M. Roth: Doesn't VN make a similar "x to y" quip in
one of his earlier novels? Something with regard to epistolary novels, maybe?
I'm thinking Despair or RLSK?
JM: A quick reply, since I have
no Nabokov novel by me right now. In his later novels, such as ADA,
there is Uncle Dan (and his "inverted" trips around the world),
measuring the extension of a lake near Ardis by timing how
long a perch will take to cross it. Later, in the same novel, there is a play with geometry and another
lake (the letters are A and B).
The same game ,with inverting directions and A/B
measurements, also happen in LATH. One cannot
apply them in retrospect to retake the skaters in Pale Fire...Nevertheless,
these two examples illustrate how a similar issue preyed in VN's
mind.
In his poem Shade mentions a
"time-fold" when he looks at a lake from his house, and vice versa. Perhaps
we might re-evaluate these lines, placing them closer to Hazel's
("Mother-Time") death.
I can never get a straight image of the weather
(the shifts from summer into winter, too) : when Hazel died it was a night
of thunder and thaw but, except for the wind, it seems that the Shade-home was
undisturbed, the TV images clear, no snow on the gravel, no disturbance for the
police-car lights.
Kinbote's commentaries about Shade's broken
narrative, while describing the night Hazel dies, also comes to
mind. The wind howls while Shade reads the poem and Kinbote prowls, but the
wind equally clatters against the window while the couple waited for Hazel's
return.
I don't know if these vague links will be of any help.