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One function of VN's myriad literary illusions, it seems to me, is to
highlight a particular theme or concept that occurs in both VN's text
and
the text to which he alludes. We see this in "stillicide" pointing to
Hardy's "Friends Beyond." We see it in many of the references to Pope.
I
think we see it in the kin-bote scenario of "Colonel Starbottle's
Client"
and in the theme of Ford's "The Image of Desire." So then, what might
Bradshaw's _Goddess of Atvatabar_ offer us? I'd like to offer the
following
two quotations:
1. "The 'this world/that world' antithesis traditionally refers to
earthly
existence as opposed to the delights of heaven. . . . Within [Invit. to
a
Beheading], however, the primary resonance of the binary pair is
metaphysical rather than religious, and the most appropriate correlates
of
the opposing poles might be 'materialistic/idealistic' or, perhaps
still
more simply, 'real/ideal.'"
--D. Barton Johnson, Worlds in Regression
2. "Bradshaw goes beyond the physical, and has created...an interior
world
of the soul, illuminated with the still more dazzling sun of ideal
love."
--Julian Hawthorne, Introduction to the novel
As Don Johnson has pointed out, the "Two World" theme is important
throughout VN's oeuvre. In Atvatabar, we have, literally, two involuted
worlds (at the North Pole, the Polar King sails down into a hole which
reveals the interior world). This world-within-a-world image, echoed by
the
novel's introduction of "twin souls," was, I imagine, pleasing to VN,
even
if the novel itself is utterly forgettable. So then, what might we make
of
this two-in-one theme as it relates to Pale Fire?
One more quotation:
"Anything may be regarded as subject or object. Soul is the subjective
aspect of man. In Homer two aspects of the same thing may be regarded
as
two things, and hence separable." --Frederick LaMotte Santee
Matt Roth