Carolyn: ..." a few things in my Jewish
reading have made me think either of VN or the List. There is a new edition of
the Jewish Encyclopedia... the original edition that was left incomplete due to
the disasters in Europe left off at the letter "L". I don't suggest that
VN knew that, but it did make me think of "Ada"...
The main narration follows the five books of the
Chumash (Genesis, Exodus, etc) and is followed by five "glosses"(aleph, bet,
etc.) which include not only poetry, but a play and an analysis of
Michelangelo's ceiling in the Sistine Chapel. There are, I believe, two authors
at work, and of course the novel predates PF by decades."
M.Roth:
"In note to line 71, Kinbote
mentions that Lukin shares the same root as Locock, Luxon and Lukashevich. Some
years back Don Johnson noted that while these names do not allude to writers,
they do derive from a writer (the gospel writer). I am still unsure of any
connections for Lukashevich and Luxon..."
JM: Only after Jerry Friedman returned
to "acanthus" and "architrave", in his discussion with
MR, did I perceive a new Biblical link. The Greek
word used in the Gospels for what in other languages is "a crown of thorns"
is acanthus.
Through the acanthus we get to Conmal's "slave and Master" ( Jesus is often
named "Master") and the idea of " to see a part and
then the whole ( here, the acanthus as a part of a Corinthian column).
I suggest we link this "acanthus crown" and "corynthian
column" to another versicle in the New Testament. It is to be found
in St. Paul's epistle to the Corinthians (1Cor. 13:12), in a line by
Charles Kinbote: "None can say how long John Shade had planned his poem to be,
but it is not impossible that what he left represents only a small fraction of
the composition he saw in a glass, darkly."
There are various possible angles to view this
issue.
I would like to remind MR that it is only in the book
of St. Luke that we encounter the Three Magi, the Nativity and the
early life of Christ. It is absent from St.Matthews,St. Mark's and St. John's,
but I haven't checked this information I first glimpsed ages ago in Bernard
Shaw's preface to "Saint Joan". There is a Balthazar, a Melchior... one has
only to google the List to find discussion about these Magi and even
about Twelfth Night.
CK, a beautiful example about "two authors at work", thank
you