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Sybil Shade, SS, Anti-Karlists and the Alderking
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JM: I remember that, in the past, Carolyn Kunin established a connection between Sybil and Queen Disa. However, from the Pasle Fire Notes [
important work - Pale Fire Notes] I found:
"C.12 pg 74 "a domestic anti-Karlist": K links Sybil to the Zemblan revolutionaries who have dethroned him and are determined to kill him. "anti-Karlist" = anti-Charles, so anti-Kinbote in particular to anything else. Does Sybil's animosity cause Kinbote to invent the anti-Karlists as part of the germination for the Zemblan story? Or is he just figuratively comparing her to those others he considers his enemies? (One compelling reading of the early New Wye sections of Kinbote's Commentary notes the elements that might have been used as generative sources for the Zemblan fantasy.) "
The genders, in connection to the Erlkönig entries, are sometimes difficult to disentangle (there is a connection to Lilith, to an Erlkönigin", aso) but, although Sybil's fears about the rattling twigs and the wind are dismissed by Shade - like it happens with the boy's complaints and his father's explanations, in Kinbote's mind there might have been a ghostly Sybil double (why couldn't he project a female double if he, himself, is a double?).
However, the only sentence that inspired me to add this at the moment is one in which Charles Kinbote refers to Sybil's initials as "S.S" after mentioning the Duchess of Payn (there is a sado-masochistic hint in a mistranslated letter by Disa to King Charles...) Cf. "I am not in the possession of particulars (who is to blame, dear S.S?)" clearly indicating the German "Schutzstaffel."
Returning to the Erlkönig:
There are various possible readings about the references to the Erlkönig appear (and most of them are mentioned in Brian Boyd's book on Pale Fire). Kinbote could be felt as an homosexual Alderking* (btw: the "Erlkönig's" promises sound like a pedophile's**),by clumsily dislodging a garbage can while the poet reads about Hazel's death to Sybil, when the noise he makes is mistaken for the wind's or, subliminally, to the fateful Erlkönig.
Cf. poem, lines 652-660 - "What is that funny creaking - do you hear?" "It is the shutter on the stairs, my dear." "If you're not sleeping, let's turn on the light. I hate that wind! Let's play some chess." "All right." "I'm sure it's not the shutter. There - again." "It is a tendril fingering the pane." "What glided down the roof and made that thud?" "It is old winter tumbling in the mud." "And now what shall I do? My knight is pinned." "Who rides so late in the night and the wind? It is the writer's grief. It is the wild March wind. It is the father with his child."
This scene is almost a repetition of two earlier ones, on the night of Hazel's death. At this time it wasn't Kinbote, but the March wind shaking trees and twigs.
Cf. Lines 417-419: "I went upstairs and read a galley proof,/And heard the wind roll marbles on the roof./"See the blind beggar dance, the cripple sing" ** and lines 479-80 "We heard the wind. We heard it rush and throw/ Twigs at the windowpane" And then, in this night of thaw and blow, Hazel stepped off ..."Into a crackling, gulping swamp, and sank."
........................................................................................................................................................................................
* "some of his predecessors, rough alderkings who burned for boys..." and the curiously sensitive German ears: "Strange, strange," said the German visitor, who by some quirk of alderwood ancestry had been alone to catch the eerie note that had throbbed by and was gone.
** «Ich liebe dich, mich reizt deine schöne Gestalt; "I love you; I'm charmed by your beautiful form;
Und bist du nicht willig, so brauch ich Gewalt.» And if you're not willing, then I'll use force."
Mein Vater, mein Vater, jetzt faßt er mich an! My father, my father, now he's grabbing hold of me!
Erlkönig hat mir ein Leids getan! -Erlking has done me harm! - (Translation by Hyde Flippo)
*** It has a Kinbotean variant when Shade refers to Pope's Essay on Man: "The draft yields an interesting variant: 'I fled upstairs at the first quawk of jazz...Such verses as 'See the blind beggar dance, the cripple sing,/ The sot a hero, lunatic a king'/ Smack of their heartless age' [...]." According to CK the draft (?) does away with the rattling wind (it's turned into 'jazz').
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important work - Pale Fire Notes] I found:
"C.12 pg 74 "a domestic anti-Karlist": K links Sybil to the Zemblan revolutionaries who have dethroned him and are determined to kill him. "anti-Karlist" = anti-Charles, so anti-Kinbote in particular to anything else. Does Sybil's animosity cause Kinbote to invent the anti-Karlists as part of the germination for the Zemblan story? Or is he just figuratively comparing her to those others he considers his enemies? (One compelling reading of the early New Wye sections of Kinbote's Commentary notes the elements that might have been used as generative sources for the Zemblan fantasy.) "
The genders, in connection to the Erlkönig entries, are sometimes difficult to disentangle (there is a connection to Lilith, to an Erlkönigin", aso) but, although Sybil's fears about the rattling twigs and the wind are dismissed by Shade - like it happens with the boy's complaints and his father's explanations, in Kinbote's mind there might have been a ghostly Sybil double (why couldn't he project a female double if he, himself, is a double?).
However, the only sentence that inspired me to add this at the moment is one in which Charles Kinbote refers to Sybil's initials as "S.S" after mentioning the Duchess of Payn (there is a sado-masochistic hint in a mistranslated letter by Disa to King Charles...) Cf. "I am not in the possession of particulars (who is to blame, dear S.S?)" clearly indicating the German "Schutzstaffel."
Returning to the Erlkönig:
There are various possible readings about the references to the Erlkönig appear (and most of them are mentioned in Brian Boyd's book on Pale Fire). Kinbote could be felt as an homosexual Alderking* (btw: the "Erlkönig's" promises sound like a pedophile's**),by clumsily dislodging a garbage can while the poet reads about Hazel's death to Sybil, when the noise he makes is mistaken for the wind's or, subliminally, to the fateful Erlkönig.
Cf. poem, lines 652-660 - "What is that funny creaking - do you hear?" "It is the shutter on the stairs, my dear." "If you're not sleeping, let's turn on the light. I hate that wind! Let's play some chess." "All right." "I'm sure it's not the shutter. There - again." "It is a tendril fingering the pane." "What glided down the roof and made that thud?" "It is old winter tumbling in the mud." "And now what shall I do? My knight is pinned." "Who rides so late in the night and the wind? It is the writer's grief. It is the wild March wind. It is the father with his child."
This scene is almost a repetition of two earlier ones, on the night of Hazel's death. At this time it wasn't Kinbote, but the March wind shaking trees and twigs.
Cf. Lines 417-419: "I went upstairs and read a galley proof,/And heard the wind roll marbles on the roof./"See the blind beggar dance, the cripple sing" ** and lines 479-80 "We heard the wind. We heard it rush and throw/ Twigs at the windowpane" And then, in this night of thaw and blow, Hazel stepped off ..."Into a crackling, gulping swamp, and sank."
........................................................................................................................................................................................
* "some of his predecessors, rough alderkings who burned for boys..." and the curiously sensitive German ears: "Strange, strange," said the German visitor, who by some quirk of alderwood ancestry had been alone to catch the eerie note that had throbbed by and was gone.
** «Ich liebe dich, mich reizt deine schöne Gestalt; "I love you; I'm charmed by your beautiful form;
Und bist du nicht willig, so brauch ich Gewalt.» And if you're not willing, then I'll use force."
Mein Vater, mein Vater, jetzt faßt er mich an! My father, my father, now he's grabbing hold of me!
Erlkönig hat mir ein Leids getan! -Erlking has done me harm! - (Translation by Hyde Flippo)
*** It has a Kinbotean variant when Shade refers to Pope's Essay on Man: "The draft yields an interesting variant: 'I fled upstairs at the first quawk of jazz...Such verses as 'See the blind beggar dance, the cripple sing,/ The sot a hero, lunatic a king'/ Smack of their heartless age' [...]." According to CK the draft (?) does away with the rattling wind (it's turned into 'jazz').
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
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/