The recent sciothery
or hunt for the waxwing's shadow or, more exactly, its whereabouts at the moment
of the bird's fatal crash with the window pane, reminded me of another shadow,
which my memory has stubbornly retained eversince my first reading of the
novel, and although I have not reread it, I am ashamed to say, since 1992, it
took me, I am proud to say, only a minute to find the specific
passage:
"Luzhin immediately
fell asleep in the cab: reflected gleams of whitish light unfolded fanwise,
bringing his face to life, and the soft shadow made by his nose circled slowly
over his cheek and then his lip, and again it was dark until another light
went by, stroking Luzhin's hand in passing, which appeared to slide into a dark
pocket as soon as darkness returned." The Defense, p.
180 (Putnam's 1964).
Of course, VN's
chiaroscuro imagery need to be studied, and I believe Carl R. Proffer was the
first to draw attention to the fact "that certain kinds of images and certain
ways of making images are used repeatedly," and to attempt a
sciotherical list of what he called "sun and shade images" as they occur in
Lolita (and elsewhere), Keys to Lolita, pp. 105-107
(and 121-124). I would like to refer Jansy to pages 105-106 of this book,
because they shed light on her enumeration of VN's tessellate and reticular
imagery.
Speaking of noses,
who knows, perhaps Gogol's shorty story "The Portrait" was on VN's mind (I
don't have it right now, so I cannot check): when a man sees a portrait the
protagonist has painted the former remarks, "why did you put shadow next to his
nose, can't you put it somewhere else?" Or words to that effect, in any case,
it's been ages since I read that story, but I do recall the royal fun I had
and that I could not wait to read the passage out loud to my sleepy
brother.
A.
Bouazza.