Subject
THOUGHTS: Stillicide in PF, another source?
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Date
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In line 35 of "PF" Shade uses the word stillicide. Kinbote points us to a
definition similar to that in Webster's 2nd (cavesdrop, eavesdrop) and to a
poem by Hardy, which turns out to be "Friends Beyond." But doesn't this
all seem a bit too easy? I would like to propose, for your entertainment,
that VN, via Kinbote, is leading us astray. Rather than pointing to Hardy--
or ONLY to Hardy--VN may also be sending us to another writer and to
another concept. Follow:
1. In Chambers's Encyclopaedia (1873) the following is included in the
entry for Servitude: (borrowed from Roman Law by Scottish Law)"the urban
rights are stillicide, light, oneris ferendi, etc. Stillicide is the right
to have the rain from one's roof to drop on another's land or house." As I
understand it, this right had to be obtained from the landowner onto whose
the land the drops would fall.
2. From Robert Louis Stevenson's "Apology for Idlers": "For my own part, I
have attended a good many lectures in my time. I still remember that the
spinning of a top is a case of Kinetic Stability. I still remember that
Emphyteusis is not a disease, nor Stillicide a crime." Emphyteusis is a
legal term referring to the right of one to lease land to another;
therefore, it is likely that RLS is here referring to Stillicide in the
legal/landowner sense, as well.
Conclusions: The legal sense of Stillicide is important because it provides
a metaphor for what happens in the novel. Kinbote is, via his commentary,
catching the drops from the roof of his neighbor, Shade. Or else he is
trying to spill his drops onto Shade's property. In either case, one man's
property is spilling onto another's. The origin in Roman law is important
because it tells us where the icicles are: on Judge Goldsworth's house.
Remember, in C.47-48 Kinbote tells us that Hugh Warren Goldsworth was
an "authority on Roman Law." Shade's vision moves from the "indoor scene"
to "hickory leaves," and finally to the "svelte stilettos." He is clearly
looking out the window of his house to the shagbark hickory and then to his
neighbor Goldsworth's house. We should also note that the movement of
Stillicide from Roman to Scottish law is akin to the movement of kin-bote
(the legal concept, if not the term itself) which also was adopted by the
Scots from the Romans.
The RLS quote is important because it establishes that the legal sense of
Stillicide may have been known to Nabokov, and it could establish one more
tie between the author of Jekyll and Hyde and PF. On that score, I just
recently became aware that RLS was a correspondent and colleauge of F. W.
H. Myers, the author of _Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily
Death_ (1903, 1907). VN mentions Myers in "The Vane Sisters" and in his
unpublished notes that are in the Berg Collection. Given these mentions,
and given the prominence of Myers's book in the world of psychical
research, it seems very likely that VN read it. And if he did, he would
have read, in the appendix to Chapter II, a letter to Myers from RLS, in
which RLS tells of a kind of painful delirium he experienced, in which his
primary personality argued with another consciousness, which he called "the
other fellow": "I thought the pain was, or was connected with, a wisp or
coil of some sort; I knew not of what it consisted, nor yet where it was,
and cared not; only I thought, if the two ends were brought together, the
pain would cease. [MR: A lemniscate???] Now all the time, with another part
of my mind, which I venture to think was myself, I was fully alive to the
absurdity of this idea, knew it to be a mark of impaired insanity [MR:
amentia], and was engaged with my other self in a perpetual conflict."
If you are interested, the rest of the letter, along with Myers book, can
be found (and downloaded!) here:
http://books.google.com/books?
vid=0b5kBynB4WibtoSjyClI&id=FNyTaFSZFv4C&printsec=toc&dq=survival+death+myer
s#PPA356,M1
Hope this wasn't too much at once.
Matt Roth
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definition similar to that in Webster's 2nd (cavesdrop, eavesdrop) and to a
poem by Hardy, which turns out to be "Friends Beyond." But doesn't this
all seem a bit too easy? I would like to propose, for your entertainment,
that VN, via Kinbote, is leading us astray. Rather than pointing to Hardy--
or ONLY to Hardy--VN may also be sending us to another writer and to
another concept. Follow:
1. In Chambers's Encyclopaedia (1873) the following is included in the
entry for Servitude: (borrowed from Roman Law by Scottish Law)"the urban
rights are stillicide, light, oneris ferendi, etc. Stillicide is the right
to have the rain from one's roof to drop on another's land or house." As I
understand it, this right had to be obtained from the landowner onto whose
the land the drops would fall.
2. From Robert Louis Stevenson's "Apology for Idlers": "For my own part, I
have attended a good many lectures in my time. I still remember that the
spinning of a top is a case of Kinetic Stability. I still remember that
Emphyteusis is not a disease, nor Stillicide a crime." Emphyteusis is a
legal term referring to the right of one to lease land to another;
therefore, it is likely that RLS is here referring to Stillicide in the
legal/landowner sense, as well.
Conclusions: The legal sense of Stillicide is important because it provides
a metaphor for what happens in the novel. Kinbote is, via his commentary,
catching the drops from the roof of his neighbor, Shade. Or else he is
trying to spill his drops onto Shade's property. In either case, one man's
property is spilling onto another's. The origin in Roman law is important
because it tells us where the icicles are: on Judge Goldsworth's house.
Remember, in C.47-48 Kinbote tells us that Hugh Warren Goldsworth was
an "authority on Roman Law." Shade's vision moves from the "indoor scene"
to "hickory leaves," and finally to the "svelte stilettos." He is clearly
looking out the window of his house to the shagbark hickory and then to his
neighbor Goldsworth's house. We should also note that the movement of
Stillicide from Roman to Scottish law is akin to the movement of kin-bote
(the legal concept, if not the term itself) which also was adopted by the
Scots from the Romans.
The RLS quote is important because it establishes that the legal sense of
Stillicide may have been known to Nabokov, and it could establish one more
tie between the author of Jekyll and Hyde and PF. On that score, I just
recently became aware that RLS was a correspondent and colleauge of F. W.
H. Myers, the author of _Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily
Death_ (1903, 1907). VN mentions Myers in "The Vane Sisters" and in his
unpublished notes that are in the Berg Collection. Given these mentions,
and given the prominence of Myers's book in the world of psychical
research, it seems very likely that VN read it. And if he did, he would
have read, in the appendix to Chapter II, a letter to Myers from RLS, in
which RLS tells of a kind of painful delirium he experienced, in which his
primary personality argued with another consciousness, which he called "the
other fellow": "I thought the pain was, or was connected with, a wisp or
coil of some sort; I knew not of what it consisted, nor yet where it was,
and cared not; only I thought, if the two ends were brought together, the
pain would cease. [MR: A lemniscate???] Now all the time, with another part
of my mind, which I venture to think was myself, I was fully alive to the
absurdity of this idea, knew it to be a mark of impaired insanity [MR:
amentia], and was engaged with my other self in a perpetual conflict."
If you are interested, the rest of the letter, along with Myers book, can
be found (and downloaded!) here:
http://books.google.com/books?
vid=0b5kBynB4WibtoSjyClI&id=FNyTaFSZFv4C&printsec=toc&dq=survival+death+myer
s#PPA356,M1
Hope this wasn't too much at once.
Matt Roth
Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm