Stan K-B:[...] PALE FIRE, indeed!
What we have is HEAT as a form of energy, visible only in a very narrow
frequency range.
[...] Will we see any write-ups of Prof Blackwell’s
Symposium on VN the Scientist?
JM: Indirectly, this is an important
clarification on Shade's "Pale Fire", because it serves to indicate
the importance of "lunar things" and their "narrow frequency range of
visibility" in this novel (cf. dead Aunt Maud's
ghostly index in "M").
Drivers in old-times were "chauffeurs"
("responsible for the heating") and still in modern
days automobiles will start thanks
to "ignition" or - should it fail or their batteries run down
- by pushing them down a steep slope ( kinetic
energy?). John Shade had problems with his old
packard (whose wheels were stuck in the snow) but in this case it was
Kinbote's impact on the ground that acted as an unexpected...chemical
reagent!
Cf: "I lost my footing and sat down on the
surprisingly hard snow. My fall acted as a chemical reagent on the Shades’
sedan, which forthwith budged and almost ran over me as it swung into the lane
with John at the wheel."
In the AY, Brian Boyd brought
up information about Nabokov's relation to heating and furnaces
before he compared these with VN's words in "On a Book
Entitled Lolita". Here is VN's sentence, published in
1956 (Penguin,315) "Every serious writer, I dare
say, is aware of this or that published book of his as of a
constant comforting presence. Its pilot light is steadily burning somewhere
in the basement and a mere touch applied to one's private thermostat
instantly results in a quiet little explosion of familiar
warmth." - which Boyd quoted to reflect VN's
tactics on how "imagination fecondates the contact with an object
to create an image". *
The same quandary came to life
in PF in another mood:
Cf. Kinbote
on Judge Goldworth's alphabetical, sunlight-ruled, calendric home:
"The heating system was a farce [...] tepid
exhalations of a throbbing and groaning basement furnace [...] By occluding the
apertures upstairs I attempted to give more energy to the register in the living
room."
......................................................................................
* José Maria Guelbenzu on-line in
"Babelia" (23-12-2006) wrote about Brian Boyd's AY,
now translated into Spanish as "Los años americanos", where
he praised Boyd's rendering of Nabokov's qualms with calefaction in
the house he rented again in 1948 (& in which VN finished
"Lolita"), and how Boyd showed their
transformation, by metaphors, in VN's afterword to
"Lolita."
"Vamos a un ejemplo: en 1948 un amigo les consigue a
los Nabokov una casa; Nabokov advierte al amigo de que es un perfecto inútil en
lo que respecta al manejo de los sistemas de calefacción individual. En esa casa
termina su autor la celebérrima Lolita; Boyd repara en un texto del epílogo a la
novela: 'Todo escritor serio, me atrevo a decir, tiene
conciencia de que este o aquel libro que ha publicado constituye para él una
presencia constante y alentadora. Su luz piloto arde sin cesar en algún punto
del sótano, y un simple toque en el termostato privado se traduce inmediatamente
en una tranquila explosión de ternura familiar'. Repare el lector tanto
en las tres líneas (autoría, calefactor, círculo de gratitud familiar) que
confluyen y se fecundan en la imagen como en el modo en que Boyd usa el texto
para hacer notar el modo en que la imaginación fecunda el contacto
con un objeto para crear una imagen." (cf. also L-Archives, 2007)