Dear Stephen and Jay, Gould and
List,
An interesting suggestion about a census of dead
souls in, our outside, a VN novel. There might be a taunting pattern
to see concerning that mysterious in-between,
otherwordly area.
Yesterday someone mentioned one of the rivers:
Styx? Acheront.., the waters of Lethe? But, for the Greeks, there were
no wandering souls and I vaguely remember that ... Oh, help
me still unburied shadows where my memory has already taken
refuge ... ). I think that VN's "otherworld" bears no relation
to the Greek's, or pass through Dantesque spirals ...
John Shade was bothered by his daughter's physical
unattractiveness, probably the more so because she looked like him. He was no
Apollo either, but managed to father a very unlucky child.
Hazel's mumblings, inversion of words and
foot-scratching ( reminiscent of T.S.Eliot's description in one of his
poems...), her constant unhappiness, resentment, isolation are probably related
to her not being able to react or to cope with her parents' lack
of perceptiveness and disappointment.
But her suffering was not entirely their "fault",
nor any dawkinian selfish-gene's: she was a very sick child, indeed.
Independently of her looks.
She also failed her entrance exams to enrol at
some university, true? She was 23, lived at home with her parents, didn't work
to acquire finantial independence... How could she be as brilliant as you say
she was?
The word "chtonic" might be suggestive in relation to Hazel and her
environment.
The first reference to "chtonic" that I still
recall came from Levi-Strauss, while he presented his structural
apparatus. He described some myths as representatives of
the human effort to understand and represent certain dilemas, namely,
are we descendants from a pairing sexual couple or were we born from an
equivalent of the legendary cabbage?
Cthonic, in that context, applies to
non-sexual generation, like mythological giants
who were sown on the earth and grew from a
dragon's teeth - it means something like "arising from the
ground". ( Unfortunately I cannot remember those ancient readings of mine
enough, but someone might feel interested to check this further)
I'm only bringing this improviso because
I've just posted a note about Freud conclusions about Shakespeare's
"Timon of Athens", where he wrote about an intense "distaste for sexuality"
he detected in the character. The Shades were not a very passionate
couple, at least so it seems to me. They kept separate rooms and Hazel
was engendered after a long period of sterility, after a trip to
Nice... The poem Pale Fire, itself, has no trace of eroticism, or
sensuality.
The expression " a writer's grief" is a
peculiar expression for a "father's grief": he was grieving for
himself...
Hazel's experiences in the barn are quite
childish: are these the ideal examples of her true "spirituality"? A
beautiful ghost that arose from a metamorphosis similar to a
butterfly's... would such an image really appeal to Nabokov if not in a
parody?
Jansy