M.Roth answered [ JM to Carolyn:
I'll be convinced by your interesting theory after you show Shadian bits and
pieces shining thru, or around K]:
Okay, I'll bite...Item one: The three birds (shadow,
fluff, bird that flies on in reflected sky) in Shade's opening lines seem to
remarkably align with Gradus, Shade, and Kinbote; item2,3.4.... There are more
glimmers than these, but that's enough for now.
JM: Fascinating examples,
particularly items 5 and 7.
Item no.1 has been widely discussed in past
Pale Fire revivals. You may also find, in
an indirect connection to it,"Double Darkness through Glass, Mirror,
Lake: Art as a Window to the Hereafter," (Zembla
on-line) where I approach a biblical versicle to a
line in K's Foreword (i.e "in a glass, darkly") and
to Shade's vision "through the dark glass" of his study.* .
In another note, "Time before and Time after
in Nabokovs novels" (The Nabokovian, 2005, no.55) you'll find a paragraph
about the various uses of the pronoun "I" in J.Shade's opening
verses. **
C. Kunin [ to JM: it is
still possible to conjecture that Kinbote had been referring to himself (your
favorite=my favorite)]: Could you give me another example where "your x" =
"my x" (spare me casas) or explain what you mean. I can't see it. I'm also not
sure if you are arguing for this interpretation?
JM: I was tempted by your
interpretation on who is it that Kinbote invokes by "your
favourite" ( you argue it is John Shade addressing Sybil & shining thru
him). I wish I could remember where (besides
novelist Julio Cortázar) one may find the narrator referring to
himself in the second person singular. I'd just been
questioning Kinbote's second person plural in "our shadows walk" and
this is why this "you=I" occurred to me.
J.Friedman: By popular demand (Jansy has requested this a couple of
times, and Matt recently mentioned that he was having trouble with the same
thing), I attach a speculative plan of the Shade and Goldsworth (Kinbote) houses
and environs...
JM: Awesome! I toiled in vain with
such a project and gave it up despairingly. May we practice with it?
For example, where lies the lake? ( "I cannot
understand why from the lake I could make out
our front porch when I’d take Lake
Road to school...The fragile vista, the frame house
between Goldsworth and
Wordsmith on its square of green."), how does the sunset
(taking place at the left of your drawing) promote reflections
from Sutton's windows which may be seen by Shade?
I haven't attempted to see the
shadows cast by the sun in the last scene.
Do you think that Shade's house, instead of lying in "parallel" to
Goldsworth's, could offer one corner to enable Kinbote to roam about
and have only one side of it closed to peeping? Perhaps all
the houses may be turned a
little? We
might also add a swing to the shagbark or the garbage can with its
noisy lid in Shade's
backyard...
Your drawing made everything much easier to follow or to
imagine. It must have taken you days of hard
work!
I hope you consider my observations as an
expression of old perplexities,only. I haven't yet really started
to stroll along your avenues and my present questions must be
easy to answer.
..............................................................................................................................................
*The waxwing smashes against a reflected
sky and Shade's study has its objects (a) reflected in
a dark glass, (b) projected onto the snowy landscape and (c) glimpsed
in a composite image through the glass. Kinbote describes the relationship between man and the
creator as in a mirror ( a narcissistic outlook.)
whereas John Shade, on the contrary, harmonizes both views
(in a glass and through a glass, darkly ). although he dismissed K's
"creator."
** The first "I" refers to the shadow of a waxwing; the
second "I" is that which observes how a mirror induced the
bird into confusing a "real sky" and an "imaginary sky".
The third "I" survives the shock against the glass because the
narrator's "I" divides it two: a "a smudge of ashen fluff" and a
living reflection that lives on in the reflected
sky.