Subject
Bad Seeds, Parricides and Explosives in the archives
From
Date
Body
Just thinking out loud again (dangerous, I know). I was doing some
googling on the subject of the novel The Bad Seed (William March,
'54), the play (Maxwell Anderson, '55) and the film ('56), and
discovered that the fictional character of the serial murderess Bessie
Denker was based on several actual American serial murderesses. I had
no idea. In the fictional account, the grandchild of a serial
murderess commits murder at the bright age of eight. Of course my mind
immediately jumped to PF - wouldn't yours? No? Well, my thinking went
something like this ...
I recalled that in PF the judge who lives next door to the Shade house
had an encounter in his professional capacity with 'a parricide aged
six.' Some years past I wondered aloud on the List if John Shade might
not have been that youthful offender. I was considering the
possibility that Shade had murdered his mother, Caroline Lukin Shade,
whose name is echoed in the name of Shade's shade, Charles Kinbote.
Among other clues, I found the absence of any parental photographs in
the Shade home telling, especially in conjunction with the fact that
in RLS's J & H, Mr Hyde destroys a portrait he finds of Dr Jekyll's
father ... Some may recall that I argue that PF is essentially a re-
telling of that story (n.b. in PF Shade is always 'Dr' and Kinbote is
always 'Mr').
Once I figured out how to spell it correctly, I found more parricides
than I had expected in the archives. Jansy found evidence that VN was
familiar with a 1928 article by Freud entitled "Dostoevsky and
Parricide" - she quotes from PF and comments:
A medium smuggled in/Pale jellies and a floating mandolin.
Fra Karamazov, mumbling his inept/All is allowed, into some classes
crept;
And to fulfill the fish wish of the womb/A school of Freudians headed
for the tomb.
Today I began to wonder if this reference to Karamazov's "All is
allowed", coming so close to another, about "a school of Freudians",
could indicate Nabokov's familiarity with one of Freud's 1928
articles: "Dostoevsky and Parricide" (Standard Edition. vol. XXI)* ....
I (ck) am struck anew by the "pale jellies" - could they be pale fire
jellies, perhaps? Previously I had assumed this was simply a reference
to ectoplasm, however in my more gruesome mood it occurs to me that as
some may be aware, the explosive gelignite is actually a jelly (aka
roaring jelly):
Wikipedia: Gelignite, also known as blasting gelatin or simply jelly,
is an explosive material consisting of collodion-cotton (a type of
nitrocellulose or gun cotton) dissolved in either nitroglycerine or
nitroglycol and mixed with wood pulp and saltpetre(sodium nitrate or
potassium nitrate).
It was invented in 1875 by Alfred Nobel, who had earlier invented
dynamite.[1] ...
Due to its widespread civilian use in quarries and mining, it has
historically been often used by revolutionaries, insurgents, and
guerrillas such as Irish Republican Army.[2]
Wasn't there a man in PF with a cracked-up or reticulated face, the
result of an explosion in 'Zembla'?
ck
*I have omitted the excerpts quoted by Jansy - they are in the
archives of course.
Search archive with Google:
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Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/
googling on the subject of the novel The Bad Seed (William March,
'54), the play (Maxwell Anderson, '55) and the film ('56), and
discovered that the fictional character of the serial murderess Bessie
Denker was based on several actual American serial murderesses. I had
no idea. In the fictional account, the grandchild of a serial
murderess commits murder at the bright age of eight. Of course my mind
immediately jumped to PF - wouldn't yours? No? Well, my thinking went
something like this ...
I recalled that in PF the judge who lives next door to the Shade house
had an encounter in his professional capacity with 'a parricide aged
six.' Some years past I wondered aloud on the List if John Shade might
not have been that youthful offender. I was considering the
possibility that Shade had murdered his mother, Caroline Lukin Shade,
whose name is echoed in the name of Shade's shade, Charles Kinbote.
Among other clues, I found the absence of any parental photographs in
the Shade home telling, especially in conjunction with the fact that
in RLS's J & H, Mr Hyde destroys a portrait he finds of Dr Jekyll's
father ... Some may recall that I argue that PF is essentially a re-
telling of that story (n.b. in PF Shade is always 'Dr' and Kinbote is
always 'Mr').
Once I figured out how to spell it correctly, I found more parricides
than I had expected in the archives. Jansy found evidence that VN was
familiar with a 1928 article by Freud entitled "Dostoevsky and
Parricide" - she quotes from PF and comments:
A medium smuggled in/Pale jellies and a floating mandolin.
Fra Karamazov, mumbling his inept/All is allowed, into some classes
crept;
And to fulfill the fish wish of the womb/A school of Freudians headed
for the tomb.
Today I began to wonder if this reference to Karamazov's "All is
allowed", coming so close to another, about "a school of Freudians",
could indicate Nabokov's familiarity with one of Freud's 1928
articles: "Dostoevsky and Parricide" (Standard Edition. vol. XXI)* ....
I (ck) am struck anew by the "pale jellies" - could they be pale fire
jellies, perhaps? Previously I had assumed this was simply a reference
to ectoplasm, however in my more gruesome mood it occurs to me that as
some may be aware, the explosive gelignite is actually a jelly (aka
roaring jelly):
Wikipedia: Gelignite, also known as blasting gelatin or simply jelly,
is an explosive material consisting of collodion-cotton (a type of
nitrocellulose or gun cotton) dissolved in either nitroglycerine or
nitroglycol and mixed with wood pulp and saltpetre(sodium nitrate or
potassium nitrate).
It was invented in 1875 by Alfred Nobel, who had earlier invented
dynamite.[1] ...
Due to its widespread civilian use in quarries and mining, it has
historically been often used by revolutionaries, insurgents, and
guerrillas such as Irish Republican Army.[2]
Wasn't there a man in PF with a cracked-up or reticulated face, the
result of an explosion in 'Zembla'?
ck
*I have omitted the excerpts quoted by Jansy - they are in the
archives of course.
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/