Canceling with one "L" then occur at
least once in the Kinbotean text.
---- Original Message -----
Sent: Sunday, August 06, 2006 7:08 PM
Subject: spelling choices Shade and Kinbote
Both my copies of Pale Fire ( The
Library of America, Everyman's Library) present the same characteristic
choices for the spelling of "cancelled/canceled"
"cancellation/cancelation" .
In his foreword Kinbote writes of
Shade´s "misshapen body, gray mop of abundant hair..." ( LA ed, page
453) and concludes that: "He was his own cancellation".
Shade, in Canto Four, line 850 chose the American spellling (as
distinguished in my Oxford Concise English Dictionary):
" A pen stops in mid-air, then swoops
to bar
A canceled sunset or restore a star".
Perhaps Kinbote wrote a commentary on
the "canceled sunset" ( I could not find it now and my recollections,
as usual, are rather dim) but there
are no particular notes on line 850 concerning this "cancelation" ( he
deals with Lines 841-872 in one short sentence) .
If Kinbote insisted on doubling the "ll" then I would be more secure to
inquire if these two different spellings for the same word were
either editorial slips ( if they are not indifferently used in one way
or another in the same novel?) or were they intended by VN.
Would this "authorial" suggestion serve to indicate that Kinbote and
Shade probably were, indeed, two distinct writers?
Jansy