Subject
THOUGHTS: Up the Lane in PF and Kinbote's lies
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Nabokov wrote in Strong Opinions (V.22) about "the effort of drawing on
the blackboard a map of James Joyce's Dublin or the arrangement of the
semi-sleeping car of the St.Petersburg-Moscow express in the early 1870s
- without understanding of which neither Ulysses nor Anna Karenin,
respectively, makes sense."
Shade's last lines have already been discussed to exhaustion, but I'm
still in the dark about one item. Perhaps someone with a good head for
topography and maps might be able to clarify my fuzziness. I was
examining Kinbote's early reference to the gardener (lines 47/48), whom
Shade will mention in lines 998/99 as "trundling an empty barrow up the
lane."
If Balthazar is going "up the lane", can we find out whereto he was
going? And how was it possible for him to spy on the pair (JS and CK)
from behind a shrubbery and whack Gradus/Grey on the pat with a spade*?
I'm disoriented by CK's mapping instructions: about how he met Sybil in
the drive and then quickly moved towards Shade, in his "nest", nor their
route across the lawn towards CK's porch. The lines in the poem and CK's
use of them are "scrambled" ( in a different sense of its employ by CK,
meaning "the flagged walk that scrambled along a side lawn"** - a very
unusual, anthropomorphic sense of a "scrambling" route?)
After all, why does Kinbote insist to say that Shade has been writing
his last lines just then, when the indications in its lines imply that
Shade was in his study, on the second floor, looking at Dr.Sutton's
windows and down to the garden where Sybil had been standing?***
From other commentaries we learned that, when Kinbote's "casement window
ceased to function," he found "at the end of the veranda, an ivied
corner from which I could view rather amply the front of the poet’s
house. If I wanted to see its south side I could go down to the back of
my garage and look from behind a tulip tree across the curving downhill
road at several precious bright windows... If I yearned for the opposite
side, all I had to do was walk uphill to the top of my garden" then look
down from the clump of black junipers towards a "patch of pale light
under the lone streetlamp on the road below. By the onset of the season
...I ...rather enjoyed following in the dark a weedy and rocky easterly
projection of my grounds ending in a locust grove on a slightly higher
level than the north side of the poet’s house."
Jerry Friedman once offered a map from the neighborhood in New Wye ( I
cannot retrieve it now). We need no great effort to learn that the
teacher's houses (with Prof. Hurley's at the top) were lined on a small
hill, whereas the other neighboring houses were cluttered below.
Nevertheless I cannot picture all their motions at the time of the
murder, namely up?down? Did their porches stand front to front? (I don't
think so). Why is Kinbote lying about how he took possession of Shade's
notecards (the entire set)?
.........................................................................................................................................
* "You will chide me, my modest man... you saved my life. You and I were
the last people who saw John Shade alive, and you admitted afterwards to
a strange premonition which made you interrupt your work as you noticed
us from the shrubbery walking toward the porch where stood —
(Superstitiously I cannot write out the odd dark word you employed.)"
What odd dark word would that be?
** "We had reached the Goldsworth side of the lane, and the flagged walk
that scrambled along a side lawn to connect with the gravel path leading
up from Dulwich road to the Goldsworth front door, when Shade remarked:
"You have a caller."...I outstripped John who until then had been in
front of me... One of the bullets that spared me struck him in the side
and went through his heart....to complete the farce of fate, my
gardener’s spade dealt gunman Jack from behind the hedge a tremendous
blow on the pate..."
***(line 991)..."Through the trees I distinguNest...the arborlike porch or veranda I have mentioned in my note to
lines 47-48....I openly walked up to his porch or perch... 'I have here'
...practically the entire product....We crossed the lawn, we crossed the
road. Clink-clank, came the horseshoe music ..."
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the blackboard a map of James Joyce's Dublin or the arrangement of the
semi-sleeping car of the St.Petersburg-Moscow express in the early 1870s
- without understanding of which neither Ulysses nor Anna Karenin,
respectively, makes sense."
Shade's last lines have already been discussed to exhaustion, but I'm
still in the dark about one item. Perhaps someone with a good head for
topography and maps might be able to clarify my fuzziness. I was
examining Kinbote's early reference to the gardener (lines 47/48), whom
Shade will mention in lines 998/99 as "trundling an empty barrow up the
lane."
If Balthazar is going "up the lane", can we find out whereto he was
going? And how was it possible for him to spy on the pair (JS and CK)
from behind a shrubbery and whack Gradus/Grey on the pat with a spade*?
I'm disoriented by CK's mapping instructions: about how he met Sybil in
the drive and then quickly moved towards Shade, in his "nest", nor their
route across the lawn towards CK's porch. The lines in the poem and CK's
use of them are "scrambled" ( in a different sense of its employ by CK,
meaning "the flagged walk that scrambled along a side lawn"** - a very
unusual, anthropomorphic sense of a "scrambling" route?)
After all, why does Kinbote insist to say that Shade has been writing
his last lines just then, when the indications in its lines imply that
Shade was in his study, on the second floor, looking at Dr.Sutton's
windows and down to the garden where Sybil had been standing?***
From other commentaries we learned that, when Kinbote's "casement window
ceased to function," he found "at the end of the veranda, an ivied
corner from which I could view rather amply the front of the poet’s
house. If I wanted to see its south side I could go down to the back of
my garage and look from behind a tulip tree across the curving downhill
road at several precious bright windows... If I yearned for the opposite
side, all I had to do was walk uphill to the top of my garden" then look
down from the clump of black junipers towards a "patch of pale light
under the lone streetlamp on the road below. By the onset of the season
...I ...rather enjoyed following in the dark a weedy and rocky easterly
projection of my grounds ending in a locust grove on a slightly higher
level than the north side of the poet’s house."
Jerry Friedman once offered a map from the neighborhood in New Wye ( I
cannot retrieve it now). We need no great effort to learn that the
teacher's houses (with Prof. Hurley's at the top) were lined on a small
hill, whereas the other neighboring houses were cluttered below.
Nevertheless I cannot picture all their motions at the time of the
murder, namely up?down? Did their porches stand front to front? (I don't
think so). Why is Kinbote lying about how he took possession of Shade's
notecards (the entire set)?
.........................................................................................................................................
* "You will chide me, my modest man... you saved my life. You and I were
the last people who saw John Shade alive, and you admitted afterwards to
a strange premonition which made you interrupt your work as you noticed
us from the shrubbery walking toward the porch where stood —
(Superstitiously I cannot write out the odd dark word you employed.)"
What odd dark word would that be?
** "We had reached the Goldsworth side of the lane, and the flagged walk
that scrambled along a side lawn to connect with the gravel path leading
up from Dulwich road to the Goldsworth front door, when Shade remarked:
"You have a caller."...I outstripped John who until then had been in
front of me... One of the bullets that spared me struck him in the side
and went through his heart....to complete the farce of fate, my
gardener’s spade dealt gunman Jack from behind the hedge a tremendous
blow on the pate..."
***(line 991)..."Through the trees I distinguNest...the arborlike porch or veranda I have mentioned in my note to
lines 47-48....I openly walked up to his porch or perch... 'I have here'
...practically the entire product....We crossed the lawn, we crossed the
road. Clink-clank, came the horseshoe music ..."
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