Dear Dmitri,
Thank you for your comments and kind words on my notes. I may
not have been able to explain them exactly, but
I was not trespassing on the birth places of these
texts. I just tried to suggest parallelisms between TT and
"Lance"--that the adventures of the protagonist could be read as those
of some knight in a medieval romance and that the text could be
seen as a kind of chart.
I had read in Brian's *VNAY* that VN's first impulse for "Lance"
was your passion for mountain climbing and that the story derived
from your parents' fears for your safety (207) and that HP was
invented inverting you: "Dmitri was a passionate mountain climber and
an accomplished skier" (589). I think the fall theme in TT might be
also from your parents' fears of your falling or sliding down
while mountaineering.
Best wishes,
Akiko
Akiko, 11.20: My I
correct something in your excellent notes about which I have first-hand
knowledge? In "Lance," the deliberate mountaineering terms "crossing through a
notch between two stars" and "attempting a traverse on a
cliff face so sheer and with such delicate holds" are a giveaway that, while
the story may be read on more than one level, including the medieval, its
inspiration was the anguish and the empathy my parents experienced when I
began climbing seriously and would depart, sometimes alone,
sometimes into uncharted
territory.