for
> > > a while.
> > >
> > well, the night is young
> >
> > Ok then. Let's begin by using the method proposed by the assertion, on
the
> > assertion.
> > Do you see where the unconscious is (s)peaking through in the assertion
> > itself? If you
> > do, make note of it, hold it in your mind, and begin writing everything
that
> > flows through
> > your consciousness as you think about it. If you do not recognize it,
the
> > p-list psycho-
> > analytic subgroup will psychoanalyze you off-list.
> >
> > The metre is running.
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Sun, 5 Oct 2003 10:32:34 -0400
> From: "Jasper Fidget" <fakename@verizon.net>
> Subject: NPPF commentary line 149 -- some notes
>
> p. 138
> "Aros and Grindelwod"
>
> Both suggest towns in Switzerland: Arosa and Grindelwald (see Grindelwod
> again p. 105).
>
> p. 138
> "Bregberg" "Bregberg Pass" (139)
>
> Could this imply the German "Burgberg" or Mountain Fortress (e.g. Harzburg
> or Colditz (from which a number of POWs escaped via tunnels))?
>
> p. 138, 149
> "Gulf of Surprise"
>
> Charles II escaped England into exile on board the Surprise (later renamed
> the Royal Escape). Also points back to Dim Gulf (ln 957); see Poe's "To
One
> in Paradise":
>
> A voice from out the Future cries,
> "On! on!"-but o'er the Past
> (Dim gulf!) my spirit hovering lies
> Mute, motionless, aghast!
>
> If Dim Gulf is the past (Shade's first book), then Gulf of Surprise is the
> future, so another time parallel.
>
> p. 139
> "Thunder was rumbling in the terrible brown sky."
>
> This made me think of Washington Irving's "Rip Van Winkle" -- the dog, the
> farmhouse, the dosing off, the stranger sighted from a distance, and some
of
> the mountain descriptions add to it. Also "the ripple-warped reflection"
> (p. 143), and "the Rippleson Caves" (p. 145).
>
> p. 139
> "after pushing through the black wall of the forest"
>
> Reminiscent of the "heavy black drapery" (p. 133) at the entrance to the
> Royal Theater from the secret tunnel.
>
> p. 139
> "His mother was an American from New Wye in New England"
>
> Sylvia O'Donnell, see p. 247
>
> p. 140
> Griff
>
> Anglo-Indian abbreviation for Griffin (OED)
>
> p. 143
> "Great fallen crags diversified the wayside."
>
> See Wordsworth's "The Prelude": "Black drizzling crags that spake by the
> way-side" (Bk 6 ln 631).
>
> http://www.bartleby.com/145/ww292.html
>
> p.145
> "'War?' queried her consort. 'That must have been the explosion at the
> Glass Works in 1951 -- not war.'"
>
> Connects back to "Extremists from the famous Glass Factory where the
> revolution had flickered first" (p. 120) and "the 1950 Exposition of Glass
> Animals, when part of it was almost destroyed by fire" (p. 112).
>
> Three years after his ascension to the throne in 1685, James II (brother
of
> Charles II) was forced to repeat his brother's escape routine and flee to
> France after attempting to convert England to Roman Catholicism. (He was
> replaced in Whitehall by the Protestant William III of Orange and his wife
> Mary, James' daughter, in the "Glorious Revolution" of 1688.) James II,
his
> son James III, and his grandson Charles's long-term campaign to recapture
> the throne was supported by the so-called Jacobites, whose secret
societies
> were banned by the monarchy, and who would engrave the bowls and glasses
> they used to toast their "King over the sea" with Jacobite symbols. The
> most common symbol engraved on this "Jacobite glass" is a rose.
>
> http://www.cosmos-club.org/journals/1999/kaplan.html
>
> I'm at a loss to find an analog for the fire (unless it's London's Great
> Fire of 1666, which happened during the Restoration and is unconnected to
> any revolution), but this at least supplies a nexus for the glass, Charles
> II, and rose patterns.
>
> p. 146
> "all the art of plastic surgery had only resulted in a hideous tessellated
> texture with parts of pattern and parts of outline seeming to change, to
> fuse or to separate, like fluctuating cheeks and chins in a distortive
> mirror"
>
> The face seems a(nother) parody of _Pale Fire_ itself.
>
> p. 146
> "sat knitting", "on one side of her lay a pair of carpet slippers and on
the
> other a ball of red wool"
>
> Part of the engine of creation motif: the knitting woman the engine of the
> masquerade (see the opening stanzas of Canto 4).
>
> p. 147
> "I was looking for /shpiks/ [plainclothesmen]"
>
> Why is this definition bracketed instead of parenthetical like the rest of
> them in this section? Compare to bore, grunter, alfear, steinmann,
nippern,
> all defined in parentheses.
>
> p. 147
> "Let those Russians vanish"
>
> Awaiting the disappearance of the Russians, who will be replaced by
Soviets.
>
> p. 147
> "I trust the reader has enjoyed this note."
>
> See index under Kinbote: "his trusting the reader enjoyed the note."
> Anybody have any thoughts on this?
>
> Jasper Fidget
>
> ------------------------------
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Sun, 5 Oct 2003 12:57:43 -0400 (EDT)
> From: Michael Joseph <mjoseph@rci.rutgers.edu>
> Subject: RE: NPPF commentary line 149, p. 143- continued
>
> To continue and conclude my analysis of this part of the commentary, I'd
> like to touch back to my last, and sort of go on selectively from there.
> Much thanks to Jasper for keeping us on track and for counterpointing my
> riffs with his own notes.
>
> > The policeman's interrogation: "What's your real name Charlie," is
> > reminiscent of the soldier, Bernardo's interrogation "Who's there?" the
> > first line of Hamlet, which is of course another text that probes
> > questions of identity, and, like this the narrative at the bottom of p
144
> > (the nadir of the verso), deals directly with the apparition of a king.
> >
> Kinbote of course is the masquerading Botkin, recalling Hamlet's sol.
>
> For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
> Th' oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
> The pangs of despis'd love, the law's delay,
> The insolence of office, and the spurns
> That patient merit of th' unworthy takes,
> When he himself might his quietus make
> With a bare bodkin?
>
> Kinbote's suicide, attested by Nabokov and debated by scholars, would seem
> to evolve from these or like considerations, and Hamlet's synecdoche, his
> specific concern with time, mirrors Nabokov's.
>
> Hamlet is also called "The glass of fashion and the mould of form,/Th'
> observ'd of all observers-" a description that suggests Nabokov's
> investment in "mirrorplay and mirage shimmer," as well as Kinbote, through
> whom the novel is ultimately focalized. Kinbote's description of Charles,
> following the text >>cited above<< seems to parody Ophelia's description
> (above) of the young and sartorially splendid prince:
>
> "The King walked on; the top of his blue pajamas tucked into his skiing
> pants might easily pass for a fancy shirt. There was a pebble in his left
> shoe ... ." [sidebar: the pebble suggests remorse; is it Shade's?]
>
> That Charles's motley appearance arouses no suspicion or curiosity among
> the promenaders at Blawick testifies to Kinbote's own sociopathy. Despite
> his jewler-like descriptions of scenery, he cannot see people correctly,
> beginning with himself. He cannot see the foolish figure he cuts. We can
> invert Hamlet's description of Laertes, "his semblable is his mirror," and
> see Kinbote's own bizarre aspect within his mirror projections.
>
> Robert Silhol says of Hamlet in "Hamlet and his Other" in A Hyperlink
> Journal for Psychological Study of the Arts,"
>
> "Perhaps it's only normal, after all, that this insistence on resemblance
> should follow on a question about identity. After, "Who's there?", a
> possible echo of "Who am I?," which would be more precise only if it were
> conscious, the idea, the wish, to look in a mirror seems perfectly
> natural."
>
> (http://www.clas.ufl.edu/ipsa/journal/articles/psyart1999/silhol01.htm)
>
>
> Extrapolating from Silhol, one could suggest that, while Shade is
> tormented by mutability, and Kinbote by identity, both find solace in
> mirrors, by which both are betrayed. Kinbote's doublegangers oppress him,
> Charles's misogyny and oafishness make him ridiculous, disgusting, while
> Shade's mirrorplay engenders reflections, meanings, he never meant.
>
> For each, Odon-as-The-Newspaper-Reader's mosaic mutilation seems an apt
> metaphor: Both poem and identity are shattered into various incompatible
> parts. That he is clearly a comment on the theme of identity or reflection
> is suggested in the comment that "an explosion at the Glass Works" caused
> his apparent disfigurement: he is the result of catastrophic mirrorplay,
> apparently. His plight, his phantom-of-the-opera-like repulsiveness
> suggests a kind of warning against mirrors.
>
> The second (more reflective) description of Odon seems to comment upon
> _Pale Fire_ as Jasper Fidgets has observed already, as well as the
> phenomenology of reading _Pale Fire._ (The "observer of observers" is also
> the reader.)
>
> "... a hideous tessellated texture with parts of pattern and parts of
> outline seeming to change, to fuse or to separate, like fluctuating cheeks
> and chins in a distortive mirror." (146)
>
> We cannot once and for all fix "Pale Fire" as this "distortive mirror"
> however because, like other reflections, it is merely a semblance, a
> disguise. The newspaper reader is Odon (i.e., the text encompasses the
> reader, and presses him or her into its phantasmagoria.) As a mere
> reflector, the King's man, just as the King is Kinbote's man, Odon cannot
> stabilize the text, establish its identity, or reflect it in an essential
> way. He can merely participate in its mirrorplay on the level of texture,
> or participate in poststructuralist "freeplay." In other words, whether
> one perceives the tesselated pattern as a truer reflection of being than
> the clownishly garbed King, neither carries a greater ontological weight,
> because one cannot settle meaning in any ultimate sense on either
> reflection. All reflections are temporal.
>
>
> Michael
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Sun, 5 Oct 2003 21:26:22 -0400 (EDT)
> From: Michael Joseph <mjoseph@rci.rutgers.edu>
> Subject: RE: NPPF commentary line 149, p. 143- continued
>
> P.S. Just to make the connection between Nabokov and Pynchon, in the
> context of _Pale Fire's_ interrogation of identity, note in _V_ chapter
> five: "Abruptly Pig swung his head toward Rachel, opened his eyes and
> said, "What do you think of Sartre's thesis that we are all impersonating
> an identity?" Thanks.
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Sun, 5 Oct 2003 19:41:31 -0700
> From: bekah <bekah0176@sbcglobal.net>
> Subject: RE: NPPF commentary line 149, p. 143- continued
>
> At 9:26 PM -0400 10/5/03, Michael Joseph wrote:
> >P.S. Just to make the connection between Nabokov and Pynchon, in the
> >context of _Pale Fire's_
>
>
> Actually, I have a note in my book at line 149, page 144, where Mr.
> Kinbote describes "Mt. Glitterntin." To me it sounded like putting a
> name together in the manner of "Frenesi," which I pronounce "free 'n
> easy" but without too hard of a long "e" sound.
> So hear we have either "Glitterin' tin" or 'Glitter 'n tin."
>
> Bekah
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Sun, 5 Oct 2003 23:04:30 -0400 (EDT)
> From: Michael Joseph <mjoseph@rci.rutgers.edu>
> Subject: RE: NPPF commentary line 149, p. 143- continued
>
> Bekah, I appreciate your response, but I'm confused. How are you
> connecting your reading of Glittertin with my note about Kinbote's
> interrogation of identity and Pynchon's reference in V to Sartre's notion
> of the construction of identity?
>
> Michael
>
>
>
>
> On Sun, 5 Oct 2003, bekah wrote:
>
> > At 9:26 PM -0400 10/5/03, Michael Joseph wrote:
> > >P.S. Just to make the connection between Nabokov and Pynchon, in the
> > >context of _Pale Fire's_
> >
> >
> > Actually, I have a note in my book at line 149, page 144, where Mr.
> > Kinbote describes "Mt. Glitterntin." To me it sounded like putting a
> > name together in the manner of "Frenesi," which I pronounce "free 'n
> > easy" but without too hard of a long "e" sound.
> > So hear we have either "Glitterin' tin" or 'Glitter 'n tin."
> >
> > Bekah
> >
> >
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Sun, 5 Oct 2003 20:44:36 -0700
> From: "Keith McMullen" <keithsz@concentric.net>
> Subject: Re: NPPF commentary line 149, p. 143- continued
>
> >>>Bekah, I appreciate your response, but I'm confused. How are you
> connecting your reading of Glittertin with my note about Kinbote's
> interrogation of identity and Pynchon's reference in V to Sartre's notion
> of the construction of identity?<<<
>
> If you note the portion of your post she left at the beginning of her post
> you will see that she is making a Pynchon-Nabokov connection of her own,
not
> relating to the portion of your post that she snipped.
>
> On Sun, 5 Oct 2003, bekah wrote:
>
> > At 9:26 PM -0400 10/5/03, Michael Joseph wrote:
> > >P.S. Just to make the connection between Nabokov and Pynchon, in the
> > >context of _Pale Fire's_
> >
> >
> > Actually, I have a note in my book at line 149, page 144, where Mr.
> > Kinbote describes "Mt. Glitterntin." To me it sounded like putting a
> > name together in the manner of "Frenesi," which I pronounce "free 'n
> > easy" but without too hard of a long "e" sound.
> > So hear we have either "Glitterin' tin" or 'Glitter 'n tin."
> >
> > Bekah
> >
> >
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Mon, 6 Oct 2003 00:47:21 -0400 (EDT)
> From: Michael Joseph <mjoseph@rci.rutgers.edu>
> Subject: NPPF Commentary to line 162: With ihs pure tongue, etc.
>
> "With his pure tongue her abject thirst to quench."
>
> Made manifestly uneasy by Shade's conspicuously erotic sexual imagery,
> Kinbote diagnoses Shade's strange, stop-time trance as "a mild form of
> epilepsy" (147). This seems an incurious pronouncement (implying perhaps
> Nabokov's contempt for positivism), which, nevertheless, hints at the
> attack's mysterious nature. Epilepsy has been traditionally associated
> with the unknown, e.g. the early Greeks called it "Herakliea nosos," the
> illness of Hercules (Euripides "Madness of Hercules"), and the Romans
> "morbus demoniacus," and "morbus sacer." (And, of course, Shakespeare's
> Julius Caesar has an epileptic seizure in act 1, scene 2--perhaps another
> in the play's sequence of "signs.") Seemingly normalizing a "sign" of
> Shade's abnormalcy, or his election, "epilepsy" actually muffles analysis,
> a point underscored by the fact that le petit mal bears absolutely no
> resemblance to Shade's outward or inward experience.
>
> Kinbote's second cut at commentary is metaphoric. "[A] derailment of the
> nerves . . . on the same curve of the tracks, every day, for several weeks
> .. . . " (147). Given Shade's age, he has just turned 11--significantly,
> two ones, one doubled--as well as (a rather telling detail) the repetition
> of the apparently inconsequential derailment, we might construe these
> tracks as model train tracks, whose shape is a (lemniscate) figure
> eight--one of two conventional circles. Perhaps Kinbote has momentarily
> transformed Shade's toy into a set of model trains?
>
> In any case, having offered the metaphor of a train as an explanation of
> Shade's neurological incident, the metaphor takes on a life of its own.
> "Who can forget the good-natured faces . . . of . . . railway workers . .
> .. following with their eyes the windows of the great express cautiously
> gliding by?" (147) Thus, Kinbote lightly abandons the abstruse text in two
> steps: first by offering the vague image of a train derailing (if not a
> child's train, then a childish illustration), and next by falling into the
> imaginary world of the metaphor--much as the reader as newspaper reader
> falls into KInbote's imaginary world in the preceding note (by becoming
> Odon, a shape-shifter, an emanation of Charles/Kinbote/Botkin). Perhaps,
> the blatant intrusion of the metaphor into the text (a link between two
> worlds, therefore another implied lemniscate) recovers Odon's grisly
> "tesselated" mask, the blatant metaphor for _Pale Fire_ or perhaps the
> intrusion of the explicit (if obscure) sexuality of Shade's metaphor.
> Kinbote's description of "faces, glossy with sweat, of copper-chested
> railway works leaning upon their spades" is suggestive in this regard.
>
>
> Michael
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Mon, 6 Oct 2003 00:51:40 -0400 (EDT)
> From: Michael Joseph <mjoseph@rci.rutgers.edu>
> Subject: Re: NPPF commentary line 149, p. 143- continued
>
> On Sun, 5 Oct 2003, Keith McMullen wrote:
>
> > >>>Bekah, I appreciate your response, but I'm confused. How are you
> > connecting your reading of Glittertin with my note about Kinbote's
> > interrogation of identity and Pynchon's reference in V to Sartre's
notion
> > of the construction of identity?<<<
> >
> > If you note the portion of your post she left at the beginning of her
post
> > you will see that she is making a Pynchon-Nabokov connection of her own,
not
> > relating to the portion of your post that she snipped.
>
> Yes, thanks Keith. There was not a relation I noted, but I thought there
> may have been a relation I had not noted.
>
> Michael
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Sun, 5 Oct 2003 22:08:21 -0700
> From: bekah <bekah0176@sbcglobal.net>
> Subject: Re: NPPF commentary line 149, p. 143- continued
>
> At 8:44 PM -0700 10/5/03, Keith McMullen wrote:
> > >>>Bekah, I appreciate your response, but I'm confused. How are you
> >connecting your reading of Glittertin with my note about Kinbote's
> >interrogation of identity and Pynchon's reference in V to Sartre's notion
> >of the construction of identity?<<<
> >
> >If you note the portion of your post she left at the beginning of her
post
> >you will see that she is making a Pynchon-Nabokov connection of her own,
not
> >relating to the portion of your post that she snipped.
>
>
> That's exactly what I did. I was just making my own little
> observation on how I found a connection. I probably could have
> started a new thread so as to keep it less confused but both the name
> of the mountain, "Glitterntin," and Pynchon were in your post so
> that's where I snipped and added. :)
>
> Bekah
>
>
>
>
> >
> >On Sun, 5 Oct 2003, bekah wrote:
> >
> >> At 9:26 PM -0400 10/5/03, Michael Joseph wrote:
> >> >P.S. Just to make the connection between Nabokov and Pynchon, in the
> >> >context of _Pale Fire's_
> >>
> >>
> >> Actually, I have a note in my book at line 149, page 144, where Mr.
> >> Kinbote describes "Mt. Glitterntin." To me it sounded like putting a
> >> name together in the manner of "Frenesi," which I pronounce "free 'n
> >> easy" but without too hard of a long "e" sound.
> >> So hear we have either "Glitterin' tin" or 'Glitter 'n tin."
> >>
> >> Bekah
> >>
> >>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Mon, 6 Oct 2003 01:16:57 -0400 (EDT)
> From: Michael Joseph <mjoseph@rci.rutgers.edu>
> Subject: NPPF: Commentary to Line 167, 169
>
> Line 167
>
> Number games apart, Kinbote here makes his inattentiveness very blatant.
> His voice drops, he seems to mumble to himself.
>
> Number games not apart, the reference to line "181" at this juncture seems
> to recollect that Shade was 11 at the time of his "fall," 11 reappearing
> in the line citation separated by an upright infinity sign, or, as we have
> been referring to it, a lemniscate. The iconic splitting of Shade into two
> selves corresponds to the idea of a fall from childhood into adulthood,
> which is conventionally precipitated by a discovery that one is going to
> die (though, it has also been argued by John Morgenstern and others, by a
> mastery of language and hence a relinquishing of a "pure tongue"). This
> fall is complicated by Shade's abject hunger for an afterlife, or for a
> state of being one can argue signified by the infinity sign. Note that the
> disjunction of selves also corresponds to the division of text here into
> Canto One and Canto Two (= Shade One, Shade Two).
>
> Line 169 Survival after death
>
> Again Kinbote defers a response to a later note. The dispersal of
> commentary suggests the signature event of Canto One, Shade's
> "distribution through space and time." Nabokov seems to reinterpret
> Shade's seizure (ironically, his "distribution") as a metaphor for
> composition, or to translate Shade's sense of the "sublime" (a
> suggestively nineteenth century term referencing Burke, et al.) into a
> kind of technique of articulation.
>
>
>
> Michael
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Mon, 6 Oct 2003 01:23:56 -0400 (EDT)
> From: Michael Joseph <mjoseph@rci.rutgers.edu>
> Subject: Re: NPPF commentary line 149, p. 143- continued
>
> I see. I was actually more startled than confused. Glitterntin and its
> description are evocative of emasculation, whereas Frenesi--either frenzy
> or free-n-easy--is decidedly not.
>
>
> Michael
>
>
> > At 8:44 PM -0700 10/5/03, Keith McMullen wrote:
> > > >>>Bekah, I appreciate your response, but I'm confused. How are you
> > >connecting your reading of Glittertin with my note about Kinbote's
> > >interrogation of identity and Pynchon's reference in V to Sartre's
notion
> > >of the construction of identity?<<<
> > >
> > >If you note the portion of your post she left at the beginning of her
post
> > >you will see that she is making a Pynchon-Nabokov connection of her
own, not
> > >relating to the portion of your post that she snipped.
> >
> >
> > That's exactly what I did. I was just making my own little
> > observation on how I found a connection. I probably could have
> > started a new thread so as to keep it less confused but both the name
> > of the mountain, "Glitterntin," and Pynchon were in your post so
> > that's where I snipped and added. :)
> >
> > Bekah
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > >
> > >On Sun, 5 Oct 2003, bekah wrote:
> > >
> > >> At 9:26 PM -0400 10/5/03, Michael Joseph wrote:
> > >> >P.S. Just to make the connection between Nabokov and Pynchon, in
the
> > >> >context of _Pale Fire's_
> > >>
> > >>
> > >> Actually, I have a note in my book at line 149, page 144, where Mr.
> > >> Kinbote describes "Mt. Glitterntin." To me it sounded like putting a
> > >> name together in the manner of "Frenesi," which I pronounce "free 'n
> > >> easy" but without too hard of a long "e" sound.
> > >> So hear we have either "Glitterin' tin" or 'Glitter 'n tin."
> > >>
> > >> Bekah
> > >>
> > >>
> >
> >
>
> ------------------------------
>
> End of pynchon-l-digest V2 #3588
> ********************************
>