Subject: R: [NABOKV-L] The Nature of Electricity: "Number nine-hundred-ninety-nine"
From: "pndale" <[email-masked]>
To: "Vladimir Nabokov Forum" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 08 Oct 2006 12:14:56 -0400

I am not too familiar with the forum's history, and no doubt someone has
noted that the number of lines - 999 - inverts, as is appropriate for a
novel structured on mirroring, the notorious number of Revelations 666,
denoting  the beast, who, among other things, has power over all tongues
(13:7). Many things can be deduced from this, given Nabokov's elusive
metaphysics, if the two numbers are related intentionally. 999 inverts
666, a number of apocalyptic closure as opposed to 999 which begs for an
extra digit, denied it, to achieve completion, and thus gestures towards
an open universe.etc etc

A similar device, of writing a poetic sequence amouinting to 999 sonnets
consciously intended to resonant with apocalyptic undertones by the
coincidence once the number is capsized (666), was mulled by Giuseppe
Gioachino Belli, whose exuberant incontinence of inspiration in the
manner however, while writing in the diabolic dialect of Rome under the
Popes of his time, pushed him beyond the desired number, leaving us with
some 2279 poems, a number shorn of numerical sense.
Peter Dale
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: George Shimanovich 
  To: [email-masked] 
  Sent: Sunday, October 08, 2006 4:40 AM
  Subject: [NABOKV-L] The Nature of Electricity: "Number
nine-hundred-ninety-nine"

  "The Nature of Electricity" was send by John Shade to a New York
magazine some time in 1958 which is before Pale Fire was written and
before Kinbote rented Goldsworth's house. It was published after Shade's
death. Its third stanza refers to number 999 as an old friend:

  Streetlamps are numbered, and maybe

  Number nine-hundred-ninety-nine

  (So brightly beaming through a tree

  So green) is an old friend of mine.

  Does it mean that nine-hundred-ninety-nine is the number of a
streetlamp opposite Shade's house? Based on last stanza of PF poem the
tree is shagbark tree in the front lawn garden, viewed from the veranda.
Kinbote called that place the Nest for a reason. That is where Shade
spent much of his time and wrote most of his poems. Could it be then
that the poem has 999 lines by design since that number is an author's
old friend? Then search of 1000th line becomes obsolete. Also is there a
link between lights of "gentle dead" in "The Nature of Electricity" and
the title of "Pale Fire" which comes from Hamlet's fire bugs (I don't
have exact quote)? I think that is in line with final Boyd's theory of
Pale Fire.

  I did not find reference to "The Nature of Electricity" in Nabokov-L
archive but may be somebody else wrote about its use of the magic
number.

  - George Shimanovich

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