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.