-------- Original Message --------
To Matt Roth and Jansymello
In relation to MR's answer to LH [ "I agree with you that there is
plenty
of evidence in the text to support the notion "that some sort of
parellel,
some sort of identity between Shade and Kinbote is showing through,
however hard Shade tries to erase it." I do not, however,dismiss so
easily
the notion the Shade and Kinbote share a body." ] I hope we can return
to
LH poetic suggestion that Shade and Kinbote were presented
stylistically as
in a mirror ( if I understood his point correctly) .
Yes, you understood my point correctly and if you and M Roth are still
interested, I'll return to it and try to be even clearer:
I thought M Roth was right to question the very length of the
shaving passage and to suspect there was something else to be read
here.
That's why I tried to show that the poem and comment reflect and
reverse
each other through the mirror Shade has fixed in his bath.
Stylistically,
it is beautifully done: growing a beard versus shaving off a beard, the
doubts about Kinbote's identity felt by the German lecturer doubled by
the
doubts felt by Kinbote about Shade's, and as a conclusion, the
re-uniting
of what has been split through the words "strange, strange..." uttered
by
both the German lecturer and Kinbote., as they sense that something
eerie
has happened.
I don't think any other reading has explained so completely this
passage (well, this sounds a bit presomptuous...): Shade announcing
that he
is going to accomplish a literary feat, then warning that he's able to
split, then doing both and concluding with his "note for further use",
a
kind of "directions for use" (beside being also a foreboding of what
will
happen) for the readers: the "abstruse unfinished poem" being the
blind,
unknowable center which I also called "extra-textual character" in
previous
posts, and Shade, Kinbote, fictional lives as mere footnotes.
There is at least one other passage / comment that works in the
same way:
I said I thought Matt was right to feel that there was something
wrong with regard to Shade and Hazel. I don't think it has anything to
do
with incest, though.
My idea is based on the passage about the travelog Sybil and John
are watching on TV (from line 429). It shows "the green, indigo and
tawny
sea / Which we had visited in thirty-three / Nine months before her
birth". "The allusion is to Nice where the Shades spent the first half
of
that year" Kinbote informs us in his note to line 433-434. Therefore,
Nice
is the place where Hazel was conceived.
Now, if we go back to the poem, we are surprised to notice that the
Shades' "first long ramble" there, was NOT pervaded by "a sustained low
hum
of harmony". Quite the contrary! Details such as the blue sail clashing
queerly with the sea (like a sour note, an aesthetic fault) the
relentless
light (introducing an idea of cruelty, ruthlessness) the insufferably
loud
gulls (cruelty, discordance again) the dark pigeon (maybe suggesting
filth)
create a rather unpleasant atmosphere.
Now, if we turn to the commentary, we learn that Nice is the place
where Disa has been banished for Kinbote to indulge more freely his
erotic
fancies.On the other hand, Kinbote realizes that Disa bears a "singular
resemblance" to "the idealized and stylized picture" of Sybil "painted
by
the poet" in the lines 261-267. He insists that we readers appreciate
"the
strangeness of this" because if we do not, "there is no sense in
writing
poems, or notes to poems, or anything at all".
I believe that we, readers must heed Kinbote's pathetic call and
realize, as Kinbote invites us to do, that Sybil and Disa are, on some
plane hovering over the plane of the narrative, one and the same
person,
just as John and Charles are different versions of the same
extra-textual
character, as is shown in VN's uniting in the same sentence "writing
poems
or notes to poems".
So, if we read Kinbote's life and actions as the extra-textual
character's comment on Shade's life and actions, we must conclude that
at
the time when they lived in Nice, while Sybil was already pregnant with
Hazel or about to be so, John was unfaithful to her.
This or these infidelities find a double expression in PF: In the
poem, they show through the discordant details of the ramble along the
sea;
in the commentary, they assume the form of Kinbote's ludicrous and
outrageous homosexual affairs.
Of course, here again, I don't mean to say that Shade is a
homosexual; that would be absurd in the context of the story. This
twofold
rendering is meant to express how this or these infidelities felt. It
may
express indirectly the extra-textual character's feelings at his own
infidelities, and although it is a very intimate matter (as Shade
objects),
it has its place in a work of art because (Kinbote answers) "a poet's
purified truth can cause no pain, no offense. True art is above false
honor".
As for Hazel, she is ill as a consequence of her father's betrayal
(s), as is so often the case in VN's stories (I'll give examples later).
Best,
Laurence Hochard