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CK replies to Jansy
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Dear Jansy,
"So far as I'm aware the Shade-Sybil-Hazel story is a complete VN invention.
Can anyone think of anything similar?", asked C. Kunin.
Obviously the "S-S-H story" is a complete VN invention... but so is "Pale
Fire" with all its other characters, structure, poem, index inter alia.
So far as I know this is true. But I could be wrong - - I was just asking.
Carolyn, are there direct references to "The Three Faces of Eve", or any
kind of hint that might me help understand its placement among putative
"PF's literary foreparents"?
Direct references? I'm not sure. The "White twins" could be one.
But the clues that I found were of a different sort. After I had re-read
Pale Fire several times, I began to notice that certain words repeated
throughout the text (examples: green/red, lilac or lavendar, seashells,
puddle, ditch, stroke, bat, "the babe" for example). I assumed that these
were clues that Nabokov had planted.
Following the tv clue as I posited it, I re-read the story of Jekyll & Hyde,
The Picture of Dorian Gray and The Three Faces of Eve. In "Eve" the first
chapter tells of the initial trauma/s that seemed to trigger the appearance
of alternate personalities and the word ditch appears over and over (the
child witnesses two terribly mutilitated bodies being retrieved from an
irrigation ditch that she has been forbidden to go near). I'm sure it
doesn't sound like much, but I can tell you that the experience of reading
that first chapter with the repetition of ditch, ditch, ditch was quite
extraordinary.
Carolyn
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