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Re: QUERIES: PF, several
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Dear Matt,
Here are my "answers" (for what they are worth) to some of your questions and comments:
1 - I've been reading some of David Lodge's novels lately, and in one of them (I don't remember which), he writes that there's always more sex in novels than in real life! I think that here, the choice of the number 40 is more a question of rythm: 40 years, 400 times, 400,000 times... (Besides, 400,000 hours make 45.66 years and not 40). It seems to me that this multiplication aims at illustrating the exponential quality of Shade's love and desire for his wife, regardless of the exact calculation.As for "the bedroom", the simplest solution is that they sleep in the same room but in twin beds.
2 - "indulgently" seems precisely to suggest that Kinbote is willing to forgive his beloved poet his lack of taste, but still regards this love and desire for Sybil as just that:an untoward indulgence. Regarding John and Sybil's relationship, Kinbote is usually aggressively reproachful, or at best (like here) indulgent, but never sympathetic. So, it doesn't seem (to me) out of character.
4 - In line 357 as well as in line 978, Shade refers to Hazel as "my" and not "our" darling: thanks for making me notice this detail! It confirms my feeling that Hazel may not have been Sybil's darling (see my posts from last summer on the subject).
7 - Shade's blubbering into Sybil's shoulder: this immature young man unable to master his emotions when he achieves physical contact with the girl he intenselydesires makes several fleeting appearances throughout VN's work. I can think of 2 instances (but I think there must be others):- In /A Russian Beauty/: "...and this was why she (Olga) long remembered the boor who pawed her at a charity ball and afterwards wept on her bare shoulder"- In /TRLSK/, about "Success", one of Sebastian's novels: "...a passage so strongly connected with Sebastian's inner life ... that it deserves being quoted: "William saw her (Anne, his fiancée) home as usual and cuddled her a little in the darkness of the doorway. All of a sudden, she felt that his face was wet...."Raining in Paradise", he said... "the onion of happiness"...."Please stop,", she said..." (p96 Vintage International)
All the best,
Laurence Hochard
Date: Tue, 10 Feb 2009 11:42:44 -0500From: MRoth@MESSIAH.EDUSubject: [NABOKV-L] QUERIES: PF, severalTo: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Dear list,
Perhaps some of you can help me with following loose ends in PF.
1. In lines 275-280, Shade says that his head has "creased" Sybil's pillow 4000 times. Questions: Is Shade referring to how many times he and Sybil have had intercourse? If so, that means they've had sex on average twice a week for 40 years! Do we believe that? Does this imply that they sleep in separate rooms (as did VN and Vera)? Why would the normally reserved Shade tell the world how many times he has had sex with his wife? Seems out of character.
2. In his note to line 181, Kinbote seems to guess that JS and Sybil are having a pre-dawn sexual encounter. He says that he "smiled indulgently, for, according to my deductions, only two nights had passed since the three-thousand-nine-hundred-ninety-ninth time--but no matter." Why does the thought of Shade and Sybil having sex cause Kinbote, who openly detests Sybil, to smile indulgently? Is this passage meant to confirm Shade's twice-a-week calculation? Kinbote refers to "the bedroom." Does this mean that Shade and Sybil share a bedroom?
3. The math of Hazel's barn transcription doesn't seem to work. In Hazel's Remarks, she says she began the alphabet eighty times but seventeen times got no response. That should leave us with 63 positive responses, but Hazel's transcription only contains 61 letters. We seem to be two letters short. Did VN (or Hazel, or Kinbote?) do the math wrong?
4. Why, in lines 357 & 978, does Shade refer to Hazel as "my darling," when throughout the rest of the poem he has addressed the poem to Sybil and, thus, used "our" ("She'd criticize ferociously our projects"; "when we lost our child")?
5. Is the image (from the Index) of Thurgus the Third "in a dressing gown of green silk, and carrying a flambeau in his raised hand" supposed to make us think of the Statue of Liberty? If so, does this reinforce the notion that the passage from the palace to the "green room" is equivalent to Botkin's passage from the Old World to green Arcady (New Wye)?
6. Is the Bera Range named after the King of Sodom (Genesis 14:2)?
7. Why does Shade blubber into Sybil's shoulder blade in the gloam of Lilac Lane? Where is Lilac Lane?
8. Has anyone managed to produce a landscape map of the Shade and Goldsworth houses? As many times as I read the note to 47-48, I cannot get it straight.
Thanks,
Matt Roth
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