Steve Arons: `"That is the wrong word,'' [Shade] said.
``One should not apply it to a person who deliberately peels off a drab and
unhappy past and replaces it with a brilliant invention. That's merely turning a
new leaf with the left hand.'' We have here a question of identity together with
the front and back of a leaf. I'd also note the peculiarity of the gesture
described by Shade, which implies hiding the page being turned from others' eyes
[..]This suggests to me that the recto/verso hypothesis in the ``Botkin, V''
index entry is not without an anchor in the text.
JM: The theme of werewolves involves
an "inversion" ( of the skin, of man into wolf), probably
a sexual inversion.
Kinbote and Botkin, "turning a new leaf with the
left hand", the image of the front and back of a leaf, perhaps even "verses and
versions" express the same transformation.
Nevertheless, Nabokov's choice of allusions is never
simple. I was also reminded of a line of Khayyam's Rubayyat (in Fitzgerald's
translation, the detail is not present in the original): Dreaming when Dawn's
Left Hand was in the Sky/ I heard a voice within the Tavern
cry,/ "Awake, my Little ones, and fill the Cup/Before Life's Liquor in its
Cup be dry." We know VN was disappointed after he realized Fitzgerald's was
not true to the original poems.
All private editorial communications, without
exception, are
read by both co-editors.