Carolyn wrote that "Kinbote does not literally upset trash cans... These are metaphors for
his attempts to make his presence known to Shade", something that is coherent
with her point of view, but I'm not sure her perspective covers everything in
PF. Also her arguments concerning rasping branches against a windowpane are
not different from mine: if indeed there was no Kinbote outside to create
the disturbances the stronger the suggestion of the
Alderking's menacing shadow looming between the
Shades.
The other
inevitable conclusion from the blend bt. JS &CK, John Shade's
"repressed homosexuality", inspite of VN's former comments about the
predominance of single males and "Victorian suppressed homosexual
elements" in RLS's story, I had not thought Nabokov would deliberately apply
Freudian "repression " and "unconscious motivations" as
essential elements for the unraveling of any novelistic plot,
independently of his fascination with neurological and psychiatric
disturbances and his almost too frequent references to them. But, of
course, I may be completely wrong in my
assumptions.
Jansy