Dear List,
Still harping on VN's first novel written in
English, TRLSK, we can follow the mutation of
SK's novel's title, from "Cock Robin Hits Back" into "the
prismatic edge" and, at last, as "The Prismatic Bezel." (Sebastian's quasi-wife, Clare Bishop, had
not approved the "well-known
nursery-rhyme" (p.64).
I had been wondering if Clare's surname
"Bishop" might relate to "Knight", or to something else.
On page 77 there is a curious doubling, for
Clare's husband's surname is also "Bishop": "no relation
either, just pure coincidence". (cf.p.77). So, perhaps, there is "something else"... because
another coincidence derives
from a 1928 detective novel, "The Bishop
Murder Case", by S.S. van Dine, which used lines extracted from
the same nursery-rhyme satirized in SK's rejected title, now appended
to the body of a certain Christopher Robbin.
I learned that this
"nursery-rhyme" detective novel is "significant in the history of
the mystery novel because it is the first time that a narrative is organized
around such a formal scheme of parallels; this format was duplicated many
times in the genre afterwards by Agatha Christie and
others."
Now I wonder if these duplicated Bishops are
merely a "robinsonnada" (p.127)... For in VN's
satire we find that Sebastian "derived a morbid pleasure
from dissecting platitudes.[...] The decayed idea [...]the merest trifle,
as say, the adopted method of a detective story, became a bloated and malodorous
corpse."[...] But The Prismatic Bezel is not only a rollicking
parody of the setting of a detective tale; it is also a wicked imitation of
many other things[...] For V. "the heroes of the book are what can be loosely called 'methods of
composition." whereas Sebastian's second book, "Success", "deals mainly
with the methods of human fate[...]all the magic and force of his art are
summoned in order to discover the exact way in which two lines of life were made
to come into contact.*
.............................................................................................................................................................
* - as I see it, this
plot seems to follow the general idea of Thornton Wilder's "The
Bridge of San Luis Rey", a book that V. discovers in SK's
book-shelves,together with Hamlet, La morte d'Arthur, Doctor
Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, South Wind, The Lady with the
Dog.[...]"(p.41)